Highly recommending this wonderful nearly two hour mix of pleasant sounds from Steve Cobby (who you may remember from his exploits with Fila Brazillia):
Inside Spotify’s Plan To Take On Apple Music
(Spotify’s) Fresh Finds takes a central component of The Echo Nest’s original methodology—its web content crawler and natural language processing technology—to mine music blogs and reviews from sites like Pitchfork and NME and figure out which artists are starting to generate buzz, but don’t yet have the listenership to show for it. Using natural language processing, the system analyzes the text of these editorial sources to try and understand the sentiment around new artists. For instance, a blogger might write that a band’s “new EP blends an early ’90s throwback grunge sound with mid-’80s-style synthesizers and production—and it’s the best thing to come out of Detroit in years.” If this imaginary act goes on tour and writers in Brooklyn dole out praise of their own, the bots will pick up on it. It helps address an issue some people have voiced early on with Apple Music, that its selections aren’t adventurous and it tends to recommend things you already like rather than things you might like.
I have the feeling that Apple Music is closer to getting curation right than Spotify. People respond to recommendations when there’s a personal aspect … like when it’s a mixtape from a friend (or someone you admire), or a recommendation from that blog writer whose taste is so spot on, or that guy at the counter in the hip record store who is always handing you cool 12″ singles. Apple Music’s apparent understanding of this might be in part because they have publicly hired tech-savvy musicians to oversee these things, while Spotify seem to be bringing on music-savvy techies.
Are Apple Music’s playlists a bit obvious? Sometimes … but I was recently surprised by a dance-oriented playlist focusing on Factory Records that contained songs I’d never heard before (and I thought I was a Factory completist), and a space-rock playlist compiled by a musician I hadn’t heard of which turned me on to a few other new artists. Apple Music’s playlist recommendations can get a bit uncanny (in a good way) once it gets to ‘know’ your taste.
Spotify’s idea of intensively data-sourced curation is intriguing, and I am sure they are utilizing some amazing innovations bordering on artificial intelligence to try to make it work. But a playlist delivered weekly under the same headline — that the recipient knows is auto-generated — is easy to ignore. And the discovery-bot will inevitably get it wrong a few times, throwing in curve-ball songs that are completely outside of the listener’s taste-zone. I don’t know about you, but something like this is only allowed a few times to get it wrong before I’m not interested.
That said, the emphasis on discovery that the streaming services are embracing makes me hopeful. If Spotify’s system does start turning people on to emerging, self-released artists then that’s an amazing thing. Likewise, it would be nice to see Apple Music’s playlists include more emerging artists. I think having regular (monthly?) playlists from notable tastemakers — music bloggers, cutting edge musicians, and even non-music types like fiction writers and film directors — would add to the ‘personally curated’ touch and increase the chances of discovery.
Apple Music also needs to improve their Pandora-like ‘radio’ function. In my experience there is zero amount of potential discovery going on there. When I tell Apple Music I want a station that sounds like The Slits, that doesn’t mean I want to hear The Slits every other song, and it certainly doesn’t mean I want to hear “The Killing Moon” for the dozenth time. Pandora has this problem, too, though not as pronounced as with Apple Music. Maybe this is where Spotify can find an advantage?
Of Scalpels and Synthesizers: The Music of THE KNICK
In the context of 1900s New York, (the musical score) is so blatantly anachronistic as to risk undermining any possible suspension of disbelief the director might have achieved through the show’s painstaking set design and costuming. And this may well be the point.
I’m quite looking forward to the return of THE KNICK in a few months (check out the Season 2 teaser trailer HERE). Though not without its faults, the show is beguiling, especially in its remarkably organic potrayal of the early 1900s as a setting. It can be seen as a bit of an artistic ‘passion project’ of Steven Soderbergh as he dedicates himself to each episode as director, cinematographer, and editor (though he is credited in the latter two capacities under pseudonyms for some reason). Soderbergh’s close involvement makes for a tightly consistent series. Also remarkable is Cliff Martinez’s revelatory ‘out of time’ score. When I watched the first episode I honestly was initially thrown off by the music, and I was worried the accompanying cold and rigidly sequenced synthesizer score would keep me from immersing myself in the show’s time period. I was wrong. This excellent analysis of Cliff Martinez’s score delves in to just what makes it work.
