Recording Artists Research Articles

Down, and Under Pressure: The Decline of Local and Non-Anglo Best-Selling Recording Artists in Australia 2000–2023: Submitted to the International Journal of Music Business Research 14.06.24.

Abstract The global consolidation and platformitisation of recorded music have attracted attention to changes in local artist representation in national sales charts and, more broadly, to the diversity of nationalities within recorded music markets. Global platform distribution has been perceived to aid local music economies and the diversity of cultural production. This article quantitatively analyses the annual Australian top 100 single and album charts 2000–2023 to determine Australian artist representation, Indigenous artist representation and diversity of nationality over the period. The data reveals, contrary to propositions of glocalisation and internationalisation, that Australian and non-Anglo artist representation has declined significantly, while North American and British artists have increased their presence in the Australian charts. It also finds that Indigenous chart representation over the period is low, stable and in line with population ratios. The data raises issues for artists, companies, policy makers and consumers in the Australian music industries.

Egyptian Popular Culture in Late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine

Abstract During the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods, Palestine was an integral component of the audience for the new forms of “colloquial mass culture” that emerged in Cairo. Early Egyptian recording artists, theatre troupes, and the giants of interwar Egyptian popular music—Umm Kulthum and Muhammad Abdel Wahhab—regularly appeared and were warmly received in Palestine. Egyptian performers did not come to Palestine to affirm or reinforce its Arabism. They came because they earned substantial fees for their performances and because they had large and loyal audiences there, some of whom were Jews. The presence of both Arabs and Jews at concerts or in movie theaters did not necessarily mean that they liked each other. Neither did they dislike each other as a matter of principle. This ambiguous legacy was manifested in the political uproar over the naming of streets in honor of Umm Kulthum and Abdel Wahhab in Jerusalem, Ramle, and Haifa in 2020. This was not an indicator of Arab–Jewish coexistence, and it did not represent a conciliation with terrorism. It was a phenomenon in which spectators and fans (and detractors) read themselves into the meanings of the work of artists.

Towards liveness: collective memory and reproductions of studio reverberation

ABSTRACT Through a consideration of their reverberant characteristics, this article places representations of recording studios as an active cultural process that plays out through the recorded sounds such spaces become associated with. Like other heritage sites, the work to define, maintain, and allocate certain structures as unique or significant relies on the cultural process of collective memory. By focusing on the concept of sonic recollection, the reconfiguration of unique tracking room environments for “in the box” digital audio workstation software, exemplified through reverberation, is shown to draw from a network of people, sounds, and technologies that cumulatively reflect various stages of a recording studio’s trajectory. By uncovering this network – encompassing well-known and unnamed engineers, famous to merely aspiring recording artists, established or defunct studios and software companies, and technologies such as convolution reverb, all of which articulate one another in digital audio workstation software – it suggests that the theoretical underpinnings of collective memory studies are a useful tool of analysis to more fully frame reconstructions or representations of physical spaces undertaken through recorded sound, and that reverberation is an ideal metaphor for the work of collective memory.

Hip-hop's Early Introduction to Sex: Queer Readings of Black Male “Rape” in Popular Culture

Abstract In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, there were several stories in the popular media about Black men's and boys’ experiences of childhood sexual violence. Though this media attention is noteworthy given the stereotypes of Black men as hypermasculine and hypersexual that have positioned Black men as beyond the pale of public sympathy, stories of Black male sexual victimization can also traffic in narratives of deviance. This article examines media representation of the childhood sexual experiences of national recording artists Chris Brown and Lil Wayne to show how deterministic narratives of sexual deviance and sexual victimization circumscribe Black men's sexual stories and proposes a way of reading these stories beyond those narrative constraints.

Home Is Where the Ok Is? Early Okayplayer Message Boards & an Ethos of Acknowledgment

In this essay, the author considers the online community of Okayplayer (OKP) as a pivotal progenitor in the development of a Black digital ethos. In particular, the author situates and interrogates Okayplayer as a “dwelling space” where self-identified Black identities developed digital voices and a communal ethic of acknowledgment. Indeed, 5 years before Facebook, and 7 years before Twitter; Okayplayer was a social media precursor—made for and by black folks. Prior to social media era, the OKP message boards were the rare space where black digital voices could be heard and acknowledged by peers and fellow recording artists such as Erykah Badu—a digital home or dwelling space. In this essay, I sample and extend Hyde’s redefinition of ethos as “home”; to online communities of color. Hence, this essay retrospectively examines OKP’s digital ethos as a cultural communal co-production where “discourse is used to transform space and time into dwelling places where people can deliberate about and know together some matter of interest” (p. xiii). By viewing OKP as discursive site, the paper interrogates the function of rhetorical voice in establishing dwelling spaces. My critical lens is informed by Mitra and Watts advocacy of marginalized digital voice. Voice is actualized as an architectural event, only when it is acknowledged. In relation to OKP, Watts contends that historically, Black voices that find acknowledgment develop a dwelling place based on ” a sort of collaboration..as a kind of “magic” by a communal will.

