14 Good Things Happening in Music Right Now
~happy birthday to me~
I feel like recent music news is often bad news. And I’m a contributor to that. Just last week I wrote a long piece about problems in the music industry that don’t get enough attention. But tomorrow is my 29th birthday. In celebration, I wanted to write about some great things that are happening. As always, this newsletter is also available as a podcast. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or click play at the top of this page.
Tomorrow’s Gonna Be a Brighter Day
#1 Recording and Distributing Music has Become Democratized
So, you have an idea for a song, and you want the world to hear it. What can you do? Download the BandLab app to your phone or computer. Record the song with the internal microphone on whatever device you are using. Upload the song to YouTube, Audiomack, SoundCloud, or some other free-to-use service. You can now share your song with anyone and haven’t paid anything beyond what it costs to own and operate a cell phone or computer. And don’t think that because this is cheap that your song will stink. d4vd’s song “Romantic Homicide” was recorded on BandLab’s free app and has more than 1 billion streams on Spotify.
If you have a bit more cash to spend, you can buy a professional digital audio workstation, grab a cheap microphone, and then sign-up with an independent distributor to send your music to every streaming service. Depending on software, gear, and the distribution model you choose, this can go from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. In an absolute sense that’s not cheap, but it is dramatically cheaper than it would have been to record and distribute a song worldwide 40 years ago. So, get out there and make music. With a good idea and a bit of luck, you could find yourself with a hit.
#2 Microphones are Remarkably Affordable
A few weeks ago, I interviewed Joey Krieger, the head of R&D at AEA, a popular ribbon microphone manufacturer. At one point in the conversation, he noted how — related to point #1 — microphones have become very affordable:
Does the average microphone now sound better than the average microphone decades ago? I would say dollar-for-dollar, yes. $100 inflation-adjusted dollars spent on a microphone today goes much further than it did in 1940 … A lot of innovation has been in making decent mics more affordable.
Though AEA makes some high end microphones, you can buy an SM58 from Shure for $100 and record quality vocals on it out of the box. The SM58 is also incredibly durable. If the apocalypse were to happen today, all that would be left afterwards would be some cockroaches and a box of functioning SM58s. There’s a reason The Who’s Roger Daltrey called the mic “absolutely remarkable” in a 2017 interview.
#3 The Music Industry Continues to Rise from Its Post-Napster Collapse
In 1999, recorded music revenues in the United States peaked at over $25 billion adjusted for inflation. Then Napster, the MP3, and the web decimated the industry. By 2010, revenues were the lowest they’d ever been since the RIAA began tracking in 1973. Digital downloads just couldn’t stem the bleeding. Then music streaming went mainstream. In the last decade, revenues have increased in nine of ten years. When I spoke with Glenn McDonald, Spotify’s former data guru, he thought it was reasonable to assume that the streaming era’s peak would end up being higher than the CD era’s.
According to the RIAA, we’ve already surpassed the peak of the CD era in terms of industry revenues. Adjusted for inflation, we’re only like 60% or 70% of the way there. However, I think the peak of the CD era was a bit exaggerated because people had to pay for music that they already owned on cassette and vinyl. It seems very reasonable to me to imagine that the streaming peak will be higher.
Live music revenues have been growing too. When I spoke to live event veteran Jonathan Shank earlier this year, he said that we would continue to see the live music industry boom for at least the rest of the decade. In other words, the music industry is making a ton of money across the board.
I’d be remiss not acknowledge that the industry at large accruing wealth does not mean that every artist is sharing in the spoils. Many of these gains are being captured by A-list stars. That said, there is more money flowing into the industry then there was 20 years ago. If nobody was spending money on recorded music or concerts, then there would be no inequality issue to even try to solve.
#4 The Ticketmaster-Live Nation Monopoly Might Be Broken Up
Speaking of live music, maybe the biggest music news this year is that the federal government, along with 30 state attorney generals, is trying to break-up the Ticketmaster-Live Nation behemoth. Breaking apart this monstrosity would be a win for fans and artists alike. To quote my aforementioned interview with Jonathan Shank, “Ticketing companies are making the most money of anybody in the live entertainment space right now. From a music fan standpoint, it's tough because there's not much transparency. From the industry standpoint, artists set prices, but they have very little say in the fees on top of those prices.”
#5 There are More Revenue Streams Accessible to Artists than Ever Before
In last week’s piece where I complained about 14 issues in music right now, I noted how it is very confusing for independent artists to get paid in full for their streams. Despite that confusion, it is possible for independent artists to sign-up to collect four distinct streaming royalties.
If you have music on streaming services, you are already signed up and collecting your sound recording reproduction royalties through a distributor (e.g., DistroKid, CDBaby, Tunecore). You can collect your performance rights royalties by signing up for ASCAP or BMI. (Note: Though BMI has a one-time fee, ASCAP is free to join.) You can also sign-up for the MLC for free to collect your mechanical royalties. Finally, you can sign-up for SoundExchange for free to collect your digital performance royalties. This process will be painful, but it is still easier than it ever was.
