With Grand Theft Auto (GTA) Online’s latest update comes yet another affirmation of the music and video games industries’ growing partnership, as the two businesses continue to intertwine. On Tuesday (July 20th), GTA developer Rockstar Games announced that it’s soundtracking the update with music entirely from its own record label, …
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For the better part of a year, a U.K. Parliamentary committee has been probing the economics of the modern music industry, questioning the entanglements of players like record labels and streaming services. At midnight British time on Thursday, July 15th, the group dropped the results of its inquiry: a massive …
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This story appears in Rolling Stone‘s 2021 Future of Music issue, a special project delving into the next era of the multibillion-dollar hitmaking business. Read the other stories here. Spotify had a plan to rule the world — before Rishi Malhotra messed it up. When rumors began to bubble in …
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Fans who try to stream Dwight Yoakam‘s “Honky Tonk Man” and “Miner’s Prayer” on Apple Music found the songs removed from the service, with Warner Music Group (WMG) allegedly taking down the music to, according to a legal complaint filed on Monday, “spite” the country star. Section 203 of the …
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We have, by and large in this pandemic year, lost our grasp on time, tossing out heralded routines and watching some minutes skirt by while others seem to drag without end. And yet Clive Davis remains unperturbed. The 88-year-old music executive’s storied pre-Grammy bash, which he hosted Saturday night in …
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Ever since Covid-19 brought concerts and tours to a crashing halt this spring, the global live music industry has been in a bind: It was one of the earliest industries forced to shut down, and it will likely be one of the last to reopen. In the meantime, promoters and …
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As the live music industry passes six months without shows, Le Poisson Rouge, the acclaimed independent New York music venue, announced on Wednesday that it is launching a new subscription livestream service in an effort to drum up some revenue while awaiting live music’s return. The shows from the subscription …
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Last week, the ASCAP Pop Awards — a major songwriting awards show, closely watched by the entire music business — awarded Publisher of the Year to independently owned music company Kobalt. Considering that Kobalt’s songwriters helped write smash hits of 2019 like Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” and Lil Nas X …
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A new coalition of independent concert venues from across the country has issued a letter to Congress asking legislators for further assistance to cushion the blow they’ve faced as live music has shuttered in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The National Independent Venue Association, made up of more …
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Members of the live music industry are celebrating an agreement that was reached today on pending amendments to the recently introduced gig economy law in California, Assembly Bill 5 (AB5). AB5 was created as a response to rideshare services like Uber and Lyft, attempting to make it harder for gig-based …
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