Brahms’s Hungarian Dances and the Early ‘Csárdás’ Recordings

Abstract The relationship of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances to their origins has been a subject of enquiry ever since they were first published. This article extends previous investigations of Brahms’s written sources to include the many 78rpm recordings of ‘traditional’ Hungarian music made shortly after his death. It establishes that nearly half of the Brahms melodies appear in the repertory of popular recording artists such as the so-called ‘Gypsy bands’, and that many of these artists had been active in Vienna during Brahms’s lifetime. It identifies other performing contexts—military bands, popular songs, salon pieces—and argues that the ‘Hungarian Dances’ are an invented amalgamation of several distinct genres, reflecting Brahms’s urban experience and musical interests. The article compares Brahms’s arrangements with the same tunes in oral tradition where possible and considers the wider implications of the recorded legacy for our understanding of the ‘style hongrois’ and Brahms’s appropriation of it.

Chasing Dreams, Finding Nightmares: Exploring the Creative Limits of the Music Career

Chasing Dreams, Finding Nightmares: Exploring the Creative Limits of the Music Career

Book Review: Field Recordings of Black Singers and Musicians: An Annotated Discography of Artists from West Africa, the Caribbean and the Eastern and Southern United States, 1901–1943

This last work of author/compiler Craig Martin Gibbs joins his other unique discographies from the same publisher—Black Recording Artists, 1877–1926: An Annotated Discography (2012) and Calypso and Other Music of Trinidad, 1912–1962: An Annotated Discography (2015)—to provide detailed access to the legacy of African American and African music from the earliest years of sound recording. As noted in the front matter, Craig Martin Gibbs died in October 2017.

The entrepreneurial imperative: Recording artists in extreme metal music proto-markets

Abstract Recent research on recording artist entrepreneurism suggests that ‘emerging music professionals need an entrepreneurial spirit’ and that ‘they need to think like an entrepreneur (even if some don’t like the term) to sustain a career in the diverse fields of the music industries’. If recording artists are now facing pressure to be both creative and entrepreneurial subjects, how does this duality then impact many of the traditional expectations and practices of recording artistry and the institutions that surround them? As a case intended to explore this question, this article will examine recording artist entrepreneurism through the economic and scenic practices occurring in extreme metal music proto-markets. Specifically, analysis will focus on the case of the Australian band Ne Obliviscaris, who were the first extreme metal act to successfully use the online patronage platform Patreon. Ne Obliviscaris’ turn to Patreon is representative of a broader transition towards recording artist entrepreneurism, where new funding and revenue options are impacting the traditional relations between the artist, the record label and the audience. Entrepreneurism is therefore interpreted as an emerging institutional norm of recording artistry, with implications for recording artists’ subjectivity, expectations and social positions.

Even weirder than the real thing—Gated reverb history and aesthetics

Sound presented via loudspeaker may take advantage of signal processing to create sounds not possible in an all-acoustic production chain. Breaking free of the acoustic constraints for music-making in the concert hall to take advantage of an analog, digital and electro-acoustic production chain has been a major attraction for many popular recording artists. New aesthetics evolved. Among the most absurd sonic concoctions to come from this, gated reverb is part discovery, and part invention, motivated by misunderstandings, and driven by plain old rock and roll rebellion. This paper tours the development of gated reverb, with audio illustrations, and makes the case for its continued use today.

