Music Biz Features

The words above weren’t supposed to be the headline of this column. The headline was supposed to be: “Kanye West just did an album release all wrong. Brilliantly.” I planned to delve into how Kanye, with the new Donda, has clearly learned lessons from heritage acts in how to print …

Want to hear the most depressing stat in modern entertainment? It was effusively delivered the other month by a beaming Jack Conte, co-founder and CEO of fan-funding app Patreon, which is now worth $4 billion. “A study published a few years ago showed that 75 percent of kids aged 6 …

This story appears in Rolling Stone‘s 2021 Future of Music issue, a special project delving into the next era of the multibillion-dollar hitmaking business. Read the other stories here. When the pandemic shut down the live-concert industry last year, Todd Mayo, the founder and operator of the Caverns, a subterranean …

If the music business were allowed to write its own history, every year’s chronicle would glow with variations on the same theme — the words “transformation,” “revolution,” and “record-breaking sea change” chief among the lexicon — ad nauseam. But in the peculiar shadow of 2020, these bombastic end-of-year appraisals, for …

In Rolling Stone‘s series At Work, we go behind the curtain with decision-makers across the fast-changing music business — exploring a range of responsibilities, burgeoning ideas, advice for industry newcomers, and more. Read earlier interviews here. Behind almost every hit song is a team of unstoppable writers. And in 2020, …

I n an alternate universe, NicWeldon would be focusing one of his video cameras on Janet Jackson right about now. At 35, he’s spent most of his working life on road crews, as either a director or a cameraman on tours with the Eagles, Kings of Leon, and Ricky Martin. …

Zach Katz and Shara Senderoff both came out of the traditional music industry. Naturally, their current business, Raised in Space Enterprises (RISE), is the complete opposite. Founded in 2019 with help from music mega-manager Scooter Braun and fintech company Ripple, RISE’s mission is to discover, invest in, and guide transformational …

What’s a “major” music company? It’s a question that often taxes the mind of Justin Kalifowitz, CEO and founder of Downtown Music Holdings — who has grown weary of the industry’s habit of describing Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group and Warner Music Group as three “majors.” “Is everyone else …

In Rolling Stone‘s series At Work, we go behind the curtain with decision-makers across the fast-changing music business — exploring a range of responsibilities, burgeoning ideas, advice for industry newcomers, and more. Read earlier interviews here. In a given week, Julie Miles can be working with a hundred different voices, …

InRolling Stone‘s weekly series At Work, we go behind the curtain with decision-makers across the fast-changing music business — exploring a range of responsibilities, burgeoning ideas, advice for industry newcomers, and more. Read earlier interviews here. The moment Rhea Pasricha was legally allowed to drive — which, in the state …