✖️ Would you invest in a musician or band? Towards tokenized fandoms
And: A guide to Gen Z TikTok trends; 11 books on electronic music; JioSaavnTV; Roblox lawsuit; creator burn-out; YouTube's Creator in Residence; Vinyl buyers younger & more diverse
Catalogue sales keep dominating the news, but would anyone actually invest directly in a musician or a band? What would the return need to be to get interest for this? And, can we move beyond investing related to future streaming revenues? Perhaps towards tokenized fandoms?
TECH
🤳🏽 A guide to Gen Z through TikTok trends, emojis & language (Rex Woodbury)
“TikTok nurtures a culture of creativity by removing the friction to come up with ideas for content. You can follow a popular trend, build on someone else’s sound, and rely on features like Stitch and Duet. The culture of creation on TikTok solves the cold-start problem.”
💔 Roblox hit with $200 million-plus lawsuit by music publishers alleging unauthorized song use (Todd Spangler)
“[Roblox takes] advantage of young people’s lack of understanding about copyright — and then they take virtually no action to prevent repeat infringement or alert users to the risks they are taking.”
David Israelite, NMPA president/CEO
🤫 Inside YouTube’s 5-year program to help creators that you’re just now hearing about (KC Ifeanyi)
“In traditional UX research, you bring a user into a lab. You extract them from their reality and you bring them into yours. Then you’re standing on the other side of the one-way mirror, thinking this user’s behaving in a really erratic way with this product. What you need to understand is maybe you’re not at the center of the universe.”
Renato Verdugo, co-lead YouTube Creator in Residence
🍒 The crucial role of the direct-to-fan model in a non-live music industry (Nick Lawrence)
“Generally speaking the first thing that a fanbase wants is the live experience. That was true in the ‘60s, is true now, and will likely be true in 2050. But even so, it’s crucial that artists (and their business managers) have other means of driving revenue.”
📺 JioSaavn’s latest feature is lean-back music video viewing (Stuart Dredge)
“JioSaavnTV is a set of music video-focused features within the service that include playlists and a linear ‘Music TV’ channel … This is also part of JioSaavn’s push of its premium subscriptions: paying customers can watch all the videos as much as they like, but free users will only be able to watch three a month.”
X
Thousands of coronavirus-free music fans fill Albanian beach festival (AP)
Unum Festival has a special place in this newsletter as it made sure earlier in the year that the whole world knew that it would go ahead regardless of the pandemic’s impact. Now, it has.
“Organizers claimed that everyone at the festival was free of COVID-19 but offered no proof for those claims and no virus checks were apparent.”
🌲 Are Hip-Hop catalogs the next ‘Evergreens?’ (Alistair Moughan)
If you enjoyed today’s article, you’ll like this analysis on Synchtank diving into whether Hip-Hop catalogs can become as valuable as the classic rock and folk catalogs that have recently sold for big money.
📚 11 essential new books about electronic music (Lee Wakefield)
If you’re into electronic music and looking for some summer reading (or winter if you’re down under) this is a great list. This one is definitely on my list: Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski: The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century by Dhanveer Singh Brar.
🧒🏾 Vinyl buyers are now younger and more diverse, record shop owners report ahead of Record Store Day (Chris Cooke)
“Record shops have had a history of being fairly male dominated spaces – but the ‘High-Fidelity-esque’ days are definitely over as more and more women are enjoying vinyl. Not only are there more women behind the counter but the spaces themselves are much more welcoming to all people of all ages.”
Ashlie Green from David’s Music in Letchworth, UK
🕯️ Young creators are burning out and breaking down (Taylor Lorenz)
Since I speak about musicians as creators in today’s article it’s important to highlight the dangers attached to the lifestyle and mindset of an ‘always-on’ creator.
MUSIC
Deutsche Grammophon is probably the quintessential classical music label, but they also have a more recent history of exploring newer forms of classical music. Clark, who you would usually see release on a label like Warp Records, just released a beautiful collections of compositions on DG. More on the release here.