I don't give a s*** if a record is mastered well or not. All I care about is the reaction it gets when I play it in a club. How technically well-made art is doesn't matter: it's art. Why would you want to analyse it on its technical merits? It's not an exam. | | | | Welcome to Celebrities Listening to Music on Headphones Week. Elton John, Sept. 12, 1974.
(D. Morrison/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I don't give a s*** if a record is mastered well or not. All I care about is the reaction it gets when I play it in a club. How technically well-made art is doesn't matter: it's art. Why would you want to analyse it on its technical merits? It's not an exam.”
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| | rantnrave:// Short and sweet again today—MusicREDEF will be back at full strength on Tuesday—and we'll dedicate this one to REGGIE LUCAS, who died Saturday at age 65. You can assign a number of musical descriptors to Lucas: guitarist, producer, songwriter. But good luck assigning a genre to a man who was an essential piece of MILES DAVIS' early '70s electric band (and de facto co-composer) and went on to produce most of MADONNA's debut, one of the landmark pop records of the 1980s (while he was at it, he wrote "BORDERLINE"). Remember when musicians could walk through walls like that? Actually, they still can, and do. While the industry (and, to be fair, people like me) are assigning boxes and borders, the best artists, and even some of the not-best artists, are following their muse wherever and whenever it takes them, and god bless them for that. RIP Mr. Lucas... XXXTENTACION's banishment from SPOTIFY's official playlists has reduced his daily streams by 17 percent in the US and could cost him $60,000 per year, BILLBOARD reports. His terrestrial radio plays are also dropping. Another target of Spotify's new policy on "hateful conduct," TAY-K, responded by creating his own playlist on the service. Playlist description: "Rugrat Music is a playlist dedicated to help advocate an artist's ability to freely speak on their environments." More than 15,000 followers as of Sunday night... TROY CARTER says he is very much still at Spotify, in case you were wondering... BILLBOARD MUSIC AWARDS winners and performances... That cellist... What CHELSEA MANNING is listening to these days. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Billboard |
| While many music industry executives say streaming services are well within their rights to curate their homepages and playlists as they see fit -- and without explanation -- it’s Spotify’s creation of an official policy nearly impossible to apply fairly that has drawn the outrage. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| The campaign may mark a critical juncture in the long-standing tolerance of the musician in his own industry and in the culture at large. | | |
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 | Resident Advisor |
| In this extract from his new book, “Inner City Pressure,” Dan Hancox explains how grime's canon of classics is full of music made by producers who were unwilling or unable to do things "properly," from So Solid Crew to Dizzee Rascal to Youngstar. | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| If real estate is the ultimate scarce resource, a headphone is a small invisible fence around our minds, creating separation, helping us listen to ourselves. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The Rita Ora track was positioned as a celebration of bisexuality, but struck a sour note with critics who found its lyrics problematic. | | |
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 | GeekWire |
| U2’s “Experience + Innocence” tour uses the most sophisticated tech and beautifully strange ideas yet to prove music for the masses can be about communion and commerce. | | |
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 | KCRW |
| In 1989 McDonald’s ran the biggest flexi-disc promotion ever, sending out 80 million discs (playing the “Menu Song”) as inserts in newspapers all over the country. A very special copy of this record was almost burned to heat a family home in Galax, Virginia. Instead, it ended up winning the homeowner a million dollars. | | |
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 | TIME |
| If you feel like you don’t really know the Weeknd, you’re not alone. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Tidal CEO Richard Sanders denies DN report, but opens review to "uncover what occurred" | | |
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 | Broadly |
| At Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Beyoncé Mass includes everything from a choir's rendition of "Survivor" to sermons inspired by Queen Bey's lyrics. | | |
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 | Getintothis |
| As the way mass entertainment changes almost before our eyes Getintothis' Gary Aster reflects on the role music plays in our lives and wonders if it's still all that signficant. | | |
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 | MusicAlly |
| The Great Escape in Brighton is one of the UK’s best showcases for new artists, but it’s also a chance for the industry to discuss some of the new technologies that could have an impact on those musicians’ careers. | | |
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 | Salon |
| We can chart decades of major cultural, social and musical trends through his discography-and not just the parodies. | | |
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 | Slate |
| Google’s new music streaming service sounds a lot like Spotify and Apple Music. Its music recommendation engine is its best shot at breaking through. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| “I don’t think it’s a secret that everybody didn’t agree,” the streaming music service's exec told The Times. | | |
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| Billboard |
| The estates of deceased musical legends have been sending holographic versions on tour, while living artists mull having holograms tour in their stead. | | |
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 | The New York Review of Books |
| Cecil Taylor was the master builder of the free jazz revolution. This was not well understood at the time, in large part because Ornette Coleman's emancipation of jazz improvisation from the chordal structures of bebop fit so naturally into an American mythology of negative liberty, of removing constraints-or, more to the point, of overthrowing one's masters. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| The conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla led the ensemble at Carnegie Hall a few hours after the Met filed a lawsuit against its former music director, James Levine. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| It is half a century since the Last Poets stood in Harlem, uttered their first words in public, and created the blueprint for hip-hop. At an intimate open house session, they explain why their revolutionary words are still needed. | | |
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 | PopMatters |
| Black music's past is a rabbit hole more than big enough for these two vastly different excursions into its secret riches. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "Hundreds of Days," released last week on Ghostly International. |
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