“The Soundtrack of the Doomscroll Generation? It’s Phonk. – YouTube Shorts and TikToks are often set to electronic dance music with rap roots that’s become the unconscious hum of vertical video while making its creators rich.”
In a world where people can’t stop complaining about streaming payouts, where newbies keep saying the business is stacked against them, this is a revelation. These people you’ve never heard of are making seven figures creating music for social networks and…
They seem to have no problem making bread, and they don’t have to play live to do it!
I listened to “Sahara,” which is mentioned in the article, and I was stunned… I expected some sting that I hear over and over again on Instagram or TikTok, BUT I LIKED IT! Which stunned me, since I find so much of the Spotify Top 50 slides right off of me.
And the Spotify Top 50 acts are so busy being brands… This phonk music is like the music scene of yore, the music speaks for itself and the music is enough.
Note: I can’t help myself, because if I write anything that doesn’t comport with expectations, that doesn’t feed the narrative, my readers go berserk. Ticketmaster and Spotify are the enemy… Anything that doesn’t align with the music business paradigm of the pre-internet era is the enemy, to be dethroned. God, now we keep hearing about AI music… If you’re afraid of AI music that just means you’re not creative enough. Because AI cannot replicate feel, emotion…furthermore, it cannot push the envelope and create something new, something never done before… It can’t create “Sgt. Pepper” based on only hearing “Meet the Beatles.” And I say all this for those who have a knee-jerk reaction saying phonk isn’t music, that the people who are making it aren’t artists… No, this is the new world, this is like psychedelic music emerging in the era of AM Top 40. This is the future, not a jet back to the past, but something new and different (always influenced by the past, everything evolves from the past). If you’re not excited by phonk and its popularity and money-generating ability then you’re already in the rearview mirror. MAGA doesn’t work in music. The past might have been great, but the only way the future will be better is if you create something new and different.
Meanwhile, I created an AI phonk playlist on Spotify. You should sample it… The styles vary, like the article says, there’s now even Brazilian phonk.
This is very exciting… I haven’t been this upbeat about music since…Spotify itself!
Spotify AI phonk playlist: “Phonk 2026”: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0RY84e9ls2m99iGVgqZWLV?si=2e8e390554684f66
The only reason Casey Wasserman hasn’t lost his gig as the head of the L.A. Olympics in 2028 is there’s no deep pocketed money involved. No single source with assets at risk. Unlike his talent agency. Which is majority-owned by Providence Equity Partners.
Don’t mess with money. Never ever.
The music business used to be one of scrappy entrepreneurs. But that changed nearly sixty years ago when Warner purchased Atlantic and Elektra. There’s been consolidation in the label sphere ever since. To the point where there are only three major labels left.
One is part of Sony.
Another is Warner…which hired Robert Kyncl to make the trains run on time and create growth. You see it’s a public company, a pure music play, and the numbers haven’t been good. Can Kyncl pull a rabbit out of the hat? So far he’s been unable to, despite all the gobbledygook about AI and new avenues of revenue. It’s basically a music company, and it depends on hits. And the truth is unlike in the past, there’s only a limited amount of recorded music revenue available. As in despite all the hoopla about physical product, the truth is that almost all of the income from recordings at the three majors comes from streams, and unlike physical product, there’s a finite amount of money to be generated. This is not like the era of physical product, where someone who hasn’t bought a record all year will suddenly purchase a Whitney Houston or Fleetwood Mac album… No, the three majors are fighting for slices of a defined pie… Sure, there are areas of growth, increasing the size of the pie, subscriptions in relatively undeveloped territories, but if you’re relying solely on revenue from consumption of recorded music…you’d better find another way to generate revenue.
Which is maybe a reason why Universal’s stock has taken a nosedive, down by double digits. Lucian Grainge might know music, but does he know money?
That’s why Michael Rapino is so successful over at Live Nation…he manages the investors, he does his best to keep the stock price up. Concerts may be sexy, but they’re subsidiary to the money!
AEG is different because it’s got one owner, it’s private. Like the music companies of yore…
But all the talent agencies took huge investments, allowing their top brass to experience huge paydays, but now what… Look at the shenanigans/changes at WME…it’s all driven by money as opposed to insight, the underlying assets.
