Music

The company has been renegotiating the contract that licenses its vast catalog of songs to the social media platform. The agreement expires on Wednesday.Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music company, said it would revoke the licenses for its vast catalog of songs from TikTok after its current contract expires on Wednesday if the two companies could not reach a new deal addressing Universal’s concerns over artist compensation, artificial intelligence and other issues.In an open letter posted late Tuesday, Universal accused TikTok of responding to its requests with “indifference, and then with intimidation,” creating a public squabble in the remaining hours of the two companies’ existing contract. If the talks fail, TikTok users would be unable to use music by Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, U2, Bad Bunny and thousands of other artists in their videos.TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is one of the world’s most popular and fastest-growing social media platforms, with more than a billion users, and its influence on youth culture around the world is unmatched. The company says it is used by more than 150 million Americans. For a majority of TikTok users, music is an integral part of the experience, with songs — often comically sped up — playing over the short clips that fill users’ feeds.In its public letter, Universal said that during negotiations it asked TikTok to address its concerns over three issues: compensation for artists and songwriters, online safety for TikTok’s users and “protecting human artists from the harmful effects of A.I.” Universal accused TikTok of allowing the platform to be “flooded” with songs created by artificial intelligence, which Universal said dilutes royalties for real, human artists and amounts to “sponsoring artist replacement by A.I.”In response, TikTok accused Universal of putting “their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”“Despite Universal’s false narrative and rhetoric, the fact is they have chosen to walk away from the powerful support of a platform with well over a billion users that serves as a free promotional and discovery vehicle for their talent,” TikTok said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

Inon Barnatan has created a solo transcription of “Symphonic Dances” in which he tries “not to imitate an orchestra, but to embody it.”Sergei Rachmaninoff composed two versions of “Symphonic Dances,” his last major work. One was the grand, orchestral score most often performed today; the other, a piano duet.But could it also work on one piano?Solo transcriptions have popped up in the decades since the 1941 premiere of “Symphonic Dances” — a colorful, harmonically adventurous journey through nostalgic melodies and grotesque waltzes, culminating in a cosmic showdown between life and death. And there exists a poor but precious recording of Rachmaninoff playing through the piece at the piano, vocalizing with his music as he ran through it for the conductor Eugene Ormandy in 1940.Now, the pianist Inon Barnatan has made a fresh case for the score’s viability as a solo transcription, through a new version of his own that he recorded for the Pentatone label — and that he will perform at the 92nd Street Y, New York on Friday.Barnatan, who has long loved the “Symphonic Dances,” has played the four-hands version in concert. But after hearing the Rachmaninoff recording, he wanted to try something similar, and the early, homebound days of the pandemic presented an opportunity.“I thought, this is my chance to see if this thing can work,” Barnatan, 44, said over coffee in his SoHo apartment. He gestured nearby and added: “I basically sat at that window with it from 9 a.m. to 1 a.m. I didn’t look up, I was so engrossed.”In the interview, Barnatan explained why the piece lends itself to piano, and how it has changed his relationship with Rachmaninoff and his own playing. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on the 2024 Grammy Awards, which will take place on Sunday. The hosts discuss who is likely to win (and who deserves to win) in the major competitions — album of the year, record of the year, song of the year and best new artist — as well as awards in the country, rap, pop and Latin categories.Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at [email protected]. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

The orchestra, under Andris Nelsons, gave a clear and controlled concert performance of Shostakovich’s crushing opera at Carnegie Hall.The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” is a garish explosion, its imagery drawn from cartoons and the Keystone Kops, its madcap energy never-ending. It’s fabulous, but the score can feel whooshed into a blender’s whirlwind.That was very much not the case on Tuesday at Carnegie Hall, when the Boston Symphony Orchestra played “Lady Macbeth” in concert. Even with some bits of staging, Boston’s performance under its music director, Andris Nelsons, was undistracted: firmly, soberly clear and controlled.Shostakovich has been a yearslong focus of this ensemble and conductor. They approach the composer with a poise that reveals just how much of this opera’s score is sheerly lovely, tender and melancholy; the frenetic, exaggerated jokiness for which it became best known is less omnipresent than you might have recalled.“Lady Macbeth,” about a 19th-century housewife in the Russian provinces who is surrounded by boorish men and turns to murder, was written in the early 1930s, when Shostakovich was still a budding brilliance. The work’s initial good fortunes — and its composer’s bright future — were infamously derailed in 1936, when Joseph Stalin walked out of a production in Moscow and an unsigned editorial appeared in Pravda, condemning the “stream of deliberately discordant sounds” and the “fidgeting, screaming neurasthenic music.”Often you can listen to the work and nod along to those words, even if today we may mean the judgment as praise. But on Tuesday, remarkably little sounded discordant, fidgeting, screaming or neurasthenic. Even a notorious effect at the end of Shostakovich’s raucous sonic depiction of sex, a slow trombone slide to evoke — well, you can decide what it evokes — was so understated that it didn’t arouse the usual audience laughter.Instead, the most memorable moments were quiet ones. Mellow strings and an almost pastoral flute combining under the protagonist’s father-in-law’s warning against workers trying to seduce her. A timpani’s rumble rising softly off growling cellos.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

