How does a 45-year old heavy metal band with fewer than 10 million monthly Spotify listeners manage to break intothe best-performing albums of 2021? The answer is, true to the band’s style, rather old-fashioned: By throwing vinyl LPs and CDs into Targets and Wal-Marts. Over the past week, while Kanye …
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This story appears in Rolling Stone‘s 2021 Future of Music issue, a special project delving into the next era of the multibillion-dollar hitmaking business. Read the other stories here. Others may opt for docs about Jay-Z or the Notorious B.I.G.; Dallas Martin’s favorite music movie is Inventing David Geffen, about …
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Early this week, Dolly Parton tweeted footage of her receiving a Moderna coronavirus vaccine shot. Among veteran musicians, it turns out she’s far from alone when it comes to getting the jab: More and more classic rockers and country acts over 65 are being vaccinated, leading to new conversations about …
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Music streaming isn’t just a big part of the record business: It basically is the record business. According to RIAA data, streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube contributed 85% of all record industry revenue in the United States in the first six months of last year, …
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Few people in music have had a bigger year than Merck Mercuriadis, the founder and CEO of Hipgnosis Songs Fund, who has tossed a billion dollars at songwriters, artists, and producers to grab the copyrights of the biggest charting hits of the past 50 years. Mercuriadis recently purchased catalogs from …
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Seattle blues singer Anita “Lady A” White filed a countersuit against country trio Lady A Tuesday evening, the latest in an escalating legal dispute that began over the summer after the group, formally known as Lady Antebellum, changed their name and subsequently sued White over the rights to the name. …
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The music industry is not known for immediately embracing new technology. So it was a surprise that last month, as Miley Cyrus prepared to release “Midnight Sky,” her first solo single in almost exactly a year, the singer was teasing the track through Reels, a new feature of Instagram that …
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Following news late Friday that President Donald Trump plans to ban TikTok in the U.S., the popular social media app responded to Trump’s claim, with U.S. general manager Vanessa Pappas taking to the platform to tell TikTok users it will not be leaving the U.S., and that TikTok is a …
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This is the latest of Rolling Stone’sMusic in Crisis series, which looks at how people all across the music industry — thousands of whom have been out of work for months due to the global concert shutdown — are coping with the coronavirus pandemic. When the U.S. government first gave …
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As protesters and industries react to the killing of George Floyd and other black victims of police brutality, artists, executives, and companies from across the music business will participate in a day of silent protest on Tuesday — though a lack of clear messaging from the major labels makes its …
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