Jay-Z's new album, "4:44," may be a hit, but the business model behind his music streaming service Tidal is in question; Two leaders of Outfest — the Los Angeles LGBT film festival — discuss how far has event has come and the history of queer cinema in Hollywood; How the New York Times became an outlet for documentary filmmakers.
Jay-Z's new album, '4:44,' is touted as one of his best, but not everyone gets to listen
Rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z's new album, “4:44,” was released on Friday to almost universal acclaim. It was also certified platinum based on streaming and download numbers.
But because it was available exclusively on his streaming platform, Tidal, and to customers of the Sprint phone company, the vast majority of music fans have not been able to hear what is being touted as one of Shawn Carter's greatest albums.
The release deal with Sprint, which acquired a 33% stake in Tidal earlier this year, is similar to that of Jay-Z's last album, “Magna Carta: Holy Grail.” That album was released by Tidal and Samsung, which purchased a million downloads of the album.
“4:44” will be available on other streaming services this week, but its exclusive release made it difficult for music fans to listen. Snoop Dogg took to Instagram to praise the album, but criticized the inability to access the album and admitted to receiving a pirated copy.
Bloomberg business reporter Lucas Shaw joined The Frame to discuss whether Tidal's release strategy make sense in today's music world.
Interview Highlights:
On Tidal’s exclusive business model:
It's everything that's wrong with the exclusive model that was in vogue for a couple of years in music and — with the few exceptions like this — has largely gone away. It didn't work all that well for the services, and artists didn't like it ... because it limits your music to people. I, for example, pay for two different services. It's preposterous that I spend $20 a month on music and I can't get this one album from an artist I really like. So I think more people have really come around to the idea that that's not sustainable.
But Jay-Z's in a particularly unusual position because he is the owner of a music service and he so badly wants it to work. And he has this belief that artists would do better by trying to take ownership of the streaming service, not giving it away to these tech companies like Spotify. The problem is, he's in a privileged position to be able to limit where his music goes in a way that I just don't think a developing artist can do.
On Jay-Z’s original message for Tidal:
The original sin for Jay-Z in trying to sell Tidal to the masses was positioning it as this service of the artist by the artist, the everyman, but then recruited the 15 or 20 most popular artists in the world to be his owners and the beneficiaries from it. And that is so burned into people's minds.
On why major phone companies like Sprint are buying into music subscription services:
You've got all these phone companies — Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T — looking for something, anything, to give them a leg up on the competition ... much like a music service that is more or less the same [as their competitors]. They all offer the same song, they all offer similar features. They need something they make themselves different, whether it's original video or radio.
To hear John Horn's full interview with Lucas Shaw, click on the player above.
New York Times' Op-Docs is an outlet for documentary filmmakers
The New York Times' new online forum, Op-Docs, is giving documentary filmmakers a platform to share original, nonfiction content.
Since its launch six years ago, Op-Docs has helped launched the careers of multiple new documentarians, including University of California-Berkeley journalism student Daphne Matziaraki. Her film, "4.1 Miles," won a 2016 Peabody Award and was also nominated for a 2017 Academy Award in the short documentary film category.
Op-Docs' executive producer Kathleen Lingo said "4.1 Miles" embodies what the forum is all about:
The film is about a Coast Guard captain on the island of Lesbos, who goes from patrolling the water in his sleepy, fishing, tourist village to literally rescuing thousands of people a day. And to see the crisis through his eyes, captured all in one day, is just so immensely powerful and so hard to watch. It's so engaging. So there's definitely something to the power of visual journalism — visual storytelling — and film to make statements on issues that the written word does, but in a different way.
Despite being developed by the New York Times editorial department, the Op-Docs don't express opinions the way their writers might. Lingo says:
Our films are much less directly political, [but] pivoting off the news, the way that our editorial board or columnists do. The Times does so much "newsy" stuff that I think Op-Docs is kind of a break from that. We work with a lot of documentary filmmakers whose names you'd know — like Errol Morris, he's contributing. Laura Poitras has contributed, but also we also try to find voices from first-time filmmakers because when you get new voices in there, you get new points of view that you never even expected to hear.
Although some of the films are sent to the Op-Docs team fresh from the festival circuit, many of the shorts come in a rough-cut stage:
That's really when we like to start working with filmmakers, because the same way an op-ed writer works with an editor to craft an essay, we also work with filmmakers to craft an Op-Doc. So it's really a collaborative process.
