✖ Four reflections on SoundCloud’s fan-powered royalties & the flaws of subscription models
And: How NFTs are changing artists' careers; Beatport launches web DJ app; the first MUSIC x PROFILE; distributors subservient to majors?; 1 year of Bandcamp Fridays
✍️ Today’s newsletter is written by Bas Grasmayer.
👛 Just a few hours after sending out last week’s newsletter in which I asked whether user-centric payments are dead in the water, SoundCloud announced their fan-powered royalty system. I posted four reflections on SoundCloud’s fan-powered royalties & the flaws of subscription models.
🎨 For i-D, I spoke to three visual artists selling their art through NFTs, because I was curious how it’s transforming their practice. How crypto art and NFTs are changing artists' careers explores how kytten, Sasha Katz, and Serwah Attafuah use NFTs, how it influences their practice, and where they see the space heading. Also useful if you need a primer on NFTs (imagine waking up from a year-long coma right now).
TECH
🎧 Electronic music DSP Beatport has launched a web-based DJ interface as a public beta. Why we’re excited: this utilizes the web as a technology set and medium in a way that sets the shopping experience apart from that of digging crates in offline shops. It lets Beatport’s DJ userbase explore tracks in a way much closer to their intended use case and supports commonly used DJ hardware.
🎈 The amount of NFT-related noise makes one wonder: what % of fanbases actually care? Food for thought, particularly in terms of the digital strategy & campaigns employed around NFTs. Dance-pop band YACHT made sure that the implications of their NFT drop are relevant to the entire fanbase: once all 5 stems are sold as NFTs, the song will be free to everyone.
🌱 A new viral article about NFTs’ environmental impact is setting a new standard for clickbait headlines: Here is the article you can send to people when they say "but the environmental issues with cryptoart will be solved soon, right?" Marketing guru Seth Godin goes for a simpler title, calling them a ‘dangerous trap’.
🔲 Fintech giant Square has acquired TIDAL for $297M, leaving many to speculate why. It’s not the first time one of Jack Dorsey’s companies invested in music:
⛓ David Turner runs a regular newsletter about the financialization of music called Penny Fractions. In a recent piece he investigates the function of digital distributors in music’s wider economy, coming to the conclusion that they depend on an economic space negotiated by the major labels:
“Unless there is a massive breakup of the major labels, they’ll remain subservient to them, which is why many are looking into new revenue streams (publishing, international royalties, blockchain, etc.).”
CORONA
🎤 Barcelona’s Primavera Sound festival has been cancelled, but a 5,000 person concert in the same city is moving ahead without social distancing. On March 27, the band Love of Lesbian will perform a gig as an experiment for the Festivals for Safe Culture platform. Masks & rapid tests will be mandatory.
👋 Nick Bilton asks: Is the Post-Pandemic Reckoning Coming for Clubhouse? The app, in part popular for hosting hangouts with famous artists & music sessions, has seen one of the fastest growth phases of any social media platform. The problem: “much of what Clubhouse replaces are things we did in real life before the pandemic began.” Can Clubhouse find a way to be Better Than Real Life?
🏕 Andre Gee spoke to Bandcamp founder Ethan Diamond and Brooklyn-based artists GENG and A. Sarr about Bandcamp Fridays, which will continue throughout the first half of 2021 and possibly longer.
🎻 The LA Philharmonic has been recording ‘socially distanced performances’ for its online Sound/Stage series. There is no audience, rather the social distancing is for the performers themselves, who are also separated by plexiglass partitions. An unprecedented challenge for musicians who now struggle to hear each other.
🏆 It’s executive producer Ben Winston’s first time organising the Grammy Awards, but he is confident it will be an incredible show, despite COVID challenges:
“Everyone is tested every 48 hours; everyone has to wear PPE or face shields; there’s no eating and drinking; we all have to stay six to eight feet away from each other; there’s no shouting; there’s pipe and draping in the hallways to make sure there’s one-way traffic.”
PROFILE
✨ New section!
MUSIC x PROFILE shines a monthly spotlight on MUSIC x members and their forward-looking perspectives on the music business. This week: Deenah Bassiouny, the founder of Beyond the Beyond, a management and A&R consultancy service, who’s based in New York City.
JOBS
Every week, Christina Osazuwa (WMG’s Director of Data & Insights - Global Marketing and founder of Measure of Music) creates a round up of new openings in the music & entertainment business on LinkedIn.
This week:
Part 1 | WMG, Red Bull Records, Genius, more.
Part 2 | The Orchard, Live Nation Entertainment, Vevo, more.
Part 3 | UMG, Disney Streaming Services, Bumble, Netflix, more.
Part 4 | TikTok, Twitch, Microsoft, more.
Click on each part to open the relevant LinkedIn posts.
MUSIC
Everyone in the norther hemisphere probably empathizes with the current feeling of more sun, more energy! So I’ve been listening to the highly energetic debut album Organ by drum ‘n bass producer Dimension.