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One Week Into Spotify’s New Conduct Policy: Penalized Artists See Streams Drop

Jason Tate

Billboard:

In the six days since XXXTentacion’s “SAD!” was removed from Spotify’s playlists including RapCaviar, where it held prominent placement, the track’s streams dropped 17 percent per day in the United States on average. That continued rate of decline, Billboard estimates, could cost the rapper as much as $60,000 in revenue in a year from — roughly ­equivalent to the United States’ median household income — from one song on one service in the U.S. alone.

How the Music Industry Messed Up Legal Streaming the First Time Around

Jason Tate

Ernie Smith, writing for Motherboard:

In the roughly 24 months between the time Napster shut down its popular free service and Steve Jobs announced the iTunes Music Store to the public, the music industry tried to create legal replacements, but the lack of precedent was a problem. Nobody could figure out exactly what a legal digital music industry was supposed to look like, or how it was supposed to work.

Tidal Hits Back Against Rumors of Wrongdoing With Its Own Investigation

Tidal
Jason Tate

Amy X. Wang, writing at Rolling Stone:

As the list of fraud accusations against Jay-Z’s Tidal lengthens, the music-streaming service is countering with its own investigation – not into the accuracy of its data, but into how that data had been potentially breached. […] In a statement provided to Rolling Stone on Friday, Tidal CEO Richard Sanders emphatically rejected DN’s claims – but, in what may appear a bit of a contradiction, said the company is asking an “independent, third party cyber-security firm” to review a potential data breach.

Ameer Vann of Brockhampton Responds to Allegations of Sexual Misconduct

Brockhampton
Jason Tate

Ameer Vann of Brockhampton has responded to allegations of sexual misconduct:

In a series of tweets on May 12, Vann addressed the allegations levied against him. Find those below. “I’ve been in relationships where I’ve fucked up and disrespected my partners. I’ve cheated and been dismissive to my exes,” he wrote. “In response to the claims of emotional and sexual abuse: although my behavior has been selfish, childish, and unkind, I have never criminally harmed anyone or disrespected their boundaries. I have never had relations with a minor or violated anybody’s consent.”

Geoff Rickly Talks Mental Health

Thursday
Jason Tate

Parker Molloy talked with Geoff Rickly of Thursday about how mental health issues in the arts needs to be talked about more:

“I think mental health is still a source of great shame for most people,” Rickly adds. “Implying that there is anything wrong with their mind is still often considered an insult. For artists, I think there’s a sense that we don’t have much (money, material success) but the one beautiful thing that we get as an artist is a state of mind, a high level of imagination and a lot of time to explore it. If you devalue that, by saying our thinking is sick, it takes away from the one thing we have of any value. Or it can feel that way.”

‘Rick and Morty’ Gets Renewed

TV
Jason Tate

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Rick and Morty has been given a 70-episode renewal:

A Rick and Morty renewal was given, but the extent of this new pact is quite unexpected. Should Roiland and Harmon maintain anything close to their current production schedule, this will keep the show on the air for as long as another decade.

Spotify Removes R. Kelly From Playlists

Jason Tate

Spotify has a “Hate Content & Hateful Conduct Policy” that states:

We don’t censor content because of an artist’s or creator’s behavior, but we want our editorial decisions – what we choose to program – to reflect our values. When an artist or creator does something that is especially harmful or hateful (for example, violence against children and sexual violence), it may affect the ways we work with or support that artist or creator.

As of today they’ve used this policy to remove R. Kelly and XXXTentacion from their playlists. A Spotify spokesperson told Billboard:

We are removing R. Kelly’s music from all Spotify owned and operated playlists and algorithmic recommendations such as Discover Weekly. His music will still be available on the service, but Spotify will not actively promote it.

Good.

Inside Amazon’s Fake Review Economy

amazon
Jason Tate

Nicole Nguyen, writing at BuzzFeed:

The systems that create fraudulent reviews are a complicated web of subreddits, invite-only Slack channels, private Discord servers, and closed Facebook groups, but the incentives are simple: Being a five-star product is crucial to selling inventory at scale in Amazon’s intensely competitive marketplace — so crucial that merchants are willing to pay thousands of people to review their products positively.

Ticketmaster Invests in Facial-Recognition Technology

Ticketmaster
Jason Tate

Jacob Kastrenakes, writing at The Verge:

Someday in the not-so-distant future, you might be able to walk into a concert venue without waiting in line for your ticket to be scanned — because instead, the venue will automatically scan and identify your face.

That’s the experience that Live Nation and Ticketmaster suggested they’ll try to develop last week, when announcing an investment in Blink Identity.

All the technology we grew up watching and reading in dystopian movies and novels is basically coming to pass. Should I be worried?

Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter Reteaming for ‘Bill & Ted 3’

Jason Tate

The Hollywood Reporter:

Currently in preproduction, Bill & Ted Face the Music will see the duo long past their days as time-traveling teenagers and now weighed down by middle age and the responsibilities of family. They’ve written thousands of tunes, but they have yet to write a good one, much less the greatest song ever written. With the fabric of time and space tearing around them, a visitor from the future warns our heroes that only their song can save life as we know it.

Kanye West in the Age of Donald Trump

Kanye West
Jason Tate

Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing in The Atlantic:

There’s nothing original in this tale and there’s ample evidence, beyond West, that humans were not built to withstand the weight of celebrity. But for black artists who rise to the heights of Jackson and West, the weight is more, because they come from communities in desperate need of champions. Kurt Cobain’s death was a great tragedy for his legions of fans. Tupac’s was a tragedy for an entire people. When brilliant black artists fall down on the stage, they don’t fall down alone. The story of West “drugged out,” as he put it, reduced by the media glare to liposuction, is not merely about how he feels about his body. It was that drugged-out West who appeared in that gaudy lobby, dead-eyed and blonde-haired, and by his very presence endorsed the agenda of Donald Trump.

I highly recommend reading this entire piece.

Pirate Radio Stations Explode on YouTube

YouTube
Jason Tate

Jonah Engel Bromwich, writing at The New York Times:

College Music had 794 subscribers in April 2015, a year before Mr. Pritchard and Mr. Laxton started streaming. A month after they began, they had more than 18,440. In April 2016, they had 98,110 subscribers and as of last month, with three active live streams, they have more than triple that amount, with 334,000. They make about $5,000 a month from the streams.

The boys stumbled upon a new strategy, one that, in the past two years, has helped a certain kind of YouTube channel achieve widespread popularity. Hundreds of independently run channels have begun to stream music nonstop, with videos that combine playlists with hundreds of songs and short, looped animations, often taken from anime films without copyright permission.