Ignorantly Delivering Knowledge

IDK (Ignorantly Delivering Knowledge) had one of my favourite albums of 2019 with “Is he real?” where he questions God. I am glad he was able to showcase his talent to a massive audience on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he performed the highly relevant track “No Cable” from his album.

In the chorus of this song he offers his take on the privilege of not needing or having to care about police shootings, school shootings or gay/trans rights. He is saying people are quick to label them as thugs or mentally unstable people and they will just “change the channel”.

Changing the channel both refers to the privilege of not having to care about things not affecting you, and the mindset most of these people who hold this privilege have: not being ready to hear the truth. This might break their comfort, so they just ignore it.

He ends the chorus with saying how we are all brothers and sisters and we should recognize this and in turn end the cycle of hurt and pain.

I feel like this was a powerful song to showcase on The Late Show because it is very relevant today, as is the message of literally asking anyone who he makes uncomfortable to “change the channel”. You can either change the channel or strive for what’s best for a society; Black Lives Matter.

 

Karl Sturch

Here Are Ten Black Independent Artists You Need to Know Of

Before I start this article I would like to say rest in peace to George Floyd, and that our thoughts are with his family. No one deserves to be treated differently due to the colour of their skin.

The Murder of George Floyd awoke many people into realising how big of a problem racial inequality is. Many are fighting to be on the right side of history, and many people are trying to fight for equality and against oppression.

We have been able to accomplish many successful things so far; for example we have been able to increase the charges for murderers and get other complacent officers charged. Even on what may seem a smaller scale you have artists and consumers calling out those who make millions off of Black Music to give back and support the black community. Artists like The Weeknd and Russ have called out the likes of Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Warner Music, Spotify and Apple to give back. This has lead to some impressive support from these organisations. For example Sony Music announcing they plan to give $100 million to fund social justice and anti racism initiatives.

This is all wonderful stuff but labels are taking most of the money from when you stream your favourite song, unless if it’s from an independent artist. I feel like we as consumers need to put in more of a conscious effort to support Black businesses. A way of doing this from home is listening to independent Black artists. So Predominantly Hip Hop gives you ten Black independent artists and groups you should know of:

Kota the Friend

Kota has gotten big during quarantine. His very chill and relaxed music is perfect for relaxing in the sun or just chilling in your room. He even released an amazing album “EVERYTHING” during quarantine.

Our favourite songs include Hollywood, Volvo and B.Q.E

 

Rapsody

She can out rap your favourite rapper for sure! A perfect musician if you like that lyrical rap. She works with legendary producer 9^th Wonder and  has been nominated for a Grammy.

Our favourite songs include Cleo, Nobody and Oprah

 

Freddie Gibbs

This is an artist who has arguably released the album of 2019. It also seems like he will be part of the conversation this year for album of the year with his album “Alfredo”, which he recorded with legendary producer The Alchemist. An artist with an amazing flow, perfect if you like cocaine rap.

Our favourite songs include 1985, Fake Names and Scottie Beam

 

Big K.R.I.T.

An artist who we respect a lot. When his label was trying to shelf him, he said he doesn’t need them and started moving independently and creating his own buzz. So when he left his label it made sense to stay independent.

Our favourite songs include K.R.I.T. Here, Mixed Messages and Believe

 

Young M.A

An artist with a strong business mind who we’re happy stayed independent. We feel she has great potential and will able to accomplish some big things in both independent rap and business.

Our favourite songs include Big, Get this Money and Trap or Cap

 Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine and Benny the Butcher

We know these three are a group under the name “Griselda” but while Griselda is signed under Shady records, as solo artists these three are independent. They are releasing music at great speed and high quality. Perfect if you like that really grimy rap.

Our favourite Westside Gunn songs: GODS Don’t Bleed, Lucha Bros and Euro Step

Our favourite Conway the Machine songs: Shoot Sideways, Fentanyl and 14 KI’s

Our favourite Benny the Butcher songs: ’97 Hov, 18 Wheeler, 5 to 50

 

The Underachievers  

This is a duo that brings you old style New York rap mixed with psychedelic rap. A very underrated duo! We look forward to seeing what they will be able to accomplish in the future.

Our favourite songs include N.A.S.A, New New York, Generation Z

 

Flatbush Zombies

We couldn’t mention The Underachievers without mentioning Flatbush Zombies, another group that brings you old style New York rap but mixed with Psychedelics. If you liked The Underachievers you would definitely like this group.

