Cardi B is right. | | | | Jazzit: Herbie Hancock in the 1980s.
(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | | rantnrave:// Existential question of the day: Should artists be paid when brands put them on their SPOTIFY playlists? This is a more complicated question than it might at first seem, no matter which side of the argument you're inclined to add your 0.0002 cents to, and BILLBOARD's JESSICA MEISELMAN does a nice job laying out the various rights and obligations in play here. From a brand's point of view, you're pointing listeners to content that's already on the service and for which artists are already being paid and saying, essentially, "This is cool. We like this." From an artist's or songwriter's point of view, you're being placed in an ad or, at least, attached to a brand. And if the brand is paying Spotify to sponsor that playlist, shouldn't it also be paying the creators of the content that makes the playlist possible? And what if a creator doesn't want to be associated with a given brand? You can't put a song in an actual commercial without getting the sync rights from both artist and composer. You can, on the other hand, play any song you want on the soundsystem of your store, as long as you're up to date with your PRO payments. Branded playlists would seem to fall somewhere in the middle of those two uses and, as Meiselman reports, Spotify and other services including PANDORA and IHEARTRADIO have guidelines for how brands can and can't use music. But the guidelines are soft and open to interpretation, and don't have the force of law. Add they don't appear to cover the concept of payment. A good way to get rid of any doubt: Ask. Ask the creator, that is... You hear her voice all the time in videos, but you don't see her face. Is BIG FREEDIA the new MARTHA WASH? And is the reason for her invisibility even uglier?... Can a new YO! MTV RAPS succeed where a new TRL and UNPLUGGED haven't quite? MTV is giving it a go... "oh by the way this is my book that I'm writing in real time"... My next job (my typing skills are mad accurate, just sayin')... STEELY DAN vs. LAURA INGRAHAM, circa 1999... RIP RANDY SCRUGGS. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| The acts featured in advertorial content help boost a brand's visibility without permission. | | |
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| "Women have gone through some very serious things in this industry." | | |
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| When Scottish upstart band the Beatstalkers were linked with David Bowie for a series of singles in the mid ‘60s, the fight for fame meant there would be only one winner. | | |
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| Everything's fine, really. Jean and Quelle are here to tell you why not. | | |
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| This video is about infrasound, and making music with infrasound. No actual ghosts were detected, but it was fun trying to see them anyway. Oh well. | | |
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| JPEGMAFIA on his 'Veteran' album and the difficult task of making political music in 2018. | | |
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| What does winning a Grammy actually mean about a musician’s worth? | | |
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