Deal (or No Deal)

SPOTIFY's rocky Q1 aside, it remains a hella good time to be in the recorded music business, as record company financials keep reminding us. If Billboard is to be believed, it's also a good time to be an artist looking for a deal with any of those companies in the recorded music business. As in the US economy at large, where unemployment is low and workers, like so many products, are in short supply, it's a seller's market. And the buyers are flush with money.

The 360 deals that became de rigueur in the wake of the post-NAPSTER music recession are increasingly negotiable, Billboard's GLENN PEOPLES reports. Don't want to give your label 20 percent of your ancillary revenue? Demand less. Don't want them participating in your touring income? Ask them to carve that out. Want to own your masters or get them back soon? That may be up for discussion, too. And sometimes, it should be noted, it may not. But in general, labels are hungrier to get deals done than they used to be, and artists, with home studios, access to distribution and maybe some leverage from a TIKTOK hit, are a little less hungry.

Except, of course, when they're literally hungry, as bedroom pop singer/songwriter ETHEL CAIN told the New York Times she was when she signed with DR. LUKE's PRESCRIPTION SONGS without even knowing Dr. Luke was involved in the company. "I’m not Googling CEOs when I’m eating a candy bar,” she explained to the Times' JOE COSCARELLI (really great profile, by the way). “I was unemployed and it was a pandemic."

Is Ethel Cain, whose dark, ambitious debut album is out today, an outlier or a harbinger? What happens if and when possible recession turns into actual recession? Does discretionary spending for things like music and TV subscriptions dry up? Should Spotify's somewhat worrisome subscription numbers be a cause for concern for labels whose rosy financials are based almost entirely on streaming income? Are label profits a lagging indicator in a streaming economy? Will the pandemic continue to eat into the biggest ancillary revenue piece of all—touring—or will clubs, arenas and festivals finally turn it around? What will 360 deals look like 365 days from now?

For now, at least, the Ethel Cains of the world, self-sufficient musicians with strong artistic visions, may have plenty of leverage even after they sign their deals. With the caveat that it's in the interest of labels to publicize how artist-friendly they are and of artists to publicize how independent they are, Cain appears to have a dream situation: creative freedom, the ability to tell the New York Times that working with her label's producer-owner "sucks" and "creatively, I have no need for him," and the self-assurance to want to be JOANNA NEWSOM popular but not TAYLOR SWIFT popular. And to understand that sometimes things can suck and not suck at the same time. "It's just not my year," she sings on her current single, "AMERICAN TEENAGER." "But I'm all good out here."

Etc Etc Etc

"We are here to show that Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian music exist," says OLEH PSIUK of Ukraine's KALUSH ORCHESTRA, which carried the country into Saturday's EUROVISION finals with a performance of "STEFANIA," a song that's become an unofficial anthem for the war-torn country. Oddsmakers are favoring Ukraine to win... COMPTON HIGH SCHOOL broke ground on a new $200 million campus last week with the help of $10 million from local high-school-dropout-made-good DR. DRE... Speaking of Dre: 12 classic hooks by JEWELL, "The First Lady of Death Row," who died last week... Ten players that tried, and failed, to take on the IPOD... Battle of the user interfaces: SPOTIFY vs. NETFLIX.

Rest in Peace

Black Dahlia Murder singer/lyricist TREVOR STRNAD, a beloved figure in death metal who'll be remembered almost as much for his behind-the-scenes contributions to the genre as for his electric onstage presence. "We haven’t just lost an integral part of a band and a charismatic frontman," Decibel's Justin Norton wrote, "but one of the most informed and passionate advocates for underground music of any generation"... Multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and vaudevillian GLORIA PARKER, who was primarily known as a master of musical glasses, or glasspiel, which she played onstage, on TV and in Woody Allen's "Broadway Danny Rose." Her favored instrument was 28 crystal glasses filled with various amounts of water and white wine. Benjamin Franklin introduced the instrument to America, she once explained to the New York Times. "And now, through ['Broadway Danny Rose'], the whole world can see them in the 20th century, and I will be the person affixed to them."