Record Profits, Empty Pockets, and 5 Songs That Don’t Suck
Picture a gold record on the wall. Ten million albums sold. Now picture the artist whose face is on that album filing for bankruptcy in the same year. That’s not a hypothetical, that’s TLC in 1995, and it’s the same math the music industry is still running today, just with better PR.
This week the RIAA dropped its mid-year numbers: six billion dollars in US recorded music revenue for the first half of 2026, up 6.9%. Streaming, vinyl, sync licensing, even CDs, somehow, all up. The chairman called it a “healthy, diversified marketplace.” Meanwhile, ninety-eight musicians from the Cleveland Orchestra stood outside Severance Hall and voted unanimously to authorize a strike, because next season’s contract has them taking home less money while healthcare costs climb and unfilled vacancies pile injuries onto the players who are left.
Here’s the thing nobody’s press release says out loud: an industry can grow and the people making the music can still get squeezed, and those aren’t contradictory facts. Wholesale revenue measures money moving through the system, not where it lands once it’s inside. The independent sector has been losing market share even in growth years, which means the money is concentrating, not spreading. And there’s a whole trade-press cottage industry now writing about merch becoming “the primary buffer,” which is just a fancy way of saying touring musicians can’t survive on the music itself anymore.
Lisa Lopes could’ve told you this with a bankruptcy filing in her hand thirty years ago. The gap between “the industry is thriving” and “artists are thriving” has never been the same sentence, and it never closes on its own. Somebody has to force it. That’s what a strike vote outside a concert hall actually is.
The Songs
Brian Fallon opens things up with “Not Bad for New Jersey,” the title track off his new solo record, and if you know the Gaslight Anthem frontman’s voice, you already know where this is headed: Springsteen energy filtered through a heavier Tom Petty pocket, with drums that channel Liberty DeVito. It’s a love letter to a state that catches as many jokes as it does strays, and it kicks all the way through.
Ghost Funk Orchestra’s “Yours” is the left turn of the week, a soul-soaked, lounge-lit slow burn that sounds like it should be scoring a Bond film from a smokier timeline. Hammond organ, fuzzed-out guitars, horns, strings, vocals that stop you mid-sentence. In a sea of red-dot nothing, this one’s bright blue.
The Dirty Guv’nahs bring “For the Money,” a straight-up American rock and roll track with a message that fits the week’s theme better than planned: don’t do it for the fame, do it for the love. Strong harmonies, a hook that sticks, a little folky Americana dust on top.
“May Queen” from The Joy Hotel is a seven-piece band doing six-part harmonies in a psychedelic-tinged indie rock package, part ’60s throwback, part modern noise. The way the vocals volley back and forth like a conversation is the detail that makes it stand out from everything else in the rotation this week.
And The Bites close it out with “Dancing With the Devil,” a genuine curveball ahead of their new album. Guitarist Jono stretches into Royal Blood territory, a long way from the Sunset Strip box people usually put this band in, but it’s built for singalongs live and it works.
Go support these artists. Buy the record, hit the merch table, whatever you can do. The gas money matters more than the headline number ever will.
