FortéPhi

CAN COCA-COLA CRACK THE CHARTS WITH ITS AMBITIOUS NEW MUSIC PLAN?
"Fifty years ago, the iconic brand's jingle proclaimed "I'd like to buy the world a Coke." Now it's connecting with a global audience by releasing original songs by some of music's biggest stars.
..Half a century later, Coca-Cola has its eyes on the charts again, but with a very different strategy: through music created by superstar artists in collaboration with Coke itself; promoted and distributed by those artists’ labels; and supported by label partner Universal Music Group (UMG), which will assist with promotional and playlist strategy. On a recent day in Seoul, for instance, K-pop sensation NewJeans recorded R&B-­infused pop track “How Sweet,” sung in English and Korean, which arrived May 24 as both the lead 2024 Coke Studio song and the title track to the act’s latest mini-album."

via : https://tinyurl.com/95e96d36

"U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) have introduced a bill to help support music tourism throughout the country. Dubbed the American Music Tourism Act of 2024, the newly introduced legislation would be an amendment to the Visit America Act that passed in 2022 and required the assistant secretary of commerce for travel and tourism to lead a coordinated national effort to rejuvenate international tourism following declines from the pandemic."

Via : https://tinyurl.com/2rvbn9wy

European Union Passes ‘World First’ AI Legislation That Would Safeguard Copyrighted Music

LONDON — Sweeping new laws regulating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Europe, including controls around the use of copyrighted music, have been approved by the European Parliament, following fierce lobbying from both the tech and music communities.

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted in favor of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act by a clear majority of 523 votes for, 46 against and 49 abstentions. The “world first” legislation, which was first proposed in April 2021 and covers a wide range of AI applications including biometric surveillance and predictive policing, was provisionally approved in December, but Wednesday’s vote formally establishes its passage into law.

via Billboard: https://tinyurl.com/yp7942pf

Why isn't the vinyl trend crossing over to the classical music market?

Over the past few years, a resurgence of interest in vinyl recordings has taken popular music by storm. Cellist Leonard Elschenbroich tells Simon Heighes why classical musicians should also take an interest.

via BBC Music Magazine: http://tinyurl.com/mwd69jkp

Now We Know Exactly How Difficult It Is To Make It In The Music Business

"Of the 1.3 million artists added last year, 87.6% fell into the Undiscovered category, while 12.3% reached the Developing stage. Only .05% reach the Mid-Level stage or higher, meaning they ranked in the top 35,000 on the platform. It’s been noted that the majority of artists stagnate in their respective categories and never move up in popularity and career success.

It’s a little worse than that actually. Of the 1.3 million artists added last year, only 710,000 even made it to a career stage at all. A lot of this was because of insufficient profiles and data, or duplications."

via Music 3.0 Blog: http://tinyurl.com/4kkthvjx

listed on the global live music discovery platform Bandsintown will now also appear on Spotify.

The new partnership provides greater visibility and discovery for artists, venues, and festivals of all sizes at a time of rising costs and increased competition. The total number of live shows grew by more than 150,000 in 2023 compared to 2022, according to Bandsintown data.

via Digital Music News: http://tinyurl.com/5xyzexzb

We are thankful for this past year and having had the chance to meet and work with wonderful people on a range of amazing projects. 🎼💕
Wishing everyone and their families a wonderful and safe holiday season!! ✨☃️

The Beatles hit No. 1 this week. It wasn’t the first time the band had topped a pop chart, of course. And having the top-selling single isn’t quite the proposition it used to be. But the first-day sales alone were enough for the “new” song, “Now and Then,” to debut atop Billboard’s digital sales ranking. And that’s a remarkable example of how the Beatles—and the idea of the Beatles—have remained relevant more than half a century after the band broke up.

Listen to the previously unheard recording of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s riotous 1967 performance of the Beatles’ Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
By Jonathan Horsley

The track is the latest gold to be shared from the forthcoming live album capturing Hendrix’s storming set at the Hollywood Bowl, California, and it features some incendiary playing

via Music Radar: http://tinyurl.com/w23urn25

Universal Music Group plans to build a $250 million entertainment and education campus in the Berry Hill suburb of Nashville.

The proposed rendering features four zones that include music studios, education/office space, retail space, restaurants, a community building, and more than 400 parking spaces to accommodate. Zone one is a 34,000 square-foot music studio, zone two has a 59,500 square-foot music studio and a 3,500 square-foot restaurant alongside a residential building. Meanwhile, zone three features a community building with 224 parking spaces, while zone four features a 115,000 square-foot education office building, a 17,000 square-foot restaurant, and 218 parking spaces.

Photo: Charley Pangus / via Digital Music News: https://tinyurl.com/mryzjemv

Griff has shared brand new track, "Astronaut", which features piano from Coldplay’s Chris Martin, and completes her latest EP, vert1go vol.1.