Taylor Swift and SZA could make history at the 66th annual awards on Sunday night, where young women dominate the nominations, and revered older artists will take the stage.The 66th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday are poised to be a celebration of a dominant year for women in pop music, with female stars like SZA, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish facing off in the major categories.SZA, whose “SOS” was a critical and chart smash, leads with nine nominations; the pop and R&B singer and songwriter Victoria Monét has seven; and Swift, Rodrigo, Eilish, Miley Cyrus and the indie-rock trio boygenius have six apiece. Swift and SZA each have the potential for landmark wins.For an award show that in the past has been criticized for its treatment of female stars, its lineup alone is being interpreted as a sign of progress. But the show this year is taking place in the shadow of lawsuits against two former Grammy leaders, accusing each of sexual assault. Neil Portnow, a former Recording Academy president, has denied the allegations against him; Michael Greene, his predecessor, has not commented.Never bet on the Grammys’ being too predictable. Industry politics, vote-splitting and a shifting membership have the potential, as always, to scramble outcomes, despite expectations about who may win or lose.Whoever wins, the night will have a roster of performers that mixes young and old, fresh faces and classics, including SZA, Eilish, Rodrigo, Joni Mitchell, Luke Combs, Dua Lipa, Travis Scott, Burna Boy, Billy Joel and U2. The host, for a fourth straight year, is the comedian Trevor Noah.Here is a look at some of the night’s major story lines.Will Taylor Swift Make History?Swift was a gale-force power in pop culture last year, and she has the potential to make a major mark at the Grammys.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

Ms. Wilson’s relationship with her husband, a co-founder of the Beach Boys, was portrayed in the 2014 film “Love & Mercy.”Melinda Wilson, who rescued her future husband, the Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson, from psychological ruin when they were dating in the 1980s, died on Tuesday. She was 77.Mr. Wilson confirmed her death on Instagram, saying that they had been married for 28 years. No cause of death was given.Jean Sievers, Mr. Wilson’s manager, said that Ms. Wilson had died suddenly at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif. She added that the couple has five adopted children — Dakota Rose, Daria Rose, Dash, Dylan and Delanie Rae — who all survive her and carry Mr. Wilson’s surname.The couple’s relationship was portrayed in the 2014 biopic “Love & Mercy.” The film shows Ms. Wilson (Elizabeth Banks) meeting Mr. Wilson, played by both John Cusack and Paul Dano, in a Cadillac showroom in Los Angeles where she was working as a saleswoman.After the film was released, Ms. Banks said in an interview with ABC News that she had met Ms. Wilson while preparing for the role.“She said to me, ‘Music is his first love,’” Ms. Banks told ABC. “‘Nothing can replace it. It’s his being, it’s his essence, it’s his everything. So I’m settling for second, but it’s a pretty good — it’s a pretty good second.’”The film shows Ms. Wilson helping her then boyfriend navigate a bout of mental illness in the 1980s. That effort, and their courtship, is complicated by the presence of Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), a psychologist who had helped Mr. Wilson fight off depression and substance abuse to stage a professional comeback.Mr. Landy, whose team of professional minders at one point lived with Mr. Wilson 24 hours a day, insinuated himself into the musician’s life to the point where the therapist was at one point acting as his Mr. Wilson’s business partner, record producer and occasional songwriting partner.In 1992, a lawsuit by Mr. Wilson’s family resulted in a court order that barred Mr. Landy from contacting Mr. Wilson. Mr. Landy died in 2006.John Cusack as Brian Wilson and Elizabeth Banks as Melinda Ledbetter in the 2014 film “Love & Mercy.”François DuhamelMelinda Kae Ledbetter was born on Oct. 3, 1946, in Pueblo, Colo. She grew up in Whittier, Calif., and went to college there before becoming a model, Ms. Sievers said.She also worked as a producer on several films related to her husband’s music, including “Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road” (2021) and “Pet Sounds Live at Royce Hall” (2006). The latter title refers to “Pet Sounds,” a landmark 1966 Beach Boys album.When the couple saw the film “Love & Mercy” for the first time, Ms. Wilson told ABC News, she did not know how tough the experience would be.“I think I was more nervous than him when I took him to see it, and after, I said, ‘So what did you think?’” she said. “And he goes, ‘Oh, it was really a lot worse in real life.’” More

