The stuff that you question whether or not you should sing about, that’s what you should be singing about. | | | | Jono Grant and Paavo Siljamaki of Above & Beyond at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, March 2, 2018.
(C Flanigan/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “The stuff that you question whether or not you should sing about, that’s what you should be singing about.”
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| | rantnrave:// In its heyday, NME, which published its final print edition this week and is going all-digital, was among the most rock and roll of all rock and roll magazines—impudent, improper, impatient and incessantly covering its carefully curated circle of rock, punk and pop gods in breathless, insidery language that sometimes made as much sense to me as a cryptic crossword but always made me laugh and sometimes made me want to scream in agreement. It was like a FALL song on newsprint. The GUARDIAN'S ALEXIS PETRIDIS and TRACKRECORD's MARIA SHERMAN do good jobs detailing the various missteps in recent years as well as the inevitably of the magazine's demise, which became that much more inevitable when its parent company, TIME UK, was sold to a private equity company a week ago. But they also make clear how, to music fans of a certain age, NME was a life force, as much a part of the fabric of pop as many of the artists who graced its pages. It was crucial. Its website, which is all that's left, has the feel of a content farm that occasionally allows decent content to slip through the barn doors, as if by accident. Here's to hoping, against my better judgment, that going all-digital means putting at least a little filthy lucre into that website and bringing some of that impudent, improper and impatient spirit back online... And please don't stop writing about music, kids... Takeaway from ROLLING STONE's check-in on how artists are feeling about SPOTIFY royalties these days: If you're over 40-ish, you aren't feeling it at all. If you're a millennial, you're good. (And if you're a major label and the question is about Spotify stock prices, you're very very good)... Need your own personal inclusion rider for your Spotify playlists? Here you go... Another jaw-dropping blind audition for the VOICE. Beyond. Also, am I missing something or has every great singer this year picked ALICIA KEYS as a coach?... The shifting age of singers of the #1 song in the US from 1977 (hi BABS) to 2017 (yo CARDI)... RIP JESÚS LÓPEZ-COBOS, BRIAN MURPHY and ALAN GERSHWIN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Slate |
| Why are YouTube diss tracks about domestic violence allegations getting tens of millions of views? | | |
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 | Medium |
| Musical.ly looks innocent — just kids making music videos, and it is that, but more so it’s this: user uploaded content by millions of people who can also live stream, which is how I first encountered porn on Musical.ly. A very helpful naked man live-streamed his live stream (if you know what I mean). | | |
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 | TrackRecord |
| Eulogizing NME’s print pub seems like a natural instinct, but it’s proven to be much more complicated than that—NME isn’t what it always was, and it was something magical. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Superorganism, Rex Orange County and Clairo are recording chipper, intimate music that’s a wild contrast to the swaggering, anthemic sound of a decade ago. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Two weeks of Siri not understanding my song requests suggest otherwise. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Last May, Spotify settled with songwriters David Lowery (of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven) and Melissa Ferrick for a proposed $43 million. But many publishers, including Wixen, opted out of that settlement, alleging Spotify has yet to create an adequate system for paying songwriters. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| At 16, she's sold out two hometown shows at the El Rey Theatre, released one of the year's most interesting and inventive pop records (the EP "Don't Smile at Me"), and has an Interscope deal for a full-length that could put her alongside Lorde and Dua Lipa as young women driving the future of pop on their own terms. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| A new book takes up the sui-generis masterpiece and unearths the largely forgotten context from which it emerged. | | |
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 | Variety |
| In recent years the branding overkill has been dialed back; the superstars performing tend to be more along the lines of Lana Del Rey than Kanye; and attendance was down from its 2016 peak. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| Standing proudly at a distance from the gangster rap dominating the airwaves and charts of the era, the Soulquarian collective put forward an ideology centered on raising political consciousness and cherishing black cultural identity that, though hardly able to compete with hard-core rap commercially, made waves far beyond the confines of a niche audience. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| In her first official act, Ariel Palitz promised to hold listening tours and entertain the gripes of those who are bothered by the vomit on their streets or the noise at 3 a.m. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Why inflation and promotional discounts are heaping pressure on Daniel Ek's company to crank up their fees. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Spotify stock is currently trading privately for about $5,000 a share -- or $125 a share after the company’s imminent stock split -- up roughly 25 percent from early December, as the streaming company readies to begin public trading in coming weeks. | | |
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| Variety |
| "When you're talking about fantasy, about transporting people to other worlds, there's no medium greater than music to do that," says "A Wrinkle in Time" director Ava DuVernay. "Music is so necessary to help inform a heightened reality." | | |
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 | The Fader |
| The true story of a one-time choir boy, his dolls, and the album that might make him a star. | | |
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 | Hypebot |
| Following two lengthy years and a slew of cash from digital streaming services and the NMPA, the Copyright Royalties Board has finally reached its decision to increase payout to songwriters and publishers by (on paper at least) 43.8%. Here we look at what this actually means for your bottom line. | | |
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 | The Trichordist |
| Every day I find myself liking the Music Modernization Act less and less. | | |
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 | Invisible Oranges |
| An in-depth talk with K.K. Downing and Les Binks about Judas Priest's landmark album "Stained Class." | | |
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 | V Magazine |
| Mariah Carey is in full bloom this Spring, back in the studio and happier than ever. | | |
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 | RealClearLife |
| We spent a music and laughter-filled 40 minutes talking to the entertainer about his legacy around the world, and what he's up to next. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "A Wrinkle in Time." |
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