8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

The Ballad of the Blog

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Writer Alan Jacobs has some strong words for those of us still using social media:

The decision to be on Twitter (or Facebook, etc.) is not simply a personal choice. It has run-on effects for you but also for others. When you use the big social media platforms you contribute to their power and influence, and you deplete the energy and value of the open web. You make things worse for everyone. I truly believe that. Which is why I’m so obnoxiously repetitive on this point.

Jacobs’ attitude is in line with my previous thoughts on intention and the depersonalization of ‘newsfeed culture.’ The reality of supporting a corporate behemoth that’s up to no good is also something I struggle with. I’ve picked up my Twitter usage over the past few months, not decreased it, telling myself it’s a useful tool for networking. And I’m still paying for Facebook ads on my label releases. I feel like a little part of me dies every time I send a dollar to Facebook.

It’s remarkable that — though admittedly part of a tiny minority — we’re all asking these questions at the same time. And this is a conversation we need to have, whether supporting artists outside of Spotify or finding promotional and networking avenues that don’t involve Facebook. I’m not the only one to plant a flag in these issues. But I’d like the blog to talk more about how we wrestle with the tension between the independent creative community and the corporate interests propped up as gatekeepers. Music’s place in the 21st century, indeed.

On My Way to Music Biz 2019

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Tomorrow I’m heading to Nashville for the Music Biz 2019 conference. This is my third year in a row and it’s by far the conference I look forward to the most. Everyone attending is laser-focused on working toward a better music industry and the vibe is buzzing and inspirational. It doesn’t hurt that it’s in Nashville, either — a fun city that I love visiting.

If you’ll be at Music Biz and would like to meet up then drop me a line. And here’s my Music Biz profile page with my tentative schedule.

An Interview on the This Is Orlando Podcast

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I appeared on the This Is Orlando podcast, interviewed by the affable and capable Rob Coble. It was a terrific discussion and I was able to touch on many of my pet topics including:

• my beginnings with the Eighth Dimension collective
• the importance of the artist’s story and the ‘body of work’ mindset
• trading physical scarcity for streaming’s abundance
• how the diversity of Orlando’s music scene is its advantage and disadvantage
• social media as the hammer, not the house
• why I switched from the artist life to the music business life
• how I find new music and strive to listen with intention

Have a listen on the This Is Orlando page or via Overcast.FM (or download it in your preferred podcast app).

PS – Overcast’s new clip sharing feature is amazing. What a great idea. That above excerpt video won’t be the last you’ll see on this site, I’m sure.

Sound-Alikes: Litigating the AI Mimic

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Dani Deahl in The Verge:

The word “human” does not appear at all in US copyright law, and there’s not much existing litigation around the word’s absence. This has created a giant gray area and left AI’s place in copyright unclear. It also means the law doesn’t account for AI’s unique abilities, like its potential to work endlessly and mimic the sound of a specific artist. Depending on how legal decisions shake out, AI systems could become a valuable tool to assist creativity, a nuisance ripping off hard-working human musicians, or both. […]

If [an AI] system then makes music that sounds like Beyoncé, is Beyoncé owed anything? Several legal experts believe the answer is “no.” […] “There’s nothing legally requiring you to give her any profits from it unless you’re directly sampling,” [Public Knowledge policy counsel Meredith] Rose says. There’s room for debate, she says, over whether this is good for musicians. “I think courts and our general instinct would say, ‘Well, if an algorithm is only fed Beyoncé songs and the output is a piece of music, it’s a robot. It clearly couldn’t have added anything to this, and there’s nothing original there.’”

I’m not so sure. It could turn out that the controversial “Blurred Lines” ruling laid the groundwork for litigating AI-mimicry.