#6 Streaming Services are Beginning to Experiment with New Payment Models
As I noted in last week’s piece about issues in music, when you hear people complaining about music royalties, the royalties they are talking about are the ones paid from streaming services to distributors for sound recording reproduction. The reason for this is (a) most people don’t know about those other royalty streams and (b) the rates for those other royalty streams are determined by the federal government.
Nevertheless, we are beginning to experiment with how we pay out sound recording reproduction royalties. The most popular alternative to the current pro rata model is the user centric model that SoundCloud and Deezer are trying. This experimentation a good thing. Music streaming is still very new. In the same way that it took the music industry a century to reach the revenue peak of the late-1990s, it will take time to find the best revenue models for artists and labels in the streaming age.
#7 Fewer Young Artists are Dying While Traveling
Musicians spend a ton of time on the road. That’s why there are scores of stories of prominent artists meeting their end while in a car or plane. In fact, in the 1960s, 36% of notable musicians who died before their 40th birthday, died while traveling. Over the last 15 years, that percentage has collapsed. Travel is just a lot safer these days. There are still too many artists dying prematurely, but it’s nice to see that it’s happening on the road less and less.
#8 There are More Resources to Learn How to Play Songs
When I was thinking about all of the good things going on in music right now, a reader wrote the following to me:
Finding sheet music, lead sheets, lyrics, or chords for any song has gone from a multiple day search to nearly instantaneous … Also, accessing any music theory info or instruction on playing any instrument, style, or lick is just a click away.
As someone who grew up in the internet age, this is something that I didn’t even think about. I’ve always been able to pull up any song on Ultimate Guitar in a matter of moments if I couldn’t figure it out. What’s also great about sites like these is that they pay artists.
When you go onto Ultimate Guitar and pull up the chords to “Someone Like You” by Adele, both Adele and Dan Wilson — the songwriters behind the song — are collecting a royalty. When you go onto AZLyrics and pull up the lyrics to “Please Please Please”, Sabrina Carpenter’s latest hit, the trio who wrote the song (i.e., Jack Antonoff, Amy Allen, Sabrina Carpenter), are all getting paid.
#9 Independent Labels and Artists are Generating More Revenue Than Ever Before
While the most popular artists still remain products of the major label system, independent artists are beginning to account for a much larger percentage of streams and revenue. In 2023, Spotify announced that 26% of streams and half of their royalty payouts went to independent labels and artists. And that doesn’t include big independent labels, like Jagjaguwar, DualTone, XL, and 4AD. That 26% share is not only growing rapidly but it’s the highest it’s ever been. In 2017, when Spotify first starting disclosing these stats, independent artists and labels only accounted for 13% of streams. Does this mean that you’ll automatically have a career if you start releasing your music? No. But it’s a heartening statistic.
#10 Music Discovery has Never Been Easier
When I spoke with Glenn McDonald, the aforementioned data guru that formerly worked at Spotify, I asked him about this idea I sometimes hear that music streaming makes discovery harder. Here’s what he said:
A few decades ago, it would have been very, very hard for some random scene in some small Eastern European country to reach me because it was expensive to make and distribute CDs. Now, it’s cheap to get your music everywhere. The internet is borderless. I don’t think K-Pop breaking worldwide could have happened without the internet.
I understand the notion that streaming services push algorithmic curation upon us, resulting in us only listening to the same things we’ve heard a thousand times. That said, you can opt out of much of this “algorithmic listening.” Just head to your settings on Spotify and turn off “Autoplay.” Now, when you finish an album or a playlist, you won’t be served up some related music. You’ll just get to bask in silence until you choose something else.
Furthermore, there is a big fat search bar sitting within every streaming app that lets you access an absurd amount of the world’s recordings of yesterday and today. Do you want to see what’s popping off in Albania? You don’t have to wait for some local record store to stock the hits of the Balkan nation. Just search “Albania”, and there will be scores of charts and playlists to choose from.
#11 Stem-Splitting Technology will Lead to a Wave of Creativity and Preservation
A few months ago, I reported on musical artificial intelligence trends for the newsletter
. There are many troubling trends in the AI world, including mass copyright infringement and the threat of flooding streaming services with schlock that will pilfer royalties from legitimate artists. Nevertheless, there’s one AI trend that I’m very excited about: stem-splitting.
When you record a song to a computer, you record each instrument to a different track. The audio file on each track is sometimes referred to as a stem. When a song gets prepared for release, an engineer or producer will take all of those recorded tracks and mix them. That mix is then outputted as a single audio file that is later mastered, pressed to physical formats, and distributed to streaming services. Stem-splitting is effectively doing this in reverse: take the final audio file and have it split each instrument into distinct tracks. As a specific example, imagine taking the master recording of “Something” by The Beatles and then splitting out just Paul McCartney’s bass line.
