All that [bling] is cool for the image and all that. But I’d rather invest in some real estate. | | | | Mdou Moctar at the Festival D'été de Québec, Quebec City, Canada, July 7, 2019.
(Ollie Millington/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “All that [bling] is cool for the image and all that. But I’d rather invest in some real estate.”
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| | rantnrave:// A tale of three albums: 1) TRAVIS SCOTT's JACKBOYS label compilation is the #1 album in the US this week, thanks in part to tens of thousands of digital copies of the album bundled with Scott merch including hoodies, duffel bags and mirror dice. 2) The original cast album for the ALANIS MORISSETTE musical JAGGED LITTLE PILL hit #2 on BILLBOARD's cast albums chart in December but missed the main albums chart because the digital copies bundled with Broadway tickets for an extra $2 didn't count for official chart purposes. Mirror dice plus album good. Broadway ticket plus album bad. But starting with next week's chart, which means starting with 3) any album released in 2020, the bundling rules are stricter for everybody. If the merch can't be bought without the bundled album, and if the bundled price isn't at least $3.49 more than the unbundled merch (is that the official value of an album in 2020?), then Billboard/Nielsen won't recognize those sales. In American football, a catch isn't legally a catch until the player who makes the catch makes a "football move," which is weird because a) it implies there are moves that football players can make while playing football on a football field that aren't football moves, and b) no one who follows the game can explain what exactly one is. Henceforth in the music biz, adding $3.49 to the price of a t-shirt and turning it into a t-shirt-and-music bundle, while still offering just the t-shirt at the original price, shall constitute a "music move." Everyone will have the rulebook and everyone will find loopholes in the rulebook and by 2021 or 2022 no one will know what's the rule and what's the loophole, what's the mirror dice and what's the music. Billboard this year is also counting YOUTUBE plays, which cost listeners not a penny, on its album chart for the first time. Mirror dice or Broadway ticket plus free album bad. Free spin on YouTube good. Give me another minute and I could defend all of these choices, but I'm not entirely sure I could explain them. Suggestion for the future: Count all bundles. Or count none. I like simple things... This, from the NEW YORK TIMES' JON CARAMANICA, is a really good explanation of how borrowing, appropriation, homage and overlap are an essential part of music creation, and how the growing wave of music plagiarism cases (note to YELLOWCARD: seriously?) is based on a "complete and willful ignorance of how pop music is actually made." I'm probably a little more sympathetic to some of the plaintiffs than Caramanica is, but on this we agree: "Originality is a con." That would be a helpful jury instruction in any plagiarism case. Right on cue, here's KATY PERRY fighting back... RIP MARK DAVID FISHER and NICK BLAGONA. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The Undefeated |
| Pop is still top dawg in Sin City, but that could change soon. | | |
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 | Fast Company |
| Master designer Andy Powers talks with contributor Mark Miller about his unlikely journey--and what guitars need to achieve Steinway Model D-level greatness. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Pop music isn’t made in a vacuum. Copying isn’t always bad. And a new trend pulling more pop stars into courtrooms is a dangerous one. | | |
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 | Esquire |
| The Tuareg rocker's story starts with a guitar made of bicycle cable--and ends with one of 2019's best albums. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Get ready for 12 months of new jams. | | |
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 | Music x Tech x Future |
| Music x climate change, music x geopolitics, music x mission-driven states, music x digital commons, and more. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| The message to the music and investor communities is clear: music assets command a premium over their prices just a few years ago. | | |
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 | Mixmag |
| Now is the summer of our disco content. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| "The Box" isn't the best song on Roddy Ricch's (great) debut album, "Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial" (that would be "God's Eye"). It's also not the most ambitious ("War Baby"), or the obvious hit single single ("High Fashion"). It is, however, the album's biggest hit since its release in early December. | | |
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 | BNN Bloomberg |
| “[Albums] are an excuse to plug the brand - not the band, the brand - into the wall and put the lights up and be able to tour,” he said, “because they’re making a cent per play on the [streaming platforms] and that’s not going to make them a living, unless you’re Drake or Taylor Swift.” | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Once a month, black men come together for The Marathon Book Club - founded to read the books that inspired Nipsey Hussle, who was killed in South L.A. in March. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| NPR Music's Ann Powers and Rodney Carmichael discuss albums they're looking forward to, as well as the artists they're begging to come back. | | |
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 | NME |
| The DJ legend on the year that was, the decade to come, Billie Eilish, the problem with influencers, and how a new generation are taking charge. | | |
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 | Loud And Quiet |
| What does a Mastering Engineer actually do, and how do you become one? | | |
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 | Guitar World |
| Young's influence and contribution to rock music continue to loom large. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Old and young alike are now benefiting from the composer’s home for retired musicians. | | |
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 | Talkhouse |
| Goes Cube’s David Obuchowski reflects on all that "Another Day Has Passed" was (and wasn’t). | | |
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 | Passion of the Weiss |
| Harley Geffner developed a scientific process to determine the objective best leaked tracks from the Atlanta rap legend. | | |
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 | Slate |
| By making these decisions app by app, service by service, it’s hard to see exactly how the military will keep up with a changing technological landscape. | | |
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 | Longreads |
| Deena ElGenaidi considers the ways in which adoring Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine from afar in her teens and early 20s provided a safe outlet for expressing desire. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | Tuareg eruption. Studio version on Moctar's album "Ilana: The Creator," on Sahel Sounds. |
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