Album Release Research Articles

Staying in, rocking out: Online live music portal shows during the coronavirus pandemic

The 2020 Covid-19 global pandemic has greatly impacted societies around the world, where governmental strategies to curb and control the outbreak have resulted in citizens being unable to attend public businesses and spaces. For musicians who rely on touring as a dominant part of their income, the pandemic has had a hugely negative effect on their finances since they can no longer play face-to-face shows. However, a number of artists have turned to digital media to remedy this, performing online to audiences via Web 2.0 platforms. To better understand this cultural phenomenon, the article introduces the concept of portal shows that employ a converge between traditional live gigs, screen media and new media technologies. Analysing the textual, affective, performative and economic dynamics of portal shows, the article examines three differing case studies: Code Orange’s album release show on Twitch.TV, Beach Slang’s acoustic performance on StageIt and Delta Sleep’s in-store show on Instagram. In doing so, the article argues portal shows offer novel and nuanced ways artists and audiences can engage with one another through spatial convergence afforded by video streaming technologies and digital interfaces. Such live events also offer just-in-time fan engagement but does so within a digital transcultural remit, aiding the support of virtual scenes. As a result, the article expands on what is considered pandemic media and subsequent audience affective registers and enriches the study of the music industry’s engagement with digital media and wider convergence cultures more generally.

From Prince’s “Party Up” to “Baltimore”: Three Decades of Social Protest and Social Awareness

ABSTRACT This article explores the stances, ideas, and political vision of Prince Rogers Nelson through some of the songs he wrote and recorded. Prince used the term “aware” to describe someone who was knowledgeable. As he often demonstrated, he was concerned with some of the world’s big problems. Prince was consistently against war. Some of his songs contained lyrics decrying gun violence and calling for gun control. He also explored issues around social and racial injustice that apparently touched him enough that he wrote about them. Calling himself the “Purple Yoda” in a song from later in his career, he self-identified as remarkably attentive to the issues he cared about. Prince’s Purple Yoda moments extend back to his third album, Dirty Mind, and surface on his last album release before his death, HITnRUN Phase Two. In between, his audience was treated to more than a few Purple Yoda moments.

Resistência pela existência: Dona Ivone Lara, Sorriso Negro e ativismos nos últimos anos da ditadura brasileira

In 1981, Brazilian songwriter and singer Dona Ivone Lara released Sorriso Negro. From its title, Black Smile, to many of the songs, the album reflects the fundamental shifts engulfing Brazil in a moment when exiles exposed to civil rights and feminist movements abroad reinforced debates about these issues to a nation under decades of authoritarian rule. "Resistência pela existência: Dona Ivone Lara, Sorriso Negro e ativismos nos últimos anos da ditadura brasileira" argues that despite Lara's reluctance to identify herself as an activist, several elements of Sorriso Negro turn it into a symbol of the black and feminist movements in Brazil and one example of what the author calls Resistance by Existence. Lara was a path-breaker black woman in the heavily masculine world of samba, and at the time of the album's release, her figure gained prominence. The sense of an imminent return to democracy allowed the feminist and the black movements to develop fully. Now, the issue at stake was not only how to put an end to the dictatorship, but what role specific under-represented groups would play in a civil society from which they had long been disenfranchised. Sorriso Negro was at the center of this quest.

Review: She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Joan Morgan

Joan Morgan. She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill . New York: Atria, 2018. 176 pp. I remember the first time I listened to Lauryn Hill's 1998 solo debut The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill . It was roughly two weeks after the album's release, and I was spending the weekend with

THE BLUES AND OLDER MINORITY MUSICIANS: MORE THAN JUST MUSIC XXVI

This 26th annual symposium again showcases a world-wide musical genre in a regional setting with local performers. Texas Blues has emanated from a pantheon of talented artists beginning in the earliest days of Roots and Blues music to the present day, and Austin has become the epicenter of this talent and music. With legendary classic blues musicians from the early 2oth century to emerging younger musicians who re-energize and re-invent this uniquely American musical genre, to legendary music labels and venues like Antone’s which continue to engage blues music artists of all ages, Austin continues to be the home of Texas Blues. Lifetime Achievement Award -winning 89-year-young, Miss Lavelle White epitomizes the resilience and energy interchange of both the performer and the music, and their mutual contribution to longevity and continued engagement. Still performing after 70 years, she has influenced generations of younger prominent blues performers and continues to appear weekly at local blues mecca Antone’s along with her Grammy Award winning band and is preparing her fourth album release. This session will celebrate her music, her artistry, and her continued success as an older blues performer. A visit to a local blues venue later in the evening will allow for a true appreciation of the blues music scene in Austin.

