The major labels are still run on the system of the 'Hunger Games': 19 in every 20 artists that signs does not succeed in their system... It is more likely than not that a major label deal will be the kiss of death for most artists. | | | | Bad Bunny at Madison Square Garden, New York, April 27, 2019.
(Steven Ferdman/Getty Images) | | | | | | “The major labels are still run on the system of the 'Hunger Games': 19 in every 20 artists that signs does not succeed in their system... It is more likely than not that a major label deal will be the kiss of death for most artists.”
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| | rantnrave:// From LOUIS ARMSTRONG and DUKE ELLINGTON to ELLA FITZGERALD and JOHN COLTRANE, from the CARTER FAMILY and BILL MONROE to LORETTA LYNN and DOLLY PARTON, from ERIC B & RAKIM and QUEEN LATIFAH to TUPAC and EMINEM, you could build multiple histories of 20th century music from the artists who lost master tapes in the 2008 fire on the backlot of UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. The NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE's JODY ROSEN follows up his investigation into that long-under-reported blaze with a partial—but very long—accounting of the artists whom the UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP believed with "reasonable certainty" had lost work in the fire. That belief appears to have been expressed exclusively in internal and court documents. BRYAN ADAMS tells Rosen he made multiple phone calls to UMG to try to locate the master tapes and other materials from his biggest album, 1984's RECKLESS, when he was planning a 30th anniversary issue. He was told nothing could be found. He wasn't told why. "If you were doing an archaeological dig [at UMG]," he says, "you would have concluded that it was almost as if none of it had ever happened." SHERYL CROW tells the BBC that all her masters were destroyed and she didn't know until Rosen's first article appeared two weeks ago. "It feels," she says, "like we're slowly erasing things that matter." Rosen points out that neither he nor, apparently, UMG knows exactly what was lost from all of those artists, a result of what he calls "decades of slapdash inventory practices" at corporate headquarters. There's no good excuse for managing a historic inventory of art with such carelessness. Except, presumably, the excuse of money. Which is one of the worst excuses of all. PACIFIC STANDARD's JACK DENTON looks into another endangered musical archive, one whose slapdash nature is built into its creation. Hip-hop mixtapes originally appeared as actual cassette tapes circulated outside mainstream commercial channels and now exist largely as digital files, some not fully legal, hosted by websites outside mainstream distribution channels. There's no worldwide media conglomerate to mismanage this archive, just an informal network of websites that could disappear at any time without warning or plans for preserving the content of their servers. Denton details a number of efforts to capture the music while it's still here to be captured, from the INTERNET ARCHIVE to community efforts like Toronto's NORTHSIDE HIP HOP ARCHIVE to university libraries like the CORNELL HIP HOP COLLECTION. Art is, or should be, everlasting; the internet, as we've learned repeatedly, is an endless network of ephemeral things. Preserve them now while you can... Some 250 music orgs and festivals have pledged to achieve a 50/50 gender balance by 2022... And here's an in-progress list of music agencies, companies, etc., with "people who are women or non-binary in leadership/key decision-making positions." The list is managed by RENÉ KLADZYK, who performs as ZIEMBA... CITYFM is a great new radio show/podcast about New York City music that brings a broad, generous and genre-fluid point of view to each topic it covers. Episode 3 explores DIY, which "was never about a specific musical genre, but about creative control and community, and whatever is the opposite of big cultural business"... OK GO wants to help put kids, or at least their art, into orbit... CÉCILE MCLORIN SALVANT and WAYNE SHORTER top DOWNBEAT's 2019 Critics Poll... RIP JERRY CARRIGAN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| They won't be lost to fire, like much of the Universal Music catalog, but who will save the mixtapes? | | |
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| Some musicians have filed suit. Others are rethinking what the company told them about their masters over the past decade. | | |
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| In the late 1970s, Chinatown restaurants started booking some unlikely dinner entertainment: the rowdy young bands of the nascent West Coast punk scene. | | |
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| Kobalt's Willard Ahdritz talks publishing, major record companies, and the true worth of the business today. | | |
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| "If I'm not having fun, then who the fuck is having fun?" We hear how a mischievous streak helps define one of dance music's best-loved DJs. | | |
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| On the day of his funeral, the whole city of Kinshasa was in mourning for Simaro, who was known simply as Poet. | | |
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| The Los Angeles City Council removed the final hurdles facing the redevelopment of Amoeba Music's site on Sunset Boulevard. But where will the store go? | | |
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| Learn about synthesizers via Ableton’s interactive website. Play with a synth in your browser and learn to use the various parts of a synth to make your own sounds. | | |
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| Here's our list of the greatest deep house music tracks of all time. | | |
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| With the summer officially under way, it's time to ponder what stands the best chance of becoming that anthem blasting out of car radios, dominating streaming playlists and capturing earbuds coast-to-coast as the weather heats up. | | |
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| It’s an interesting time for the debate surrounding how -- and how much -- streaming services pay different factions of the music industry. | | |
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| It's vital the group managing the MLC has no significant conflicts of interest, and for Congress and the Copyright Office to ensure this is the case. | | |
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| On this week's All Songs Considered we explore the city that gave us the noise of Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana and the introspection of Fleet Foxes and Death Cab For Cutie. | | |
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| The teenage rapper and singer talks about combining trap and Afrobeats to create a new sound that’s energizing his country’s youth in this Rising interview. | | |
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| The streaming wars are upon us, and Netflix needs to take action before a competitor steals one of the biggest niche audiences. | | |
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| This is Taylor Swift, at long last, choosing a political side. | | |
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| Rappers convey the harsh realities of Cuban life, but no one on a changing island wants to listen anymore. | | |
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| Eric Clapton covered one of his songs almost note for note.Rory Gallagher listed him as one of his biggest influences. Hell, even Robert Johnson covered one of his tunes. But who remembers Scrapper Blackwell? | | |
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| Taylor Guitars brings us history, sustainability and innovation. | | |
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| | | | | | | Rising rents, rising skyline, rising cost of coffee. But she loves LA in her own way, I think. From "Bird Songs of a Killjoy," out now on Spacebomb. |
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