🔗→ We’ve been warned about AI and music for over 50 years, but no one’s prepared

Shoving from the Margins: Pop Music and the Fringe

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Mat Dryhurst for The Guardian:

I believe that those on the margins would do well to shift focus on to more ambitious and untested fund-generating efforts that emphasise the interdependence of musical communities of place and purpose. We need technical and economic concepts that reflect what working artists have long known to be true: an artist creating challenging work is dependent on resilient international networks of small labels, promoters, publications and production services to facilitate their vision. A vision of interdependence acknowledges that individual freedoms thrive in the presence of resilient networks and institutions. It asserts that even pop stars, and the streaming services that prioritise them, significantly benefit from those on the margins market-testing ideas so that they don’t have to. {…}

We need to acknowledge that those communities, and the sounds they foster, generate value that is impossible to quantify on a spreadsheet. The artist and writer Jon Davies recently invoked the ideal of interdependence to emphasise the role that social music spaces play in combating epidemics of loneliness and depression. As well as enlivening commercial culture with a trickle-up supply chain of new ideas, music on the margins offers many a sense of shared purpose.

As noted in my post about the closing of Red Bull Music Academy, independent music communities — especially those operating on the fringes — may need to adopt collaborative and communal strategies to maintain relevance, rather than relying on corporate patronage. Dryhurst smartly suggests that the health of the experimental edges of the music community is vital for pop culture’s continued evolution. I see his point — current hit songs by some of the biggest names obviously draw upon production techniques that were underground and radical ten years ago. Culture becomes stale without the experimental margins giving it a shove.

🔗→ Band together: why musicians must strike a collective chord to survive

The Olds Are Alright: Dance Music Becomes Generational

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Joe Muggs in Mixmag:

Which is more important, though – reinvention or continuity? After all, the purity of scenes that are created for and by youth, with all the energy and absolutism that goes with that, is something special. Whether it’s the teenagers excluded from UK garage who turned their youth clubs into moshpits as they invented grime, or kids in bedrooms across the world cooking up ever more mind-warping memes and post-vaporwave electronic sub-genres that only make sense with total immersion in cultural reference points from K-pop, Cartoon Network and dark web research chemicals, some things absolutely don’t need the input of old farts. There’s a stupendous thrill that comes from hearing kids from Shanghai or Sao Paulo, Jakarta or Johannesburg, smashing together extreme electronics with pop and local sounds with zero respect for the canons and hierarchies of the past.

But at the same time, The Black Madonna [who referenced “the young folks and more seasoned folks sharing space and ideas”] is right. In the space of house-techno-rave that she’s operating in, it’s incredible to have people like her and Honey Dijon, Optimo and Harvey and all the other battle-hardened vets right in the thick of things, bringing the weight of decades of experience to bear on the dancefloor and sharing that with the young guns they play next to. Each new generation that discovers the joys of Kerri Chandler or Photek or Chris & Cosey re-ignites the power of their music.

As one of the above mentioned ‘old farts,’ I love this sentiment, and I’ve also thought a lot about it. We are in a unique place where veteran (a kinder way of saying ‘older’) artists freely mingle and perform with younger, emerging talent. For example, in dance music, some of the biggest draws — and influences — are now 50+. In my DJ heyday — the late ‘90s — this wasn’t the case. Though, granted, the genre was fresher.

I used to think it was good for older artists to step aside and let the young take their seats at the table. But it turns out the different generations are just adding extra chairs. There’s a collaboration between the various ages of artists rather than competition or resentment — a transfer of ideas that encourages innovation while respecting history. And it’s not just the artists — the fans have embraced this generational variety, too. When the 79 years old Giorgio Moroder can release albums and tour with enthusiastic fanfare from the electronic music community, it’s evident that we’ve arrived in a special and respectful place.

🔗→ Never mind nostalgia – we’re living in a golden age of intergenerational partying

An Amazing BBC ‘Bootleg Report’ from 1971

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I previously wrote about bootleg culture in the age of streaming and reminisced on the simple days of CD bootlegs sold in my own record shop. Now my pal Kenn Richards — via his essential Research {Curation} Reduction newsletter — alerted me to this 14-minute BBC documentary from 1971 examining the bootleg scene in London at the time. Holy cats, this is wonderful.

The video features incredible quotes and contributions from Led Zeppelin manager Peter ‘no one heavier than me’ Grant, ‘The’ Pink Floyd, Yoko Ono, and John Lennon who prefers to be in a bag. Also, it’s so quaint how the guy who manufactures bootlegs and the other guy who sells them (at a Virgin Records, no less) are so open and casual and like ¯_(ツ)_/¯ about it.