How Live Music Moves Us: Head Movement Differences in Audiences to Live Versus Recorded Music.

A live music concert is a pleasurable social event that is among the most visceral and memorable forms of musical engagement. But what inspires listeners to attend concerts, sometimes at great expense, when they could listen to recordings at home? An iconic aspect of popular concerts is engaging with other audience members through moving to the music. Head movements, in particular, reflect emotion and have social consequences when experienced with others. Previous studies have explored the affiliative social engagement experienced among people moving together to music. But live concerts have other features that might also be important, such as that during a live performance the music unfolds in a unique and not predetermined way, potentially increasing anticipation and feelings of involvement for the audience. Being in the same space as the musicians might also be exciting. Here we controlled for simply being in an audience to examine whether factors inherent to live performance contribute to the concert experience. We used motion capture to compare head movement responses at a live album release concert featuring Canadian rock star Ian Fletcher Thornley, and at a concert without the performers where the same songs were played from the recorded album. We also examined effects of a prior connection with the performers by comparing fans and neutral-listeners, while controlling for familiarity with the songs, as the album had not yet been released. Head movements were faster during the live concert than the album-playback concert. Self-reported fans moved faster and exhibited greater levels of rhythmic entrainment than neutral-listeners. These results indicate that live music engages listeners to a greater extent than pre-recorded music and that a pre-existing admiration for the performers also leads to higher engagement.

The Grunge Effect: Music, Fashion, and the Media During the Rise of Grunge Culture In the Early 1990s

The Grunge Effect: Music, Fashion, and the Media During the Rise of Grunge Culture In the Early 1990s

Allen Ginsberg, <i>The Complete Songs of Innocence and Experience</i>

There are several reasons why this 2017 album release represents a significant moment for anyone interested in the role played by William Blake in shaping the counterculture of the sixties (and the role of that counterculture in shaping academic and popular understandings of Blake). The most basic is that the original 1970 album, Songs of Innocence and Experience [sic] by William Blake, Tuned by Allen Ginsberg, has never previously been made available as a CD or digital download. However, it is a credit to Pat Thomas, who produced this expanded reissue for Omnivore Recordings, that there are other, more important, reasons to celebrate. The double-CD Complete Songs of Innocence and Experience is not just a rerelease of the album in a new format with a few alternative takes added as filler; rather, at over twice the length, it aims for the first time to fulfill Ginsberg’s original intentions for his extensive Blake recording project, to which he devoted much of his creative energy between 1968 and 1971.

Te Vaka

Reviewed by: Te Vaka Candice Elanna Steiner Te Vaka. 30October 2015, Hawaii Theatre Center, Honolulu. Te Vaka, the award-winning and wildly popular South Pacific fusion group representing and featuring music and dance influences from many Pacific Island cultures, kicked off their US tour on 9 October 2015, with stops in Florida, Washington, California, Arizona, and Hawai‘i. Touring members included founder, [End Page 518]songwriter, and bandleader Opetaia Foa‘i; lead drummer and percussion composer Matatia Foa‘i; vocalist, keyboardist, and percussionist Douglas Bernard (aka D.Burn); vocalist, dancer, and choreographer Olivia Foa‘i; electric guitarist and percussionist Joe Toomata; bassist and percussionist Max Stowers; dancer Gerard Tioti; and dancer Etueni (Edwin) Pita. With their wide range of influences and impeccable skills, these musicians and dancers gave a spectacular performance, and the audience enthusiastically reciprocated. Indeed, the hallmark of the tour was a contagious energy that began its spread months before the first show with the band’s announcement of a major upcoming project and an album release, and that energy fully enveloped the audience during the 30 October performance in Honolulu. In August 2015, Te Vaka announced in their newsletter and via social media that Opetaia had signed on as songwriter—along with Lin Manuel Miranda and Mark Mancina—for Disney’s upcoming feature film Moana, which is set for theatrical release in November 2016. In concert with this announcement, on 14 August Te Vaka performed one of the new songs for the film during D23: The Official Disney Fan Club’s D23 EXPO, a biannual event showcasing, among other things, Disney’s current and upcoming projects. Not long after, on 24 September, the band released their much-anticipated eighth studio album, Amataga. Members actively promoted Moana, Amataga, and the US tour on social media, stirring up excitement that spilled over into the group’s live performances. The Honolulu audience definitely brought this excitement to the show. Adding to this was a strong sense of community among those present: attendees of all ages and representing many of the communities in Hawai‘i quickly found friends and family in the crowd, greeting each other with hugs and excitement about the night’s event. To our great surprise, Auli‘i Cravalho, the teen from Mililani, Hawai‘i, who was cast to play the title character in Moana, was part of our concert community that evening (I turned to my left, and there she was just one section over). We were all looking forward to a memorable show. The first half of the concert featured some of the group’s softer and more serious songs, and the audience responded accordingly, smoothly shifting from bright to somber depending on the tone of each piece. During the introduction to one song in particular, sections of the audience burst into applause at the mention of Tuvalu but then fell into silence when Opetaia explained that the piece, “Loimata e Maligi” (Let the Tears Fall), mourns the loss of eighteen teenage girls and their supervisor in a dormitory fire in Tuvalu on 8 March 2000. The performance itself, led by Olivia, was breathtaking. Olivia’s voice filled the song’s range—both vocal and emotional—beautifully, and the entire group’s impeccable delivery left the audience rapt. The other songs during this half of the concert were equally engaging with their respective topics and outstanding delivery, and the audience was eager to participate throughout, cheering at the mention of any Pacific Island place and—in the case of a handful of particularly lively audience [End Page 519]members in the middle orchestra section—standing to dance during the more upbeat songs. Momentum was building. During the second half of the concert, it peaked. Encouraged to dance (Opetaia invited people to dance in the aisles, quickly adding that he probably shouldn’t have said that) and elated to have met Disney royalty during an intermission meet-and-greet with Auli‘i, the audience was ready to explode with energy. Our excitement was reflected back to us in the jubilant faces and exemplary performances of the band as they led the second half with one danceable hit after another. Te Vaka took full advantage of our...

