Photo: Damien Meyer / AFP / Staff
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Dailymotion, France's video giant, is going premium
Also in this week's TechWatch: ASCAP, PRS for Music, SACEM, YouTube
Rounding up recent tech news that impacts livelihoods in the creative community …
Dailymotion relaunch to switch emphasis onto premium content in June
On April 10, Variety revealed Dailymotion's plans to relaunch in June with a new emphasis on premium content. Often billed as the French YouTube, the video platform's worldwide traffic has grown to 300 million monthly visitors since the site was founded in 2005 as a hosting service for user-generated content. Now owned primarily by Vivendi — the parent company of Universal Music Group — Dailymotion plans to transform into a curated distributor of professional videos with an emphasis on what is new daily, live events, and the ease of watching endlessly. Users will still be able to upload their own videos, but plans to begin monetizing content will be restricted to professional producers. Maxime Saada, CEO of both Dailymotion and Canal Plus, said cleaning pirated content and pornography off the site's inventory was "the first thing we did."
YouTube reduces financial incentives for rule breakers
In a blog post on April 6, YouTube Vice President of Product Management Ariel Bardin explained how recent changes to the platform's YouTube Partner Program were designed to "help ensure revenue only flows to creators who are playing by the rules." In a welcome change expected to thwart pirate re-uploaders who are monetizing infringing material, YouTube will only extend monetization to channels passing a threshold of 10,000 views and will first conduct a review to ensure compliance with website policies. Bardin boasts that previous changes to make reporting easier "helped us terminate hundreds of thousands of channels violating our policies" and said "this new application process will help ensure creator revenue continues to grow and end up in the right hands."
Leading PROs join on copyright data, blockchain project
On April 7, leading performing rights organizations ASCAP, PRS for Music and SACEM announced an innovative joint project to prototype links between metadata used to identify tracks by means of blockchain ledger software. In order to correctly match international royalties, two sets of identification codes must be matched — International Standard Recording Codes and International Standard Work Codes — so that the work and its recording are identified as a pair and royalties can be correctly distributed. The PROs will prototype a decentralized ledger that can be shared in real-time "to match, aggregate and qualify existing links between ISRCs and ISWCs in order to confirm correct ownership information and conflicts."
More advocacy at The Academy: Go inside the 2017 GRAMMYs on the Hill Awards
The Apollo Theater
Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
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From Small Stages To The GRAMMY Stage: How Four Venue Professionals Became Presenters At The 2021 GRAMMY Awards Show
Operators and staff at the Station Inn, the Troubadour, the Apollo Theater and Hotel Café appeared during the 2021 GRAMMY Awards show to petition viewers for help—and promise an epic party for them if they do
The Recording Academy reimagined everything about the 2021 GRAMMY Awards show on a more intimate scale, and the choice of presenters was no different. When it came time to announce the Best Country Album winner, the person who appeared on screen wasn't a slick Nashville superstar, but a soft-spoken, older man who's unrecognizable to a global audience but beloved in the Music City. His name was J.T. Gray, and he grinned ear-to-ear on national TV.
In a segment recorded a month prior, Gray showed the camera crew around the Station Inn, the 145-person-capacity bluegrass venue he'd owned since 1981. Despite the room receiving almost no income for a year due to the live music industry shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Gray was rosy about the future. "Getting to reopen the Station Inn, that's going to be a celebration like never before," he promised. "It's going to be a big party." He then announced the winner, Miranda Lambert, to the world. Gray was naturally quiet and reserved, a closed book. Not after that shoot, though.
"He was just beside himself the whole time," Jeff Brown, the Station Inn's marketing director, tells GRAMMY.com. "He just never believed it was happening. He just didn't believe that his little venue was being recognized on that kind of scale, that those many people in a place with the GRAMMYs and the Recording Academy's recognition actually paid attention. He just couldn't believe it." On Sunday, March 14, Gray astonishedly watched himself on CBS. The following Saturday, he passed away after a struggle with compounding health problems.
