Trash TikToking

The irony of the HALSEY vs. CAPITOL RECORDS social media dustup, as I'm hardly the first to point out, is that the artist, in complaining about what the label wanted her to do, has given the label exactly what it asked for: a viral TIKTOK post. "i have a song that I love that i wanna release ASAP," Halsey wrote in the text of a Sunday morning TikTok, "but my record label won’t let me." According to Halsey, Capitol said no-go to a single "unless they can fake a viral moment on tiktok." Everything is marketing, she complained. "i'm tired." This is, of course, a little gross. It's also, of course, not new. Everything has always been—or at least has always been subject to—marketing for as long as there have been songs and records to market. Artists have always had to do press. Artists have always had to do radio. Artists have always had to shake hands and smile. In the social media era, artists have to make endless streams of content, day after day after day. In the current era, it's not out of the question that making records "may well come last" in the list of priorities for some artists. There are so many other things that must get done. *I'm* tired. Halsey's TikTok rant, in which her eyes wandered around the screen while a snippet of a new song, presumably *that* new song, played and her complaint slowly unfolded via text, was intimate and compelling and quickly went viral, as both she and her label wanted, presumably for different reasons (though can we ever be sure?). Capitol Records responded with a statement in which it said it believes in Halsey and "can’t wait for the world to hear their brilliant new music." (Halsey uses both "she" and "they" pronouns.) The label's statement didn't challenge a word of Halsey's rant. Halsey had already won this week's music news cycle. Why mess with that best of all outcomes? Why lie or deflect when you don't have to?

FKA TWIGS, CHARLI XCX and FLORENCE + THE MACHINE's FLORENCE WELCH have also complained publicly in recent weeks about their labels trying to squeeze TiKTok content out of them. But Welch, who began an a cappella TikTok performance in March with a heavy sigh and captioned it "The label are begging me for ‘low fi tik toks’ so here you go. pls send help," told the LA Times, "The fan community on TikTok was so funny and cute that I kind of started to enjoy it." She's continued to post a steady stream of TikTok videos, and no more sighing. Halsey has posted just one more TikTok, the same day as her label rant, in which she's having a release strategy discussion with an unseen adviser. "I just hate this," she tells him. "It sucks." There's only one line of text onscreen in that one: "I wish I was kidding lol."

MusicSET: "Halsey Rocks Around the TikTok."

Ad It Up

The good news about the bad news about SPOTIFY welcoming back political ads after a two-year hiatus is that music streaming users won't hear them—the ads will be podcast-only—and individual podcasters will have the power to refuse them. The bad news about the bad news is that Spotify, as Protocol's Issie Lapowsky reports, isn't as well equipped as companies like META and GOOGLE to vet and contextualize the ads for its users (and frankly those companies are hardly well equipped either). Spotify says it's "spent the past two years strengthening and enhancing our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content," and it will accept ads only from known entities and not from "issue" groups. The ads will be micro-targeted in all the creepy ways we've come to expect... After a 10-year run, PEPSI is giving up its sponsorship of SUPER BOWL halftime. The move saves Pepsi, which will continue to be an NFL partner, $40 to $50 million a year, which it may well shift to more targeted Super Bowl spending. And it raises the question, suggests Billboard, of whether "this could shift the calculus in terms of who might perform" at future halftimes—although, as the magazine notes, ROC NATION will continue to have control of that decision.

Etc Etc Etc

The NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION's "Grand Ole Night of Freedom" concert will go ahead as scheduled Saturday night during the org's annual convention in Houston, four days after a gunman killed 19 schoolchildren 275 miles away in Uvalde, Texas. Veteran country singers LEE GREENWOOD, LARRY GATLIN and T. GRAHAM BROWN have all confirmed they still think it's a good idea to perform, and SIRIUSXM's DANIELLE PECK is still hosting. But there'll be no "AMERICAN PIE"—singer DON MCLEAN has pulled out, saying, "In light of the recent events in Texas, I have decided it would be disrespectful and hurtful for me to perform." To the credit of the wider country music community, not a single artist who's had a hit in the last 20 years said yes to this gig except the host, and it's been 15 years for her... DAVID BOWIE and JERRY LEE LEWIS docs premiere in Cannes. FANNY doc premieres Friday in New York (and is headed to PBS in 2023)... BOB DYLAN and T BONE BURNETT are WU-TANG'ing their mysterious new-audio-format recording of Dylan's "BLOWIN' IN THE WIND," putting it up for auction as an edition of one, with an estimated price in the MARTIN SHKRELI range.

Rest in Peace

French metal singer GUILLAUME BIDEAU, whose bands included Mnemic, Scarve and One-Way Mirror.