Can Global Release Day Reduce Piracy?

IntroductionPrior to July 10, 2015, new music recordings were released on different days in different countries around the world. On February 26, 2015, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) announced the official acceptance of the global release day concept meaning that new releases from acts associated with the IFPI would be released on Fridays in all countries involved with the IFPI around the world.1 The IFPI believes that this concept will reduce the risk of piracy, which implies that the amount of pirating activity will also decrease. This paper addresses the question of whether or not global release day could decrease piracy.Although it can be argued to the contrary, I do not believe global release day will have a significant impact on lowering piracy. Factors including consumer behavior, the convenience of piracy, time zones, and the publicly known release dates for albums are enough to encourage piracy even with global release day. After reviewing the existing literature, I will explain what global release day is, its relevance to society, why it was enacted, and what characteristics of pirating it is trying to fight. Then I will present my argument as to why global release day will not reduce piracy, as well some possible arguments in support of a global release day, including information as to why global release day may be beneficial whether it will reduce piracy or not.Literature ReviewLittle research has been conducted on the possible effectiveness of global release day because the concept was initiated less than a year before the publication of this article. Still, there is some reasonable speculation about the possible effects as well as some important articles about the motives of those who pirate music who may be affected by global release day. In February 2015, the IFPI, which according to the organization's website consists of about 1,300 members from over sixty countries, officially announced that after months of discussion global release day will happen starting July 10, 2015. Hannah Karp, a journalist at The Wall Street Journal who specializes in writing articles on the music industry, has written about the tension between different parties in the debate as to whether or not global release day will be effective in its purpose to increase music sales and better the music purchasing process.2 Her articles have addressed both the positive and negative effects global release day could have on sales, but they do not address the effects it will have on piracy. This paper, on the other hand, will be one of the first to focus heavily on how global release day could affect piracy.In the music industry, releasing music unexpectedly is another album-releasing trend becoming more common. Journalists have taken notice of this. For example, in an article for Vulture.com, Lauretta Charlton, a journalist who focuses her writing on music, wrote about whether or not album release dates are even necessary. The article explores the possible strategy of not publicizing music releases in order to limit the opportunities for music to leak and for consumers to pirate it before the music is legally released.3 By contrast, my paper further explores the importance of not publicizing a release date for new music in order for global release day to be successful in reducing piracy.Several articles have been written about various forms of piracy and the ways in which it occurs. Why consumers pirate is one of these subtop- ics that multiple authors have written about and a topic that is used in my argument as well. For example, Daniel Castro (a policy analyst), Richard Bennett (a network engineer), and Scott Andes (also a policy analyst), all worked for the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF). They wrote an article about ways to reduce piracy and explanations as to why it occurs, citing reasons such as minimal risk of being caught and the little effort needed to be able to pirate music that is, and is not, available in their market yet. …

Stars vs. Underdogs in Online Music Markets: The Effect of IT on Visibility, Artistss Broadcasting, and Fanss Activities

