When asked about the near future of free music streaming, Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s chief business officer, tells me, “What’s next is more ad revenue coming into it.” For instance, the advertising conglomerate Interpublic Group recently revealed it was shifting $250 million in TV ad spending to YouTube. Kyncl suggests advertisers could increasingly take money off traditional radio, too, and put it on the service’s clips. The record industry’s business model always differed from TV and radio in that fans bought specific songs or albums, but now it’s being tied into that same advertising-based model through free streaming.
“The music industry as a whole hasn’t earned that much from advertising, and now that’s changing,” Kyncl says. The reason industry coffers haven’t previously spilled over with ad revenues is partly a quirk of U.S. copyright law. Unlike in some other nations, radio broadcasters here pay royalties only to the songwriters, not the labels that own the recordings. But on-demand streaming service providers like YouTube and Spotify must pay both types of royalties. So, according to Kyncl, as listening goes from analog to digital, the music industry can look forward to a bigger share of the revenue from a larger market. In other words, labels—and artists who own their own master recordings—have gone from “monetizing only the super fans, by selling them CDs and LPs and tapes, to making money through ads from everybody that enjoys music,” he explains. “And that’s a big deal.”
The Era of the One-Word Song Title
Yet another way that Talking Heads’ Fear Of Music album was ahead of its time … via Priceonomics:
Over the last several years, pop music has been inundated by massive hits with one-word song titles: “Happy”, “Fancy”, “Rude”, “Problem”, “Jealous”, “Chandelier, “Hello”, and “Sorry” are just a few examples of this trend.
We are in the era of the shrinking pop song title. The transition has taken place slow enough that you may not have noticed, but when you look back at the history of pop, the change is stark.We analyzed Billboard Hot 100 song title data and discovered a steady upward trend in the number of one-word titles. Today, the probability of a one-word title is two and a half times greater than in the 1960s. The average number of words per song title has also declined substantially. The increasingly industrialized pop machine likes its song titles short, sweet and on brand.
Why might shorter song titles be better commercially? Mostly because they are easier to remember, particularly if they are repeated over and over in the song. The last thing the music industry wants is for you to love a song but be unable to remember its name when you go to stream or download the song. But it’s tough to forget “Hello” or “Happy” when Adele and Pharrell keep repeating the one-word title throughout the song.
The pop industrial complex is focused on making the consumption of its product as easy as possible, and that has meant making song titles ever more simple and memorable. Expect to hear a lot more one-word title hit songs with lyrics that will drill that title into your head.
The Music Industry Isn’t Ready for the Blockchain
Every day there are headlines about companies in the banking industry employing blockchain technology. Technologies like this could make the music industry more fair and transparent, and reduce a lot of friction around rights and payments, leaving more money to flow from fan to creator. The biggest obstacle, however, is the music industry itself.
The problem in getting the music industry to adopt the blockchain for anything beyond metadata is that there are competing interests. For instance, if you’ve invested a lot of money into marketing a sub-licensed work in a certain territory, you wouldn’t want everyone to be able to see when your right expires… because then you’ll have a lot of competitors who might try to secure those rights.
There’s a lot of interest in making payments transparent, so that it becomes clear how much a party like Spotify actually pays to certain labels, and what happens to that money along the chain to the creators. Creators are likely to have privacy concerns about having their income being public though.
Other organisations have a risk of redundancy — although they might secure a new role for themselves by participating.
When Classic Rockers Embraced The New Wave
Writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine has tackled a fascinating (to me) subject for Medium’s Cuepoint: the odd collision of classic rockers and the emerging ‘new wave’ in the late ’70s.
Three or four years after the revolution, all the upheavals of the back half of the 70s were no longer contained in the underground. Disco and punk, synthesizers and drum machines, hip-hop and new wave — these strange new sounds started to seep into the mainstream and not just through new acts. Baby boomers facing their forties decided to try to dig the new breed, albeit on their own terms.