The Dept. of Justice Said to Be Considering a Baffling New Rule Change for Song Licensing
According to numerous sources, the DoJ has sent a letter to the two performance rights societies governed by the consent decree, telling them that on “split works” songs — songs written by multiple writers — any writer or rights holder can issue a license for 100 percent of the song. In other words, the long-established industry practice of each rights owner greenlighting their particular portion of a song in order to establish a license — also known as fractional licensing — may no longer be allowed.
The DoJ has, somehow, become convinced that it is common practice in the music industry for any rights holder to license an entire song, not just the share they own.
I can’t see this going through as it only takes some simple explaining to realize the tumult it would create, but its consideration illustrates the growing political influence of tech — the Pandoras, etc — versus that of the PROs in our present climate.
I’m So Green
That disorienting moment when you imagine CAN’s “I’m So Green” as the blueprint for Happy Mondays …
What Would Instagram for Music Look Like?
(The) idea is relatively simple: on Cymbal, you amass followers, follow your friends, and instead of posting selfies and sunsets, you post one single song, which is paired with the track’s album art. As you scroll through your feed, you see a flowing playlist curated by your friends. Unlike many other music-based apps that try to design their own groundbreaking format, Cymbal piggybacks off the libraries of music-streaming giants like SoundCloud and Spotify, letting users select tracks from these massive libraries.
“Wait … what?” – This Is My Jam
Happy Birthday Copyright Bombshell: New Evidence Warner Music Previously Hid Shows Song Is Public Domain
Further investigation showed that the song appeared in editions stretching back to 1922, which in the plaintiffs’ view “proves conclusively” that “Happy Birthday” entered the public domain no later than that year. The song was printed without a copyright notice unlike other songs in the book. Rather, it included a notice that read “Special permission through courtesy of The Clayton F. Summy Co.”
That important line of text published underneath the song’s lyrics was “blurred almost beyond legibility” in the copy that Warner/Chappell handed over in discovery. Plaintiffs’ lawyers note that it’s “the only line of the entire PDF that is blurred in that manner.”
If you haven’t been following the issue closely, there is actually a lot of evidence, much of it put together by Robert Brauneis, that the song really should be in the public domain. There are all sorts of questions raised about how it became covered by copyright in the first place. Everyone agrees the song was originally written as “Good Morning to All” in the late 1800s, but from there, there’s lots of confusion and speculation as to how it eventually was given a copyright in 1935, granted to the Clayton F. Summy company. People have argued that the 1935 copyright was really just on a particular piano arrangement, but not the melody or lyrics to Happy Birthday To You — which had both been around long before 1935.
This latest finding at least calls into question how honest Warner/Chappel has been for decades in arguing that everyone needs to pay the company to license “Happy Birthday” even as the song was almost certainly in the public domain.
This would be a pretty big shake-up, especially if Warner/Chappel were ordered to retroactively pay back license fees if it’s proven they had knowledge of all this. Regardless, the fight over “Happy Birthday” is becoming the music publishing world’s equivalent to a juicy detective novel.
Grace Jones On Top of the Pops
From 1980, a pure distillation of attitude. Even Roger Daltrey seems a tad bewitched at the end.
SoundCloud Losing Money Fast As Record Labels Apply Licensing Pressure
More SoundCloud pain.
Digital Music News has reported that SoundCloud is hemorrhaging cash so quickly that it might actually run out before the end of the year, unless it can convince a bank or other investment group to hand out more dough until it can figure out a way to monetize its business model. This is despite a recent report valuing the company at $700 million dollars.
One reason SoundCloud is burning through money so quickly is the huge legal expenses the company is incurring. Record labels are growing impatient with talks intended to legitimize the service through licensing deals, with most labels currently uncompensated for the content streamed on SoundCloud. The record labels are threatening to sue the company if talks don’t progress faster.
I always tell labels / musicians that there’s a danger in making a site that’s outside of your control the main aspect of your promotional strategy (i.e. Facebook, etc). But SoundCloud has been such a useful one, especially as an embeddable platform for our own sites. I’ll be in some trouble just like the rest of you if SC goes under, or if they limit streams for non-paying listeners or start to include audio ads in my content … there will be a heavy load of site embeds to replace. It might be a good idea for us all to start thinking about and preparing for this now.
Apple Music Licensing, Explained: Why Some Beats 1 Shows Won’t Be Podcasts
This article, in its attempt to answer the headline’s question, actually serves as a decent newbies primer on the soup of different types of music licenses that need to be navigated. One gripe: composition rights aren’t solely about the lyrics.