My 8-year-old and 6-year-old boys, they live on their iPad, they discover music way beyond what I was doing at eight. My kids can sing songs by U2, Imagine Dragons, they’ve just discovered them differently. They know Marshmello because of Fortnite, they know every Black Sabbath song because of 'Iron Man.' | | | | Clint Eastwood at home in 1959 demonstrating the correct way to listen to records.
(CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “My 8-year-old and 6-year-old boys, they live on their iPad, they discover music way beyond what I was doing at eight. My kids can sing songs by U2, Imagine Dragons, they’ve just discovered them differently. They know Marshmello because of Fortnite, they know every Black Sabbath song because of 'Iron Man.'”
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| | rantnrave:// A promise for today: There are no spoilers, allusions or glancing references to GAME OF THRONES anywhere in this newsletter. This is a musical safe space. We may or may not, however, find ourselves asking what ABC was thinking in scheduling the finale of a very good season of AMERICAN IDOL (featuring, in ALEJANDRO ARANDA, the closest thing the show has had to a surefire pop star in years) directly against the GOT finale. Or should we be asking the opposite question?... But in honor of the long game that GOT's smarter characters prattled on about for eight years and that Aranda expertly played for 12 weeks, I've been thinking about the common belief that there was once a time when great record company moguls played a long game of their own by nurturing and investing in artists over many years and many albums, giving them as much time as needed to find their artistic footing and their worldwide platinum audience. I've never bought that it was true, which is to say I've never believed it was better in the '70s than in, say, the '90s, or that it was better in the '90s than it is today. It sometimes seems that way because we remember the SPRINGSTEENs and GREEN DAYs and NO DOUBTs who were allowed time to develop and we forget the hundreds of artists who were quickly and quietly discarded. We remember the winners. We remember the great artists who would have succeeded no matter who was running the show and we convince ourselves that the great men in charge (it's always men, isn’t it?) were somehow responsible. This is what the music industry apparently calls gurshing. Twenty years from now, we'll remember the 2010s as a golden age when great execs at great labels generously and deliberately developed DRAKE and JANELLE MONÁE and TAME IMPALA, and no on will question the narrative. But it's always been about the artists, and it always will be. The best execs will clear paths and find opportunities. And the best artists will either explode out of the gate—with or without a jockey—or find their niche. Same as always... H/T (and HBD!) PIOTR ORLOV for this mini-documentary on "The Wonderful Last Day of IRIS RECORDS, Feb. 16, 2019," chronicling the final hours of a Jersey City, NJ, vinyl shop that went into business by selling a BOB JAMES album for $4 in June 1996 and went out with the sale of a SCHOOLLY D record for $12 some 23 years later. JUAN ROQUE's doc is basically eight minutes of customers, age range from 20s to perhaps 70s, flipping through vinyl inside the store and standing outside the store talking about the joy and beauty of records. If it doesn’t make you smile a lot and cry a little, then, hey, there are "Game of Thrones" recaps to be read, go for it... And here, in what I believe officially qualifies as a shocker, is your new American Idol. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Washingtonian |
| The audio streaming service has turned rockstar chefs into DJs. | | |
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 | Pollstar |
| "Demand is greater than ever. For any business, that’s a good thing. Thankfully, in Milan, Dubai, Cape Town, there’s a 19-year-old saying, 'I want to go see Billie Eilish,' and that didn’t exist before." | | |
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 | Music Industry Blog |
| Fandom is fragmenting. Streaming personalization and falling radio audiences are combining to rewrite the music marketing rulebook, ushering in a whole new marketing paradigm. Hits used to be cultural moments; artist brands built by traditional mass media. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| Of their contemporaries in the Seattle music scene in the '80s and '90s, none was louder, more abrasive, or as heavy, psychedelic, and captivatingly dark and twisted than Soundgarden. They are the critical missing link between Led Zeppelin and Bauhaus, Hüsker Dü and Black Sabbath, Killing Joke and Pink Floyd. | | |
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 | Okayplayer |
| On May 18th, 1999, Rawkus Records released 'Soundbombing II,' the landmark album paved the way for one of the greatest independent rap runs ever. | | |
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 | The Trichordist |
| In the offices and boardrooms of any corporation it is not uncommon to find executives wildly overstating their role in the success of some corporate initiative, or radically understating their role in a spectacular failure. Since this is the music business we created a word for it: Gurshing. And we perfected it as an art. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| The singer breaks down how her new album 'Dedicated' came together. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Live Nation on Friday said it has acquired concert promoter Spaceland Presents and its Los Angeles music venues, the Echo, Echoplex and The Regent. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Toronto’s Royal Mountain Records does something so basic, yet so radical among records labels: subsidizes its artists’ therapy. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Despite an online campaign by fans to “Free Britney,” there remain more questions than answers about the pop star’s well-being. Here’s what we know. | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| Twenty years ago, as the group’s 'Millennium' album topped music charts, one writer found belonging in an online community she unwittingly helped create. | | |
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 | Literary Hub |
| The following is from an oral history of Joy Division, compiled from interviews with the surviving band members and those closest to them. | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| It’s a big summer for the ‘Big Ole Freak’ rapper, with her first album and a date with Cardi B. | | |
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| Billboard |
| Brexit leers menacingly across Europe, pregnant with risk. Populists are peddling their nostalgic fairytale about making Britain great again. The country is a global laughing stock. Is it time for Brit-pop to take on British populism? | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Depending on ticket sales, the R-rated musical fantasia about Elton John could have ripple effects for its star, its studio and the wider film industry. | | |
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 | Trench |
| The rapper opens up about everything from the fractured state of the country to his vision for the future. | | |
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 | The Telegraph |
| Lots of people are going to blame Britain's last place finish in the Eurovision Song Contest on Brexit and political voting, but the theory doesn't hold up. | | |
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 | Variety |
| Thirty years after the “Rhythm Nation” tour — which her Vegas residency is being advertised as commemorating, at least in part — she’s clearly still got all that rhythm. Who could ask for anything more? | | |
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 | Dazed Digital |
| Michelle Lhooq, founder of Weed Rave in L.A, speaks to the organisers behind music festivals Wonderfruit and Lightning in a Bottle about how to party with the planet in mind. | | |
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 | VICE |
| “You gotta do it. It’s like Fight Club. This is Sing Club. If this is your very first night at a karaoke bar, you have to sing.” | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | One of the four originals he sang on the "American Idol" 2019 finale. |
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