1/ there's a lot of really sharp writing happening right now on music-tech innovation + strategy, by both reporters + industry folks working on the ground.

an ongoing thread of examples (disclaimer, many of these folks have also been instrumental in @water_and_music's growth) 🧵 2/ @holmesprice, who helped spearhead @water_and_music's current AI coverage, now has his own newsletter Future Filter on how tech is shaping electronic music culture. his latest issue on AI voice model marketplaces is a really good guide on the topic

https://twitter.com/holmesprice/status/1674372979885580289

for some weekend reading, i present to you the absolutely chaotic mess of rights holders and music/tech companies all owning stakes in each other, 2023 edition — in 4 parts.

pt. 1: the tencent music ouroboros, plus Sony adding Bandcamp (via Epic Games acquisition) to its arsenal pt. 2: the emerging Access Industries <> BlackRock <> Rotana Group tech/rights entanglement, with newly-public companies Warner Music Group and Deezer at the center

"where's midjourney/DALL-E/GPT3 for music????"

it's coming, for sure (we're dedicating a whole season to it at @water_and_music). but i think ppl are underestimating how much more of an uphill battle it's going to be for music to get its "midjourney moment."

a short 🧵on why... 1. LACK OF DATA

text+image models are trained on dozens of *terabytes* of data EACH. there isn't close to this much public training data for music. to get to that point, we'd have to train a model not just on all recorded music, but on everyone's GarageBand/Ableton/Logic drafts.

Season 2 at @water_and_music has officially launched........ with a very casual 76-page slide deck on the metaverse docs.google.com/presentation/d… compared to our previous collab sprints on music/web3, Season 2 presented an incredibly steeper learning curve; there are SO many contradicting definitions of the metaverse out there, and so many different technologies it invokes (gaming, 3D design, VR/AR/MR, spatial audio, etc).

we at @water_and_music have been working hard on a new Web3 strategy that will serve as the rails for a new model of collaborative music-industry research, and are thrilled to share an early view of what this strategy looks like.

introducing: $STREAM

waterandmusic.mirror.xyz/ox_BFXwgue_sJj… ok now that Seed Club demo day is over... time to break this out into a mega-thread

the main points:
- Water & Music's history and community ethos
- why web3 makes sense for us (and the music media market) now
- our higher-level token strategy + launch drop plans

a simple but illuminating model from @createos:
if you an artist in an 80/20 label/artist royalty deal with a $300,000 advance, $80,000 recording budget and $150,000 marketing budget, your music would need to generate over 500M streams before you make just $1 on the backend. play around with it >>>> dealsim.createos.app

There are already many versions of this pay-to-play(list) model online and I am hard-pressed to find one that actually works *for the artist*.

https://twitter.com/DistroKid/status/1307781648264486912

Also, charging artists so they won’t overwhelm playlist owners is a very non-artist-centric product decision, and having price as the only filter will eventually make it even *more* like playing the lottery because you’re paying a price for the ticket.

this episode, especially 64:00 to 178:00, is a must-listen for anyone interested in the politics and decision-making behind Spotify's podcast deals

(most important news is that The Joe Budden Podcast will no longer be a Spotify exclusive after Sep. 23) open.spotify.com/episode/50azzR… Joe: "There's an entire [podcast] ecosystem here that you have to respect, if you're looking to feed the soil ... Everybody's not looking to feed the soil — some are just looking to take the fruit."

damn

said this in a panel yesterday re: AAPI artists being “un-marketable"

a huge assumption in that claim is that you can only market AAPI artists to the 5% of people in the U.S. who are AAPI, so they can't ever go mainstream

if this is you, i implore you to please EXPAND YOUR MIND also... my hypothesis is that the major-label system largely finds Asianness to be marketable only if it is foreign, i.e. if it comes from outside the U.S. (e.g. K-pop/J-pop, K-rap)

an "Asian American" artist becomes too confusing for them to fit into their marketing boxes

Starting a thread of audio tweets from musicians and music-industry people... Some of them are strategic. Most of them are weird.

https://twitter.com/LilNasX/status/1273316717662363648?s=20

Spotify last published internal diversity data in 2018, and promised at the time that they would update their report on an annual basis.

Narrator: They did not.

hrblog.spotify.com/2018/07/09/say… The stats on their official Diversity & Inclusion jobs page are old, from 2018. At the time, 6% of their U.S. employees were black.

Has that gotten higher or lower ever since? Spotify (and every major music company for that matter) ought to let us know. spotifyjobs.com/diversity-incl…

the Warner Music IPO happening the day after Blackout Tuesday is truly surreal. I don't think you can talk about anti-racism and black inequality in music without talking about how the money flows. I know of WMG's $100M fund. It's good that they're taking concrete action unlike many of their peers.