Each short film has to meet the New York Times' rigorous accuracy policy before it gets drafted into the fold. Coordinating producer Lindsey Crouse has fact-checked each Op-Doc. That's 244 films, according to Lingo:
I think she might be the first person in the world who has fact-checked a virtual reality film. And fact-checking visual material is also different. I mean, we do look at the scripts and say, Where'd you get this statistic? Is this right? But there's also the issue of looking at what's on screen. Creativity is totally fine, but you've got to be transparent with your audience. So what crosses the line for us is when there is a manipulation of time or sequencing of events in order to make a particular point that we absolutely won't allow.
Much like the paper, there can be a quick turnaround on breaking news Op-Docs:
The fastest turnaround was in response to the Charlie Hebdo attack. We had a filmmaker in Paris reach out to us within a few hours, connecting us to a friend of hers that'd made a documentary on Charlie Hebdo. He had filmed with them the first time they'd drawn Muhammed for the cover of the magazine. So that we turned around in 24 hours.
To hear John Horn's interview with Kathleen Lingo, click on the player above.
Is there still a need for LGBT film festivals like Outfest?
The best picture win for "Moonlight" at this year's Academy Awards marked a milestone. For the first time, a film featuring queer black characters took home cinema's highest honor.
But, maybe not surprisingly, that doesn't mean it's become magically easier to get an LGBTQ-themed film made.
One film festival dedicated to changing that is L.A.'s Outfest. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the festival, which gets underway on July 6.
While a lot of progress has been made since the festival first started on the UCLA campus in 1982, Outfest's executive director, Christopher Racster, says the need for Outfest and other queer film festivals hasn't gone away.
"Sadly, we're facing a lot of the same issues today that caused people to come together and begin Outfest in 1982," Racster says. "There is a lack of representation, there's a lack of affirming representation, and not everybody has access to these stories."
Racster and
, film reviews editor for The Wrap and a senior programmer for Outfest, joined The Frame's John Horn to talk about Outfest's origins and the current state of queer cinema.
Interview highlights:
On the state of gay film back in the early 1980s when Outfest was just getting started:
Alonso Duralde: There was a flirtation of big studios trying to tell these stories. That’s when you wind up with movies like "Cruising" and "Partners," which were not exactly highlights of the genre. There were outliers trying to get these movies made, but there were not organizations backing them up, there were no production entities that were particularly interested in making them. And there certainly wasn’t the theatrical distribution … There wasn’t streaming, there wasn’t DVD. You really had to find these urban, niche markets wherever they existed.
On the continuing need for queer film festivals like Outfest:
Racster: Outfest serves a very particular purpose for our community. We are one part art, one part activism, and — equally, and maybe more importantly — we are about community ... creating a safe, inclusive, affirming environment where you can come together and watch a story reflective of your experience with 600, 1,000, 2,000 people that understand what the LGBTQ population faces. There is nothing like experiencing that together and the debate, the discussion, the affirmation that comes out of it. Obviously, we want these films to be seen. Obviously, we want straight audiences, other audiences to see them and get out there. But there will always be a role for a queer film festival, there will always be a role to bring people together, celebrate our stories, and celebrate each other.
On distributors and production companies that were early pioneers of queer cinema:
Duralde: I think Sam Goldwyn early on with films like "Longtime Companion." The early years of Strand Releasing, who are still a juggernaut in arthouse and indie cinema, helped get "The Living End" made, which was one of Marcus Hu’s first [producing] credits. And then obviously things started turning around in the early '90s, when you had the new queer cinema. One year at Sundance you’ve got "Poison" winning the Jury Prize, and "Paris is Burning" winning the Documentary Jury Prize. That set off this mini-wave of [filmmakers like] Gus Van Sant and Cheryl Dunye, and slowly but surely Zeitgeist and Miramax and other companies like that started getting interested. And once there was money to be made, a lot more of those indies in the mid-'90s started trying to make more mainstream but still queer inclusive comedies and dramas for a larger audience.
On the success of "Moonlight" and the continuing struggle to get LGBTQ films made:
Racster: There was an article that just came out in Vanity Fair focusing on Barry Jenkins and "Moonlight," that interviewed queer filmmakers across the spectrum. People we feel are very successful, whether it is a Jamie Babbitt or a Cheryl Dunye … they still struggle and fight every day in the entertainment industry to be seen, to be heard, to get their projects green-lit. Even when we have a critical and popular success, such as "Transparent," oftentimes the industry is going to say, Great! We’ve got our trans story. Next! Almost a quota. So the struggle is still there.
To hear the full interview, click the blue play button above.