Our favourite songs include Bounce, Vacation and New Phone Who Dis?

 

Childish Major

A very talented producer/rapper that is perfect for chilling in your room. Similar to Kota the friend we would definitely recommend for your quarantine playlists.

Our favourite songs include Not Numb, Supply Luh and I Like You

 

Rimon

This is an artist with a beautiful voice, perfect for your quarantine playlist. She even released a wonderful EP called “I Shine, U Shine” recently.

Our favourite songs include Out Of My Way, Downtown and Dust

 

I hope you find at least one new independent artist that you like in this list, and if not I hope this article makes you put more of a conscious effort to try find and support Black independent artwork.

 

 

‘Stan’ culture and its impact on Music

The word ‘Stan’ was a term first coined by rapper Eminem in his song ‘Stan’ from 2000. According to Urban Dictionary, the slang word means “an overzealous maniacal fan for any celebrity or athlete”.

Humans tend to admire someone who is great at their craft, for example, take Ariana Grande’s ability to sing – she is a great singer, no doubt, and this has led to a lot of people admiring her. This admiration often leads to people having a more positive perception of people like Ariana in every aspect of their being such as having better morals, having higher intelligence and being more attractive. As a result, their negative perceptions of these people tend to dampen.  This is an example of what normal fans are like when perceiving their favourite artist.

Stans on the other hand are superfans – they take admiration for their favourite celebrity to an extreme. Stan’s perception of their favourite celebrity is often along the lines of that they are ‘the best of the best’, they ignore anything negative their artist is associated with and attack others that disagree with them or attack their artist in any way.

Stan culture has always been around in music but not to the extent it has been in recent years. Why is there a rise in Stan culture? It’s because of social media.

Social media has enabled the ability for artists to communicate with fans, and fans the ability to communicate with other fans.  This ability has allowed Stans to find other Stans which can be good as it can create an online community of people with the same interest and lets celebrities and artists see that they have people backing them up. This is good for both the artist and the fans as any type of community makes the people involved happy by providing a sense of fulfilment and family. These communities can help artists figure out what type of music works because these communities respond directly to what the artists does. However, these communities often provide a sense of protectionism as well, especially from the ‘Stan’s of their community. These Stans will go after anyone who insults their favourite artist which in turn protects these artists from losing their place in the industry. ‘Cancelled’ or ‘Stanned’ are words in the industry that show that these Stans have the power to make or break an artist’s career. However, do these people deserve to have this much power over someone’s career? Does this pose a problem for the actual artist these Stans love?

Stans have a problem with seeing flaws in their artists as they are usually very bias, which creates no room for critique. This can A) create something where artist don’t get reasonable feedback so they think the music they are putting out is doing a lot better than it actually is, and B) it can create cyberbullying and attacks from people who just hold different opinions than you.

The Barbz (Nicki Minaj Stan’s) for example have been able to be find personal information, release addresses and phone numbers of people they disagreed with. Ariana Grande Stan’s have even tried to encourage Pete Davidson to kill himself.

I know that these are small minorities and extreme cases of Stans, however Stan culture creates a loss of individualism within people as well creates a sense of a no liability so these Stans feel that they can say very mean and hurtful things in the act of an artist and not get in trouble. This makes Stan culture in a sense very toxic.

However, it is important to stress that Stans and Fandoms are different. Fandoms are great, they let us watch artist we love to grow and expand. Stans on the other hand are extreme and create a horrible online present filled with toxicity. We can love our favourite artists without being toxic, we do not have to argue with people with different opinions online, so why do Stans choose to? Music is very subjective, people are not going to feel the same way you feel when you listen to a song as they do. So just enjoy the music as it lasts and maybe use your detective skills for something better.

Karl Sturch

Fake Listeners

Last year over 60% of U.S. music revenues came from streaming platforms. This will only rise due to the popularity and convenience streaming platforms give to listeners. For artists, this means that these streaming platforms are very valuable when it comes to marketing and selling one’s work. But is there a way of getting more streams that aren’t actual streams being listened to by real listeners? There is, and these are called streaming farms. I will be discussing what exactly these are and how they may impact music artists and fans.

In recent news, Selena Gomez beat Drake in becoming Spotify’s most-streamed artist, however questions arose since she hasn’t released an album since 2015. Drake has newer content and it would make more sense for him to grab that spot. Could Selena be involved in streaming farms?