As for Universal… The big story is activist investor Independent Franchise Partners has purchased a 3.01% interest in the stock… No one invests to lose money. People only invest to make money! They need a return on their cash. This is one of the reasons Merck lost control of Hipgnosis. When interest rates were low, the return on publishing assets looked good. But when the market recovered investors wanted a greater return on their money. Was Merck the guy to deliver this? No wonder Blackstone ended up owning the assets… They know better how to deliver a return… Talk is cheap, can you generate revenue, increase the asset value? That’s all that money cares about.
Which is why when you’re considering selling your publishing and/or royalty streams know that you might like the check, but have no illusion that you’re pulling one over on the purchaser. This is their business, money. If they can’t profit, they’re not going to make the deal. Turns out publishing only increases in value in the digital age. So you may have a pile of cash today, but in the long run the purchaser will end up with the revenue and the asset, in the long run they’ll end up with more money. This is their business, money, don’t think you can beat them at it.
This is what happens in a mature business. An influx of money which allows entrepreneurs to cash out and ultimate control by that money. This is not the rough and tumble music business of yore, where the guy with the gold chain around his neck is the final word when it comes to your career…no, that same guy today is wearing a three piece suit and thinking about the people he has to serve more than you.
Just like Live Nation… No individual act has the power of the sponsors. The acts are just the grease for the “flywheel.” Which is why Live Nation can pay so much/overpay for talent.
This myth of the all powerful entertainment executive is just that. It’s from the past. The people running these enterprises today are all sold out to the money. And if not yet, they will eventually. Money has superseded music in the music business. Which may sound counterintuitive, but it’s a fact. There are independent companies out there, and that’s where all the innovation lies, however they’re hobbled by the majors’ ownership of catalogs representing nearly the entire history of recorded music, giving them all the leverage in negotiations.
As for Casey Wasserman… He was no match for the money. Wasserman was gallivanting around, in the news, but he was no match for Providence, a nearly faceless enterprise, most people in Hollywood have no idea who runs the fund. Providence was not going to let its asset go to zero. Do you think Casey Wasserman wanted to sell his agency? Of course not, Providence made him do it. Because it wanted to protect the asset. Sans talent, there’s nothing left. Wasserman might have been a good front person, but everybody’s replaceable.
And expect Wasserman to be booted from the Olympic committee too. It’s just that politics works more slowly than money. But politics cares about money too, and the fear is that with Wasserman in charge, revenues will fall, so he’s got to go.
One could say Wasserman was too big for his britches. Or he didn’t know what he didn’t know. You don’t mess with money. And you keep your house clean. It’s one thing if you’re an act doing drugs, screwing up, the label which owns your contract might not like that, but it can survive without you. Then again, if you’re a superstar, they’re going to do everything to get you back on the right path. But if it’s the entire asset… Was Providence going to sit by and watch all the talent leave? No, it had to stanch the bleeding… Wasserman was expendable, not the talent agency.
So if you want to live the rock and roll lifestyle of yore, drinking and drugging, getting laid, being in TMZ, be my guest. But if you want to play at a higher level, where the money is, you’ve got to keep your house clean, especially in today’s world where there are cameras everywhere and so much information comes out. The Epstein files were just the straw that broke Wasserman’s back… It was the womanizing detailed in the “Daily Mail” article before that that truly ignited the fire, the Epstein files just turned it into a conflagration.
Mind your p’s and q’s if you want to survive at the top level.
And know that if you take the money…you’re serving the money, no matter what you think.
I love the internet. After listening to my “Back Where I Come From” playlist six or seven times in a row (I can do that, actually I love to do that, to find a song I like so much that I can play it ad infinitum, locking into a mental groove, just me and my music, making me happy) I decided to delve into Jimmy Buffett’s catalog. His best and most poignant song, albeit with a sense of humor, is ” A Pirate Looks at Forty,” but I was looking for something a bit more upbeat, so I played “Son of a Son of a Sailor.” And then Spotify presented me with a playlist, “Country Rock Classics.”
