Complete Music Update

Grammy nominated Summer Walker is not only trying to get out of her business relationship with Universal Music’s Interscope, she’s also very keen to break up with management company LVRN, which - she says - locked her into an unfair contract and then acted in bad faith. The bust up with Interscope came to light last week when the major label sued Walker for damages after she tried to use California’s Labor Code to end her record deal early.

This week we caught up with Billy Young, publicist at 4AD, one of the most beloved and artistically distinctive record labels in the UK, where they handle UK press and coordinate international press for the label’s roster, as well as working on selected AD 93 releases. Billy’s path is a great example of what happens when you couple hard work with following what you genuinely love rather than chasing a pre-determined career plan.

The UK Copyright Tribunal has sided with songwriter collecting society PRS in a dispute over the royalties paid by cinemas for the use of music in films, ultimately agreeing that the royalty rate paid by cinemas should increase. In a statement on the case, PRS says that it argued the previous rate, negotiated more than two decades ago, “no longer reflected the realities of today’s cinema industry”.

Elena Tonra is the lead singer of Daughter, and Ex:Re - her solo project - is very much a different side of the same coin. Where Daughter deals in heartbreakingly fragile indie-folk, Ex:Re is still interior but more assured; alt-pop that chronicles the gnawing minutiae of consciousness. Her self-titled debut in 2018 was a cult classic. She never intended to make a second one.

Techno DJ and producer Sara Landry is now involved in legal battles on both sides of the Atlantic with her former managers at UK-based The Night Department. The management firm sued Landry in the London courts back in August alleging she breached her old management contract. She has now filed counterclaims with the London courts while also filing a separate trademark lawsuit with the courts in New York.

A big and hearty bid for indie-rock canonisation - Sonic Youth guitar work, motorik bassline, Mike Crossey on the mix (Arctic Monkeys, Wolf Alice). Perhaps the most dance track by the band. Barbed electronics, synth-sirens and crunchy breakbeats, disjointed but gleeful, with a video shot on handycam across LA and Paris. A good preview of their self-titled debut album, out in November. Sparse and ominous before erupting. Radiohead-like verses.

Danish culture minister Zenia Stampe yesterday presented revised proposals in the Danish parliament to introduce new rights to help performers, and people more generally, to block unapproved digital replicas that imitate their voice or likeness. There has been much debate around the world about how to regulate AI-generated deepfakes and digital replicas, and whether new rights are required in law to provide effective protection.

Cyril Vetter, the songwriter who won a landmark termination rights ruling in the US courts last year, recently told judges on the US Supreme Court to ignore all the hyperbole and doomsaying now being pushed out by the major music publishers regarding the impact of that ruling. In a new court filing, the major publishers have provided yet more doom and gloom predictions which the Supreme Court judges may or may not want to ignore.

LA-based Ben Schwab started Sylvie after finding a box of tapes his father had recorded with his band in the 1970s. Named after a Matthews Southern Comfort song, the project is rooted in a warm, sun-bleached Laurel Canyon and Nashville sound; country folk-rock with a soft-focus amber glow. Schwab also played guitar in Drugdealer, whose sound occupies similar territory. It’s music that sounds like it could have been made fifty years ago, which isn’t a criticism. Some things age without rusting.

The music industry has welcomed the imprisonment of Michael Smith, the streaming fraudster who made millions by uploading AI-generated tracks to digital music platforms and then artificially boosting streams of that music. It’s the first conviction of a streaming fraudster in the US and one of the first worldwide. He was yesterday sentenced to eighteen months in prison.