If you thought this week was a sleeper, think again. We’ve gathered all the news fit to print in one easy-to-read place.
We made it to April! If you’re reading this, go ahead and pat yourself on the back. You are now three full months in 2022, and nothing has gone as planned so far. Touring is back, but it’s littered with canceled gigs and undersold performances. Plenty of albums are coming out, but consumers are too overwhelmed by news, culture, and society to give the arts much attention. Everyone is hoping for a better tomorrow, but we’re still living today, and for now, all we can do is our best. That has to be enough.
The final week of March brought another wave of massive announcements, eye-popping acquisitions, and an avalanche of new music that we’ll be spinning all weekend long. We cannot ease your workload or give you more hours in the day, but we can help you stay informed. Below you’ll find the biggest stories of the week, all covered by the best outlets in tech and entertainment. Click around, learn what’s happening, and use the weekend to prepare for the end of the month.
But let’s be honest. There is no way we can hope to cover everything that happens. If you see a headline we missed that people need to know, please do not hesitate to send james@haulix.com an email. We’ll include your links in the next update.
THE BIGGEST STORIES OF THE WEEK
Women Still Vastly Underrepresented in Music Creation Process, New Study Finds
The results of a 10-year study have found that women remain underrepresented in many areas of the music creation process and other areas of the industry.
Released today (March 31), this Inclusion In The Recording Studio? study is the fifth annual report on gender equality in music industry from Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, of which Smith is the Founder. Funded by Spotify, this report found that over the past ten years, female representation in the recording studio — and subsequently on the charts and at the Grammys — has not significantly increased.
The study was performed by examining the artists, songwriters, and producers credited on each of the 1,000 songs on Billboard‘s Hot 100 Year End Chart from 2012 to 2021, along with the gender and race/ethnicity of every person in those three roles. In 2021, there were 180 artists on this chart — 76.7% of them were men and 23.3% were women. (No artists identified as gender non-conforming or non-binary in 2021.) Across all ten years, 78.2% of artists were men and 21.8% were women.
Key findings include that in 2021, 23.3% of artists on the Hot 100 Year-End Chart were women. This number has been stagnant for a decade, with women representing 21.8% of artists across ten years and 1,000 songs on this chart. The study notes that these numbers are a “far cry” from the 51% of the U.S. population comprised by women.
Instagram upgrades its DM inbox with music sharing, statuses, polls, silent messages and more
Instagram today is rolling out over a half dozen new messaging features, following promises late last year that its DM (direct message) inbox would get a significant upgrade in 2022. The changes include the ability to share music previews in DMs, the ability to send a message silently, the ability to see who’s online to chat with, the ability to reply to messages while you browse your feed and more.
The company says the work is part of its larger efforts to improve how users connect and share with friends. It also comes on the heels of Instagram’s launch of chronological feed options, Following and Favorites, which allow users to see posts ranked without the use of algorithms. The Favorites feed allows users to hand-select a list of their closest friends or favorite creators to keep closer track of, while the Following option simply sorts posts in chronological order.
Now Instagram is turning its attention to the inbox. Today’s changes include the following:
- Music sharing: Instagram will integrate with Apple Music, Amazon Music and, soon, Spotify, to allow users to share 30-second song previews in chats.
- Reply while browsing: The app will allow you to reply to new messages while browsing their Feed, without having to go to the inbox and lose your place.
- Quick sending: You can now tap and hold the share button to quickly reshare posts to your closest four friends.
- Status: At the top of your inbox, you can now see who’s free to chat with, similar to Messenger.
- Silent messages: You can opt to send messages to friends without bothering them — like when you know they’re busy or asleep. To do so, you’ll add “@silent” to your message.
- Lo-fi chat theme: A new theme designed to make conversations feel more personal, which features a cityscape scene and a cat.
- Polls: You can now use the Poll sticker to create a poll directly in the group chat.
The Truth Behind Spotify’s Alleged “Fake Artist” Problem Comes Out (Maybe)
Spotify has long been accused of creating fake artists to promote so-called “mood music” to the masses while cashing in behind-the-scenes. Rumors of these practices recently ramped up yet again, and one MBW reader chimed in with scintillating insight.
First of all, “mood music” is one of the largest growth segments of the music industry. This makes sense because an increasing share of the hundreds of millions of people who pay for these streaming services are not really music fans.
More importantly, since there is no longer any cost to access a single piece of content, music for more niche use cases like meditation, working, reading, studying or putting your baby (or yourself) to sleep are becoming important habits. It turns out, most people have more time in their day for these activities, then for actively looking for and listening to Thom Yorke’s recent single. In fact, most users who come home from work just want “something chill” to listen to and could not be bothered what artists will be part of that session.
Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album now holds the Billboard Top Country Albums record for most weeks at number one, for a staggering 51 weeks.
This beats the record previously shared with Luke Combs’ This One’s for You, and Shania Twain’s Come On Over. However, Luke actually snapped his own streak with the released of his sophomore album, What You See Is What You Get.
Copyright Royalty Judges Reject “Settlement” Extending Freeze on Physical Mechanicals
In brief, the CRB has kept the mechanical rate at the present 9.1 cents since 2006, and the filing parties claimed that the figure should remain in place “for the rate period at issue” – through 2027, as noted. The NMPA likewise indicated that it and Universal Music, Sony Music, and Warner Music had come to “an agreement in principle concerning a separate memorandum of understanding addressing certain related issues.”
Songwriter organizations promptly called for greater transparency from the CRB and took aim at the inherent conflict of interest between the majors (which, of course, own massive publishing companies and sit on the NMPA board) and the NMPA, demanding that the Copyright Royalty Board judges reject the proposed mechanical-rate freeze.
Now, as highlighted at the outset, the CRB has voted against extending the 9.1-cent mechanical rate for the quick-approaching 2023-2027 stretch, the entity (and specifically Chief Judge Suzanne Barnett) relayed in a Federal Register that was published today.
