New and Noteworthy: Issue 52

9 Nov

Written By Greg

👋 Welcome to the 52nd issue of New and Noteworthy, a collection of interesting ideas and projects from the world of music and audio. This issue signals the first anniversary of the New and Noteworthy project. Thanks for your support and interest!

Research

Loyalties v. Royalties - A review of 1,000 gold-selling acts from 1959-2021 found that groups with equal splits tended to prosper more across their careers.

Around the web

Spotify is changing its royalty model. There are three changes:

Introducing a threshold of minimum annual streams before a track starts generating royalties on Spotify
Financial penalties for distributors of music - including labels included - when fraudulent activity is detected on tracks uploaded to Spotify
Minimum length of play-time that each non-music 'noise' track must reach in order to generate royalties

“Artists have solutions to fix streaming but Spotify isn't listening. Instead they propose changes that will enrich the top of the pyramid even more, and make it even more impossible for working musicians to benefit from streaming.” READ

Spotify Royalty Calculator

Daniel Ek (Spotify CEO) has banked $64M selling Spotify shares - three months after banking $100M doing the same thing

Streaming benefits mega stars like Taylor Swift, but squashes all other musicians

Bandcamp United files Unfair Labour Practice violation claim against Songtradr and Epic Games

How AI tools are turning words into music

Why cultural innovation has largely come to a standstill

How Japan’s music industry caters to (and relies on) ‘superfans’

Breaking the infinite content loop

Billboard compiles list of 500 best ever pop hits

You should look at this chart about music genres

The Rolling Stones become the first act to have top 10 albums in each decade since the 1960s

Musicians and task-specific focal dystonia

The next League of Legends music group is a virtual boy band

“For its 50th birthday, the Sydney Opera House has become its own musical instrument in Music of the Sails. With a combination of machine learning and human creativity, the Opera House is making a generative soundscape lasting 744 hours, which it says “will dynamically recompose the everyday data flow” of the building.” READ

German music industry calls to extend KulturPass scheme

"There's a real difference between being a technically great player and creating music - those are two different things" - Rick Rubin

Video: Composer Steve Reich discusses how he created his iconic 1965 tape piece It’s Gonna Rain

Video: How the ‘60s changed the guitar

Video: How techno shapes the future

Video: What explains the popularity of black metal?