Gray might not get to attend the "big party" when things open up. But 9 million people heard his message.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Troubadour offers our deepest condolences to JT Grey’s family, friends, and those at <a href="https://twitter.com/stationinn1974?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@stationinn1974</a>. JT created a special home for bluegrass, country music, and more in Nashville, TN. He leaves behind a beautiful legacy and will be missed by many.<a href="https://t.co/rGwZGuDoXK">https://t.co/rGwZGuDoXK</a></p>— Troubadour (@theTroubadour) <a href="https://twitter.com/theTroubadour/status/1374515380622794753?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 24, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
For a year, venues worldwide have been hanging on by a thread: struggling to pay their rent, waiting in vain for federal aid, and given no clear finish line as to when they can reopen. That's why, with the Recording Academy's blessing, Executive Producer Ben Winston asked Gray, as well as representatives from the Troubadour and Hotel Café in Los Angeles and the Apollo Theater in New York City, to present at the 63rd GRAMMY Awards and talk about their economic struggles during the pandemic. Together, they sounded a shared refrain to the world: We matter to our communities, and we need help.
The venues that spoke their piece during the 63rd GRAMMY Awards were members of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA). An assemblage of independent venue owners and promoters from around the country, NIVA formed directly in response to the 2020 lockdown. "We figured we'd better find a way to come together and lobby for federal assistance," Audrey Schaefer, a board member and the Communications Director for NIVA, tells GRAMMY.com. "Because otherwise, we're all going under."
The Steel Wheels at Station Inn in 2015. Photo: Erika Goldring/Getty Images for Americana Music via Getty Images
Last year, NIVA, along with the Recording Academy and other music organizations, lobbied Congress via the Save Our Stages Act and succeeded. On Dec. 27, the decree became the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant and passed along with the COVID relief package. "In that grant fund is $16 billion," Schaefer says. "For an organization that didn't exist before … nobody gave us any hopes of being able to secure that kind of funding. But we did. We got the law passed."
However, venues have not yet seen that money. "We understand that the applications will start at the beginning of April," she adds with relief in her voice.
In the meantime, Scheafer mulled over how best to convey to the world the existential crises venues face. "I was thinking that the GRAMMYs couldn't possibly be at the Beverly Hilton like it normally is—in a big ballroom—because we can't be together," she says. "I thought, 'What if the GRAMMYs were to have the award show, and instead of having all the performances under one roof, they were to have them in independent venues?'"
To try and give this idea legs, Schaefer reached out to Daryl Friedman, Chief Advocacy Officer of the Recording Academy's Advocacy division. "He said, 'Listen, Audrey, I think that's a great idea, but they have a million great ideas. So, let me take it to them and we'll see what happens,'" she recalls. Schaefer persistently followed up. "I kept asking Daryl, 'What do you think? What are you hearing?'"
But unbeknown to her, the Recording Academy and the production team were already independently planning to highlight independent venues and their employees as an advocacy initiative and add a personal moment to the broadcast. "And then I found out that, oh my gosh, they do want to do it," she adds with awe.
Billie Eilish at the Troubadour in 2019. Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for SiriusXM
Granted, the Recording Academy didn't agree to host performances at independent venues. But Schaefer calls the idea they decided to go with "so much better." Instead, venue professionals would take viewers on a tour of their workplaces, illustrating their value to their communities and why they desperately need help. Participants included the Station Inn's Gray; Rachelle Erratchu, the night manager at the Troubadour; Billy Mitchell, the tour guide and overall house cat at the Apollo Theater in Harlem; and Candice Fox, a bartender at the Hotel Café in Hollywood.
For Erratchu, the problem extends further than keeping the lights on at the Troubadour; the entire live music ecosystem is in trouble. "We need everybody else to survive so that we can survive," she tells GRAMMY.com. "If we don't exist and all the other venues across the country don't exist, the tour circuit as we know it and have relied on it for decades won't exist anymore."
For Billy Mitchell, the Historical Tour Manager and overall global representative of the Apollo Theater who has earned the title of "Mr. Apollo," his job isn't a means to an end; he lives and breathes it. Mitchell's time at the Apollo began in 1965 when he ran errands for James Brown and his band. During the telecast, Mitchell relates a funny story of how the Godfather of Soul sent him all the way home to the Bronx to get his report card, threatening to put his job on ice if he didn't get better grades.
COVID forced the Apollo to temporarily furlough some its staff. To be forced to stop, it was heartbreaking, to be honest with you," Mitchell tells GRAMMY.com. "I give tours to people from all over the world, and they're unable to visit because of COVID restrictions and things like that." While the not-for-profit has offered digital programming in the meantime, most of it has been free as not to burden fans. Thankfully, at press time, all staff members have returned full-time.
Billy Mitchell at the Apollo Theater in 2009. Photo: Jemal Countess/WireImage via Getty Images
The Apollo has been lucky, in a sense; corporate and private donations have kept it afloat. Still, they're not out of the woods yet. "Donations are needed so that when we do reopen, we can pump out those great shows and bring back our staff," Mitchell says. "We want to bring back our staff as soon as possible."