In cultural markets, for books, music or movies, sales are concentrated on a small number of highly successful products. One explanation for the skewness of sales is incomplete information: consumers are poorly informed about most products, because only a small proportion of them are visible and promoted in the offline world. With digitization, as suggested by the Long Tail hypothesis, the increasing visibility of niche products could improve consumer information, and thus reduce sales concentration. In this paper, we study whether, in the music industry, online promotion improves the visibility of “underdog” artists or that of “stars”. We use an original and large dataset of indicators for visibility, both offline (i.e., press coverage) and online (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, or LastFm), for about 1,000 artists over a 6-month period following a new album release. First, we investigate the extent to which the Internet democratizes access to visibility, and we examine the online promotional actions taken by artists and their fans to overcome a potential lack of visibility. We find that, while the most popular and visible artists offline are also the most visible online, audiences of underdog and debut artists are more strongly engaged to support their promotion efforts. Then, we use a panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model to explore the interplay between artists’ broadcasting activities (artist-generated content), fans’ activities (user-generated content), artists’ online reputation (number of fans) and a free form of online consumption (music streaming), according to the artist’s visibility in the traditional media channels. Our main results suggest that the promotion supported by online audiences has a positive effect on music streaming only for underdog artists, whereas artists’ broadcasting activities in social media have no direct impact on music streaming.

Dynamics of Popstar Record Sales on Phonographic Market --- Stochastic Model

We investigate weekly record sales of the world's most popular 30 artists (2003-2013). Time series of sales have non-trivial kind of memory (anticorrelations, strong seasonality and constant autocorrelation decay within 120 weeks). Amount of artists record sales are usually the highest in the first week after premiere of their brand new records and then decrease to fluctuate around zero till next album release. We model such a behavior by discrete mean-reverting geometric jump diffusion (MRGJD) and Markov regime switching mechanism (MRS) between the base and the promotion regimes. We can built up the evidence through such a toy model that quantifies linear and nonlinear dynamical components (with stationary and nonstationary parameters set), and measure local divergence of the system with collective behavior phenomena. We find special kind of disagreement between model and data for Christmas time due to unusual shopping behavior. Analogies to earthquakes, product life-cycles, and energy markets will also be discussed.

A Historical Investigation of Patterns in Sophomore Album Release

IntroductionUsing Nielsen SoundScan and Billboard chart data for the periods 1993-2003, this paper develops a cohort panel dataset comprised of artists and groups for the purpose of studying historical patterns of sophomore album release. Knowing when and why sophomore albums are released is of importance to social scientists as it allows the testing of various behavioral theories. Additionally, music industry practitioners and educators may find the description of sophomore album releases important because it indicates how acts (artists, groups, and labels) have historically behaved thus identifying a standard for industry behavior.The estimation model includes variables that affect the timing of an act's sophomore release. How these variables impact the timing is a priori unknown and thus is a puzzle. One such variable is the cumulative debut album sales. A successful debut album could indicate the future success of a sophomore album resulting in a shorter sophomore release time frame. Alternatively, debut release success may give acts more time to improve and complete the sophomore album thus delaying its release. Another possibility is that past success may not be as important since all of the acts studied have had initial success as indicated by the Heatseekers Albums chart.Another variable used to test the timing of release is the genre of the act. For various reasons, certain genres may be more efficient in the production and release process due to the number of tracks associated with the album. For example, classical and jazz albums can be more efficiently recorded relative to Hot 100 pop albums that often consist of more than one hundred tracks to edit and mix. Additionally, given the common wisdom that artists have their entire life to write the first album but only a year to write the second, the availability of material within a genre may impact the timing.1 In total, the main variables used to explain the timing of sophomore album release are chosen based on a theoretical description of the primitives that describe the economic motivations to release an album.For the panel of acts, the paper documents the following empirical facts about the timing of the sophomore album release. First, the hazard function indicates that most sophomore albums are released 45 months after the debut album and if a sophomore release does not occur within 80 months of the debut album there will most likely be no sophomore release. Second, the time between album release is a function of past album sales; all else equal, the larger the hit the less time it takes for the next album to be released. Third, genre influences the timing of release. Holding all else constant, the Rap/R&B/Dance genre consistently delayed sophomore albums relative to the Country/Blues and Rock genres. Fourth, conditional on successful debut album sales, acts from the Country/Blues and Rap/R&B/Dance genres release more quickly than acts from the Rock genre. Although the third and fourth empirical facts seem to contradict each other, a simple example clarifies the two. At the extreme, a rap artist with zero debut album sales would have a delayed release relative to a rock artist with the same sales level. However, the probability that a rap artist will release before a rock artist increases as debut albums become more successful.DataFollowing Hendricks and Sorensen (2008), a sample cohort is constructed using Billboard s Heatseekers Albums chart of new or developing acts2 for the time period 1993-1994. To estimate the econometric model, a sample cohort is needed for two main reasons: (1) the universe of possible acts is too large and (2) employing a sample cohort allows one to compare acts in the same part of their career lifecycle. In total, the sample cohort describes the album sales history of 111 acts whose album reaches Billboard's Heatseekers Albums chart in 1993 and 1994. The Heatseekers Albums chart lists the sales ranking of the top 25 new or ascendant artists and bands each week. …

