Three or Four Hundred

We all know stories of musical collaborators who met on TWITTER and maybe did their actual collaborating through social media or other internet-based means, but is this also now how music entrepreneurs in corner offices negotiate nine-figure deals? @P is PIERRE "P" THOMAS, co-founder and CEO of the Atlanta label/management behemoth QUALITY CONTROL, whose artists include LIL BABY, MIGOS and LIL YACHTY. @300 is 300 ENTERTAINMENT, the decade-old, data-driven, New York hip-hop tastemaker whose roster boasts the likes of MEGAN THEE STALLION, YOUNG THUG, FETTY WAP, GUNNA and lots more, and which has put itself on the market, according to Bloomberg's LUCAS SHAW, for at least $400 million. Trapital's DAN RUNCIE has the basics on what someone might get for those four hundred million bucks, including a roster whose recording income comes mostly from streaming, not radio, and a group of young pop stars whose sales numbers don't quite match their stardom and "who each have their bull and bear cases." Risk + reward. P's Quality Control label has a booming track record of artist and brand development and he has his bankers on deck and wants to talk. He also, apparently, has a twitter account. Which I guess is what you do in 2021.

Dot Dot Dot

TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON's Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice is teaming up with New Music USA to launch a mentorship program for women and non-binary jazz artists trying to break into a field still dominated by men. The program, Next Jazz Legacy, is accepting applications for its first class of six early-career artists, who'll receive $10,000 cash grants, yearlong performance apprenticeships and access to industry mentors and online classes at Berklee... TIM SWEENEY's long-running WNYU radio show BEATS IN SPACE moves to APPLE MUSIC... Who put the bomp in "WHO PUT THE BOMP (IN THE BOMP, BOMP, BOMP)"? Whoever it may have been, LE TIGRE's KATHLEEN HANNA and JOHANNA FATEMAN have settled out of court with "Who Put the Bomp" singer and co-songwriter BARRY MANN, who accused their 1999 song "DECEPTACON" of stealing lyrics from his 1961 hit, and who in turn sued him, claiming he and co-writer GERRY GOFFIN cribbed the lyrics from older doo wop songs and had no right to claim them as their own. The case was settled "without any public admission of liability," Pitchfork reports... In other "I don't own these lyrics and neither do you" news, GENIUS is asking a federal court in New York to restore its suit against GOOGLE and LYRICFIND, which it accuses of stealing its transcriptions of song lyrics. A judge threw out the case last year on the grounds that Genius doesn't have the copyrights on the lyrics themselves and therefore has no standing to sue. In its appeal, Genius is arguing that what's being stolen isn't the lyrics themselves, but the labor involved in transcribing them. My nonprofessional nonlegal opinion is that publishers should actually send their lyrics to the sites that pay to license them instead of making the sites source them on their own, which is a strange work flow.

Rest in Peace

PAT MARTINO, one of the giants of 20th century jazz guitar, if not *two* of the giants of 20th century jazz guitar. After carving out an influential career as both a sideman and bandleader in the 1960s and '70s with his exquisite tone and "singular soul-jazz feel," he had to learn how to play again, from scratch, after a brain aneurysm in 1980 left him with severe amnesia. It took him nearly a decade to master his instrument again. That experience was "the greatest thing that ever happened to me," he would say later in life... Agent JESSE ARATOW, whose clients included String Cheese Incident and Leftover Salmon.