In the clip played during the 2021 GRAMMY Awards show, Mitchell addressed viewers from the empty audience. "We miss our audience and we can't wait until our doors open up again," he says. "We just can't wait."
Candice Fox, a bartender at Hollywood's Hotel Café, believes there will be an outpouring of activity at her workplace once it's safe again. "I like to believe people are going to want to make up for lost time," she tells GRAMMY.com. "I know that people are itching to perform. People are so excited to experience that exchange of energy again. So, I think it's going to explode."
In line with Erratchu's thoughts on the overall music ecosystem, Fox notes that Katy Perry cut her teeth at the 65-capacity room on Cahuenga Boulevard. "She wasn't the big pop star she is now; she was just a girl with a guitar," she says. "So many artists' careers and the GRAMMYs couldn't exist without small, independent venues like the Hotel Café because you've got to start somewhere." In her clip, Fox ruminates on the regulars she's missed for a year, pouring a Boddingtons and mixing an Old Fashioned to an array of empty stools.
Sister Sparrow and the Dirty Birds at Hotel Café in 2015. Photo: Christopher Polk/Getty Images
At the end of every venue vignette, each venue representative announced the winner of their assigned categories: Best Country Album for Gray (Miranda Lambert's Wildcard), Best Pop Solo Performance for Erratchu (Harry Styles' "Watermelon Sugar"), Best Rap Song for Billy Mitchell (Beyoncé's and Megan Thee Stallion's "Savage Remix") and Album Of The Year for Fox (Taylor Swift's folklore). All four were thrilled to appear and encourage viewers to support their workplaces—whether by donating directly, paying for a livestream or purchasing a T-shirt.
That way, the lights at the Station Inn, the Troubadour, the Apollo and Hotel Café can flare up again, ensuring these cultural hubs don't become figments of the past. And if you want to know how memorable the inevitable "COVID is over" parties will be, just look at Gray's blazing smile during the GRAMMYs.
"I can probably count a very [small] number of times that I've seen him truly smile," the Station Inn's Brown reflects. "But truly smiling—that's what he was doing here."
Click here to support the Station Inn.
Click here to support the Troubadour.
Click here to support the Apollo Theater.
Click here to support Hotel Café.
Click here to support NIVA.
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Why This Viral Beach Boys Cover, Meant To Heal A Grieving World, Almost Didn’t Happen
Last summer, almost 30 musicians banded together from home to record a cover of the Beach Boys' 1967 classic, "Good Vibrations." After widespread COVID-related deaths and global protests hit, the group wondered if it would ever see the light of day
The saxophonist, flutist, and keyboardist Sarah Johnson Melkeraaen's father was her number-one fan. A lover of soul artists like George Clinton, Lou Rawls and The Temptations, Julius Johnson danced at any opportunity—at the supermarket, after bowling a strike, or in response to good news of any type. Sometimes, his dancing made his daughter feel shy, but today, she misses it more than anything. Granted, Johnson wasn't particularly a Beach Boys fan. But when Melkeraaen—who records and performs as Lady Albatross—took part in a massive cover of America’s Band, it ended up a testament to his goofy, music-loving spirit.
In a YouTube cover of the exuberant "Good Vibrations” recorded last June, created to give a world in lockdown a much-needed lift, she played flute alongside almost 30 other musicians in virtual collaboration. Released this year after a months-long delay, the cover grew so popular that it caught the attention of Brian Wilson himself.
But because Johnson died of COVID-19 the month of its making, he's not around to cut a rug in response.
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"In my mind, I'm picturing being able to tell him, and he definitely would have had an ear-to-ear, massive grin," Lady Albatross, who came onto the project by word-of-mouth, tells GRAMMY.com from her home in Odda, Norway. “He would have given me a really big hug and told me how proud he was."
Making The Cover
"Good Vibrations," which a 24-year-old Wilson concocted as the centerpiece to 1967's aborted Beach Boys album Smile, is only the latest tune that organizers Doc Crotzer and Matthew Smith have tackled. In the confusing, suffocating early weeks of lockdown, they cast out a net to record a quarantine-friendly cover of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'." "We thought maybe a few other people might be interested in doing it with us but didn't expect too many people," Smith tells GRAMMY.com.
Through a network of friends recommending friends, like in Lady Albatross's and Jones' case, they followed up the Petty tune with a pitch-perfect rendition of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run."
