The Singer Not the Song

Hell yes to the proposition that the human voice is "The Most Important Instrument in the World." If I had a dollar for every time someone tried to tell me the voice isn't an instrument at all and that singers aren't musicians, I might be one of the 700 Americans who'd be subject to the billionaires tax currently being contemplated in Washington. They're wrong, every one of them. "The voice," YouTube musicsplainer CORY ARNOLD, aka 12TONE, tells us in his latest video, "is totally acoustic and innate, built into the human body by nature itself. There's no knobs, no settings, just raw primal sound." Which is part of what makes it so difficult to play. There's no instrument that's harder to master. Throw a rock in the middle of any street in East Nashville and you'll hit a guitarist who could go on tour with any band in the world tomorrow. Do the same in Atlanta and you'll hit a hip-hop producer who probably has a song in the Hot 100 right now. But there's nowhere you can go and find a truly great singer that easily. They're much more rare. Theirs is an incredibly unique and personal instrument. You can't tune it or dial in a sound. You can't tune out how you're feeling. You can't walk away from it when you get frustrated, or trade it in for a better one at GUITAR CENTER. But damn, if you ever truly master it... This has been a public service announcement. Also, Cory/12Tone consistently makes smart, fun, insightful videos about how music works, this one included.

Report Cards

SPOTIFY ad revenue in Q3 was up 75% year-over-year, because podcasts. It's now the leading podcast platform in the US based on total listeners. Whether this is good for news for musicians and music companies who are heavily invested in Spotify revenue will probably be up for debate for quite some time. Better news on the music front: Paying subscribers increased 19% year-over-year, as did the number of monthly active users, which Spotify says will pass 400 million by the end of 2021. And average revenue per user, which has been trending downward for years because of discounted family plans and expansion into markets with lower rates, crept up for a second straight quarter; it's now $5.03... UMG reported 17.4% growth in its first quarter as a public company, fueled by streaming revenues and new albums by BILLIE EILISH, DRAKE and Japanese pop group KING & PRINCE. "I firmly believe the music industry is only at the beginning of a new wave of growth and evolution," CEO LUCIAN GRAINGE told investors... Worldwide publishing revenues took a hit in 2020 because of the pandemic, which decimated collections from concerts and from stores, restaurants, hotels and bars, CISAC said in its annual report. While those collections dropped nearly 50 percent, the overall 10.7% downturn was better than CISAC originally expected. TV and radio revenues were down only slightly and digital revenues continued to boom. "It could have been worse," CISAC president BJORN ULVAEUS told Variety. Ulvaeus will do his best to add to all those revenue streams, and stem the losses, when the band he moonlights in releases its first album in 40 years Friday.

Rest in Peace

Viagra Boys guitarist BENJAMIN VALLÉ... ROSE LEE MAPHIS, a West Coast country pioneer who co-wrote the standard "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music)" with her husband, Joe Maphis... Blues harmonica player WILLIE COBBS.