My concern is more structural. Who are the main beneficiaries of the value that the IPO generates? Not the artists whose catalogs make them so appealing. variety.com/2020/music/new…

I'm working today, but am focusing on gathering data and evidence that point to concrete actions the music industry can take to improve.

Starting an ongoing thread here with examples.

First: A lot of recent lineups for virtual festivals have been overwhelmingly white and male. Digital Mirage was 65% white, 91% male, 5% black.
@roomservicefest was 75% white, 84% male, 8% black.
@SIRIUSXM's Virtual DisDance was 74% white, 95% male, 5% black.

Artists, especially those with leverage, should draw a line and refuse to be on lineups like this moving forward.

lil rant: one great part of startup/VC land that IMO music desperately needs is a culture of operators within the industry blogging publicly, openly and often about lessons they learned on the ground while building their own companies and products—both successes *and* failures. e.g. if an artist or manager put a magnifying glass on one of their campaigns in writing—walking in an actionable, *non promotional* way through what they learned (good and bad) and how they'll apply those lessons in the future—so many ppl in the industry would eat that up.

everyone is still trying to figure things out, so I'm wary of sounding prescriptive—but close to 100% of the (free) music livestreams I've seen so far have presented no opportunity for audience members to follow up in a way that actually allows for deeper community-building. 1/ common example: artist goes live for free on IG/FB/YouTube/Twitch/etc and shares their social media handles as a way for fans to "keep in touch" after the fact. problem: they don't own their social media audiences, and in the case of IG/FB they have to pay to reach their fans. 2/

like any sane person would, I wrote ~4,000 words about the major legal factors to consider when livestreaming concerts, DJ sets and other musical events, featuring perspectives from veterans in biz dev & legal affairs in the industry.

Full piece here → patreon.com/posts/35791016 I unpacked the issue through the lens of three different scenarios:
1) Artists going live on Instagram/YouTube/Twitch/FB
2) Artists striking exclusive, direct deals with paywalled platforms (e.g. @nugsnet)
3) Major festivals like Coachella broadcasting their events for free

I and many other writers + artists talked to @grantrindner
/@Complex about how we define "industry plant."

A time-old, maybe clichéd debate—but IMO still worth having in an era when "transparency" and "organic" growth are easier than ever to manufacture.

complex.com/pigeons-and-pl… tl;dr of my definition
1) ppl usually throw the term at artists whom they think are lying about their backstory—i.e. who claim to be “DIY,” “independent” or “home-grown” but actually have a highly inorganic, calculated + cash-rich corporate machine (e.g. major label) behind them.

I filed this piece for @DJmag in early March (for the April print issue) before all the event cancellations poured in, so there's no mention of COVID-19. Hope it still offers a helpful look into how artists have already been using Twitch in their careers: djmag.com/longreads/how-… takeaways:
1) while the first-ever major concert broadcast on Twitch was Steve Aoki's 2014 set at Pacha in Ibiza, virtually no major electronic act is active on Twitch today. most of the activity related to electronic music on the platform revolves around indie/unsigned artists.

I have 2 pieces for @NPR out today

1. how fans can support artists + music workers at this time—from most to least immediate impact. there are many ways to contribute, but not all land equally as fast into artists' hands. if that matters to you, read on:
npr.org/2020/03/20/818… 2. how affected small music-industry businesses can both cope with change and contribute to systemic improvement—from local/federal emergency funding and cash advances from music distributors + ecommerce providers, to data-collection + advocacy efforts: npr.org/2020/03/20/818…

not that we need our lives to be *more* complicated right now — but my latest for @musicbizworld dives into a little-discussed, heavily-loaded fact about Tencent Music: it isn't actually a Chinese company, and doesn't actually own any of its own services.
musicbusinessworldwide.com/tencent-music-… that's because it's incorporated in the Cayman Islands. incorporating offshore is the only way any Chinese music/streaming/internet company can legally get foreign investment & go public in the U.S.; Alibaba, Baidu, JD.com & Sina Corp are also incorporated there.

I wrote for Hot Pod about the growing number of artists who are launching entire new podcast series to help promote their albums (e.g. @PIXIES, @mxmtoon), and the creative and marketing rationale behind embracing a hybrid album/podcast release strategy: hotpodnews.com/the-new-hot-wa… @PIXIES @mxmtoon Most of the hybrid album/podcast releases to date have been nonfiction, behind-the-scenes docs—but then there are ones like Asking For It, which contextualizes a band's lyrics, demos and archival footage from shows within a wholly new, fictional narrative: mermaidpalace.org/Asking-For-It