"By then," Crotzer says, "more people had seen the video and reached out to us, so we were able to grow our Social Distance Session Band, which added to the fun and challenge. 'Good Vibrations' came out of trying to answer 'How do we top "Born to Run'" with our group?'"
To help manifest their sun-kissed dream, Crotzer and Smith contacted Anders Fehon and Edwin Herder of Beach Boys musical replicators The Fendertones. Then, they recorded a scratch track for the instrumentalists, and Crotzer sang rough takes of each vocal part to place the singers properly in the harmony stack.
Sarah Johnson Melkeraaen and her father, Julius Johnson.
Two of those singers were MInhee Jones, a London-based alternative pop artist, and her friend, Celeigh Chapman, a country singer originally from Bakersfield, California. The recording process helped Chapman exhume the song from TV ads and oldies stations and examine it anew.
"For us, it was cool to pull apart the layers because [most of us] appreciate it in a passing way or understand that it's revolutionary for the time," she tells GRAMMY.com. "But then, to pull it apart and learn a specific part and see all those parts stack up, I think, gave us a whole other level of appreciation for them doing that at that time, considering where the technology is now and where it was then. When you look underneath the hood, there's a whole other level of, "Oh, this is actually why this is so omnipresent in our culture and has been able to sustain generations of fans and musicians."
Stitching together nearly 30 socially-distanced takes wasn't easy, but Crotzer and Smith found ways to circumvent potential hiccups. "For the instrumental part of the track, we let people do their own thing a bit more," Smith says, "but everyone was still playing to a guide track so that everything would stay in sync when we got the tracks back."
Near the end, the number of tracks so overwhelmed his laptop that he had to buy a better computer. "Fortunately, we had an awesome editor named Chase Johnson cutting it," Crotzer says. "He made it look easy and seamless."
Hitting A Roadblock
The month they recorded the cover, the George Floyd protests hit. "Good Vibrations" wouldn't come out in June as planned.
While the musicians never explicitly mentioned current events over the email chain, Chapman says there was an unspoken agreement that the timing wasn't right. In the midst of global racial upheaval, releasing a happy-go-lucky cover may have come across as blithe or tone-deaf. The following months brought mostly silence. "I remember sending an email asking, 'When is this coming out?''" Lady Albatross remembers.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Watch this amazing video from Social Distance Settings of "Good Vibrations" featuring Minhee Jones and Jesse Hernandez, and musicians around the world. Their goal for this performance is to make everyone SMiLE. Hope you enjoy it! <a href="https://t.co/QwmGbLWGQS">https://t.co/QwmGbLWGQS</a></p>— Brian Wilson (@BrianWilsonLive) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrianWilsonLive/status/1354063648319221760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In the months leading to his death, Lady Albatross's father became inward and uncommunicative; she's not certain he even knew about the "Good Vibrations" cover. Lady Albatross was already saddened her father would never hear it, but after a while, it seemed like nobody would. As the months stretched out between George Floyd's killing and the fractious 2020 election, the "blossom world" Wilson sang of seemed more out-of-reach than ever.
Jones felt wary of a world seemingly drained of the Beach Boys' promise. "I was pretty down around that time because it was so polarized," she tells GRAMMY.com. "You saw some disappointing ideals coming out of people. Just a lot of ignorance, I guess. It didn't seem like the right time to put out anything too light."
Going Viral
On the heels of the inauguration and with vaccinations starting to roll out, it finally felt right to drop "Good Vibrations" on YouTube in the spirit of healing and brighter days ahead.
"I remember when I got the email from Doc and Matt saying, 'It's up! It's finally here! It's done!'" Jones says with a grin over Zoom. "It was right after the inauguration. I think they posted it on Facebook just like that: 'This could not have come at a better time. So many good vibrations. A weight has been lifted.' I thought the inauguration was amazing. We were all watching it around the world. I was over here with my glass of champagne in London. I thought the timing of that was spot-on."
Almost immediately, the video was met with global excitations—and Brian Wilson's. "Watch this amazing video from Social Distance Settings of 'Good Vibrations' featuring Minhee Jones and Jesse Hernandez, and musicians around the world," he tweeted. "Their goal for this performance is to make everyone SMiLE." At press time, the video was on the cusp of 50,000 views.
Overall, the response has bowled over Crotzer and Smith, who had merely organized the video for the fun, fun, fun of it.
"I couldn't believe it when Brian Wilson shared our cover on his social media," Crotzer tells GRAMMY.com. "The first rock 'n' roll music I heard as a kid was written by him and got me into music in the first place. Waking up to see that Brian liked it was an incredible way to start a day. Just absolutely surreal.”