Why would you want to do this? First, isolating vocal and instrument tracks is important in various genres, including hip-hop and electronic dance music. While producers can sometimes get access to the original stems, it is hard if not impossible in other cases. Furthermore, sometimes original stems are lost or destroyed. This technology makes it possible to extract each component track from, say, a Ray Charles recording whose stems were destroyed and have them remixed and remastered.
There have been ways to approximate this by using clever equalization and processing, but AI technology has proven dramatically better than anything else. Not only that, but the technology is accessible. In fact, Apple added a stem splitter to the latest version of Logic Pro X.
#12 A Wide Variety of Genres are Succeeding on the Pop Charts
As I write this article, here is what the top ten songs on the Billboard Hot 100 look like:
“I Had Some Help” by Post Malone & Morgan Wallen
“Please Please Please” by Sabrina Carpenter
“Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter
“A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey
“Million Dollar Baby” by Tommy Richman
“Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar
“Too Sweet” by Hozier
“Houdini” by Eminem
“Bird of a Feather” by Billie Eilish
“Lose Control” by Teddy Swims
Whether you like these songs or not, it’s undeniable that they cross a wide variety of genres. “I Had Some Help” and “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” are country crossovers. “Not Like Us” and “Houdini” are lyrically-dense hip-hop tracks. “Million Dollar Baby” and “Lose Control” are soulful R&B numbers. “Espresso” harkens back to the synthy pop of the 1980s. In other words, today’s pop music is not a monolith.
Furthermore, there was concern last year that the industry no longer knew how to create new pop stars. “Nobody knows how to break music right now,” a label executive told Billboard in August. While this chart has some returning hitmakers, like Post Malone and Billie Eilish, along with legends, like Eminem and Kendrick Lamar, it also has fresh artists, like Tommy Richman, and those that have been building momentum for a while, like Sabrina Carpenter. I agree that the industry still seems confused on how to break artists in the TikTok age, but listeners are ready for fresh sounds across the genre-verse.
#13 The European Union is Cracking Down on Apple’s Monopoly that Deprives Artists of Millions
While bemoaning problems in music last week, I noted how Apple and Google force apps to use their payment technology. That technology has exorbitant fees. If more money goes into Apple’s coffers when a listener buys a subscription for a streaming service, that leaves less money for artists.
The good news is that the European Union sued Apple over not allowing third party payment technology. The even better news is that Apple finally agreed to settle the lawsuit. If all goes well, streaming services will be able to send more subscription dollars to artists and labels rather than to Silicon Valley.
#14 There is More Flexibility in Label Deals
When I asked the CEO of Audiomack what he thought was going well in music right now, he said the following: “Artists who sign to a label are often presented with a variety of deal structures, whereas in the past the only deal they could sign was one that gave ownership to the label.” This is good news for artists. Not only can they maintain some level of ownership of their master recordings, but they can often get more favorable payment structures.
A New One
"I Never Lie" by Zach Top
2024 - Country
When I mentioned the current popularity of country music earlier, I should have mentioned that this country music typically comes in one of two strains. First, a gruff, heart-on-your-sleeve style (à la Zach Bryan) that bears much resemblance to the confessional emo and pop punk music of the early-2000s. Second, a radio-friendly strain of the genre that borrows heavily from hip-hop and is ruled by Morgan Wallen. Zach Top is neither of those things.
If you grew up on the country music of the 1980s and 1990s, Zach Top will make you feel at home. A recent song like “I Never Lie” has a melody reminiscent of George Strait and lyrics packed with the light touch of wit that makes great country songs bounce around in your head for days.
An Old One
"Lovey Dovey" by The Clovers
1954 - Rhythm & Blues
Earlier, I mentioned that Eminem’s “Houdini” is currently a top ten hit. “Houdini” interpolates the chorus of Steve Miller’s 1982 number one hit “Abracadabra”. After Eminem released his song, Miller put out a statement on his website about his respect for Eminem and a celebration of how music talks across generations:
There is a long chain of stories, poetry, lyrics, and musical roots that have crossed cultures and generations inspiring the whole world for hundreds of years and in all those lines of thought, music, and rhythm there are special artists who take it all in and create new original ideas from their own feelings and experiences. You [Eminem] are one of those timeless originators building something new on a long musical legacy of original artists.
This gushing statement reminded me how Miller’s 1970s’ hit “The Joker” also interpolated lyrics from an earlier hit. When Miller sings, “You're the cutest thing that I ever did see / I really love your peaches / Wanna shake your tree / Lovey dovey, lovey dovey, lovey dovey all the time” he is quoting a hit from two decades earlier by The Clovers. While Miller’s reimagination is more well known at this point, The Clovers’ original is worth revisiting for its bluesy, finger-snapping groove.
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Great post... And Happy Birthday!
Pro Tip for starters: Buy a license for the Reaper DAW, it's 60 bucks and Reaper is a fully professional DAW. You can also try it for free.