New Billboard / Rolling Stone Partnership & Paywall is Troubling
The media landscape in music just got a lot more cloistered, oligarchical, and insular. Announced recently, Rolling Stone‘s parent company Penske Media Corp. (or PMC) has entered into a joint venture with Billboard’s parent company called MRC to bring the two biggest music media companies together under the same roof.
Named PMRC (Ironically, the same acronym for the 1st Amendment-challenging music censorship entity that resulted in explicit lyrics stickers on music in the 90’s), the media group will also include music outlets Vibe, Music Business Worldwide, as well as entertainment outlets Variety, Deadline, and The Hollywood Reporter, along with other media brands. In other words, two huge multi-platform media companies have just become one big multi-platform media company at a time when independent music media is failing left and right.
Under the new arrangement, Penske Media Corp. (the Rolling Stone parent) will lead daily operations for the mega media company’s print and multimedia empire, while MRC will lead an effort to use its content production assets to “develop new content and business opportunities” on the live and entertainment media side. Along with all the other assets brought under the umbrella of this partnership, MRC owns Dick Clark Productions, which is behind country music’s ACM Awards, as well as the American Music Awards, and the Billboard Music Awards. The MRC production company also develops movie and television franchises such as War Dogs and House of Cards.
The deal is being compared to the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which immediately limited the choice and options for both American consumers and music creators, and continues to create strain throughout the live music space as the mega company forwards an aggressive agenda of acquiring local assets to bring them under their international control. Though details of the deal are not confirmed and the two companies are quick to point out they’re not officially merging, only partnering, with Penske (Rolling Stone) taking a rumored 80% ownership in the new entity that will control Billboard, it doesn’t look good for the future of music journalism.
The concern is similar for the movie and visual entertainment industry, since competing outlets Variety, Deadline, and The Hollywood Reporter will all be brought under the same power structure. Even more troubling, since the new partnership also includes a production arm, it means the media monopoly will also be reporting on entertainment products the company creates, similar to the concerns raised with major music label Warner Music Group owning the music outlets Uproxx, HipHopDX, and IMGN Media.
Billboard has always been seen more as the music industry leader, with its coverage focused around its industry-leading charts and the stories and narratives they spawn. Meanwhile Rolling Stone is seen as the cultural leader with their coverage veering into politics and pop culture. Together, they can and will monopolize the market on popular music coverage.
The announcement comes after Rolling Stone launched its own set of charts in 2019 to compete with Billboard’s charts. Billboard also began putting its charts and other select coverage behind a paywall in 2019. Here recently, Rolling Stone has also instituted a paywall, including for many of the articles on its subdomain Rolling Stone Country. So not only is music coverage continuing to be placed in the hands of a select few entities, access to this information is being restricted more than ever in the internet age except for those paying into the subscription base of these massive corporations.
Major music media companies working together as opposed to competing with each other means less choice in the market for consumers looking to read and learn about music, and creators who look to media outlets to help get their music to the public. But it also means less accountability in the marketplace as one big partnership commands the biggest bullhorn by far in the music media space at a time when trust in media is falling, and misinformation is on the rise.
October 6, 2020 @ 12:13 pm
That’s why we’re counting on you Trigger, to keep us informed of good talent, both old & new.
October 6, 2020 @ 2:20 pm
Trigger, are you going to cover the assault of the Mavericks trumpet player Lorenzo Molina Ruiz? As of now it’s being described as an assault for speaking Spanish.
October 6, 2020 @ 4:10 pm
I am actively investigating the incident. As soon as I have information directly from the sources, I will try and get something posted.
October 6, 2020 @ 4:22 pm
Thank you sir….
October 6, 2020 @ 2:55 pm
The more things change, the more they stay the same. This is why I always say music died with the repeal of the Telecommunications Act in 1996.
October 7, 2020 @ 10:12 am
Music died when they appended the word business to the end of it…
October 6, 2020 @ 4:11 pm
I wonder if Roger Penske actually knows what’s going on or are they just using his money and name clout? He’s a pretty successful and savvy business man who is quite innovative.
As an aside, but related, I was just reading this, again- i say again, because I’ve read it prior to today in the past year or so- I guess “pocket’ was having a slow day.
Who Killed the Great American Cable-TV Bundle?
