Spotify continues to make noise with their global emerging artist development program, RADAR.

In RADAR news, the streaming platform has teamed up with Oslo-based pop artist, girl in red, aka Marie Ulven.

girl in red has released the single “Serotonin’ (FINNEAS collaboration) that deals with mental health that comes off her forthcoming album if i could make it go quiet.
The indie pop singer first made waves with “i wanna be your girlfriend,” which has clocked over 150 million streams on Spotify landing on Spotify’s most popular playlists including New Music Friday, LOREM, Oyster, Ultimate Indie, Out Now.
girl in red will get the full Spotify muscle including promotional support for her upcoming releases, on-platform marketing, and social promotion.
Spotify’s previous US RADAR artists Alaina Castillo, J.I The Prince of N.Y, The Kid LAROI, and Flo Milli.

SoundCloud will become the first streaming service to start directing subscribers’ fees only to the artists they stream. This move is applauded by the artist community campaigning for fairer pay.

Streaming services like Spotify and Apple put royalty payments into one big pot and pay them out based on which artists have the most plays. This payout is unfair, that gives a huge slice to the few megastars like Ariana Grande, and leaves nothing for the majority of the artists.

Why should fans fund artists that they never listen to? It doesn’t make sense.

SoundCloud will start directing royalties due from each subscriber only to the artists they stream.

“Artists are now better equipped to grow their careers by forging deeper connections with their most dedicated fans,” the statement said. “Fans can directly influence how their favorite artists are paid.”

Major record labels favor the Spotify/ Apple payout system which allows them to generate massive profits through a few artists.

Is Morgan Wallen slowing coming back after being cancelled?

Knoxville’s WMYL radio station put Morgan Wallen back in rotation. How did it happen? Well, the radio station polled its listeners and 92% wanted the rising country star back on radio.

“We were disappointed by the behavior in the video,” said the station owner Ron Meredith. “But we were also uncomfortable with sitting in judgment.”
Morgan Wallen’s mother also spoke out agains the media mob.

“CPAC is playing Morgan Wallen, they don’t hold to Cancel Culture. I stand with Morgan Wallen, who made a mistake and is paying dearly for it,” Wallen’s mom said. “Country Music Associations, businesses, radio stations, and agencies, stop using him as a pawn. Forgiveness and love is needed on all sides, not hate. Hate produces more hate. This isn’t solving problems. Your round table discussions are not solving problems.”

She went to say:

“Get out in neighborhoods and help your children and youth of all colors that are suffering,” “Educate, mentor, love. Blexitfoundation.org.”

Regardless of the ban, Wallen’s album sales and streams have skyrocketed.

Is The Return of Summer Music Festivals a Reality?

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino believes large music festivals are closer to returning. He said that “a clear outline to a 75% to 100%” capacity for outdoor U.S. events in 2021 was looking likely to be green-lit.”

Rapino said, “We think we’re better off waiting for a high bar capacity moment in most of the states to ramp up and talk to the artists about getting paid properly.”

The British government will allow large music events in the U.K. to resume at 100% capacity beginning on June 21. The Reading & Leeds festival, scheduled for August 27 and 29 is already sold out. The Creamfields fest Aug. 26 to 29, also sold 70,000 tickets in 48 hours.

We might have certain states that might not be ready, but we have enough states and enough artists willing to play the open slots if we get to that level in the right markets,” Rapino said. “So as long as these states open up to the right capacities, we can start in midsummer and in the southern U.S. we can go all the way into November.”
Every day we seem to have a new state or country talking about when they’ll open up, so we’re feeling more optimistic than we were a month ago. Lots of artists are calling, looking at how we start up in July, August, September. So for right now, we still believe we’ll have enough open in the U.K., Australia, Canada and the U.S. to keep what we have on the books in amphitheaters booked for now.”

As of now, the vaccine + herd immunity is starving covid. Hospitalizations, new cases, and deaths have fallen off a cliff. Some medical experts have said Covid could be nearly gone by April.

There is reason to think the country is racing toward an extremely low level of infection. As more people have been infected, most of whom have mild or no symptoms, there are fewer Americans left to be infected. At the current trajectory, I expect Covid will be mostly gone by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life. (WSJ)

Drew Trosclair signed a publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music for co-writing the viral song “!**!#…In Dallas” performed by Trey Lewis. The track hit #1 on the Billboard Country Chart. Released in December, the song quickly jumped to Number One on the iTunes chart and was dominate on TikTok. In the pic celebrating are Drew Trosclair and Lawyer Dan Friedman.