We got TuneCore and Twitter. That’s all you need. | | | | Wait, what if rock isn't dead? The Regrettes at the Masquerade in Atlanta, June 17, 2017.
(Paul R. Giunta/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “We got TuneCore and Twitter. That’s all you need.”
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| | rantnrave:// Beyond the usual (and always welcome) examinations of poster font sizes and of the differences between the politics of the businessman who owns the festival and most of the artists who'll be performing, the reactions to this week's COACHELLA lineup announcement basically ran the gamut from "Where the f*** are all the bands!?" (god bless your rock and roll heart, LOUIS TOMLINSON), to rock bands can't fill a polo field anymore, to "rock isn't dead, it's just chilling in the fine print," to the simple observation that Coachella hasn't been a rock festival for a long time. Nor has it needed to be a rock festival. If you could get BEYONCÉ as your headliner, why would you look anywhere else? (No disrespect, at all, to her fellow bill-toppers MARSHALL MATHERS and ABEL TESFAYE.) Coachella is a pop-culture party in the 21st century desert and rock is a pop-culture remnant of the 20th century. Which doesn't mean there aren't still good bands making good rock and roll. There are, as Coachella undercard acts ST. VINCENT, ALVVAYS, BIG THIEF, ANGEL OLSEN, SNAIL MAIL and FIDLAR can all attest to. And this isn't exactly the first time rock has been proclaimed moribund. There was Feb. 3, 1959, the official Day the Music Died. There were grumpy old men asking "Is Rock Dead or Just Beat?" in 1979 (disclaimer: I have no idea how old the WASHINGTON POST's BRAD CHASE was in 1979; the grumpiness is self-evident). There was MARILYN MANSON proclaiming its death in 1998. It's one of rock's favorite themes. But another couple decades down the line, rock reads more like source code and background for hip-hop and pop and country and whatnot than like a cultural force of its own. Not breaking news, I know. And yet rock's spirit persists. And another true believer is born every minute. And some of them are really, really good. So we'll keep asking the same question. MusicSET: "Rock: Dead or Nah?"... SPOTIFY has quietly filed for its public listing on the NYSE, while being loudly sued by WIXEN MUSIC PUBLISHING, whose catalog includes TOM PETTY, the BLACK KEYS and MISSY ELLIOTT, for allegedly not licensing their music properly. The suit was filed before the new year to beat a deadline that could be imposed by the contentious Music Modernization Act recently introduced in Congress. It seeks $1.6 billion. Tweet of the week, from noted Spotify critic DAVID LOWERY, who settled a class-action suit against Spotify last year for a tad bit less than that: "Now I look reasonable"... Are labels labeling projects mixtapes instead of albums so they can pay producers less? Very curious to see where this leads... RIP TONY CALDER, BETTY JANE WILLIS and HAIRL HENSLEY. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | REDEF |
| Is rock a) dead, b) irrelevant, c) the new jazz, d) frozen in time, e) louder than ever, f) back in black or g) all of the above? Or is it just hiding in plain sight? Make sure you're wearing earplugs, and read on. | | |
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 | Bloomberg |
| Spotify filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange, according to a person familiar with the matter, in the highest-profile test yet of a technique that lets companies list shares without raising money through a traditional stock offering. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Once derided as a bourgeois excess, the saxophone is making a comeback in China. And one northern village is delighted to be playing its part. | | |
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 | MusicAlly |
| Here at Music Ally, we covered a lot of new music/tech startups for the first time in 2017. We've now chosen 20 of them that we think have potential. | | |
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 | The Outline |
| The former *NSYNC singer is the latest pop star to embrace his “authentic” roots. | | |
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 | Smithsonian Magazine |
| Beach Boys singer Mike Love recalls what it was like to be at the Indian locale, which remains a destination for fans of music and meditation. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| On Tuesday, Atlantic Records came under fire after frequent Wiz Khalifa producer E. Dan -- who makes up a third of the production trio ID Labs -- claimed in an interview with BeatStars that the label underpays producers by retitling rappers' albums as "mixtapes," "street albums," or "compilation albums." | | |
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 | Chicago Reader |
| Ian’s Party is a music festival, yes, but it’s run mostly by volunteers-which helps it feel like a community, not a branding exercise. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| How the singer left the girl group Fifth Harmony and found a chart-topping sound with an ode to her immigrant past. | | |
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 | NPR |
| Just before New Year's Eve a music publishing company filed a suit seeking $1.6 billion in damages from the company. A new bill in Congress was the reason the plaintiffs went ahead. | | |
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 | UPROXX |
| Anyone complaining about the lack of rock bands probably hasn’t been to the festival in recent years. | | |
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| Billboard |
| Plus: Overall music consumption up 12.5%, on-demand streams climb 43% & Taylor Swift’s “Reputation” is year’s top-selling album. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Before Ella Mai turned to Instagram, she didn't think her music would ever reach anyone. It was the summer of 2015 and the singer-songwriter was studying at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute when a light bulb went off: "I literally had an epiphany. Like, 'What am I really doing?" | | |
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 | CNBC |
| Panos A. Panay, Berklee College of Music, explains how smart minds are figuring out ways to use blockchain's technology to enhance music attribution. | | |
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 | Vox |
| Big Freedia explains where "Lemon" got its bounce from. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| You can hardly blame Lorde for getting in a diplomatic brouhaha, celebrity singers are too young and too busy to be political sages. So here’s a cheat sheet. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Igor Levit, known for bringing together music old and new - and for his outspoken political views - has been given the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award. | | |
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 | V Magazine |
| In conversation with friend Sarah Jessica Parker, Sam Smith ruminates on his evolving sound and refreshingly honest yet hopeful mind-set right now. | | |
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 | Trench |
| Something of an underground king since at least early 2012, when his banging “Rage” hit the streets of his Walworth Road ends, Suspect has delivered vivid tales of the trap with real craft, injecting some much-needed lyricism to the somewhat saturated arena. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| The jazz drummer Phil Young turned seventy last year. He still plays every Thursday, at the Lenox Saphire, in Harlem, from seven until eleven, at an event he calls "The Gathering of the Harlem Hip." "Music has a very healing energy," he tells the filmmakers Jay Dockendorf and Kenny Sule in this short film. | | |
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