| Every artist is understandably nervous to bite the hand that feeds you, even if it doesn't feed you much. | |  |  | | Rocking the vote: Questlove DJs outside Philadelphia City Hall on Election Day, Nov. 8, 2022. His and other pop-up shows were organized by the group Joy to the Polls. | | (Ryan Collerd/AFP/Getty Images) | | | | quote of the day | | | rantnrave:// | Exposure Therapy
TIKTOK likes to see itself as a partner that's "enhancing musical engagement" for record companies and their artists, which is a fancy way of saying it pays in exposure, which is good because while TikTok also pays in cash, it appears to be a really, really small amount of cash. Billboard's ELIAS LEIGHT collected some eye-popping numbers this week, such as $8 for 1 million views for one indie label, and $5,000 for an artist whose song was used in videos that collected views "numbering in the billions." TikTok music chief OLE OBERMANN responded with the enhancing musical engagement quote and the argument that "that translates directly to more financial and creative opportunities for music creators"—presumably at other platforms, not his. Suddenly those platforms, including SPOTIFY and YOUTUBE, are looking good in the eyes of record company accountants, while TikTok has become the labels' royalty target du jour.
The three majors have been negotiating their next contracts with TikTok for the past year and they're all asking for higher royalties and, for the first time, a cut of the social media company's growing ad revenue, Bloomberg reports. The company is expected to bring in $12 billion this year (or maybe a little less) and the labels are determined not to be MTV'd or YouTube'd again. (Full disclosure: MTV, me, blah blah, but it's not like I was negotiating deals with anyone.) TikTok, not surprisingly, is happy the way things are.
TikTok's leverage appears to be manifold. It does, in fact, offer fantastic exposure, a benefit no one disputes. Artists and songs are all but made on the platform, and it's become a page-one item on record company marketing plans. Not only can it launch hits, it's increasingly difficult to launch a hit without it. It's where the labels' consumers are. It appears willing to go into direct deals with artists if labels don't want to play ball. It knows labels really *don't* want to pull their music; if anything, they want to do more with TikTok, not less. (Obermann, a former WARNER MUSIC exec, also claims TikTok's users are there mostly for the videos, not the music, but that's a strange argument to push when you're trying to convince music companies to give you stuff.)
The labels' leverage consists of fewer bullet points, but it's a really good point: They own and/or control the recordings. Which they *can* simply pull from the platform if they want to, but they don't, but they could, but at the very least they'd like to think that gives them some sway in setting a price.
Complicating factor #1: TikTok parent company's BYTEDANCE's subscription music service, RESSO, which it's trying to expand into more markets, which is the subject of separate, rocky negotiations with the labels.
Complicating factor #2: TikTok's mounting issues with content having nothing to do with music. It's having a particularly bad week this week, with accusations of election interference, antisemitism and a possible investigation into a 12-year-old British boy's death, "and it's only Tuesday," as MusicAlly reported relatively early in the day on Tuesday.
Complicating factor #3: "I've seen this movie before, and I know the ending," UMG CEO LUCIAN GRAINGE told investors who asked about TikTok in October. Do he and his peers at SONY, WARNER and indie consortium MERLIN have the power to change the ending this time? Or does it always end that way for a reason? Is the exposure always worth it in the end? Is the exposure ever worth it?
Dot Dot Dot
Congrats to my old VH1 colleague RICK KRIM, who's replacing JON LANDAU as head of the ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME performers nominating committee (and whom I hereby, starting today, shall be pestering about WARREN ZEVON and the SHANGRI-LAS)... VOGUE is none too pleased with DRAKE and 21 SAVAGE's parody publicity campaign for their album HER LOSS, which included clips of nonexistent NPR TINY DESK and HOWARD STERN appearances and a fake version of Vogue, with the two rappers on the cover, that was distributed around New York City and promoted on Drake's Instagram (and, not surprisingly, picked up by several news sites who thought it was real). Vogue's parent, CONDÉ NAST, is suing, calling the parody zine "a counterfeit version of perhaps one of the most carefully curated covers in all of the publication business." NPR and Stern, for what it's worth, were amused/impressed by the campaign... How to become a film and TV composer (spoiler: it's really, really hard)... GUSTAV MAHLER is having a moment; thank you, Hollywood... BILLBOARD's Top Business Managers.
Rest in Peace
Fiddler/guitarist JEFF COOK, who founded the groundbreaking country band Alabama with his cousins Randy Owen and Teddy Gentry and played with them for nearly 50 years and through 43 #1 country singles, often wielding his signature double-neck electric guitar. Parkinson's disease finally forced Cook off the road in the late 2010s, but his bandmates continued to set up his gear at every show in case he ever wanted to return. "Jeff was a sweet sweet man and a hugely influential musician for us Alabama folks," Jason Isbell wrote... Nazareth lead singer DAN MCCAFFERTY, who rocked the talk box on "Hair of the Dog" and helped codify the power ballad with Nazareth's 1975 cover of the Everly Brothers' "Love Hurts"... Musician and synth designer DON LEWIS, who built a groundbreaking integrated system, the Live Electronic Orchestra (LEO), in the 1970s, and went on to contribute to the development of the Yamaha DX7 and Roland TR-808 among other notable instruments... Bob Marley & the Wailers keyboardist TYRONE DOWNIE, whose lengthy CV also included time with Black Uhuru, Buju Banton, Steel Pulse, the Tom Tom Club and Youssou N'Dour... Gospel singer ALAHAUNDRA ROMEO, who sang with the New York Community Choir and Carl Bean & Universal Love... UK music journalist COLIN IRWIN, who was an editor at Melody Maker, a radio/TV presenter for the BBC and the author of several books.
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
| | wednesday night interlude |
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