The problem with these classic playlists is there’s no discovery, you know the songs already, so I don’t find them fulfilling. HOWEVER, have you tried the Spotify AI playlist generating feature yet? It’s GENIUS! Far better than the curator constructed stuff and far better than the radio feature because you can put in acts or songs that no algorithm would think go together, never mind a curator believing the same person liked both. Like I put in Chris Stapleton and Luke Bryan, both of whom I adore, but the former is credible and the latter is seen as bro country and a bit of a sellout now that he’s a judge on “American Idol,” but the playlist generated…and it has to think for a while…turned me on to a song that I never knew about that you probably do which is great, “Wagon Wheel,” in this case by Darius Rucker. I said to myself, THIS IS A HIT! And then I did a bit of research and found out it already was! Multiple times! That Ketch Secor had added to a Bob Dylan chorus and… That’s what I discovered via Spotify’s AI generated playlist feature, it’s a breakthrough, no matter how you feel about AI, you should try it out.
ANYWAY, I’m looking at the tracks in the “Country Rock Classics” playlist and it starts with “Amie,” certainly a classic, but I wasn’t in the mood for that, so I scrolled down and that’s when I saw Poco’s “Heart of the Night.”
I knew it was from when Timothy B. was gone, not to mention Richie Furay, never mind Jim Messina, and… I started to wonder, did Rusty Young sing this song? I mean he was never a singer before, but I knew that he was the vocalist on one latter day Poco hit so…
I went to Wikipedia and found out it was Paul Cotton. But that was not the most interesting thing I learned. Turned out that when Timothy B. had exited for the Eagles, Cotton and Young auditioned for ABC as a duo, under the name “The Cotton-Young Band.” And having passed the audition they recorded the album “Legend” and the execs liked it so much that they canned the planned live album with Timothy B., a coda to Poco’s career, and decided to release this new project under the name Poco. Which turned two studio musicians, Steve Chapman and Charlie Harrison, into members of the new band.
I DIDN’T KNOW THAT!
Nor did I know that the sax was played by Phil Kenzie, since I never owned the album and therefore never read the credits. And I knew Kenzie played on that second Cretones album, but doing a bit of research on the chairlift I found out he was the one who played the sax on Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat” and he was ENGLISH!
Now the amazing thing is after ten previous LPs, seven on Epic and three on ABC, after songs that were dorm room classics, heard on FM now and then, when all the original core members other than Young were gone, Poco had a HIT!
Believe me, it was a surprise.
“In the heart of the night
In the cool southern rain
There’s a full moon in sight
Shining down on the Pontchartrain”
I liked “Heart of the Night” from the first time I heard it, always made me smile when I heart it on the radio, driving in my car I’d turn it up.
And there are great changes, and that indelible sax solo, but I’ve got to say what made the song stand out for me was the use of “Pontchartrain,” how it was sung with emphasis, a word that you’d think could never be worked into a song. In an era when unless you’d been to New Orleans, chances were you didn’t know where or what it was… As for me, I knew it was a river or lake down there somewhere, but my vision was hazy, I didn’t make it to N.O. until this century.
So Paul Coton was recruited from the Illinois Speed Press to fill the hole Jim Messina left in Poco. And that was when the band went into the wilderness, they had hard core fans, the music was good (listen to the two CD package “The Forgotten Trail,” it will blow your mind), but listeners were dwindling.
And then came “Heart of the Night.”
I’m listening after reading that it was Paul Cotton on vocals, and that he’d written it, and then it occurs to me that Paul Cotton is dead, he doesn’t realize how much I’m enjoying listening to his song, that it has lasted.
Furthermore, Rusty Young has passed too. That made a bigger news splash, but the two of them and their latter-day Poco have not been embraced by the younger generations, at least not to my knowledge, and then…
I realize “Heart of the Night” was a hit in 1979! And that Cotton and Young basked in their breakthrough for forty years before they passed, both in 2021 (and that’s weird).
So maybe you remember or maybe you don’t, but one thing is for sure, the song remains, and it’s the same. And it evokes a feeling… Not one readily found in today’s music…the Spotify Top 50 is all flash, too often melodyless, and if you’re not streaming a ton of product you can’t afford to create a pristine recording on a par with “Heart of the Night.”
Still, there’s music that is not made for dancing, that is not background, just grease for everyday living. There are tracks that change your thinking, put you in a mood, make you reflect, think about life…