Erlewine goes on to document amusing efforts of varying success by Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop (working with XTC / future Shriekback keyboardist Barry Andrews), Robert Palmer (collaborating with Gary Numan and Chris Frantz), and even Shaun Cassidy (who enlisted Todd Rundgren to help with his attempted transformation). But he saves most of his wonderment for Paul McCartney’s unlikely embrace of these sounds:
Of all these odd records reckoning with new wave, none were as surprising as Paul McCartney’s McCartney II. Decades later, its cloistered, claustrophobic single “Temporary Secretary” can still startle and so can its accompanying, misshapen album.
On “Temporary Secretary,” McCartney sets his whimsy — which arises in the form of a rhyming, murmured sing-song appropriated from Ian Dury — to a frenzied synthesized loop that undercuts whatever cutesiness he utters. Sounding like a computer in collapse, that loop leaves the lasting impression that McCartney really was attempting to be fashion forward.
The results of these pre-synth era artists coping with onrushing trends would make for a fun compilation album … has anyone done this? Anyway, this is a fine article and worth some time and thought.
SoundCloud Partners With LANDR
With the introduction of SoundCloud’s paid ‘Go’ service and external pressure to become a more commercial enterprise, there’s been heated speculation that the site might forgo its commitment to the independent musicians and DJs who have been SoundCloud’s emphasis. Today’s news, though a minor announcement to most, may be a signal that music creators will remain the focus of SoundCloud’s long game. Via FACT:
SoundCloud has announced a partnership with online mastering service LANDR that means all users can get free track optimization for the streaming platform. The partnership sees SoundCloud focusing once again on its original market of music creators rather than consumers after the launch of its paid subscription service, SoundCloud Go.
A LANDR spokesman said: “We use exactly the same algorithms but we did some research to find the best output for optimizing the sound of any track on the SoundCloud streaming format. The optimized tracks will only be hosted on SoundCloud and not in LANDR’s track library. It is really aimed at streaming on SoundCloud."
Professional mastering is regardless still mandatory for commercial release (seriously … please), but this is a smart move that not only gives the music uploader a little something extra out of using SoundCloud, but also improves audio consistency throughout the site.
Update, via Ars Technica:
Landr’s landing site describes the mastering process as “complicated and elusive,” then insists that its product, which is almost entirely algorithm-driven, delivers a quality product for small-fry musicians by intentionally limiting how many options they can pick from. “Great design is all about limiting the field,” Landr says. As a result, the company touts that “we’re confident you’ll hear the difference” between professional mastering work and what Landr can pull off.
After our tests of SoundCloud’s new Landr functionality, we can safely agree with that statement—in every bad way possible.
Encouraging Steps Towards Closing The Publisher Data Gap
Artist concerns about transparency in streaming services are well founded but it is an eminently fixable problem because virtually all of the necessary data is in place. When a record label or distributor licenses music to a service it literally provides a data file of its music which is then ingested (uploaded) by the service. But when service licenses from a music publisher or PRO there is no such data file, because the recorded works are owned by the labels. Publishers do not even provide a comprehensive list of what works their license covers. So music services instead do a ‘best efforts’ licensing effort, licensing all the key publishers and PROs.
The problem is that until there is a market level solution that sort of action won’t go away. This means any music service operating in the US, where there is a statutory damages system, cannot operate with certainty that it will not face another legal suit with potentially vast damages awarded. The nightmare scenario is that streaming services start pulling out of the US, or restricting their catalogue to identified works (which largely means major publishers only) rather than face potentially fatal legal challenges.
The music industry needs a solution and now just like busses that never come, two arrive at once: Google’s Open Source Validation Tool for DDEX Standard and Canadian PRO (Performing Rights Organization) SOCAN has acquired Medianet essentially as a digital rights reporting play.
I sort of feel like the old guy grumbling “we can land a man on the moon but we can’t even (insert impossible thing here)”, but in this data-obsessed age we really should have a centralized publishers database that can be updated and utilized throughout the industry. Hopefully multiple companies getting involved (there are also rumors of Music Reports entering the fray) will finally bear some fruit, and we can begin slowly stumbling our way out of this wild west phase of the streaming economy.
