jason hirschhorn's @MusicREDEF: 03/14/2022 - Google Beats Genius, John Oliver on Ticketmaster, Playlist Hijacker, 'Pushin P,' Gayle...

My sound engineer wrote to me yesterday that he didn't have any water... He cannot go out, it's dangerous. Open in browser Monday March 14, 2022 Ukrainian singer Jamala in Kyiv, May 9, 2017. (Michael Campanella/Getty Images) quote of the day "My sound engineer wrote to me yesterday that he didn't have any water... He cannot go out, it's dangerous." - Jamala, who won Eurovision for Ukraine in 2016 with her song "1944" rantnrave:// Lyrical Flow A US federal appeals court last week upheld a lower court's ruling that GENIUS has no standing to sue GOOGLE and LYRICFIND for allegedly cribbing its transcriptions of song lyrics, on the grounds that Genius doesn't own the copyrights in the songs themselves. This seemingly ends a two-and-a-half-year legal fight over Google search results for lyrics. LyricFind, one of the companies that supplies lyrics for the Google information boxes that trump all other search results for songs, is legally free, it appears, to cut-and-paste all the Genius transcriptions it wants into its own database and then into Google's database, if in fact that's what it's been doing and if that's what it wants to continue to do. I've written about this once or twice before and won't repeat myself except to say it remains weird that music publishers don't routinely supply the actual lyrics to the sites they license lyrics to—they basically license the right for the sites to figure out the lyrics on their own, with occasionally hilarious results—and just because the law says you can copy them from other sites that have already done that work, doesn't mean you should. It's still someone else's work, copyright-protected or not. If I was Genius, I'd start randomly hiding hilarious results like "Google Probably Stole This Lyric" in the html code of transcriptions in a way that makes them automatically show up anywhere they're copy-pasted. (Genius, it should be noted, originally sued for $50 million, which is more than half of what the entire company was worth when it sold itself at a fire-sale price in September to MEDIALAB, and has a few of its own issues to answer for.) In Other Legal News Has the tide officially turned in favor of defendants in music plagiarism suits? While high-profile suits against DUA LIPA and ED SHEERAN work their way through courts on both sides of the Atlantic, an appeals court in the US drove the final nail into Christian rapper FLAME's case against KATY PERRY's "DARK HORSE" last week. In a ruling that stunned and alarmed top-shelf songwriters and music publishers, Flame had won a $2.8 million judgment in 2019 over a short, similar ostinato that appeared in Perry's song and his "JOYFUL NOISE." But it was overturned a year later, and on Thursday, the appeals court declined to reinstate the original judgment, writing, "Just as films often rely on tropes to tell a compelling story, music uses standard tools to build and resolve dramatic tension," and what the two songs shared was "a manifestly conventional arrangement of musical building blocks." That's the exact judgment and reasoning Lipa, Sheeran and other prominent plagiarism targets have been seeking—what you might call the "that's how songwriting works" defense. Quote of the week from Sheeran, asked in a British courtroom if his melody for "SHAPE OF YOU" was similar to his accuser SAM CHOKRI's "OH WHY": "Fundamentally, yes. They are based around the minor pentatonic scale [and] they both have vowels in them." The same defense, it should be noted, can be used by the writers of any future songs that sound suspiciously like "Dark Horse" or "Shape of You" or Lipa's "LEVITATING." One hopes the pop stars and their publishers will be as reluctant to raise a fuss when that happens as they were appalled when a fuss was raised against them. Walking the Floor Over You I'm pretty sure I've bought more records from the ERNEST TUBB RECORD SHOP on Lower Broadway in Nashville than I have from any other record store I've never lived within 800 miles of, starting, if I'm not mistaken, with these two 7-inch singles. I hate this news. People who do live within 800 miles hate it even more. An American treasure. Rest in Peace 1970s soul singer (and songwriter and producer) TIMMY THOMAS, best known for the 1972 anti-war classic "Why Can't We Live Together"... Singer and reality show star TRACI BRAXTON... Country singer/songwriter BRAD MARTIN. - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator gunna Last Week Tonight Ticketmaster: 'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver' By John Oliver John Oliver explains why concert tickets are so expensive, who's making money off of them, and which One