#3 - Chaleur humaine 🌞

LA: 🌅 6:29 AM PST | ☀️ High of 101° | 🌇 7:15 PM PST

NYC: 🌅 6:26 AM EST | ⛅ High of 86° | 🌇 7:23 PM EST

Welcome to our weekly roundup of happenings in the music industry. Here's what we have queued up this week:

1. 🎹 Song recs for an American Parisian.

2. 🎙️ Christine and the Queens is our featured artist of the week.

3. 📈 Data on royalty rates per stream for different platforms.

4. 💿 Industry quick hits on what's happening in music this week.

5. 🎡 Moon River Music Festival and more live music to look forward to this fall.

Songs from Paris, with love 🎹 

From the Vault 🔙

Donya's Pick

Chris's Pick

Artist of the Week: Christine and the Queens🎙️

At the intersection of gender fluidity and songwriting bilingualism, Héloïse Letissier, better known as Christine and the Queens, continues to push the boundaries on the interlaced identities of person and music.

From Héloïse to Christine

Héloïse, only a name used by his parents, was raised in Nantes, France and grew up with parents that integrated and encouraged strong music, theatre, dance, and literary figures into his life. However, his real coming of age occurred at a tumultuous time, in which Héloïse was experiencing both a post-romantic breakup and an unfulfilled, restrictive experience at university while studying theatre direction. For spiritual and mental relief, he took a trip to London, where he stumbled upon the inspiring stories of drag queens at the now defunct burlesque club, Madame Jojo's. Here, he met "the Queens," whom encouraged Héloïse to unequivocally continue her pursuit of singing. This would ultimately become one of the most pivotal moments in Héloïse's life, shaping the remainder of his career and birthing the persona we now know as Christine and the Queens.

Christine in Character

Héloïse describes Christine initially as a dark character, evidently struggling with both her bisexuality and gender identity while navigating the stirring emotions of difficult relationships and introverted tendencies. From her first live performance in Lyon, to receiving the high praise and critical acclaim of TIME, Forbes, and the French Ministry of Culture, Christine and the Queens is not just a frequently referenced fusion of Bjork and Michael Jackson, but rather, she's a beacon of progressiveness in both synth-pop and social acceptance. It's rare to have one artist conjoin powerful influences from multiple facets of life, but we think she does it most effectively through her multi-national perspective within her albums. If her music is her canvas, then her ability to touch both French and English communities (see "Christine" /"Tilted") is her brush.

Christine's Evolution to Redcar

After Christine's debut album, the next evolution of Christine manifested in her sophomore collection, Chris. The album portrayed a continuum of machismo fluidity, eventually bringing Héloïse full-circle, as Chris performed for RuPaul's Drag Race shortly after the release. Since then, Chris has collaborated with Charli XCX on a couple of Sunlighter favorites ("Gone" and "New Shapes"), and more recently, has been working on his third studio album, Redcar les adorables étoiles, under the new professional sobriquet, "Redcar."

Consider this issue of Sunlighter as a herald of Redcar, which drops in less than 3 weeks. In the meantime, we'll continue to spread Chris's "chaleur humaine" or "human warmth" at Sunlighter.

Data 📈

Royalty, royalty, royalty: As worldwide streaming services continue to grow users and revenue, artists are the lone party receiving diminished returns. Spotify, who recently announced their Q2 2022 earnings, grew their global Monthly Active Users to an all-time-high of 422 million, translating to an equally impressive all-time high total revenue for the quarter. However, Spotify pays just 1/3 of a penny to an artist who receives streams on their platform. That means on Spotify, it would take the artist ~314 streams to just make 1 dollar.

Royalty rates aren't much better across other streaming platforms (see the chart below by Producer Hive), and to make matters worse, Spotify currently accounts for ~1/3 of the streaming market. After record labels take a cut of royalty payments, artists are only left with ~16% of their total royalty payments. Safe to say if you want to make it in the music industry, you need to focus on more than just streaming.

Industry Updates 💿 

Quick Hits:

• Royalty Treatise: A joint proposal submitted to the Copyright Royalty Board suggests that the new streaming royalty rate in the US should be raised to 15.35% for 2023-2027 (big fans of this given the current royalty model explained earlier).

• Ticket Flow: Event organizers who sell tickets on Ticketmaster can now issue NFTs on the Flow blockchain.

• DeeZen: Deezer, a music streaming platform based in Paris, France, is trialing a new yoga and meditation app known as Zen, moving into territory currently dominated by Headspace and Calm (these two own ~70% of the market).

• Not a Thriller: TikTok competitor Triller is being sued by Sony Music for copyright infringement.

• Fair Play for Every Play: Utopia Music is raising €300 Million as part of a Series C funding round to grow their music data processing platform.

Festivals & Tour Announcements 🎡

Moon River Music Festival - September 10-11th in Chattanooga, TN

Originally founded in 2014 by Tennessee-native and singer-songwriter Drew Holcomb, Moon River Music Festival's first four years were held in Drew's hometown of Memphis before moving to its new home of Chattanooga in 2018. This year, the two-day music festival will be returning to Coolidge Park, continuing the heritage of celebrating Tennessee music and culture while showcasing artists across the Americana, folk, and indie genres.

Tour Announcements 🤘

• The 1975 announce At Their Very Best tour, kicking off November 3rd in Connecticut. This follows the announcement of their fifth studio album, Being Funny In A Foreign Language, to be released on October 14th.

• Harry Styles adds more tour dates in Europe, Austin, Chicago, and São Paulo. After waiting hours for his Coachella set and seeing him at Madison Square Garden, we can confirm: Harry knows how to put on a show, and his fandom is unlike any other—bright colors and feather boas galore. 10/10 recommend.

• Jessie Reyez announces The YESSIE Tour, which starts on October 13th in Miami.

• ODESZA is set to wrap The Last Goodbye Tour on October 1st with remaining dates in the Midwest and West Coast.

• Black Pumas announced earlier this month they would be canceling the rest of their tour dates.

We'll Always Have Paris 👏

We're closing the newsletter this week with a fun play on the word "yes."

Lyrical Genius ✍️

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See ya next Sunday and happy Labor Day 😎

Chris and Donya