Streaming farms are automated streams with a goal to increase streaming numbers and thus increasing profit and popularity. There are various methods for streaming farms, one way is artists or labels paying companies like Streamfy or SpotLister to give them fake play.

Fans suspect Selena Gomez’s label to use automated bots to boost her numbers. These automated bots are thousands of phones playing music 24/7, which is very similar to the ‘Click farms’ that automate likes and comments in China. The fans believe this was all because they want to create buzz and conversation for her new album.

Streaming farms for streams is very dangerous to do. It’s fraud and it will land you in some trouble as an artist. For example, in 2015, a small folk band called “Smokey and the Mirror” received a life time ban from Spotify for fishy streams. This band was able to get 79,000 plays with only 30 followers. You may be thinking 79,000 streams is not much, that’s only just over $450 US, surely Spotify won’t lose that much?

Streaming platforms wants to make sure all artist gets the same advantages. Buying fake streams rigs the algorithms, that companies like Spotify or Tidal have set up. What if there was a great band that deserved to be discovered by a new fan because they didn’t cheat but then another band gets discovered first because they cheated? It is not fair for artists and these streaming companies will lose out on genuine valuable marketing data that will help improve their services. I believe creators should have respect for other creators out there and be able to live their own truths and play fair.

Now I don’t know if Selena Gomez is paying to have her streams automated, I personally doubt it.  I believe her success is due to her ability to constantly be on Spotify’s made playlists, and for being a talented artist, but we don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes and we can’t ignore the fact that streaming farms are still being used. It will be very interesting in seeing what Tidal, Spotify and Apple Music will do to crack down on this, and fellow artists’ responses to these changes.

Karl Sturch

 

The Upload Button – Power to Creator –

In the 60’s, we saw events like record labels cornering the market on vinyl presses – if you wanted to get a record made you would need a record deal. In addition, resources and the price to make physical copies of music was super high, so record deals were only given to a small percentage of artists.

A lot has changed since then because the music industry is constantly expanding and changing, less people now are buying vinyl and are more into advanced ways of listening to music thanks to advances in technology and its conveniences in everyday life. Think smartphones. Think apps. Think social media. It is now easier than ever to connect to anyone in the world. With that in mind, also think about the ease of access to resources we have today. It makes sense that there is currently a surge in independent artists. If you continue, I will explain why in more detail.

In 2003, Apple came up with a way to purchase music online with iTunes. This was a blessing for the music industry as it was a way of fighting illegal peer-to-peer file sharing which had caused a decrease of legal music sales.

And then Spotify and Rhapsody came into the picture offering subscription services to stream music. Spotify was one of the first streaming service that was able to negotiate licenses with all of the major labels and many independent labels to allow unlimited access to wide ranges of music.

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of streaming platforms and an increase of people moving towards streaming platforms to receive music. I talk about this in my previous article, ‘A shift to the forefront of the music Industry- could streaming platforms be the new record labels?’.

This increase in people using streaming services created a very competitive market. When Tidal entered the picture, ‘The Streaming Wars’ began. Tidal was created to help and benefit the artist, and only the artist. It started getting its subscribers by offering them exclusive album releases a week or even two in advance.

But then artists started making deals with other streaming platforms for exclusive deals. That was until record labels had to cut in and say ‘no’, all because these labels were receiving less money than they would have received from releasing their artists music on all platforms.

Streaming platforms subscribers is increasing. It’s not surprising, I’m pretty sure it’s rare to know someone who doesn’t have a streaming service on their devices than vice versa. Spotify holds the most subscribers with around 83 million worldwide, Apple Music is a close second with 50 million worldwide subscribers.

On the 21st of September, 2018, Spotify announced that they will be allowing artists to upload their music directly to the streaming service. This new upload system is free for artist to use and Spotify even pays artist if their music is streamed. This hasn’t taken place yet though. Currently you would either need to be an artist signed to a label or an invited independent artist, eliminating emerging new artists.

What would happen if this takes place, and Spotify goes through with this idea? This will allow more artist to stay independent meaning receiving 100% of royalties, pushing the power towards the streaming platforms and artists. It also allows newer artists to advertise themselves on a whole new platform instead of social media etc.

I personally think that if Spotify goes through with this, it will have a knock-on effect on all streaming platforms. This will benefit the artist directly and reward the royalties they deserve for their art. In addition, it will bring hope to new artists in making it big!

