Morning Music Notes – An Album from Elvis Rootstello
The Roots and Elvis Costello? Yeah, That Might Work
Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night house band is making an album with Diana Krall’s husband. Translation: The Roots are collaborating with Elvis Costello (via Billboard). While they originally planned for just a few songs, the juices were flowing (whatever that means), and they ended up with more than a dozen tracks.
“It was really love at first sight,” ?uestlove says of Costello on Late Night. “The second time he came on, we surpassed the first one. So by the third time, he was like, ‘Let’s stop messing around and do something together.'” No one ever says that to me. The Roots are also planning on releasing an album of their own, either in 2013 or 2014.
Speaking of the Roots, they announced the line up for their 6th annual Roots Picnic. They will be playing, but Elvis Costello won’t – thanks for killing my segue, guys. Actually, the line up is chalk full of artists who cracked the PeteHatesMusic Top Songs of 2012, such as Grimes, Solange, and Gaslamp Killer, as well as artists like Araab Muzik, Naughty By Nature, Joey Bada$$, How To Dress Well, and more. The event will go down in Philadelphia on June 1. Tickets go on sale Friday at noon EST – check the website for details.
Psy Has Actually Made a Lot of Money Off of YouTube
Making money from streaming services is one of those pipe dreams that the services talk about being great and the artists bitching about it being pennies. Psy’s Gangnam Style is the most watched YouTube video ever, with over one billion views. Despite that many views, many think he’s probably making peanuts from YouTube, who can add commercials at the beginning of viral videos in order to give users like you some cash.
YouTube has revealed just how much revenue the video has earned – $8 million (via Slash Gear). That’ll buy a lot of kimchi. However, YouTube takes 50% of revenues earned, so Psy, his record label, and his handlers have $4 million to split. Based on 1.23 billion views, that works out to about $0.0065 every time the video is played. If you’re bored at work today and want to make Psy 65/100th of a penny, you know how.
Pirates Spend More On Music, Study by Pirates Finds
People seem to have wildly different opinions on the spending habits, or lack of, for file sharers. Let’s call them pirates, because that’s what we they are. The American Assembly – a research centre at Columbia University (and NOT a super hero group) – found that peer-to-peer file shares purchase 30% more music than those who don’t file share (via NME).
The study, commissioned by Google of all people, found that the average U.S. citizen who file shares has 2000 songs in their library, with 38% of these songs legally purchased (which seems higher than I would’ve thought). However, other digital music collectors who don’t use peer-to-peer downloading have an average of 1300 songs, with 45% legally purchased, with others coming from ripped CDs or copied. So we should continue to be mad at record labels who sue downloaders for tens of thousands of dollars, when they are actually sort of helping the industry?
Vampire Weekend Announce New Album Release Date
Fact: Vampire Weekend are named after a binge session of Twilight movie watching. There might be some speculation involved in that ‘fact’, but let’s roll with it. Another fact: the band are releasing a yet-to-be-named 3rd album on May 6/7. And those are the facts!
Listen! Devendra Banhart – Never Seen Such Good Things
Something new from Devendra Banhart off of his eighth album. Devendra Banhart, who was lucky enough to date Natalie Portman, but is forever haunted by Google when he types in his name and sees her name too, will release Mala on March 12. The track that’s streaming is Never Seen Such Good Things, which has a slower feel, but has some neat effects fluttering in the background. The song almost has a warm, western feel to it (much like another song we posted yesterday). Check it out below.