“I wrote "Astronaut" about the idea of being left behind,” comments Griff. “In young relationships, when someone needs time to figure out and find themselves without you, it hurts because you’re left wondering what about yourself wasn’t enough for them.”

via the line of best fit: https://tinyurl.com/ydr5r5va

‘Bob Marley: One Love’: Everything We Know About The Biopic
The film will arrive in theaters on February 14, 2024

via Udiscover Music: https://tinyurl.com/27uux755

According to Paramount, Bob Marley: One Love celebrates the life and music of an icon who inspired generations through his message of love and unity. On the big screen for the first time, discover Bob’s powerful story of overcoming adversity and the journey behind his revolutionary music.”

One of the preview’s most intense moments comes during a scene chronicling December of 1976 when a crew of men attempted to assassinate Marley inside his home with his wife and children. “No guns can stop this message,” Ben-Adir’s Marley says in the trailer, accompanied by a version of “Three Little Birds.”

Along with chronicling Marley’s rise to fame, One Love also highlights his historic performance at the One Love Peace Concert in Kingston, Jamaica in April 1978, which aimed to heal the rupture between the country’s two major political parties, Jamaica Labour Party and People’s National Party.

8 New Albums You Should Listen to Now: Peter Gabriel, Full of Hell & Nothing, and More

via Pitchfork: https://tinyurl.com/25hup4ce

"Peter Gabriel teased the arrival of I/O for more than 20 years, finally making good on his promise of new material as he began the album rollout with “Panopticom” in January. Over the course of the year, Gabriel continued to release all of the record’s dozen tracks, coinciding with each month’s full moon. I/O is the musician’s first album of all-new original material since 2002’s Up."

Lenny Kravitz Wants To Clear a Few Things Up "As he prepares to drop his first album in more than five years, with a massive tour to follow, the rock and style icon talks candidly about family, faith, s*x, love, and legacy."
photograph Norman Jean Roy

"Forty million records sold. Four Best Male Rock Vocal Performance Grammys—in a row. An MTV Video Award from the time MTV Video Awards still mattered. Concerts at the biggest venues on the planet. The true sign of relevance in this century, he’s even an annual meme; photos of Kravitz in his bewilderingly oversize scarf flood the Internet on the first day of fall each year.

“There would be no Tyler, the Creator without Lenny Kravitz,” says Jay-Z. “We need those moments of inspiration. That pushes creativity and opens up lanes for others.”

Madison Vain courtesy of Esquire: https://tinyurl.com/4p6tjyh2

Have Labels Hit a Breaking Point With Data-Driven A&R?
Analytics can predict hit singles, but skeptics say it's far less effective at identifying enduring artists.

"The A&R position has historically been one of music’s most glamorous executive roles. But it’s common to hear today that the job is closer to that of an anonymous Wall Street number-cruncher — many of the creative aspects have been removed."

via Billboard: https://tinyurl.com/2k892k3e

Is Chris Stapleton the One Thing That America Can Agree On?
How did a songwriter who never cared much for being famous transcend country music to become one of today’s most popular stars? Ahead of a new album, GQ’s Brett Martin goes road-tripping with one of the most reliable hit makers in music.
By Brett Martin / Photography by Stacy Kranitz

courtesy of GQ: https://tinyurl.com/33kj4pry

Cal Tjader: Live at the Penthouse, 1963-1967..
"Tjader was part of the exciting San Francisco jazz scene to emerge in the late 1940s. Bay Area artists included pianist Dave Brubeck, bassist Ron Crotty, clarinetist Bill Smith, saxophonist Dave Van Kriedt and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, among others. Tjader started out playing drums in Brubeck's trio of 1949 and 1950, and then was at the drums in Brubeck's octet in the summer of that year. Tjader shifted to the vibes full time after recording with the George Shearing Quintet in 1953, when he began pioneering jazz mambo and other forms of Latin jazz, even though his last name was Swedish, not Latin."

via JazzWax: https://tinyurl.com/bdeuv795

"The late legend Miles Davis is undoubtedly the most widely celebrated jazz musician ever. His trumpeting virtuosity led him into the blossoming world of bebop jazz in the early 1940s. Very soon, Davis’ seamless talent for composition and multi-instrumentalism saw him rise swiftly to the top.

In the late 1940s, Davis began to migrate from his roots in high-tempo bebop jazz, joining the smaller cult of “cool jazz”. This transition is defined by his Birth of the Cool sessions for Capitol, recorded between 1949 and ’50 but commercially released in 1957."

via Far Out magazine: https://tinyurl.com/2p982mbv

"The end goal for many musicians is to go full-time. That’s my goal. I want to wake up every day, make music, and do all the things needed to build a sustainable music career. But it’s not for everyone. It’s difficult. It can be discouraging. And you probably won’t get rich. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go for it.

Most full-time musicians are blue-collar, middle-class musicians. They’re making a living, yes. They can pay rent and their bills, and maybe they can afford fun stuff now and then. But they’re not rich.