The Importance of Copyright Protection to Audio and Audiovisual Performers in the Digital Age

I have been a professional actor for forty-two years. I have worked in over a hundred theatrical and television films, been in several TV series and done scores of guest appearances on other TV shows. During those years I have also done dramatic radio works, TV and radio commercials, audio books and worked on and off Broadway. Simultaneously, I served over twenty-five years as National President, Vice President and Board Member of Screen Actors Guild, and after our merger, as a Board Member of Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). SAG-AFTRA is a national labor union representing more than 165,000 actors, announcers, broadcasters, recording artists, background vocalists and other media professionals.1 We are the largest performers’ union in the world, and we exist to protect the economic and artistic rights of media artists in motion pictures, television, sound recordings and most other forms of media.2 I was asked to participate in this Symposium as a veteran professional actor as well as a union officer with many years of service to our members. Given my experience and background, I feel I can state that when copyrighted works are infringed upon, misappropriated and downright stolen, it has a direct economic and career impact on everyone who was part of creating those works. During the course of my career, there have been many changes in our business, the most significant of which came with the advent of digital technology. In the world of analog recordings, copies had to be struck directly from master recordings to achieve the highest possible fidelity to the original performances. Every copy of every movie shown in a theater was printed from a master negative, and every video recording that was sold, rented or broadcast was struck from a master recording. These necessities of analog copying substantially restricted the ability of copyright infringers to misappropriate and exploit unauthorized copies. Digital technology took the brakes off copyright infringement through the accessibility and high quality of the stolen material and the ease of stealing it.

A Meditation on the Soundscapes of Black Boyhood and Disruptive Imaginations

In this article I consider how discourses of crisis and politics of respectability make it difficult to imagine black boyhood. While both forms of intervention are guided by good intentions, they nonetheless stymie research and critical engagement with how black boys experience boyhood. This article considers how a speech by President Barack Obama functioning as a precursor to formal announcement of the My Brothers Keeper initiative demonstrates the difficulty with distinguishing black boys from black men and, therefore, from developing interventions and research, in general, that attends to the needs, interests, and ways of being of black boys. I propose that in the absence of discursively focused research and empirical data, the inner thoughts and lives of black boys can be located in culture, specifically soundscapes created by black male recording artists that offer disruptive imaginations.

Real men don't sing: crooning in American culture

The crooner Rudy Vallee's soft, intimate, and sensual vocal delivery simultaneously captivated millions of adoring fans and drew harsh criticism from those threatened by his sensitive masculinity. Although Vallee and other crooners reflected the gender fluidity of late-1920s popular culture, their challenge to the Depression era's more conservative masculine norms led cultural authorities to stigmatize them as gender and sexual deviants. In Real Men Don't Sing Allison McCracken outlines crooning's history from its origins in minstrelsy through its development as the microphone sound most associated with white recording artists, band singers, and radio stars. She charts early crooners’ rise and fall between 1925 and 1934, contrasting Rudy Vallee with Bing Crosby to demonstrate how attempts to contain crooners created and dictated standards of white masculinity for male singers. Unlike Vallee, Crosby survived the crooner backlash by adapting his voice and persona to adhere to white middle-class masculine norms. The effects of these norms are felt to this day, as critics continue to question the masculinity of youthful, romantic white male singers. Crooners, McCracken shows, not only were the first pop stars: their short-lived yet massive popularity fundamentally changed American culture.

Mortality in American Hip-Hop and Rap Recording Artists, 1987–2014

The deaths of American hip-hop and rap recording artists often receive considerable media attention. However, these artists' deaths have not been examined as a distinct group like the deaths of rock, classical, jazz, and pop music artists. This is a seminal epidemiological analysis on the deaths of an understudied group, American hip-hop and rap music recording artists. Media reports were analyzed of the deaths of American hip-hop and rap music recording artists that occurred from January 1, 1987 to December 31, 2014. The decedents' age, sex, race, cause of death, stage names, and city and state of death were recorded for analysis. The most commonly reported cause of death was homicide. The 280 deaths were categorized as homicide (55%), unintentional injury (13%), cardiovascular (7%), undetermined/undisclosed (7%), cancer (6%), other (5%), suicide (4%), and infectious disease (3%). The mean reported age at death was 30 yrs (range 15-75) and the median was 29 yrs; 97% were male and 92% were black. All but one of the homicides were committed with firearms. Homicide was the most commonly reported cause of death. Public health focus and guidance for hip-hop and rap recording artists should mirror that for African-American men and adolescent males ages 15-54 yrs, for whom the leading causes of death are homicide, unintentional injury, and heart disease. Given the preponderance of homicide deaths in this analysis, premature mortality reduction efforts should focus on violence prevention and conflict mitigation.

Making Music Pay: Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work

Making Music Pay: <i>Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work</i>

Matt Stahl. Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013. Pp. 304. $24.95 (paper); $89.95 (cloth).

Matt Stahl. Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013. Pp. 304. $24.95 (paper); $89.95 (cloth).