Here’s some bonus content from the same year: Neil Young discovering bootlegs of his own work in a Los Angeles record store. Watch the guy behind the counter — his uncomfortable body language as Young starts flipping through the bins is priceless.

Apple Gains as Songwriters Come Out Against Spotify

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Billboard:

In 2017, Spotify launched its Secret Genius Awards annual event to honor songwriters and producers behind some of the streaming platform’s most-played songs. But now some of those same honorees are speaking out about something much less celebrated — Spotify’s plan to appeal Copyright Royalty Board rates, along with Google, Pandora and Amazon.

“We’re hurt and disappointed,” the dozens of songwriters wrote in an an open letter to Spotify on Tuesday (April 9) addressed to Spotify chief Daniel Ek and shared with Billboard. “You created a songwriter relations team and ingratiated Spotify into our community. We know that you are not the only DSP appealing the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) rate determination. You are, however, the only provider that made us feel we were working to build a modern music industry together.”

It seems silly, from a PR standpoint, that Spotify would pick this battle (along with another two at the same time). But how could the company know that songwriters — and a good segment of the industry — would come together with such force? Historically musicians and their industry don’t exactly agree, delivering a fragmented and unfocused protest at best. Perhaps songwriters have been emboldened by the Music Modernization Act, or the pervasive atmosphere of protest we live in now, or the vilification of the tech industry by its own actions, led by Facebook. A combination of the three is most likely.

Spotify will probably be the loser in this PR war. And the winner might be the tech giant that’s sitting this one out, according to Variety:

Ultimately, Apple, which for years was the company the music industry most loved to hate, is now in an enviable position. If Spotify wins its appeal against the CRB — which is considered a long shot — Apple benefits by paying reduced royalty rates. If Spotify loses the appeal, Apple, by not joining the other streamers, looks like the hero. And if, at the urging of songwriters, artists start jumping on a #CancelSpotify bandwagon, Apple Music stands to gain subscribers.

“Unlike Spotify, music is not Apple’s core business, thus allowing [it] to sit this one out, with Spotify taking the heat and the legal bills that follow,” says Jeff Rabhan, chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU Tisch. “By choosing to watch this war from the sidelines, Apple has made a brilliant move by making no move at all.”

🔗→ Spotify’s Secret Genius Songwriters Pen Letter to Daniel Ek Over CRB Rate Appeal: ‘You Have Used Us’
🔗→ Apple Is the Real Winner in Spotify’s Battle Against Songwriters’ Rate Hike

Putting the Puzzle Back Together

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Rolling Stone:

… today’s most influential music companies [are] increasingly eating into one another’s core businesses in a bid to grow their prosperity. At the center of this trend are those music-streaming services “doing a Netflix,” i.e., investing money into independent artists to create their own content outside the traditional record-company structure. […]

Streaming services are becoming distributors and, in some cases, record labels. Record labels are becoming streaming services and, in some cases, talent management companies. Talent management companies are becoming record labels, while distributors are having a go at becoming managers. (All of these companies, it appears, also want to become video and/or podcast production houses, but that’s a topic for another article.)

This concept isn’t that different than what a traditional major record label would do 20+ years ago (and, remember, there were more than three ‘major labels’ in those days). A major label would have control of A&R, manufacturing, distribution, publicity, publishing, tour support, and so on. And in some (often self-serving) cases the label would also provide an artist’s manager and legal team.

It’s like in the ‘00s the puzzle got thrown on the floor and scattered into many pieces. Now that it’s being put back together the pieces aren’t quite fitting the same — rather than a label providing management or publishing, the current trend is the manager or publisher starting a record label. But without the capital and influence of the flush-with-money major labels of yesteryear, I wonder if many of these new endeavors are spreading themselves thin. I think we’ll continue to see companies handling two or three of these aspects at a time (i.e., publishing, distribution, and A&R) but I don’t feel the trend of trying to do everything under a single umbrella will yield many successes.

🔗→ Every Music Company is Morphing into the Same Thing