Tearing Up The Rules Of The Album
Teens of Denial couldn’t possibly exist 15 years ago—least of all because songwriter Will Toledo hadn’t yet turned 10 years old. Toledo instead stands as a “new” voice among a younger generation of musicians (ala Chance The Rapper, age 23, or Torres, age 25) who grew up alongside our current digital music ecosystem. As such, Car Seat Headrest’s first original album for a label represents a culmination of many changes the industry has gone through in the past decade-plus: instant accessibility to vast catalogues; the democratization of recording and releasing; the need to share it all immediately.
Perhaps equally as important as making the music, Toledo always had a home for it. His first release (called 1) dates back to spring 2010, and it still lives on Bandcamp (which itself dates back to 2007). At the age of 23, Toledo already has 11 albums and an EP to his name on the Car Seat Headrest Bandcamp page (Teens of Denial will make it an even dozen).
Toledo’s first release for Matador, last year’s Teens of Style, didn’t include a single new song. Instead, the label wanted Car Seat Headrest partially because of this built-up history. Teens of Style essentially acts as a best-of for Toledo’s Bandcamp output, although the musician re-recorded each selected track. This highlights perhaps the most modern characteristic of Car Seat Headrest: any song can be a continuous work in progress.
Over the years, Toledo has kept a consistent presence on Tumblr (a service that coincidentally started the same year as Bandcamp). He posts plenty of ideas and early demos, including a recent Radiohead tribute. This transparency and symbiotic interaction with fans became part of his process. So whenever Toledo made the types of sweeping changes that services like iTunes might demonize, “people commented, but now people don’t really remember that was a thing.”
You may have heard about someone else trying a similar approach earlier this year. Kanye West released his Tidal faux-exclusive The Life of Pablo on February 14, tweaked some tracks in mid-March, and then shocked fans by producing an almost entirely new version on March 31. “What Kanye is doing is a lot more recognizable to younger people who are more used to this sort of low-key LP release,” {Toldeo} said. “Even with official LPs, people get leaks and half-finished versions before the album actually drops, and this only became prevalent with the Internet. People today are used to the having the LP come into shape more slowly and not get dropped all at once, so what Kanye did was brilliant. He got so much shit for it being a disastrous release or whatever, but that’s not what I saw. He understood the power of the Internet, and he was using his massive celebrity to use Tidal like it was the next Bandcamp.”
Hitting The Links
Sun Ra is often cited as the founding father of afro-futurism, a tangent of thought which extends through the mothership connections of Parliament-Funkadelic, to the astral techno of Underground Resistance, to the aquatic, lardossian narratives of Drexciya; his work examines racial identity and the black experience in America through the eyes of an alien visiting humanity. The language of this deconstruction is peppered with his own neologisms, like the “astro-black” of outer space, the “myth-science” or “solar-myth” of creation, right down to the name he chose for his band, “the Arkestra”, a linguistic riff on Noah’s biblical safe haven.
Giant Abandoned Soviet Spaceship Made of Wood
Buran, the Soviet Union’s answer to NASA’s Space Shuttle programme, wasn’t quite as successful as its American rival. Just one flight-capable Buran orbiter (craft OK–1K1) was completed, and flew only once, unmanned, on November 15, 1988. Today, a handful of relics from the Buran programme lie strewn across the former Soviet Union and beyond, from half-finished orbiters to a series of full-scale engineering rigs and other test articles; among them was this wooden wind tunnel model, abandoned for years in a corner of Zhukovsky Airfield in Moscow Oblast.
Electron Microscope Shows How Vinyl LP’s Are Played
Have you ever wondered how a vinyl player actually plays a record? Well, wonder no more. Microscopic Images shared this image on their Twitter some months back, showing what a record’s groove looks like under 1000x magnification.
The Meenakshi Temple of Madurai, India
Meenakshi Temple was originally built by Kulasekarer Pandya in the 6th century BC, but the credit for the present look of the temple goes to the Nayakas, who ruled Madurai from 16th to 18th century. The reign of the Nayaks marks the golden period of Madurai when art, architecture and learning flourished expansively. The riot of colors, however, is a more recent addition.
