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YouTube Negotiating With Labels Over AI

YouTube
Jason Tate

Lucas Sha, writing for Bloomberg, details the record labels and YouTube negotiating an AI tool that would let people create content using major musicians’ voices:

When YouTube hosted an event for creators in late September, the company unveiled a bunch of new AI-powered tools, including ones for video backgrounds and dubbing.

YouTube had hoped to unveil a tool that would let users perform using the voices of major musicians. Imagine you are an amateur creator uploading a video or a song, and you could sound like Dua Lipa.

Just one problem: None of the major music companies have agreed to participate — at least not yet. Music companies have some questions, and YouTube is still working to supply the answers.

This could be a pivotal moment for the use of AI in the creative industries. For all the fuss about the potential of AI, many of the most-hyped new tools have yet to establish meaningful commercial relationships with artists (aka rights holders). That’s why there are so many lawsuits; nobody has decided how copyright law is going to work in this new(ish) field.

While this is just a test — YouTube wants to try the feature with a little more than a dozen artists — it is still a negotiation between the largest music service in the world and the largest music companies that could result in artists consenting to the use of their work.

Look, I get it, I’m old and not cool and am probably yelling at clouds, but I can’t put into words how much I hate this idea.

Bandcamp Lays Off 50% of Workforce

Bandcamp
Jason Tate

The Verge:

In an email to The Verge, Songtradr confirmed that 50 percent of Bandcamp employees have been extended offers to join Songtradr and reaffirmed from a previous statement the company’s commitment to keeping the Bandcamp experience the same.

Songtradr’s statement also confirmed that its purchase of Bandcamp had been completed, but it did not confirm if it would voluntarily recognize Bandcamp’s union that employees won earlier this year, despite pressure from employees and the Bandcamp community.

The union has responded.

Discogs’ Vibrant Vinyl Community Is Shattering

The Verge
Jason Tate

Natalie Weiner, writing at The Verge:

Discogs attributed the need to raise fees to its “significant investments in recent years to ensure compliance with various regulatory programs, including tax support and privacy protection.” The company said the change would allow it to “continue to devote resources to maintaining the Discogs Marketplace and develop better tools for collecting, selling, and enjoying music.” 

Many sellers who spoke with The Verge speculated, in line with the viral thread, that the company was trying to pump up its valuation for a potential sale. All of them, though, had the sense that Discogs was trying to increase its profit margins without necessarily offering any improvements to its product in retur

Jack Antonoff Talks with The Face

Bleachers
Jason Tate

Jack Antonoff talked with The Face in a new wide ranging interview:

Antonoff says that his motivation, and his process, has rarely wavered since he first began producing; he and his collaborators dream ​“about what a record can be,” and sometimes that results in ​“really transcendent shit” and sometimes it doesn’t. There is no way, he says, to ​“optimise” his process, because there’s no formula. ​“I do think that there’s a misconception about what I do and what pop music is,” he says. ​“There’s a certain group of people who think it’s about appealing to the masses, [which is] not how I feel. I’ve never made anything hoping that everyone would like it.” 

His closest collaborators – like Swift and Del Rey – are people with whom he feels like he can ​“drill even further” into one sound or idea, a feeling he describes as ​“crazy magic”. But the goal is never to top the charts, or appeal to every possible listener. 

“I remember with Norman, Lana wanted to give the mastering engineer her credit card over the phone because she barely wanted anyone to know that the album was being made,” he says. ​“These records are so insular, so it’s a little hard to get it up for someone who has a hot take when [these albums] are reaching the people who they’re intended to reach. It’s cool if you get it and it’s cool if you don’t, but also like, there’s always the option to just shut the fuck up.”

Restaurants, Rest Stops and Red Bulls With Brian Fallon

Jason Tate

Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem talks with Paste Magazine about food on the road.

I would always eat the hash browns for breakfast and I would eat the chicken strips and fries. I wouldn’t really go for the burger, it was too messy and tour is a game of tricking the bathroom. You have to be very careful what you eat at night. Because when you’re home, if you wake up in the night and you’re like I have one bathroom, no problem. And when you wake up, barreling down the highway or in an airport, there’s not always a bathroom or there’s a bathroom you don’t want to use

Live Nation Stops Merch Cuts at Clubs

Jason Tate

Rolling Stone:

Live Nation is ending merchandise fees for artists at all of its club-sized venues across the country, the company announced Tuesday as part of a new developing-artist program that it has launched with Willie Nelson. 

