| The things that influence me most in terms of making things are the things that I hear that don't quite succeed, where I listen to them and I think, 'That's a brilliant idea, and if they had done this and that and this other thing, and left that bit out, that would be even better.' |
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Shout it out loud: Big Freedia at Central Park SummerStage, New York, June 13, 2019.
(Jack Vartoogian//Getty Images)
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“The things that influence me most in terms of making things are the things that I hear that don't quite succeed, where I listen to them and I think, 'That's a brilliant idea, and if they had done this and that and this other thing, and left that bit out, that would be even better.'”
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Brand, New
I'm fascinated by this vintage 1980 record-store newspaper ad, which, besides the blatant segregation (it advertises at least five broad genres of music but only one color and one gender of artist), I find notable for the record-company names spelled out prominently beneath every album cover. The desire to brand labels was strong in 1980. RUSH was a MERCURY artist. VAN HALEN was a WARNER BROS. artist. These things mattered. The labels were likely funding the ad, and the artists weren't the only entities they were selling.
In the streaming universe, label brands have become an afterthought at best. In SPOTIFY, their names exist mostly as copyright notices, in small print. They aren't linked. Rush's PERMANENT WAVES isn't even on a label anymore as far as a Spotify user might know. It's on a corporate entity doing business as "The Island Def Jam Music Group Inc." If for some reason a user wanted to know what other artists produced work under contract to that entity, she'd have her work cut out for her. Even a search for a label that's put serious effort into branding, like GRISELDA, is a chore. There's no Griselda landing page in Spotify and no list of Griselda artists. You have to rely on playlists made by other Spotify users.
A new effort by APPLE MUSIC to try to rectify that may prove to be bigger news, at least for a certain segment of music obsessives, than the "spatial audio" and lossless audio features that Apple launched with some fanfare Tuesday for subscribers who have the right equipment (e.g. not me and my SONOS collection). Apple is pushing the spatiality more than the losslessness, and its new label search, which apparently rolled out last month, hardly at all, as Rolling Stone's ETHAN MILLMAN notes. But the music obsessives have been asking for this. If you search for select labels on Apple's desktop app, including majors like DEF JAM and CAPITOL and indies like DEAD OCEANS and XL RECORDINGS, a pleasant surprise awaits. Likewise if you find yourself looking at any album or single on any of those labels.
Apple says it has about 400 pages so far, for what appears to be a somewhat random group of labels. No Griselda, for example, and no INTERSCOPE. And no CACTUS JACK or YSL, even though Apple's ZANE LOWE mentions those two hip-hop labels to Rolling Stone as examples of current brands with loyal followings that people would want to search for. Start using GOOGLE DOCS, Apple people. Get on the same page with each other, and keep building those pages out. It's a good feature, a good discovery tool. Even for albums that aren't available in spatial audio, which most, at present, are not.
Etc Etc Etc
Billboard has a good package on the state of the vinyl industry, with deep dives on why certain albums are getting vinyl pressings and others aren't; the struggle for manufacturers to keep up with demand; green initiatives; vinyl's grey market, and more... BRIAN ENO has a new SONOS radio station, which he's using to share a bounty of his own unreleased material. Eno being Eno, the sequencing is random, "chosen by chance so there is the possibility of odd, I hope exciting collisions," he says... CMT will honor pioneering Black country singer LINDA MARTELL at tonight's CMT AWARDS, which air at 8pm ET on CMT, MTV and select other MTV NETWORKS channels. CMT won't be honoring MORGAN WALLEN, despite Wallen fans funding a billboard campaign around Nashville, same as they did before the ACM AWARDS and the BILLBOARD MUSIC AWARDS... Kudos to music theory YouTuber ADAM NEELY for this video which explains in detail the musical prejudices that led TIKTOK users to harass a young singer for the unconventional harmonies she added to a cover of MATT MALTESE's "AS THE WORLD CAVES IN." As is often the case, what they don't like about her performance says more about them than it does about her.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Billboard |
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| Apple’s Eddy Cue Believes the Future of Music Isn’t Lossless -- It’s Spatial Audio |
| by Micah Singleton |
| Although lossless music has been thought to be the next big thing in the music industry for years, Apple sees it differently, positioning high-fidelity music as a “pro” feature for a limited group of audiophiles who have the proper equipment and talking up Spatial Audio as the great leap forward for consuming music. |
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Complex |
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| Can the ‘Taylor Swift’ Re-Record Model Work in Rap? |
| by Andre Gee |
| Re-recording songs can allow artists to make more money from new masters. It’s working for Taylor Swift. How well can it work for hip-hop artists like Cam’ron? |
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DJ Mag |
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| Sama' Abdulhadi: Palestine's techno champion |
| by Sirin Kale |
| An artist as determined as she is talented, Sama' is fighting for her work to be heard, and for the world to connect with her and her fellow Palestinians. Sirin Kale discovers how Sama' was saved by techno, and how she’s rebuilding her life, and her scene, after a tumultuous time. |
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The New York Times |
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| Meditation Apps Want Us to Chill Out. Musicians Are Happy to Help |
| by Eric Ducker |
| Music and mindfulness have become increasingly linked during the pandemic, and artists like Erykah Badu, Grimes and Arcade Fire are teaming with tech companies to make it happen. |
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XXL |
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| Yo Gotti Interview: Hip-Hop's Next Big Exec Makes Power Moves |
| by Georgette Cline |
| Look no further than Yo Gotti as the plug. He's hustling to find hip-hop's next big talent and distributing their music to the masses through his independent label, CMG, by way of a newly established partnership with Interscope Records. |
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Guitar World |
