The music industry is unpredictable, competitive and turbulent. Job insecurity is rife. There’s a sense that you need to remain outwardly grateful, even if you’re struggling, because there’s always someone hot on your heels who wants your job. | | | | Glam country: Orville Peck at the Dior Men's Fall 2020 Runway After Party, Miami, Dec. 3, 2019.
(Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “The music industry is unpredictable, competitive and turbulent. Job insecurity is rife. There’s a sense that you need to remain outwardly grateful, even if you’re struggling, because there’s always someone hot on your heels who wants your job.”
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| | rantnrave:// "If there's a single on this album, this is it, so I put it first like at MOTOWN." So wrote TODD RUNDGREN at the top of the liner notes to his 1972 double album SOMETHING/ANYTHING. If you think the complaint that nobody cares about albums, only singles, is a new one, or if you think SPOTIFY's to blame for making everyone start their album with the hit, let this be a reminder that this is pretty how it's always been, for better or worse, with maybe a couple brief spells of album-oriented longform freedom over the years. Pop fans—and rock fans and hip-hop fans and country fans—like singles. What exactly a single is, and how exactly we discover them, is changing all the time, and every new format and every new platform contributes to the change, but the basic currency of pop music has been remarkably consistent over the years. Current example: RODDY RICCH's wonderfully weird pop breakthrough "THE BOX" has yet to be officially released as a single, but as ROLLING STONE's CHARLES HOLMES notes here, its placement as the first track on Ricch's debut album that isn't called "INTRO" makes it a de facto single, because that's the track the average pop fan is most likely to come across. I've read a few social media threads lately about how no one listens to albums anymore and how sequencing is a lost art (an evergreen discussion subject if ever there was one), but I'm not sure it's true. Streaming listening stats consistently make it clear that fans start at the beginning of the album and listen straight through until they get bored, which is sometimes after 30 seconds, sometimes after 3 minutes and sometimes after 30 minutes. (And do they get bored quicker than they used to? Or do they just have more options now?) Either way, track 1 will typically get more streams than track 2, which will typically get more streams than track 3. Those stats are users quite literally listening to albums in order. In Ricch's case, his looped vocal squeaks that anchor "The Box" ("sounds like a squeaky windshield wiper," Rolling Stone wrote) are the payoff for anyone who makes it past the album intro. And they're working. TIKTOK is helping too, as TikTok will do. Emphasis track, single, hit, call it what you want. It's a hell of a song, and the fans who want more will use it as a key to open the rest of the album, quite possibly in the same order Ricch sequenced it. Same as it's always been, for better or worse... Twenty-six years before Ricch was born, Rundgren was referring in his cheeky liner note to "I SAW THE LIGHT," his breezy, bubblegummy side 1 track 1, which was *a* single but not, it turned out, *the* single. The real single, the one that became Rundgren's career calling card, was the blue-eyed soul jam lodged way in the back, at side 4 track 4. That one didn't become a hit because 16-year-old pop fans and AM radio programmers made their way through four album sides. It became a hit, presumably, because BEARSVILLE RECORDS put marketing muscle and money behind it. And because it, too, is a hell of a recording. That part hasn't changed either... Go-go moves one vote closer to becoming the "official music of the District of Columbia"... Soul singer CELESTE wins BBC MUSIC's SOUND OF 2020... THE BACHELOR with music. Terrible idea, fantastic idea or both?... Academic paper of the day: "SOUNDCLOUD and BANDCAMP as Alternative Music Platforms"... Just a 17th century church playing BOWIE.
| | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Marker |
| Music mogul Merck Mercuriadis raised hundreds of millions of dollars to buy the rights to hits by Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars. Is he insane? | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| On Jan. 31, French media company Vivendi announced it would be selling a 10% stake in Universal Music to Tencent, underscoring the labyrinthine nature of global media in the digital age. | | |
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 | VICE |
| Fans of acts like Snail Mail and (Sandy) Alex G find community in groups dedicated to meaningless drivel. | | |
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 | Audiophile Review |
| Even in these 21st Century tymes, I still experience format compatibility hassles. It's the sort of teensy tiny nuisance that gets under one's skin to a point where you want to throw the durn thing out the window. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| "Circles" is scheduled for release on Jan. 17, and will be overseen by veteran L.A. producer and composer Jon Brion. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| On the eve of the band’s third album, ‘The Deadbeat Bang of Heartbreak City,’ frontman James Alex talks about why he hasn’t become jaded after nearly three decades in music | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Two of the UK’s most successful grime stars are tearing chunks out of each other with diss tracks that open up the intergenerational tensions in British rap. | | |
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 | Penny Fractions |
| Last month, after a number of early leaks and rumors, TikTok’s owner Bytedance unveiled its new music streaming platform, Resso, in India and Indonesia. Now there are increased eyes on the rather sudden arrival of a new player within the music streaming market. | | |
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 | Twenty Thousand Hertz |
| In 1987, TV composer Jonathan Wolff was still trying to make a name for himself in Hollywood. Then one day, he got a call from Jerry Seinfeld, who needed music for his new sitcom. This is the story behind the unforgettable music of Seinfeld, and how Jonathan Wolff’s unique approach helped make the show a TV classic. | | |
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 | Guitar World |
| The bassists that played with the late legend share their stories. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Bruce Springsteen, Drake, Lana Del Rey, Adele, Rihanna, and Lady Gaga are among the artists we’re looking forward to hearing from this year. | | |
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 | Consequence of Sound |
| 2019's Festival of the Year makes history and turns heads with an eclectic lineup announcement. | | |
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| VICE |
| These mental health professionals know what it feels like when the van breaks down, when the booker shorts the fee, or when your drummer is just being a d***. | | |
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 | The Illusion of More |
| Every once in a while, a copyright litigation story makes a fine cautionary tale for users of social platforms, and this is true partly because the conflict tends to spawn misleading headlines or comments that add fuel to an outrage already borne of ignorance. | | |
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 | WNYC |
| Marsalis is one of the greatest instrumentalists of our time and the founder of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He gets personal about his dad, his musical roots, and race. | | |
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 | Passion of the Weiss |
| On the Welcome to Jamrock Reggae Cruise, Paley Martin speaks to the Marley Family member about collaboration and finding freedom in playing music. | | |
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 | Nashville Scene |
| Metro Council will consider a bill that amends a longstanding code making studios effectively illegal. | | |
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 | NOLA.com |
| But he hasn’t completely retired. | | |
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 | Clash Magazine |
| The Neptunes is a name that you may, or may not, be familiar with depending on your behind the scenes music knowledge. But even if you haven't heard their names you have definitely heard their songs. | | |
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 | Okayplayer |
| Chef Omar Tate has made a career for himself pulling from jazz, hip-hop, and literature to create dishes that give snapshots of Black life in America. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | Gil Scott-Heron reimagined by Makaya McCraven |
| | From "We're New Again – A Reimagining by Makaya McCraven," out Feb 7 on XL Recordings. |
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