The stats on how musicians actually make money are slim, but we do have some resources. We do know performing live is the main source of income for most active musicians"

via Digital Music News: https://tinyurl.com/4stjmdjb

Superlawyer Donald Passman Talks AI, New Streaming Models and the Updated Edition of His Book, ‘All You Need to Know About the Music Business’: Strictly Business Podcast photo: courtesy Simon & Schuster

"If there is a bible for the music industry, it’s Donald Passman’s book, “All You Need to Know About the Music Business.” Since the first edition came out more than 30 years ago, it has guided countless musicians and executives, and has prevented many of them from making decisions they’d later regret. Considering the deep detail Passman gets into about contracts, royalties and other complicated business arrangements, his tone is remarkably conversational, and he makes sure readers don’t miss the important stuff: The section on business managers begins with him saying “Listen to me!!!” in italics with several exclamation marks."

via Variety: https://tinyurl.com/bdcpzc5d

More than half of all 2024 Grammy nominations went to independent artists and labels according to A2IM (American Association of Independent Music).

“A2IM offers its heartfelt congratulations to the independent labels, artists, producers, and songwriters nominated for the 2024 GRAMMYs,” said Dr. Richard James Burgess MBE, President and CEO of A2IM. “Representing more than half of all nominees, these companies and creators are the pulse of musical innovation, touching audiences globally with their diverse works. We honor them for making the music that shapes our world.”

via Hypebot: https://tinyurl.com/2vv9rm7f

"It’s a phrase we use all the time, not least on Radio 3, where our drivetime show is literally called In Tune. But that begs the question; what does being ‘in tune’ really mean? It seems obvious: being out of tune as opposed to in tune is the contrast between Florence Foster Jenkins’s exquisitely appalling attempts to sing the Queen of the Night’s Act II aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute and the way any professional soprano sings the same aria, with those high Fs pinging gloriously in the right place. It’s the difference between the gleeful massacring of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony by the Portsmouth Sinfonia – riotously out of tune – and how the Hallé Orchestra might play it, with decorous in-tune-ness."

via BBC Music Magazine: https://tinyurl.com/n49yz59t

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Fred McDowell, 1965, Como, Mississippi © Chris Strachwitz from Arhoolie Records Down Home Music: The Stories and Photographs of Chris Strachwitz, Chronicle Books

'Chris Strachwitz, founder of Arhoolie Records, crisscrossed the United States photographing and recording musicians where they played'
"Strachwitz did not think of himself as a record producer, but a song-catcher. He belongs firmly in the tradition of Cecil Sharp, the British musicologist who collected hundreds of Elizabethan folk songs during World War I in the West Virginia hills. He is the modern descendant of John and Alan Lomax, the intrepid pioneers who made field recordings of Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie and dozens of others for the Library of Congress. He entered the record business as a means to support his passion; he only made money by accident. San Francisco Chronicle jazz and pop critic Ralph J. Gleason told Strachwitz that he didn’t have a record company—he had a hobby. He frequently found himself in confounding and complicated circumstances when it came to making his records with these remarkable musicians."

via Smithsonian Mag: https://tinyurl.com/55ex3pd7

"Willie Nelson, now 90, has been writing songs for nearly a century. He wrote his first song when he was 7 years old. Given his energetic album output of late, he probably wrote his most recent song this morning.

Over the course of a very long and eventful musical career that has produced at least 100 studio albums and 14 live albums, Willie has also found the time to write two engaging autobiographies and another dozen or so books filled with stories mostly about his childhood and his extended musical family.

But now he’s published his real autobiography, Energy Follows Thought: The Stories Behind My Songs, in which (with the help of ghostwriter David Ritts and Willie's longtime harmonica wingman Mickey Raphael) he recounts the circumstances, both musical and personal, that inspired 160 of his best-known songs."

via: Daily Beast: https://tinyurl.com/6bre47fr

Getting journalists and influencers to notice your brand can be a valuable way to gain credibility and get the word out about your business. But how do you shine through a sea of PR (public relations) pitches?

“I believe that the most important approach when it comes to PR is to own your experience and expertise,” says Elayna Fernandez, a single mom of four and founder of The Positive MOM.

via Brit+Co: https://tinyurl.com/46xux5uy

The NFT Market Has Crashed. What Should Artists Do Now?

"In the wake of the NFT market's multi-year downturn, many artists who once thrived are now navigating a challenging and uncertain landscape. The NFT market had experienced exponential growth in recent years before it stumbled, leaving artists to question whether digital artwork is still a viable avenue for success."

via Coin Desk: https://tinyurl.com/wvtju6fm

"The recently opened Louis Armstrong Center in Corona, Queens, was conceived to 'continue to preserve and expand the legacy of America’s most-enduring Black popular music icon'. Its architects, the New York studio founded by principals Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson, a firm committed to designing at least 50 per cent of its work in underserved communities, was a perfect fit for the commission. Their important goals did not mean compromising on design quality or looks – as the curvaceous structure, which shines like a beacon for culture at night, when lit from within, attests."

by Ellie Stathaki Image credit: Nic Lehoux
via Wallpaper: https://tinyurl.com/ycvythp7

"You’ve probably seen all the different types of calendars. Maybe you use one from time to time, tracking birthdays or other important events. Very few successful business people are without a calendar for tracking essential meetings and other day-to-day productivity items. Schools nowadays start even elementary kids with a calendar because the data says that people who use calendars are more productive and successful. But for some, calendars are little more than a wall decoration. However, when it comes to time management, ignoring your calendar means leaving a lot on the table."

via Entrepreneur: https://tinyurl.com/3fa6txk9