Requiems for a City: Popular Music's Response to 9/11

Historically, music has provided a voice for protest, solidarity, and hope during and in the aftermath of difficult times. In this paper, I discuss two popular albums which respond to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. At the time of each album's release, Springsteen's The Rising and the Beastie Boys' To the Five Boroughs offered unique opportunities for listeners to engage in a process of mourning and empowerment. As such, these works can and should be viewed as part of a larger context of popular music as a forum for both public grief and collective healing in the wake of tragedy.

“Of War Machines and Ghetto Scenes”: English-Canadian Nationalism and The Guess Who's “American Woman”

Woman, stay away from me. (1) Grungy and over-driven, The Guess Who's 1970 title track acted as a Canadian call-to-arms, unofficial national anthem, and became the most popular song in Canadian rock 'n' roll history. Canadian popular culture authors Geoff Pevere and Greig Dymond call probably the most blatant dis of our southern neighbor in recording history, while Chart magazine columnist Aaron Brophy notes that it has become an anthem of sorts, with us Canadians thumbing our noses at those damn Yankees across the border. (2) Two recent rankings have affirmed its place in Canadiana: Chart magazine's July-August 2000 Top 50 Canadian Songs of All Time, and a reader-selected list tallied by Sun Media (publisher of the Toronto Sun and other Canadian newspapers), both placed it as No.1. (3) Shaped by their experiences touring the United States and the nationalist period in which the song was produced, The Guess Who constructed American straw man (or, in this case, a straw woman) of oppressive, militaristic, ghettoized, superficial society, ready for a lyrical gutting. In return, the song was nationally embraced as a vocal manifestation of communal anti-Americanism. is important cultural artifact, highlighting the ferocity of a tremendously nationalistic period. It also illustrates the reciprocal relationship between social climate and the production and reception of cultural goods. As a historian, I will not delve too far into ethnomusicologist's realm of musical aesthetics and audio signifiers--instead, this article will contextualize the lyrics as a textual document created and interpreted within a specific and contentious period of English-Canadian cultural and national consciousness. Rockin' on Guard for Thee: The Guess Who's Vocalist Burton Cummings, guitarist Randy Bachman, bassist Jim Kale, and drummer Gary Peterson out of Winnipeg and rocked both the Canadian and American music scenes. They achieved tremendous success with 1968's Wheatfield Soul single These Eyes and in 1969 with Canned Wheat's Laughing and Undone, but it was the title track to their 1970 American Woman release which ensured their position as one of Canada's greatest rock 'n' roll groups. The song was improvised during a show and almost forgotten, though. Returning to Canada from a tour of the United States, The Guess Who played a gig in a very Canadian location: a hockey arena. (4) Bachman replaced a guitar string during a set break, and in the process of re-tuning he worked out Woman's fuzz-laced riff. Kale and Peterson returned to the stage and jammed while Cummings mingled outside in the arena's parking lot. Told of the band's return to the stage, Cummings rushed back and joined the jam with his harmonica and flute. Exhausting his instrumental selection, he stepped to the microphone and improvised the lyrics to what would become the band's most popular song. According to Cummings, the lyrics came through looking over a Canadian audience after touring through the Southern U.S.A. and just thinking how that Canadian girls looked so much fresher and more alive. (5) The song, however, was almost relegated to a one-time jam. There was a kid in the audience with a cassette recorder, Cummings explained. He backstage afterward and played the song to us, and we thought 'maybe there's something there.' If that kid hadn't brought the tape backstage, the song would have just been another jam that would have been forgotten. (6) Developed and refined for album release, the lyrics reflected several years of touring and traveling in the United States. In 1965 the band--at that time known as Chad Allan and the Expressions--released Shakin' All Over under the guise of the Guess Who?, a marketing trick in which the radio audience was to guess the band's identity. (7) Shakin' All Over's success landed them a tour through the U. …