Before the 2024 awards on Sunday, revisit a ceremony where the Recording Academy got it right, honoring the Beatles, Bobbie Gentry, Aretha Franklin and more.In 1968 the Beatles won their first and only album of the year Grammy for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” PA Images, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,The 66th annual Grammy Awards take place on Sunday, and this year’s lineup of performers is pretty exceptional. I mean, Joni Mitchell is performing! For the first time ever at the Grammys! I could really just stop there, but Billy Joel, Billie Eilish, SZA, U2, Olivia Rodrigo, Burna Boy, Luke Combs, Dua Lipa, Travis Scott and more are scheduled to grace the stage. Will Joel and Eilish take this opportunity to start a supergroup called the Billies? Will SZA and U2 start an all-caps collaborative side project called SUZA2? Will Travis Scott meet Joni Mitchell, and if so, what will they talk about? The possibilities of this year’s ceremony are endless, and a little weird.To kick off Grammy week, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at another exceptional-if-slightly-odd year in Grammy history: the 10th annual ceremony, which took place on Feb. 29, 1968 and honored the music of 1967.The Grammys, infamously, do not always get it right. Sometimes their slights are laughably egregious (like when Metallica lost the 1989 award for best hard rock/heavy metal recording to … Jethro Tull); other times, they play things annoyingly safe (see: Beyoncé’s last three losses for album of the year). But just as a broken clock is right twice a day, sometimes justice actually is served at the Grammys. And 1968 was one of those years.Consider that album of the year went to a release that pushed the format forward into the future, and one that’s still often (and rightly) mentioned in lists of the greatest albums of all time. Some incredibly worthy artists won their first-ever Grammys that year: Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin and Tammy Wynette. Many of the songs and artists awarded have — gasp — actually stood the test of time.Today’s playlist is culled entirely from the winners of the 10th annual Grammys. Feed your meter, inflate that beautiful balloon and prepare to hop in a time machine ready to take you up, up and away.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s latest report finds that women’s involvement in the biggest hits of 2023 was greatly improved over previous years.Each year since 2018, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has tracked the number of women credited on the music industry’s biggest hits, and the numbers have usually been dismal — year after year, female artists, songwriters and producers have been crowded out by men, sometimes by extraordinary margins.In their latest report, however, the study’s researchers found some good news. Women’s involvement in the biggest hits of 2023 was greatly improved from previous years, and in some measurements reached higher proportions than the researchers have found in more than a decade of data.For example, of last year’s most popular tracks — as defined by Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 singles chart — 35 percent of the credited performing artists were women. That is a higher number than U.S.C.’s researchers have found for any year going back to 2012, and only the second time (after 2022) that the number has been over 30 percent.And for the first time in the study’s research window, a majority of the year’s 100 most popular songs — 56 percent of them — had at least one female songwriter.Stacy L. Smith, an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the study’s lead author, was cautiously celebratory of the findings. While the latest numbers are up, she noted, women still represented an average of only about 23 percent of performer credits on all surveyed songs since 2012. (Some years that figure has been as low as 17 percent.)“For the second year in a row, the percentage of women artists on the popular charts has increased,” Dr. Smith said in a statement. “This is a notable milestone and worthy of celebration. However, it is still important to recognize that there is room to grow. Women filled less than one-quarter of artist roles across all 12 years examined, and these figures are still far from representing the 50 percent of women in the population and the music audience.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More