Graphic Designer Mark Ohe of Matador Records
Mark’s approach to working with a band always began with hearing their ideas for the project first, because, he pointed out, they always had ideas for it. “It’s pretty rare that someone comes to me and says, ‘Hey I’m doing this record, but I don’t know what to do for the cover.’ That almost never happens. What they really usually need is for someone to edit those ideas.”
Rapping, Deconstructed
Who’s To Blame For Music Startups’ Bleak Outlook
(The) bleak outlook for profitability among standalone digital music companies is a direct result of the high royalty rates incumbent upon startups who wish to license digital music for use in their apps. Whether you negotiate voluntary agreements or avail yourself of the existing compulsory licenses, you will not turn a profit. At least, no one ever has. The few that refused to pay these rates were often sued out of existence.
The end result of these perilous market conditions is that the only companies who can afford to be involved with digital music are the internet giants prepared to subsidize their digital music services with profits from their other businesses. The high royalty rates and up-front cash advances required by the record companies prevent profitable, sustainable businesses from emerging. As a result, the recorded music businesses is left only with these giants: Amazon, Apple, YouTube and, to a lesser extent, Spotify and Pandora.
But this is a “crisis” of their own making. Many of us argued for years that it was in the industry’s best interest to create a healthy ecosystem of hundreds or thousands of successful companies, all enjoying successful businesses around music. But those arguments fell on deaf ears, and instead the industry fought repeatedly to raise royalty rates over and over again, despite evidence that not a single company ever achieved profitability.
In my mind, it would have been in the best long-term interests of the recorded music business to enable the widespread success of thousands of companies, each paying fair but not bone-crushing royalties back to labels, artists and publishers. But the high royalty rates imposed upon startups, even after clear signs over the past 19 years that the strategy killed companies, has prevented a healthy ecosystem from emerging. It’s a bed the music industry made for itself, and now it is left to lie in it.
On the other hand, via Hypebot:
The indie music community has embraced Bandcamp and its suite of direct to fan monetization tools. And unlike most music tech startups, Bandcamp, which launched in 2008, has been profitable “in the now-quaint revenues-exceed-expenses sense” since 2012.
Bandcamp grew 35% last year, according to new stats just released by the direct to fan music platform. Fans are paying $4.3 million to artists monthly using the site, including 25,000 records a day.
Subscription-based music streaming “has yet to prove itself to be a viable model, even after hundreds of millions of investment dollars raised and spent,” the company wrote in a blog post. "For our part, we are committed to offering an alternative that we know works.
Update; There’s now a rebuttal to the original piece, via Medium’s Cuepoint:
More and more artists have chosen to go independent, direct to consumer, self-release their art. Stuff like Blockchain is exciting. If the labels are so impossible to deal with, then shouldn’t the investment be in platforms that will succeed in a post-label world? Shouldn’t the new startups, or the established players, be investing in content and talent development directly with artists, in a more substantial way? Shouldn’t they just take their great ideas and bypass the stubborn major labels?
Update 2; via Music Business Blog:
The music industry is in a transition phase. In such periods, the old and new worlds co-exist and collide. There are statistics that both sides of any argument can hold up in their defence, in fact they can often hold up the very same numbers to support opposite perspectives. Similarly, the comparisons you chose to benchmark with, can paint entirely different pictures. Such is the nature of transitions of human and business behaviour. For example, 83% of Spotify’s gross revenue going to rights is clearly too high and unsustainable, yet $0.00098 per song going to artists is also clearly too low and unsustainable. Something needs to give, for both ends of the value chain.
Maybe if/when Spotify gets to 50 million subscribers it will feel it has enough clout to compel rights holders to rethink licensing economics. Perhaps it will take Spotify getting to a 100 million to make that happen. Perhaps it will never happen. But if it doesn’t, the economics of streaming will remain so broken that only companies with ulterior business objectives will remain viable players, enter stage left streaming’s Triple A: Apple, Amazon and Alphabet (Google). The labels need to ask themselves whether that is the streaming future they want…
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