I think the people who lose out the most are the current record labels.

Spotify had claimed they don’t want to become a record label however this move suggests the opposite. This move is removing all record labels and leaving only them (Spotify) and the artists in the equation. If that’s not clear enough, as per my last article, streaming services are moving in to being the new record labels.

I am personally glad that as times are changing the artists are seeing more benefits for their work. In 2017, musicians only saw 12% of the total money their music generated for their label. With the introduction of the upload button, I hope that encourages more new independent artists to emerge, and create more great music. It’ll be a win for the artist and for us listeners.

Karl Sturch

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A shift to the forefront of the Music Industry – Could streaming platforms be the new record labels?

Record labels were the forefront of the music industry in the 1920’s because of the increased popularity of people buying other peoples’ music recordings. This was a novelty at the time, a novelty that was convenient as majority of people then would only listen to music through buying sheet music and playing it themselves. This convenience resulted in the decline of sheet music sales and relinquishing its place as the main way people listen to music.

Sales of recordings in the US went from $30 million in 1909 to over $100 million in the 1920’s and this created an influx in the number of Record companies from around 18 existing in 1914 to over 160 in 1918 – that is a massive amount in just 4 years! Forward to around the 1970-80’s, there were a consolidation of Record companies resulting in a few multinational companies. The majority of recording sales were going through the ‘Big Three’ record labels – Sony Music, Warner Music Group and the Universal Music Group.

Now in present day the consumption of music has changed a lot. The music industry was deemed “dead” by many so called ‘professionals’ many times do to different and new ways of consuming records, but I personally prefer to say it has been evolving. It is clear that in today’s consumption of music, a lot of people are shying away from hard products such as CD’s and Vinyls, and are now relying on streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, etc. to listen to music.

This was massive. The change in consumer taste shifted the dynamics of the whole music industry. The industry had to adapt by changing the way they did things whether it was Billboard including streams in their chart sales, or record labels prioritizing their artist’s singles over their artist’s projects.

[Figure 1]

As you can see from Figure 1, ‘Streaming’ (all shades of green) is on the rise since 2005, whereas the other platforms for music revenue have been decreasing. Upon seeing the RIAA year end Revenue Statistics breakdown and using Figure 1, the ‘Streaming’ revenue in the US increased by 43.0% in 2017 and ‘Physical’ revenue (eg. CD’s, LP’s) had decreased by 3.7%.

These Streaming platforms are holding a lot of new found power. There is a constant competition between all the streaming platforms to grab the most of what seems to be an ever growing market. They were even signing artists to release their projects exclusively on their platform, like for example, Drake’s album ‘Views’. It was released a week early for iTunes and Apple Music listeners.

But because most artists have record deals, this exclusivity on streaming platforms do not last long as Record labels care mostly about maximising sales. It makes sense for them to release an artist’s music on all platforms to do so. Streaming companies on the other hand want more people to listen to their own platform to increase their profit. This therefore begs the question: why don’t these Streaming companies sign their own artists?

Another example is Tidal. Tidal was created by Jay-Z with the notion of it being a coalition of artists working together for the best interests of these artist. But Tidal didn’t work as well as it was planned as a lot of the artists who are a part of Tidal didn’t own all of their music, so there was no way for exclusivity. This didn’t stop the vision, so Jay-Z took his old music off his competitor’s platforms and put it on his, and Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” album was only able for streaming on Tidal.

Recently Youtube has launched its own music streaming platform with it being headed by Lyor Cohen. In a recent interview with ‘The Breakfast Club’, Charlamagne tha God asked him whether he would sign an artist to Youtube, and his response was “Labels are important…..I think there is a real important role for labels…….we (Youtube) are solving a global platform getting them to subscribe, getting them to pay with their eye balls……….we (Youtube) got our hands full”. This seemed a lot like a side step and seems like he is still very unsure about Streaming companies taking over from Record labels.

The music industry has been constantly evolving, this is evident from the shift of sheet music sales to music streaming which dominates the industry today. I hope it continues and I’ve said it many times on my podcast ‘Predominantly Hip Hop’ I believe Streaming platforms can compete as the new Record labels.

However, I do know that this is probably not going to happen in the near future as current labels will do all they can to stop this from happening. I do advise many artists to make sure they are getting what they deserved from the deals they have signed. They should never give up their credit or royalties.

Karl Sturch

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