Guests purchase tickets for $10, or can pay $80 for a private room to party alongside Instagram-famous DJs and burlesque dancers. There is ostensibly a dress code. On a recent weekend, the party is full of European models and bearded men in fedoras, dancing along to Macarena. | | | | Remembrance of Coachellas past: SZA on the main stage, April 13, 2018.
(Larry Busacca/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “Guests purchase tickets for $10, or can pay $80 for a private room to party alongside Instagram-famous DJs and burlesque dancers. There is ostensibly a dress code. On a recent weekend, the party is full of European models and bearded men in fedoras, dancing along to Macarena.”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// This one goes out to the writers and editors laid off Tuesday from BILLBOARD, the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER and VIBE, to all the non-newsroom employees furloughed by the LOS ANGELES TIMES, to all my other media peers who have lost jobs or work in the past month, and to everyone else still holding on. This newsletter is entirely dependent on your work, and over the years I've come to feel like friends even with those of you I've never met. Your work is my oxygen. Subscribe to their newspapers, magazines and websites, people. Support the arts and culture media any way you can. These aren't the best of times for the media in general, and they're especially bleak in the arts sector. Through these last couple months of worldwide trauma—and no doubt its own business trauma—Billboard in particular has done a tireless job of chronicling the pandemic's effect on the music business. How are metal or Latin or blues acts weathering the storm? Or emerging artists? What about the touring industry's gig economy? Or ticketing companies? Or Seattle? Or Nashville? Or festivals? That's all in a few weeks' work from Billboard. The last couple of links, at least, are by reporters who lost their jobs Tuesday. The magazine is also, of course, charting the WEEKND's dominant spring on those pop charts you might peek at every now and then. The work of these reporters, editors, podcasters and videographers is especially crucial in the midst of a crisis with a growing death toll and with an economic impact on nearly every aspect of the business. There are fewer of them now, and that's a loss not just for the media, but for music itself... Speaking of Billboard, a survey (paywall) by its sister company MRC DATA finds that 59 percent of Americans would be willing to attend a live entertainment event "within two months after the pandemic ends or a vaccine or treatment becomes available," while 2 percent say they will "never again" do so. It may be a while before many of them have a choice, though. California GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM, the first governor to issue a statewide shelter-in-place order, said Tuesday that even when the order is eventually lifted, "The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best until we get to herd immunity and we get to a vaccine. So large-scale events that bring in hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of strangers... is not in the cards based upon our current guidelines and current expectations"... Seven dance-music feature films and docs for the stay-at-home set, as recommended by NILS NEUHAUS of ELECTRONIC BEATS... Teens are using a JASON DERULO song to come out on TIKTOK... Why is bad music good for running?... RIP JIMMY WEBB, RYO KAWASAKI, ALBERT K. WEBSTER, BRUNI PAGAN an ART DUDLEY. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | | | | | jimmie brown, the newsboy | |  | Bloomberg | | Can a novelty for the bored-at-home last after the coronavirus pandemic? | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | “If I can get the latest Yeezys at box price in that kid’s music video, I’m going to watch that video,” says DroppTV CEO Gurps Rai. | | | |  | Pollstar | | Once the domain primarily of gamers, livestreaming platform Twitch has become a refuge for musicians and their fans during the coronavirus crisis, allowing a vast array of artists to perform for – or just hang out with – isolated audiences. It's the culmination of a years-long strategy by the company, which launched in 2011 and was acquired by Amazon in 2014. | | | |  | Pitchfork | | Why we have always turned to darkly funny music during epidemics. | | | |  | Hypebeast | | The Emmy nominee opens up about the new season of 'Insecure,' her record label and more. | | | |  | Trapital | | Dreamville President and J. Cole’s manager Ibrahim "Ib" Hamad came on the Trapital Podcast to talk about how him and J. Cole started Dreamville and how it became what it is today. | | | |  | Billboard | | On the latest Pop Shop Podcast, Keith & Katie discuss the rapidly changing album release calendar & why artists choose different paths. | | | |  | The Pudding | | We looked at 19 years of the kid-friendly albums to find out what types of words get the black bar. | | | |  | Complex | | From premiering Drake's "Toosie Slide" to regularly seeing Virgil Abloh and Bella Hadid in the comments, Bia's DJ sets are like a virtual A-list club. | | | |  | I Care If You Listen | | Composer Mary Kouyoumdjian advocates for allowing yourself to take a break from creating original art during periods of grief, mourning, and depression. | | | |  | Music Business Worldwide | | Round Hill Music CEO, Josh Gruss, on the competitive music M&A landscape, and his firm's next big raise. | | | |  | The Independent | | As Iron Maiden’s self-titled debut album turns 40, Ed Power looks back on the musical movement, coined ‘NWOBHM’, that had a decent crack at conquering the world. | | | |  | The Guardian | | In our monthly column, our critics ponder how are listening tastes are changing - and how pop might adapt to a strange new world. | | | | | Billboard | | If you're looking for peace and quiet, the best place to find it right now might be at a Nashville recording studio. | | | | | Rolling Stone | | Debbie Harry, Duff McKagan, Billie Joe Armstrong, and more pay tribute to Trash and Vaudeville manager and “punk rock’s unofficial shopkeeper.” | | | | | Pitchfork | | If all that survived of 20th-century hardcore were Sam McPheeter’s essays, future historians would still have a good idea of the era’s spirit. | | | |  | The Future of What | | As music transitions to a digital-only reality, the teams at Facebook and Instagram are rolling out new products and initiatives to help musicians and fans establish new types of relationships that will work in the new paradigm. In this episode, we revisit a public conversation between Portia Sabin, Perry Bashkoff (Instagram) and Mayola Charles (Facebook) from April 6, 2020. | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | Producer, arranger and songwriter Van Dyke Parks, 77, on working with the late Hal Willner, the upside of isolation and why his best work better be ahead of him. | | | |  | And The Writer Is... | | Today we catch up with a Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum, songwriter and producer. He recently co-wrote Katy Perry’s new single “Never Worn White” as well as “Feel Myself” for Selena Gomez’s new album ‘Rare.' | | | | | Bloomberg | | In the pandemic era, we’re streaming more video - and prime time no longer exists. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | Prince & the New Power Generation | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
