Spotify did not invent creation—nor the idea of making a living as an artist, nor the activity of listening to music and feeling inspired—but, since its launch, in 2008, it has changed the way we think about all of those things. | | | | American idols: Buddy Holly & the Crickets on CBS' "The Toast of the Town," Dec. 1, 1957.
(CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Spotify did not invent creation—nor the idea of making a living as an artist, nor the activity of listening to music and feeling inspired—but, since its launch, in 2008, it has changed the way we think about all of those things.”
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| | rantnrave:// So that went smoothly. There were hiccups, from the NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE mistakenly flying a Swiss flag instead of a Swedish flag outside its headquarters Tuesday morning, to shares not officially trading until more than three hours after the market opened—the longest wait for a new stock in NYSE history—but not the kind of hiccups that mattered enough to warrant a spoonful of peanut butter. Stock in SPOT opened at $165.90 and closed at $149.01 with fewer than 30 percent of the company's shares changing hands (low by IPO standards). The company is now worth $29.5 billion on paper (or on a digital spreadsheet) and by near-unanimous agreement it was a smooth debut for a company that can now say it disrupted the way IPOs work with less incident than with which it disrupted the way the music industry works. Random hot takes: The NEW YORK TIMES DEALBOOK said WALL STREET will flock to Spotify because "It is doing a great job at getting record companies to roll over" (while also making them rich again, writer PETER EAVIS could have added). The WALL STREET JOURNAL (paywall) and SLATE said the company now faces greater scrutiny as it struggles to figure out a way to make, say, a profit. Pesky shareholders. Tuesday's billion-dollar-plus winners: co-founders DANIEL EK and MARTIN LORENTZON, CHINA's TENCENT, and UNIVERSAL, SONY and WARNER. One wonders when the labels' artists, who have been waiting for their cut for years, will take a cue from teachers in WEST VIRGINIA, OKLAHOMA and KENTUCKY and walk off the job. Artists aren't unionized like teachers are, they don't have your kids' education in their hands, and "artists" probably aren't as cohesive and like-minded a community as "schoolteachers in West Virginia," but they are the single indispensable element in the music industry. Can they find their collective voice? Do they want to? How much power do they have? Wielded strategically in the current environment, methinks, a lot. They have a little more information today than they did 24 hours ago. And information, as everyone on the internet knows, is gold... Elsewhere on the stock exchange: LIVE NATION has lost more than $1 billion in value in the past two days, following the New York Times' revelation that the US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT is looking into how the company and its TICKETMASTER business wield their power in the live-music market. (Ticketmaster CEO JARED SMITH's lengthy response, in case you missed it)... MORRISSEY vs. the INDEPENDENT... The vinyl revival vs. the idea of running a record store... WEIRD AL YANKOVIC co-authored today's New York Times crossword puzzle... Really nice to have you back, MELODY PROCHET and MELODY'S ECHO CHAMBER. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The New Yorker |
| A company that once seemed untenable, if not immoral—all of this music, for free, and it’s legal?—is now mainstream. On Tuesday, it will go public. | | |
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 | Bloomberg |
| It took more than three hours on Tuesday morning to get Spotify trading publicly, in a stock sale as unorthodox as streaming digital music once seemed. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| After going multiplatinum with "Black Beatles," the duo wrecked cars, bought pet monkeys and made an ambitious triple LP. | | |
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 | Salon |
| Writer Jim DeRogatis on the worst accusations haven't touched the singer | | |
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 | UPROXX |
| The singer-songwriter talks about parties at Phil Spector’s house, how to write like John Prine, and his great new LP. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Our weekly new music playlist runs down the best songs of the year so far | | |
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 | The National UAE |
| Our love affair with the digital download lasted for less than a decade. | | |
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 | The Quietus |
| As Record Store Day hoves into view, you can expect a whole load of waffling about the brilliant news of the #vinylrevival. But the reality for many shops is not so rosy or clear cut. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Ticketing has changed since the DOJ approved the vertical integration, but not in ways many people think. | | |
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| Bloomberg |
| The pop icon shows on a Broadway stage that it's possible to recover the shared American narrative. | | |
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| Pitchfork |
| These songs and albums use sampled audio to quickly set a politicized scene. | | |
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 | Complex |
| Belcalis has the fame, money, and fans that she's been courting for years. It's made things more complicated. | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| From Total and Biggie, Mya and Jay-Z to Rihanna and Drake, 54 of the best R&B songs with hip-hop features. | | |
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 | Nest HQ |
| As Spotify prepares for its impending direct public offering (IPO) and shares of Spotify are sold on the public market for the first time, it's time for a discussion we've long avoided about what it means for artists. | | |
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 | Passion of the Weiss |
| Ben Grenrock takes a look at the perceptions clouding lo-fi hip-hop and some producers re-defining what the term means. | | |
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 | The Fader |
| Damon McMahon on his fifth album, “Freedom.” | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| Both as a player and composer, Halvorson has a decade-strong reputation as one of her field's least predictable. Her latest release, “Code Girl,” might be her most startling move yet. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Netflix's recently released hip-hop docuseries "Rapture" shines a spotlight on Nas, his protégé Dave East and why paying it forward is important to the 44-year-old living legend. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| A musician fled war-torn Sierra Leone for the United States, formed a band and introduced an ancient music, bubu, to a broad audience. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| Members of Unearth, The Red Chord, and more reflect on the tragic passing of a musician who helped define an era of Massachusetts music. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang |
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