Direction is his favorite. NPR Once, cultural ties to Russia were deliberate and hopeful. Now, they're eroding By Linda Holmes Russia's growing isolation in the cultural world is poignant for those who remember optimistic outreach of the 80s and 90s. Gawker How an Obscure Finnish EDM Artist Hijacked Countless Spotify Playlists By Tamlin Magee From children's medleys to funeral mixes, no shared playlist is safe from Pesukone and its labelmates. The Washington Post The precipitous rise and fall of 'Pushin P' By Chris Richards Gunna, Future and Young Thug made the first great song of 2022. Then it went bad. The Believer Songs in the Key of Childhood By Chris Feliciano Arnold Joe Raposo, the music of Sesame Street, and parenting through despair. Texas Monthly Sister Bobbie Grounded Willie Nelson in His Music—And His Life By John Spong and Michael Hall They shared something sacred that everyone else could only admire. "When we get into music," Bobbie Nelson once said, "something happens. There's magic between me and Wille." Trapital How Quality Control Music Invests in Startups By Dan Runcie and Dazayah Walker Being a 23-year-old venture capitalist is difficult as is. Now tack on being female and black? "It's been a journey", as Dazayah Walker, head of investments at Quality Control Music, shares with us in this episode of the Trapital podcast. The New York Times A New, Stealthy Kind of Protest Music By Carina del Valle Schorske Latin-American artists use images of fruits and flowers to expose the desecration of their homelands and sound out new futures. Saving Country Music We Need To Discuss The Sale of the Ernest Tubb Record Shop By Kyle 'Trigger' Coroneos We all just need to appreciate that the Ernest Tubb Record Shop on Lower Broadway in Nashville is not just a building, and it's not just a business. It isn't just brick and mortar, any more than the Ryman Auditorium is. It is a cultural institution and landmark. Vulture Gayle's 'abcdefu' and 10 More Extremely Cursed Radio Edits By Marc Hirsh Sometimes the edits are so tin-eared and misbegotten that they manage to undercut something that was crucial to the song in the first place. future Variety SXSW Returns In-Person to Stormy Texas Political Climate By Matt Donnelly An unseasonable cold and rainy spell drifted through Austin on Friday, as attendees poured into the SXSW conference in person for the first time in two years. But that's not the only storm brewing as marquee names and business leaders from Hollywood, tech, music, and media step foot in Texas. The Forty-Five Twitter Stan culture invites fans in, but have we got too comfortable? By Jenessa Williams On the eve of the release of Charli XCX's fifth studio album, we examine the way in which her fans are overstepping the boundaries leaving little room for their artist to grow. The New York Times The Opacity of Earl Sweatshirt By Ismail Muhammad One of rap's more confounding artists uses his popularity to assert his humanity. NPR A Russian pianist's shows are canceled, even though he condemns the war in Ukraine By Bill Chappell Alexander Malofeev, 20, had already arrived in Montreal when a series of his concerts in Canada had been canceled. Billboard Leaving Russia Will Have Little Impact on Streaming Services, Record Labels By Glenn Peoples Strong steps taken by Western music companies to cease operations in Russia will have a big impact on the country but result in little damage to the global market. Slate The Song That Finally Toppled 'Encanto' From Its No. 1 Billboard Spot By Chris Molanphy It took more than a year for this TikTok hit to break into the mainstream. The Washington Post Teen found his dad's unreleased song from the '70s and shared it with the world. Now it has millions of streams By Sydney Page Rocker Curly Smith was never able to land a record deal for it. them. The Sapphic Pop Boom Has Been a Long Time Coming By Jill Gutowitz Each passing year has felt like the most Sapphic yet, and 2022 in particular has been off to a deeply lesbian start. Mainstream pop and rock music is growing increasingly, visibly queer, with women like Doja Cat, Adrianne Lenker, Phoebe Bridgers, Brandi Carlile, and Megan Thee Stallion leading the scene. what we're into Music of the day "1944" Jamala Ukraine's 2016 Eurovision-winning song is about the Soviet Union's ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tatars, including the singer's grandmother, in 1944. Video of the day "Ukrainian Rhapsody: A Journey Into Ukrainian Classical Music" Natalya Pasichnyk Music | Media SUBSCRIBE Suggest a link "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" Jason Hirschhorn CEO & Chief Curator HOME | ABOUT | SETS | PRESS Redef Group Inc. LA - NY - Everywhere Copyright ©2021 UNSUBSCRIBE or MANAGE MY SUBSCRIPTION