jason hirschhorn's @MusicREDEF: 06/22/2022 - California's Seven Year Ache, BTS Overwhelms Its Fans, RIP Lead Singles, Zola Jesus, King Princess...

I think if we change the way that music is valued, and what aspects of music are encouraged and supported, culture will deepen and broaden, and that would really change society. It's a life or death issue for culture to revalue music. Open in browser Wednesday June 22, 2022 Release radar: Big Freedia at New Orleans Jazz Fest, May 6, 2022. (Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images) quote of the day "I think if we change the way that music is valued, and what aspects of music are encouraged and supported, culture will deepen and broaden, and that would really change society. It's a life or death issue for culture to revalue music." - Zola Jesus rantnrave:// Seven Year Ache Release your anger, release your mind, release your job, release your artists from lengthy record deals, that's the ask today in Sacramento, where the California Senate will hold its first hearing on a bill that would end the record industry's exemption from the state's seven-year limit on personal service contracts. Labels, not surprisingly, think this is a bad idea and they have economists on their side. Artists and their advocates think it's a great idea and they have economists on their side. The bill under discussion is the FAIR (Free Artists from Industry Restrictions) Act, which would repeal a 1987 amendment to the state's 1944 Seven-Year Statute that says recording artists are technically free to walk away from their contracts after seven years like everyone else in the state—but their labels can then sue them for lost revenue and other damages if they haven't delivered all the albums they were contractually bound to deliver in those seven years. (Spoiler alert: The typical artist, not being KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD, can't deliver the number of albums a typical seven-year deal asks them to deliver in seven years.) The debate is an old one, but updated for the booming streaming music economy. Labels say they won't be able to invest the way they do now in new artists, most of whom will never pay that investment back, if they can't be guaranteed the chance to hold onto the ones that do. Some argue that the FAIR act would amount to a giveaway to the most successful artists, who would become free agents relatively earlier in their careers, at the expense of newer and younger artists, who labels will stop supporting. Artists and managers say labels' overall investments in artists are already paying off many times over in soaring streaming profits, which are enriching record companies faster than they're enriching artists. A seven-year rule, they say, would give artists needed leverage and restore some balance to the music economy. (And, perhaps, put an end to some messy arguments about what does or does not constitute an album for contractual purposes.) Labels, it's worth noting, typically have the upper hand on both ends of a record deal. Artists are often in their teens when they sign their first major contract, hungry for the deal and generally in no position to dictate the terms. And when they walk away, whether it's after seven years and three albums or 15 years and seven albums, they almost certainly won't get to take their copyrights with them. They can, to paraphrase one particularly avid advocate of artists' rights, check out any time they like, but their royalties can never leave. Not waiting around for the legislature to act is H.E.R., who last week went ahead and sued MBK ENTERTAINMENT, which signed her to a one-album deal with five additional options when she was 14. Her first album came out 10 years later. In her lawsuit, the five-time Grammy winner says her "seven years have run." Diane Warren's Oscar Is a thing that will soon, actually, for real, exist. "I'm gonna put it on my piano and I'm gonna look at it every day," says she songwriter, who got her first Oscar nomination 34 years ago and his been nominated 12 more times without ever winning. She's getting an honorary Oscar in November—the first such honor ever awarded to a songwriter—and "every f***ing thing about this is amazing." Rest in Peace DENNIS CAHILL, a Chicago-born Irish American guitarist who played traditional Irish music, often with fiddler Martin Hayes. Together, they "created a Celtic complement to Steve Reich's quartets or Miles Davis's 'Sketches of Spain,'" the New York Times' Ann Powers wrote in a 1999 live review. In the 2010s, they released three albums with their Irish supergroup, the Gloaming. - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator release your job The New Yorker How BTS Became the Most Popular Band in History By E. Tammy Kim In an age of despair and division, a boy band from South Korea remixed the rules of pop and created a fandom bigger than Beatlemania. Billboard RIP Lead Singles: Why Hip-Hop Titans Are Dropping Full Albums All at Once By Jason Lipshutz Major artists like Drake, Future and Kendrick Lamar are increasingly dropping new projects without lead singles and letting the fans choose the hits. Culture Notes of an Honest Broker Where Did the Long Tail Go? By Ted Gioia 'The Long Tail' was supposed to boost alternative voices in music, movies, and books--but the