The “On the Road Again” program, named after Nelson’s famous song, will also give artists playing those venues an extra $1,500 per show intended to help cover growing tour expenses like gas, transportation, and hotels. Live Nation also said it would give unspecified bonuses to crew workers, and the company will contribute another $5 million to the Crew Nation fund it started during the pandemic.

Brian Fallon Talks with NME

Gaslight Anthem
Jason Tate

Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem took a quiz about the band for NME and talked about the band’s career and upcoming album:

Was there any other point during The Gaslight Anthem’s break when you considered getting the band back together?

“No, I’d put it pretty far to the back of my mind. We didn’t finish with a Smiths thing where we hated each other, it was more like we didn’t want to make an album that we were embarrassed by later, and it felt like we had entered a lull that every band goes through. People start off loving you, then they hate you, and then they love you again – and it felt like we were in that time where everybody hated us. We thought: ‘Maybe it’s time for us to shut up and make way for some other bands’ [Laughs]. We always knew we’d come back – we just didn’t think it would take nine years.”

From Rites of Spring to Olivia Rodrigo

Olivia Rodrigo
Jason Tate

Washington Post:

Now squint your ears and listen to Rodrigo sing, “I made it weird, I made it worse,” all sweet and sour on her new “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl.” Can you hear emo’s intimacy wrestling with its vastness? This music has traveled a relatively short distance through time, but it has bridged so much: suffocating ’80s moralism, smothering ’90s ennui, numbing ’00s shock and awe, an opioid crisis that won’t let go — along with all the deeply personal awkwardness and anxiety commonly associated with coming of age in any of those shaky American timelines.

Sufjan Stevens Has Guillain-Barre Syndrome

Sufjan Stevens
Jason Tate

Sufjan Stevens has revealed that he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

Last month I woke up one morning and couldn’t walk. My hands, arms and legs were numb and tingling and I had no strength, no feeling, no mobility. My brother drove me to the ER and after a series of tests—MRIs, EMGs, cat scans, X-rays, spinal taps (!), echo-cardiograms, etc.—the neurologists diagnosed me with an auto immune disorder called Guillian-Barre Syndrome. Luckily there’s treatment for this — they administer immuno-hemoglobin infusions for five days and pray that the disease doesn’t spread to the lungs, heart and brain. Very scary, but it worked. I spent about two weeks in Med/Surg, stuck in a bed, while my doctors did all the things to keep me alive and stabilize my condition. I owe them my life. 

On September 8, I was transferred to acute rehab, where I am now undergoing intensive physical therapy/occupational therapy, strength building etc. to get my body back in shape and to learn to walk again. It’s a slow process, but they say I will “recover,” it just takes a lot of time, patience, and hard work. Most people who have GBS learn to walk again on their own within a year, so I am hopeful. I’m only in my second week of rehab but it is going really well and I am working really hard to get back on my feet. I’m committed to getting better, I’m in good spirits, and I’m surrounded by a really great team. I want to be well!

RIAA Share Mid-Year Revenue Report

Money
Jason Tate

The RIAA have released the 2023 mid-year report:

In the first half of 2023, recorded music revenues continued to set new milestones and reflect the results of more than a decade of industry transformation. Total revenues grew 9.3% at estimated retail value to an all-time first half high of $8.4 billion. At wholesale value, revenues grew 8.3% to $5.3 billion. Paid subscriptions continued to be the strongest driver of revenue growth, increasing by more than $550 million and averaging nearly 96 million subscriptions during the period.

Jann Wenner Removed From Hall of Fame Board of Directors

Hall of Fame
Jason Tate

Pitchfork:

Jann Wenner has been removed from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation’s Board of Directors, a representative for the Hall of Fame confirmed to Pitchfork. The Rolling Stone founder has faced criticism for comments he made about Black and female musicians in an interview published yesterday in The New York Times, wherein he also admitted to letting interview subjects edit their own transcripts while at Rolling Stone.

Streaming Is Changing the Sound of Music

Jason Tate

Wall Street Journal:

To keep the “skip rate” as low as possible, musical artists are increasingly moving a song’s hook or chorus to that initial 30-second sweet spot. Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding, the hosts of the “Switched on Pop” podcast, have coined the term “Pop Overture” to describe a new trend in which a song “will play a hint of the chorus in the first five to 10 seconds so that the hook is in your ear, hoping that you’ll stick around till about 30 seconds in when the full chorus eventually comes in.”

Creators are modifying more than just the introductory sections of tracks for optimal performance on streaming. Every track that is listened to for more than 30 seconds counts as a play, but whether a listener makes it all the way through a song helps to determine whether a streaming service like Spotify will recommend similar songs in the future.