Broadly Specialized: Identity and Entry into Entrepreneurship

One of the core findings in entrepreneurship research highlights the benefits of breadth, linking the mastery of different roles and skills to higher likelihood of entry. However, sociological research finds repeated evidence that breadth reduces the appeal of an individual to their focal audience. We develop hypotheses for how prospective entrepreneurs navigate this tension through the use of distinctiveness and compensatory strategies and test these on the likelihood that a recording artist launched their own label. To estimate these we use a unique sample of the skills and appeals made by 5,000 recording artists between 1990-2010. We find that acquiring a distinct set of broad skills and making a narrow, but conventional appeal, increase the likelihood that an individual would launch their own record label.

“Sell Out With Me Tonight”: Popular Music, Commercialization and Commodification in Vineland, The Crying of Lot 49, and V.

Particularly drawing on the theory of Jacques Attali and Horkheimer and Adorno, this article considers popular music in Pynchon’s novels as more than simply a ‘soundtrack’ to the plot. Much attention has been paid to Pynchon’s original songs, but not to the manner of their dissemination; therefore, this article examines the role of the popular musician in the production of consumer culture, focusing on McClintic Sphere (V.), The Paranoids (Lot 49), and Billy Barf and the Vomitones (Vineland). Pynchon depicts a modern ‘culture industry’ in which recording artists, voluntarily or not, ape their forbears, but in which the idea that live performance is liberating whereas recording is constraining, is problematized. The article explores Sphere’s struggles to become successful in the face of live audiences that constantly compare him to Charlie Parker rather than assessing his music on its own merits, and the twin inspirational and coercive ‘moulding’ forces he experiences during the recording process that represents the only chance for musicians to disseminate their music widely and find a properly appreciative public. Similarly, the disjunction between the Paranoids’ deviant lyrics and behaviour, and their thoroughly generic sub-Beatles musical texture, which adheres to the tropes of recorded music (one song ‘fades out’ even when played live!) is discussed; they too are caught in an excluded middle between transgression and conformity, as are the Vomitones, who in one live performance suppress their rebellious ‘punk’ aesthetic when they gain employment performing Italian ballads at a Mafia wedding. Ultimately this article argues that popular music is equally moulded by live audiences and by recording bosses and that its absorption into networks of capital is inevitable, so musicians, given the chance, may as well ‘sell out’, and hope to balance commercial success with at least a modicum of creative control.

Brief Amicus Curiae of the Motown Alumni Association in F.B.T. Productions v. Aftermath, No. 09-56069 (9th. Cir.)

This case involved an important issue of contract interpretation majorly affecting the market for digital music downloads with serious implications for the welfare of many recording artists. At issue was the "Masters Licensed" clause and the usage of standard terms in a deal involving the artist Eminem that paralleled the terms in a great many recording agreements. And while the recording label Appellees tried characterize these contracts as unique to these parties, the interpretation of the basic terms at issue — especially "license" and "sale" — affected nearly every American recording artist signed to a major record label, including many members of amicus Motown Alumni Association. For example, one agreement between Motown Records and The Temptations drew exactly the same distinction in its royalty structure between records sold and recordings that were licensed to third parties.During the proceedings below, the District Court failed to give adequate consideration to the broader context of the contractual terms at issue and the role they play in the music industry. In this appeal, amicus urged the Court not to make the same mistakes and, in particular, to consider three key factual and legal aspects of the music industry that are relevant to resolving the dispute: (1) the major labels’ frequent and repeated use of strained contractual interpretations, abstruse royalty structures, and strategic accounting practices to deny artists proper notice and fair compensation, including the historical failure to pay out accurate royalties earned under artist contracts; (2) the incentives record labels have to contort contractual terms in order to avoid paying higher “license” royalties to artists, given their changing role in a music market rapidly shifting to digital distribution; and (3) the specific context and meaning of common copyright terms such as “license” and “sale” in the federal Copyright Act.In light of these considerations, amicus urged the Court to adopt a strong presumption that when music contracts conveying copyright interests use terms derived from within the Copyright Act, such as "license" or "sale," the Act's default terminology should apply, and only in rare cases where there is substantial evidence that the parties unambiguously agreed to deviate from these common statutory meanings should these terms be susceptible to different interpretations. This practice comports with well-settled principles of contract law, the proper allocation of risks in recording contracts, and the reasonable expectations of artists, enabling them to rely on common industry understandings and the plain meaning of the terms, regardless of changes over time in technology, distribution methods, or the labels' business models.* This brief was written with the assistance of Berkeley Law students Adam Blankenheimer, Amber Burroff, Jade Jurdi, and Joel Wallace.

Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work

Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work