Let Him Go

Before they became BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS, before they became what the ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME knows only as BOB MARLEY (someone should fix that), they were simply, as if anything is ever really that simple, the WAILERS. A vocal harmony group. There is no point in the song "STIR IT UP" where Bob Marley sings the phrase "Stir It Up" alone. PETER TOSH's voice anchors each word, each chord, from the bottom, Marley rests comfortably in the middle and BUNNY WAILER (stage left in the linked video) floats on top, providing a crystalline outer layer for harmonies that echo across continents and across musical time. They were, it goes without saying, one of the more consequential vocal harmony groups of the 20th century. They harmonized in ways that went far beyond those chords. "Peter Tosh was the real militant one," Wailers biographer VIVIEN GOLDMAN told the New York Times. "Bob was the poetic revolutionary humanist. Bunny was regarded as the spiritual mystic." The mystic who took the band name as his last name was the first to leave, conflicted about touring for religious reasons and, by most accounts, increasingly unhappy at the Wailers' transformation into "& the Wailers." He was the last to die, ending this part of his journey on Tuesday, at age 73, having been one of the very few musicians who can say they were there at the beginning and they changed music from sounding like this to sounding like that. Bunny and his fellow Wailers moved the music's very accent from here to there.

Of the three towering figures who kickstarted the reggae revolution from inside a single band, Bunny Wailer was the least celebrated, for understandable reasons. He wrote less and sang fewer leads than the others (though he did both of those things), and he chose to stay home in Jamaica for the first decade after he set out on his own, declining to tour even as he produced a series of now-classic solo albums starting with BLACKHEART MAN in 1976. But he was a towering figure indeed, a founding father, a natural mystic, a roots radical, with a plaintive, soulful vocal instrument that expressed more than most people could ever know. RIP.

User-royal Tea

Look out, here we go, sort of. After years of debates about the relative virtues of the dominant pro rata royalty system in streaming music—in which all subscription revenue goes into a single pot to be divvied up at the end of each month by DRAKE, BAD BUNNY and TAYLOR SWIFT—and a user-centric system that sends each user's portion of that revenue to the artists the user actually plays, SOUNDCLOUD has agreed to try the user-centric thing. This is, joking aside, a potentially watershed moment in streaming royalties, though there are caveats galore in the implementation of what SoundCloud is calling fan-powered royalties.

For starters, none of the major labels has agreed to it, so only indie artists will be paid that way. And only some indie artists, depending on their exact relationship with SoundCloud—about 100,000 artists for now, the company says. Everybody else will be paid the old pro rata way, which is as confusing and as complicated as it sounds. The company essentially will be divvying up each subscriber's monthly $4.99 or $9.99, plus money from any ad revenue the user is responsible for, into two separate pots to be distributed two different ways to two different sets of artists. SoundCloud says it can easily handle this.

Fans of user-centric payment systems say it will benefit middle-class artists at the expense of streaming's one-percenters, and this is the first real chance to find out if that's true. MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE's TIM INGHAM, who has the best explainer of the change, says the redistribution here will happen between different tiers of indie artists. And the dueling systems, he writes, may force SoundCloud to pay out a surplus above its normal royalty share some months.

The initiative is also a chance for SoundCloud to separate itself from the pack as an indie-artist-friendly economic proposition. Will DEEZER, which has been vocal about its desire to try something similar but doesn't have agreement from the labels, find a way to follow? Will the labels come around on their own? Will artists see what they're hoping to see in their royalty statements come this spring?

All About Soul

SOUL and BLIZZARD OF SOUL were the big winners at the SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS AND LYRICISTS AWARDS Tuesday, with "Soul" composers TRENT REZNOR, ATTICUS ROSS and JON BATISTE getting the honors for Outstanding Original Score for a Studio Film two days after winning the Golden Globe for the same movie. "Blizzard of Souls" composer LOLITA RITMANIS won in the Independent Film category. Other winners included the song "HUSAVIK" by SAVAN KOTECHA, FAT MAX GSUS and RICKARD GÖRANSSON, from EUROVISION SONG CONTEST, and CARLOS RAFAEL RIVERA's score for the TV series THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT... The AVALANCHES' WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU won the AUSTRALIAN MUSIC PRIZE, beating out albums by TAME IMPALA, ZIGGY RAMO and others.

Copy, Right?

A helpful lesson in plagiarism from TV and film composer and session musician JON SPURNEY, who's now a two-day JEOPARDY! champion. Guest host MIKE RICHARDS asked Spurney Tuesday what he thought of the iconic "Jeopardy!" theme music. "I can't tell you how many times I've been asked to copy it, to make something that sounds like it," Spurney said. But you've never done that?, Richards asked. Never, Spurney said, "because that would be illegal." Dear TV, film and especially commercial producers and directors: I know that of course you would never ever do such a thing, but, hey, just in case.

Rest in Peace

Italian house DJ CLAUDIO COCCOLUTO... British jazz bandleader CHRIS BARBER, who contributed to the country's pre-BEATLES skiffle craze by playing bass on LONNIE DONEGAN's "ROCK ISLAND LINE"... TV producer and director ROGER ENGLANDER, who championed classical music in programming including the YOUNG PEOPLE'S CONCERTS he made with LEONARD BERNSTEIN.