exact opposite happened. What went wrong? Capitol Weekly End recording industry's corporate loophole that strangles artists By Hal Singer and Ted Tatos Recording artists labor under an anti-worker exemption to California employment law that the labels wrote themselves. Variety FAIR Act Proponents Are Sabotaging California's Music Community Behind Closed Doors (Guest Column) By Mike Montgomery For the last two years, a small group of wealthy music managers and lawyers have been trying to advance a bill in Sacramento that would change the rules for recording agreements to benefit elite stars and their representatives while driving down advance payments and royalties for everyone else and making it harder for diverse new voices to get signed. NPR Music Zola Jesus finds purpose in the process By Liz Pelly The musician faces the spiritual quandaries of what it means to be an artist now. Cultured Magazine Why King Princess's 'Hold On Baby' Is Not a Pandemic Album By Brandon Flynn King Princess's new record represents two years of work both on songwriting and on accepting the truths of oneself--the good, the bad, the ugly. In conversation with actor and friend Brandon Flynn, the artist explains why this album was meant to be performed and the different emotional registers it explores, from lust to self-loathing. Trapital Drake and the Monetization of Hip-Hop By Dan Runcie This era rewards consistency more than it rewards greatness. The New York Times George Michael Preferred Music to Fame. The Doc He Made Does, Too By Rob Tannenbaum "George Michael: Freedom Uncut," a film the musician worked on with his longtime collaborator David Austin, tells the story of his professional life via interviews and previously unseen footage. DJ Mag RETRO READ: Solid gold: how Robin S' 'Show Me Love' became one of dance music's most iconic anthems By Harold Heath It starts with a cymbal crash, a bumpy house beat and a prominent, punchy snare. There's a gnarly, low synth stab that plays a simple three-note riff, and then a yearning, wordless vocal comes in, held over a few seconds while one of the most recognisable melodies in house music plays out. release your trade Vulture In Baz Luhrmann's 'Elvis,' Yola Becomes Her Own Hero By Andrea Williams There would be no Yola without rock-and-roll architect Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Now Yola gets to become her in Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis." Billboard After the NFT Gold Rush: What Does the Crypto Crash Mean for Music? By Benjamin James With the value of cryptocurrencies like Ethereum tanking, the focus has quickly shifted from hyper-growth to defensive and heads-down building. Money 4 Nothing Independent Labels and Electronic Music with Chal Ravens By Saxon Baird, Sam Backer and Chal Ravens As it developed from house and techno to today's endless array of genres, electronic music traded the artist-heavy focus of rap or rock for constellations of high-profile DJs, faceless producers, and—most importantly for today's episode—a host of iconic independent labels. But...how did that work? Variety If Black Culture Drives Pop Culture, Where Are the Black Senior Music Executives? By Tiffany Red Black artists' needs are different than our non-Black counterparts. Why is the Black voice missing from the board room? The New York Times U.S. Orchestras Playing More Works by Women and Minorities, Report Says By Javier C. Hernández The recent discussions over racial justice and gender disparities appear to have accelerated efforts to bring more diversity to classical music. The New Yorker How Johan Lenox (and Some Acid) Merged Beethoven and Kanye By Andrew Marantz Stephen Feigenbaum was a classical-music kid oblivious of pop; Lenox, as he's known now, is a hip-hop producer with a new solo album, "WDYWTBWYGU." Vulture The Point Guard of the 'Winning Time' Score Sees Jazz in Basketball By Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding Nicholas Britell brought charts to record the show's score. Robert Glasper, his co-composer, doesn't get down like that: "I was like, 'Hell no.'" The Guardian The truth about screaming fangirls By Kaitlyn Tiffany Teenage pop fans have long been derided as vacuous victims of marketing. But there is so much more to it than that, explains a Harry Styles aficionado. (Edited extract from Kaitlyn Tiffany's "Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It.") Broken Record Broken Record: Sonny Rollins By Justin Richmond and Sonny Rollins Sonny Rollins talks about one of his first big gigs in 1949 playing alongside other jazz icons like Bud Powell and Fats Navarro. He also explains why he no longer actively listens to music, and for the first time ever, Rollins talks about how Charlie "Bird" Parker is the reason he kicked drugs. NPR Encore: Rock 'n' roll's 'Creem Magazine' is back in print and online By Danny Hensel "Creem Magazine," which covered rock 'n' roll from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, is returning: first as a digital magazine with full archives, then in the fall as a quarterly print publication. what we're into Music of the day "Show Me Love" Robin S Video of the day "Glastonbury Man" Andrew Graham-Brown/BBC 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?'" 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