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/who-killed-the-great-american-cable-tv-bundle?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Who killed who? Follow the money, see the agenda- it ain’t rocket science. Same as what’s happening in everything we hold near and dear, i.e. entertainment and every other aspect of our lives- it’s now being referred to as Artificial Intelligence and is nothing more than an excuse for the not so intelligent to fuck with peoples lives- the real *Artificial* Intelligence is in the halls of congress and board rooms-
I had this Artificial Intelligence conversation with and Assistant Manager at Walmart last week (she seemed pretty bright and very kind)- I asked her, who in their right mind wouldn’t have a Walmart, in Spring, Tx not stock “Simply Watermelon” drinks? She had no idea, bless her heart.
The answer: Artificial Intelligence – and it began in the late 80’s with Cable Co’s doing demographic studies from Colorado for places like Spring, Tx and determined that the “Starz” movie channel would be a great fit as long as Country Music Television was removed- in Spring fucking Texas! I went to their office and, along with many others there cancelled my subscription that I had paid for 6 mos in advance- it took me most a year to the day to get my money back-
That, my music loving friends, is what y’all will be putting up with long after I’m gone.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
October 19, 2020 @ 3:56 am
This is owned by Jay Penske, Roger’s son. There’s not much Roger can do about it.
October 6, 2020 @ 5:28 pm
Rolling Stone has sucked giant balls for the last 20 years. Let these giant mainstream companies merge. People will just flock more and more to independent entities like SCM. If RS produced content worth reading they would have a better advertising base, instead they need to charge people to read their drivel. Just keep doing what you’re doing.
BTW: Wasn’t George Costanza in charge of the Penske file? Now we know what happened.
October 6, 2020 @ 8:23 pm
The Billboard executives were angry that day.
Like a Big Machine exec rejecting a demo b/c it had “too much fiddle”
Jerry : What’s the deal with the Paywall? Everybody knows we aren’t going to pay for it. We refresh and refresh and screenshot what we can – then we try to decipher half the article like a message in the bottle.
A paywall, its almost like they don’t want us reading anything from their website.
Mission accomplished!!!
Thank you, remember to tip your Zoom host. I’m here all week
October 6, 2020 @ 7:36 pm
Hard to imagine the world of already suspect corporate media posing as one-sided culture war commentators becoming even more insular, phony, and out or touch…but here you go.
October 6, 2020 @ 8:07 pm
Whatever happened to Roughstock website ran by Matt Bjorke?
It’s still around but it doesn’t feature half the insight on digital and physical sales that it used to..
Ever since the virus, Matt stopped posting sale numbers.. Is that information not accessible due to the pandemic? If so, it truly doesn’t make sense. I assume the music industry (strictly at digital sales) have boomed from the virus with people bored with nothing else to do but discover and stream new music
October 7, 2020 @ 3:56 am
Deals like this allow more money to be thrown at refining the AI for algorithmic journalism. News writers have about 5 more years at best before their jobs are assimilated by the truly Big Machine.
Beep, bop, boop, bop, bitches. You’d best be learning some binary code.
Saving Country Music? Saving John Connor might be the better cause at this point.
October 7, 2020 @ 4:05 am
If the content is good, I don’t mind a reasonable paywall. We used to pay for newspapers, so we still should support good journalism.
I support Wired, and Wikipedia and a couple of others. If Trig asked for financial support, Id be there (i bought the Boomswagglers album, so should you).
Having said that, neither was a site I was interested in. And if anyone wants to be an alternative news source than social media, good on them.
Speaking of Wired, they just posted an interview with Dolly Parton that is kind of cute
October 7, 2020 @ 6:22 am
Wired used to be a great mag until every other article had a political agenda. So tired of that stuff. Why cant we go back to music, movies, websites and magazines that allowed us to escape from the madness instead of shoving it constantly in our faces?
Rolling Stone magazine is such a farce. It sells itself as some type of anti-establishment oracle of music, politics and fashion yet is really nothing more than a glossy cover pamphlet for corporate greed.
It’s the PTL Club of pop music and Jan Wenner is Jim Baker.
October 7, 2020 @ 1:21 pm
Yeah, Wired has gone downhill, but still better than a lot. And i figure we can’t complain unless we make it profitable for them to be quality.
My point was more for paywalls in general, as for rolling stone, they would have to pay me to read it.
October 11, 2020 @ 12:27 am
I wonder whether most of us will actually notice any difference. Rolling Stone has lost its way and become more political than music. Billboard for its charts – does anyone pay much attention anymore? Have they and similar magazines not become almost irrelevant because of the internet? For finding out about music there are better sources for information such as ‘saving country’ and there are others dealing with the ‘Nashville Country’.