| Music has always been the channel for the common man or woman against the system. |
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Khruangbin (from left: Mark Speer, Laura Lee, Donald "DJ" Johnson) at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, Sept. 3, 2021.
(Erika Goldring/Getty Images)
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“Music has always been the channel for the common man or woman against the system.”
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All Alone in the Moonlight
Like FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM and WHATSAPP, I was down for some time on Monday—unlike them, my downtime was planned—so this will be short today. I'll use my allotted time to point you to this delicious dive by ADAM GOPNIK into the musical CATS (not, perish the thought, the movie), which was inspired by the recent revelation that its songs served as catnip for DONALD TRUMP. Gopnik's piece is about a number of things but mostly about how a healthy human actress, BETTY BUCKLEY, learned to sing in the voice of a decrepit, dying cat, and how the actress, no fan of the former president, nonetheless understands the particular appeal of her show-stopping number ("Its only function is to stop the show! If you don’t stop the show, you haven’t done the song") to that particular fan of this particular corner of musical theater. It's a show-stopping essay about great (and not so great) theater, and songs and how they're sung, with a guest lesson from a well known (and now disgraced) Spanish tenor. One day, maybe next time I have some down time, I'll tell you about my traumatizing evening at the Broadway show, which I did not, and still do not, understand.
Dot Dot Dot
PANDORA is shuttering music analytics pioneer NEXT BIG SOUND, which it bought in 2015. Many of Next Big Sound's tools have been integrated into Pandora's AMP platform but the company says it will discontinue its social-driven Pandora Predictions chart (while helpfully suggesting other companies who collect similar data)... SXSW, threatened first by a pandemic and now by Texas politics, says it will remain in Austin in 2022... Yes, KACEY MUSGRAVES really was... A dozen ways to digitally play the same song.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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The Guardian |
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| ‘Odds are against you’: the problem with the music streaming boom |
| by Mark Sweney |
| As dust from the gold rush settles, big record companies and elite artists emerge firmly on top. |
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The New Yorker |
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| How to Explain Trump’s Love for the Musical 'Cats' |
| by Adam Gopnik |
| To unlock this mystery, we went straight to the source: Betty Buckley, the actress who sang “Memory” in the original New York production of “Cats.” |
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NME |
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| Many artists can’t afford to tour Spain as Brexit touring fiasco rolls on |
| by Andrew Trendell |
| Figures from the music industry tell us how new Brexit visa rules in Spain mean that many UK artists can no longer afford to play there. |
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Music Business Worldwide |
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| Imagine if the government gave record labels over $5m a year to spend on A&R. In Italy, it’s already happening |
| by Tim Ingham |
| Local labels can claim nearly a million dollars of tax relief across three year period. |
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The FADER |
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| J Balvin on battling COVID and mental health issues to create his most personal work so far |
| by Mark Ronson and J Balvin |
| From his humble roots in Medellín as a fearless kid making reggaetón mixtapes, he's majorly responsible for changing the sound of pop music. |
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Slate |
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| Country Music Needs Mickey Guyton More Than She Needs Country Music |
| by Carl Wilson |
| Mickey Guyton’s overdue debut is a scorching reclamation of a genre. |
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Billboard |
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| Warner Music Artists Will Soon Be Direct-Texting Their Biggest Fans |
| by Chris Eggertsen |
| Warner Music is the first major music company to enter a deal with Community, joining brands like People Magazine, The Shade Room, Slutty Vegan and more in adopting the service. |
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The Tennessean |
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| Olivia Rodrigo exorcises heartbreak, skewers social media in essential 'ACL' performance |
| by Deborah Sengupta Stith |
| Halfway through a tight nine-song set that covered the bulk of her chart-topping hits, Olivia Rodrigo made a startling revelation: For the first time in "Austin City Limits" history, the 47-year-old television show was hosting an all-female band. |
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Trapital |
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| Fans and Influencers Bankrolling Artists Directly |
| by Dan Runcie |
| What if middleweight boxer Canelo Alvarez invested in a Mexican hip-hop artist who will perform alongside him as he enters the ring for his next prize fight? What if LeBron James starts a record label and features that artist’s music in any upcoming SpringHill Entertainment projects? |
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The Trichordist |
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| Say No to the Stockholm Syndrome: Is an Artist Strike Coming for Streaming? |
| And how would that work? |
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BuzzFeed News |
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| Kidz Bop Has Topped The Charts For 20 Years. How Did That Happen? |
| by Jessica M. Goldstein |
| A couple of dads with a 1-800 number and a hunch somehow became a dominant force in children’s entertainment. |
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Hollywood Reporter |
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| ‘Britney vs Spears’ Director on Why She Plans to Stay With Pop Star’s Story 'For the Rest of My Life' |
| by Chris Gardner |
| Filmmaker Erin Lee Carr and producer Sarah Gibson talk about leading with empathy, critics who say they exploited Britney's story for profit and a "shocking" new project about a new subject. |
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Pitchfork |
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| The 200 Most Important Artists of Pitchfork’s First 25 Years |
| by Madison Bloom, Lane Brown, Ryan Dombal... |
| From Bon Iver to J Dilla to Beyoncé, these are the musicians who made the biggest impact across Pitchfork’s lifetime so far. |
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Refinery29 |
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| R&B en Español Is on the Rise, but Who Gets to Have Visibility? |
| by Jennifer Mota |
| R&B en Español is dominating the Latin American music industry. But, yet again, a Black-rooted genre in the Latin music industry still has few visible mainstream Black artists. |
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Billboard |
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| Public Radio Experiments With ‘Urban Alternative’ Format to Reach Younger Listeners |
| by Steve Knopper |
| Seven years ago, Jordan Lee of 88Nine Radio Milwaukee started working on a problem: Although the public-radio station played tons of music by young Black and Latino artists, it was mostly older white listeners who were tuning in. |
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Mixmag |
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| Fuelled by freedom: Nightmares On Wax has made the soulful soundtrack to a reopening world |
| by Ralph Moore |
| Ralph Moore flew to Ibiza to meet George Evelyn in his natural habitat to talk soundsystem culture, the impact of a cancer scare, and why his latest LP may be his best yet. |
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The Guardian |
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| A broken record: why music TV deserves more than Jools Holland |
| by Phil Harrison |
| In 2021, the 63-year-old is still the nation’s pop gatekeeper. Why won’t broadcasters give viewers what they want, rather than yet another tedious episode of Later…? |
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Fifteen Questions |
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| Michael Rother about Production, Technology and Dreaming |
| "I appreciate the absence of music a lot." |
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| Music of the day |
| "Social Media" |
| Abstract Mindstate |
| "That social media feedin' ya 'til we greedier." From "Dreams Still Inspire," out now on YZY SND. |
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YouTube |
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"That social media feedin' ya 'til we greedier." From "Dreams Still Inspire," out now on YZY SND.
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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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