I really think that even in the darkest of times, our ancestors got something from art, some kind of spiritual manna—or, as the British would say, the bloody bollocks to move forward and not get stuck... I think all artists are being called at this time. | | | | Travis Scott live, so to speak, in Fortnite, on a Nintendo Switch, in an 11-year-old boy's hands, South Pasadena, Calif., April 23, 2020.
(Neilson Barnard/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I really think that even in the darkest of times, our ancestors got something from art, some kind of spiritual manna—or, as the British would say, the bloody bollocks to move forward and not get stuck... I think all artists are being called at this time.”
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| | rantnrave:// Well that was an awkward three-step rollout, TICKETMASTER. In early April, with the live-music economy in freefall, the ticketing giant told music fans they could get refunds for any concert that had been canceled but not for concerts that had been postponed, even if they were postponed by several months, and even if there was no new date at all. That didn't go over well, so in mid-April the policy was changed to allow for refunds for shows that had been moved to a specific date—but not, strangely, for those that had been indefinitely postponed. Like BON JOVI, who responded by outright canceling its previously postponed summer tour so fans could get their money back "to help pay their bills or buy groceries," and like the two members of Congress who responded angrily in writing, I could have told the company that wasn’t going to go over well either. Anyone could have. Over the weekend, Ticketmaster finally closed the gap, with the help of a tweet from MICHAEL RAPINO saying "Fans, we hear you." I get the issues behind the drawn-out, inelegant response. The ticketing business is a complicated web of stakeholders—venues, promoters, artists, ticket sellers—and by the time a show is canceled or postponed, the ticket seller has already shared most of its receipts with its partners. The money you paid for those BTS tickets isn’t sitting in a drawer somewhere in Ticketmaster's headquarters. Everyone in the live business is hurting, and no other major ticketing company has done much better with refunds this spring. Some have done worse. But none of those complications or mitigating factors matter to struggling, laid-off music fans who want their hundreds of dollars back, and who could use the money for those bills and groceries. To them, it isn't a complicated process at all. They bought the tickets from Ticketmaster and they want a refund from Ticketmaster. And like any consumer of any product, they think it's the company's job to make it happen. Some may take Ticketmaster up on its offer to accept 150 percent of each ticket's value in credit for a future show in lieu of a refund, or to donate their tickets to health care options, both great options for anyone who can afford them. But not everyone can. Not in this economy... Music journalism in the age of the video game concert in the year of the plague: "There was a timer projected above the stage counting down the minutes to the beginning of the show. One of the people in the crowd put away their mic stand, pulled out a gun and shot me in the head"... Elsewhere in video games, LIZZO's "JUICE" has been pulled from ROCK BAND because the lyrics include a particular vulgarity that becomes that much more problematic in a game that penalizes players who don't sing along to every word. Actually, there are two popular vulgarities in "Juice," and I'm going to agree to disagree with CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND's (and, perhaps, HARMONIX's) assessment that the other one is "ubiquitous enough in music to become innocuous." Ubiquitous, yes, Innocuous, no... The LIBRARY OF CONGRESS may have just unveiled the world's biggest digital crate for copyright-free sampling and remixing. Shoutout BRIAN FOO, one of the Library's two innovators-in-residence, for the CITIZEN DJ initiative.. RIP HAMILTON BOHANNON (whose extensive proto-disco catalog is almost entirely absent from streaming services), MIKE HUCKABY, HAROLD REID, BOOTSIE BARNES, IAN WHITCOMB, "SIR" DEAN GANT and MICHAEL COGSWELL. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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 | Matthew Ball |
| The Travis Scott x Fortnite event is commonly understood in comparison to prior Fortnite events, but instead it needs to be viewed as part of Fortnite’s testing and experimentation process/journey. It is technically less impressive than prior events, but creatively much bigger. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Defying the economic downturn, online business is booming for Apple’s GarageBand music software, as well as Sweetwater, Guitar Center, Reverb, and other retailers. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| A deep dive into Billboard's archives reveals 1918 headlines share similarities to modern day news about the coronavirus pandemic. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| A conversation about music, politics, her new memoir “Resistance,” and what you learn about America from being on the road. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| Havoc of Mobb Deep opens up about the 25th anniversary of “Shook Ones (Part II),” without question one of the finest, most menacing rap tracks yet made. | | |
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 | Pollstar |
| The National Independent Venue Association was recently formed to lobby with a unified voice for assistance from the federal government after thousands of small businesses across the country were imperiled by the spread of coronavirus. Within a matter of days its membership grew to some 450 members and a week later it had expanded to 900. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The company, which operates Ticketmaster, will now allow refunds for the thousands of concerts that have yet to be rescheduled. | | |
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 | Forbes |
| After months of requests, the hip-hop superstar shared financial records, revealing details about his wildly popular Yeezy sneaker empire - and his fixation on outside validation. | | |
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 | Detroit Free Press |
| DJ Mike Huckaby, whose soulful, studied work made him one of the prominent early figures in Detroit techno and house music, died Friday after a lengthy hospitalization following a stroke. He was 54. | | |
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 | The Newnan Times-Herald |
| In a discography ranging from 1973 to 1990, Bohannon released 22 albums. As a pioneer of disco and funk, his sounds have been sampled by the likes of Jay Z, Snoop Dogg, Craig Mack and Kool G Rap. | | |
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 | BBC |
| In 1964, South American fans eagerly awaited the arrival of the Fab Four - but four guys named Tom, Vic, Bill and Dave turned up instead. It’s the strange story of a con gone wrong. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Every two decades or so, the old becomes stylishly new. And now the pop artifacts of the Y2K era - winking futurism, loads of glitter, “TRL”-style videos - are back, with an update. | | |
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 | Very Smart Brothas |
| A few years back, I wrote an article about Raphael Saadiq being the most underappreciated R&B artist of all time. I still believe this to be true. We’ve been stuck in the house for weeks now watching IG Live battles of artists going back and forth with their catalogs, and when people are proposing matchups, Saadiq’s name rarely comes up though he could probably wash a sizable number of artists in a battle. | | |
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| Rolling Stone |
| As music’s revenue streams tighten, financial companies that offer alternate royalty options are eager to give artists a new way forward. | | |
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 | Radio Survivor |
| WBCN in Boston, MA is one of the storied freeform FM stations in American commercial radio history. We're talking about it because there's a recent documentary film, entitled "WBCN and the American Revolution," that dives into its history, and how WBCN's early days in the late 60s and early 70s are intertwined with the counter culture movement in that city. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| His signature song, "I Put A Spell On You," has a long legacy on its own and in songs that sample it. But Hawkins' dying wish for his dozens of children to meet created a new chapter in his story. | | |
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 | Tampa Bay Times |
| A local singer with big dreams keeps getting close to stardom. Then her body and mind start to fail her. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| In this Rising interview, the supremely chill New York DJ and producer talks about his dedication to peace, love, and deep jams. | | |
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 | Electronic Beats |
| Meet the artists bypassing government restrictions through new sonic frontiers. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Review Of Books |
| Bob Dylan, Neil Young, John Legend & Sam Smith, Randy Newman, "Hamilton" and more. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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