A No. 1 hit in its day, "Good Vibrations" was sparked by Wilson's curiosity about the human emotions that dogs pick up on. Had the crew had released their cover back in June, it might have clashed with the will of the universe. But because they released it in a long-awaited moment of political optimism, "Good Vibrations" acted as a beacon of light through the gloom—and elicited a hard-won smile from thousands of viewers.
And Lady Albatross, who sticks out in the virtual crowd in her hand-crocheted octopus hat, says her old man would be right there with them.
"He would have given me a really big hug and a kiss on the forehead," she says, envisioning his response to the Brian Wilson-approved video. And, of course, "He would have done a little happy dance."
Dave Mason On Recording With Rock Royalty & Why He Reimagined His Debut Solo Album, 'Alone Together
Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles
Photo: Farah Sosa
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Save Our Stages Virtual Festival Reveals Stacked Full Lineup & Schedule
On Oct 16–18, the free #SOSFest livestream will bring live music from huge names playing in empty indie venues around the country to raise much-needed funds
On Oct 16–18, Save Our Stages Festival—or #SOSFest—will bring live music from huge names playing in empty independent venues safely to fans via a star-studded YouTube livestream. The full lineup and schedule have been revealed, so you can make sure to be front row (on your couch) for your favorite artists
FINNEAS, Dillion Francis and Bea Miller will each perform at Los Angeles' Teragram Ballroom, while YG, the Foo Fighters, Phoebe Bridgers, Leon Bridges and Marshmello with Demi Lovato will play at West Hollywood's legendary Troubadour. Comedian and musician Reggie Watts will host the entire weekend.
Miley Cyrus, Sebastián Yatra, G-Eazy and the Black Pumas will also serve up sets from Hollywood's Whisky a Go-Go, Fort Lauderdale's Broward Center, San Francisco's Independent and Austin's The Parish, respectively. Cautious Clay, the Roots, Dizzy Fae, Alec Benjamin and more will also bring their music to the cause.
Witness: Capturing Los Angeles' COVID-Closed Venues
The organizers, the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) goal is to deliver much-needed support to the shuttered music spaces with direct financial support and raising awareness for the $10 billion stimulus package currently in Congress.
During the three-day livestream fest, viewers will be encouraged to donate what they can to the NIVA NIVA Emergency Relief Fund, which benefits indie venues at risk of closing. Save Our Stages is part of the updated HEROES Act, which includes essential funding for independent entertainment venues and promoters.
Related: Taylor Hanson Speaks Out For Oklahoma's Live Venues At Save Our Stages Event
A recent NIVA study found the majority of indie venues—90 percent!—in the U.S. will be forced to close without federal support.
Visit NIVA's YouTube channel, where the show will be streamed this weekend, to set reminders for each day of the fest. You can also visit saveourstages.com for the full lineup, for more info on the fight to Save Our Stages and to contact your elected officials to urge Congress to pass the Act.
Photo: Jena Ardell via Getty Images
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YouTube & NIVA Team Up On #SOSFEST To Raise Money For Indie Venues
Miley Cyrus, YG, Foo Fighters, Marshmello with Demi Lovato, the Roots, Sebastian Yatra and more will contribute original performances Oct. 16–18
YouTube and the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) are joining forces to bring #SOSFEST (Save Our Stages Fest) benefiting independent music venues across the country. The three-day music event on Oct. 16–18 will feature an eclectic lineup of musicians.
Miley Cyrus, YG, Foo Fighters, Marshmello with Demi Lovato, The Roots, Sebastian Yatra and more will contribute live original performances across 25 independent venues. Other artists participating include Leon Bridges, Phoebe Bridgers, Reba McEntire and G-Eazy.
The festival "aims to generate significant awareness, advocacy and donations for the NIVA Emergency Relief Fund." The fund aids the "most vulnerable venues experiencing catastrophic revenue loss."
"Independent venues are closing permanently all around the country. These are the clubs and theaters that you know and love; the rooms our favorite bands play their first gigs at. With no assistance from the federal government in the future, we need to act NOW to #SaveOurStages!" NIVA, whose group of over 2,000 venues includes Los Angeles' The Troubador and New York's Apollo Theater, posted to their Instagram.
According to a NIVA survey released in June, 90 percent of roughly 2,000 venues without federal help surveyed were going to close in a few months.
#SOSFEST will livestream on NIVA's YouTube channel.
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