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Hey everyone. I hope your weekends were great. As it’s still early in the week, we here at Vada, just wanted to keep you all in the loop about what’s gone down in the music world this week, as well as what you might want to keep an eye on.
Aretha Franklin’s 100th hit
R&B legend Aretha Franklin has achieved her 100th hit song on the Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, according to Billboard.com. The site said this makes the first female artist and fourth artist overall to achieve this honor.
Franklin’s 100th hit is titled ‘Rolling’, which is an interpretation of Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’. The song debuted at No. 16 on the Hot R&B Songs chart while debuting at No. 9 on R&B Digital Songs chart. The song is the first single off Franklin’s upcoming album titled Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics which is due out later this month.
If you have not yet seen the performance of the cover song, you can take a look at it below.
Three power players: New York is Music
If you are shooting a film or television show in most major cities, you would go to the film office. In addition to helping you find filming locations and getting permits, the office also helps filmmakers with getting tax credits. Well, now some music executives in New York City are hoping to do the same thing with music.
New York Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, Justin Kalifowitz of Downtown Music Publishing, and William Harvey, a studio owner, are looking to keep the center of the music industry in New York. They came together, because they claimed they saw the state was waning as the epicenter of the music industry in the United States. They claim that musicians and other professionals are moving to states such as Georgia and Tennessee, because albums can be made cheaper. Cost will always be a major factor, but especially now as the music industry is still struggling to manage the many transitions they have gone through over the past 10 to 15 years.
To combat this, Lentol, Kalifowitz, and Harvey are attacking this problem from two different angles.
Assemblyman Lentol has proposed tax credits for music industry professionals. More specifically, the bill is supposed to look out for studio engineers and other low profile job. The proposed tax credit would help people who work these jobs get up to a 20% tax credit for costs related to producing.
‘Billy Joel is not going to get a tax credit, nor is Jay Z. It’s going to be the working stiff that gets the credit,’ said Lentol in a New York Times article.
On the other hand, Kalifowitz and Harvey founded a coalition called New York is Music. New York is Music’s goal is to push the city to see the music industry as a viable means for commerce, much like the film industry. The coalition has over 60 organizational members, including the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and they’ve made their first goal to aid Lentol in getting the tax incentives proposal passed.
While there has been some opposition to the tax credit proposal, specifically from some economists, the three are quite hopeful the legislation will pass.
Kalifowitz was quoted in the New York Times saying, ‘The hope over the long term is to build a diverse and viable music industry ecosystem across the state.’
That’s enough for this week’s Music News Roundup. What about you? Let me know what music stories you’ll be keeping an eye on this week in the comments below.