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| Wolfgang Van Halen: 'Dad would rather people not try and sound like him but sound like themselves. I’m being myself -- I’m not sitting there doing covers of 'Panama'x |
| by Jonny Scaramanga |
| The multi-instrumentalist details the recording of "Mammoth WVH," and explains why making the music he wants to make is the best way to honor his father. |
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Music x |
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| The community-owned rave: event organisers as DAOs |
| by Bas Grasmayer |
| This piece explores the intersection of underground rave culture and Web 3 concepts like decentralized autonomous organisations. |
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Toronto Star |
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| The International Indigenous Music Summit wanted a ‘new, pandemic-centric’ way to showcase the art. So, they sent the artists iPhones |
| by Jonathan Dekel |
| Filmmaker and activist Sarain Fox has a word for the work being presented at International Indigenous Music Summit (IIMS), which takes place virtually in Ottawa this week in the wake of the discovery of a mass grave at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. "It's vital." "It's vital," she repeats. |
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Broken Record |
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| Broken Record: Brian Eno -- The Innovator |
| by Rick Rubin and Brian Eno |
| Rick Rubin talks to Brian Eno about his new radio station through Sonos Radio HD called The Lighthouse, and his love for the musical space that exists between humans and machines. Eno also recalls predicting the birth of hip-hop in the back of a cab with David Bryne, and explains why listening to Beyoncé through a wall is strangely satisfying. |
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The Guardian |
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| ‘This sounds like a human synthesiser’: the evolution of rap, one verse at a time |
| by Joe Muggs |
| A rap tutor and a language expert dissect the various eras of music’s ever-shifting genre, from Beastie Boys to Giggs and Nicki Minaj. |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| After 30 years as Hollywood's coolest film composer, Danny Elfman still has something to prove |
| by Randall Roberts |
| Best known for his groundbreaking film scores for Tim Burton, Danny Elfman gets back to his art-punk roots on his first solo album in over 30 years. |
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Legendize |
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| Ledgendize: DJ Clark Kent |
| by DJ Marley Marl, DJ Callie Ban and DJ Clark Kent |
| Brooklyn's Finest, DJ Clark Kent, joins Marley and Callie in-studio for a deep dive into hip hop history. Listen in as they discuss the rock n roll hall of fame, the iconic sample used in classic records for Junior Mafia, Jeru the Damaja and EPMD, plus the cultivation of hip hop across the globe. |
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Billboard |
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| Inside Hipgnosis’ $2.2B Valuation, NFT Plans and Synch Wins: ‘We Bought Well' |
| by Glenn Peoples |
| Since its IPO in 2018, Hipgnosis has built a $2.2 billion music rights business that generated $138.4 million in net revenue last year, the company revealed in an unaudited financial report. The document has plenty of interesting details ahead of full-year results coming June 29. |
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Trapital |
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| Streaming’s Microwave Era: Music’s Shelf Life is Shorter Than Ever |
| by Dan Runcie |
| Three weeks ago everyone talked about J. Cole’s "The Off-Season," but the moment has now passed even though the album and rollout were praised. |
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The New York Times |
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| Bruised by the Pandemic, Carnegie Hall Plans a Comeback |
| by Javier C. Hernández |
| New York’s premier concert hall hopes a star-studded season will draw virus-wary fans. But there’s still uncertainty. |
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DJ Mag |
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| Inside the fascinating world of reissue labels |
| by Katie Thomas |
| Running a reissue label is a tender, laborious process, with extraordinary stories of finding lost artists and documenting a release’s context. But it’s also a process ripe for misappropriation, and with changing music markets, artists risk being treated unfairly. |
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The Quietus |
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| The Strange World Of… Don Cherry |
| by Jennifer Lucy Allan |
| From pocket trumpet to donso ngoni, sharp suits and jazz clubs to communal utopias, Jennifer Lucy Allan immerses herself in the world of the American trumpet player and composer. |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| 'I'm proud a legend hates me!' Why Liza Minnelli shunned Rufus Wainwright's Judy Garland tribute |
| by Tim Greiving |
| With Renée Zellweger in attendance, Rufus Wainwright performed Judy Garland's immortal 'Live at Carnegie Hall' album with a small ensemble at Capitol Studios. |
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The Telegraph |
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| The man behind the Glastonbury glitch: ‘It was so close to being perfect -- then we got unlucky’ |
| by James Hall |
| Thousands of furious fans were shut out of the festival's live stream. For the first time, the man responsible explains what went wrong. |
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Vulture |
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| Liz Phair on Her Best Songs and Humbly Defining Generations of Indie Rock |
| by Brady Gerber |
| "I was so sure about who was right and who was wrong when I was young. It’s so much more complex than that to me now. I tried to make the music more complex to echo that, to kind of bring in the brain of me now with the sounds and building blocks of me [from] then.” |
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| Music of the day |
| "Judas" |
| Big Freedia |
| Lady Gaga cover from Gaga's "Born This Way Reimagined," out June 18 on Interscope. |
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YouTube |
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Lady Gaga cover from Gaga's "Born This Way Reimagined," out June 18 on Interscope.
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| Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech |
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“REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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| Jason Hirschhorn |
| CEO & Chief Curator |
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