There are 12 billion transactions in one hit song. | | | | Purple rain: FKA twigs at Primavera Sound, Barcelona, May 30, 2019.
(Xavi Torrent/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “There are 12 billion transactions in one hit song.”
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| | rantnrave:// I've read more than one eulogy this week, on prominent sites, for the ITUNES MUSIC STORE. This is a little maddening, as the iTunes Music Store has neither died nor been condemned to die. (Insert your own press criticism here; I'm doing my best to refrain.) But it's also emblematic of the general confusion around the bloated, sprawling APPLE music ecosystem, which is one of the main reasons the company had to do away with the software that used to manage all of it, which is also called ITUNES, and which is where contemporary eulogies should be directed. BILLBOARD has a good, quick explainer on the coming changes (and the coming not-changes). Basically Apple, like a magician trying to yank a tablecloth off a table without disturbing the place settings on top of it, is planning to move iTunes to trash without killing any of its features. Which leaves one crucial question for you, iTunes user: Do you believe in magic? Oh, and come this fall, when the iTunes tablecloth is officially yanked, will you remember how loudly you've been complaining about the software for the past 10 or more years? MusicSET: "Notes on the Long Anticipated, Not Quite Death of iTunes"... In a post-album, post-CD, post-download era, you can hardly blame Billboard for the accounting gymnastics it goes through to create its top-200 albums chart every week. But in his always insightful PENNY FRACTIONS newsletter, DAVID TURNER articulates one of the things that's always been frustrating about the magazine's complicated math, which treats paid streaming plays, ad-supported streaming plays and video plays as three separate things, with rapidly declining value from the former to the latter. Video plays, in fact, don't count. Turner's current newsletter examines what he calls "the central tension of the charts to either measure song popularity or how much money it produces, which over the last decade is increasingly not the same thing." Billboard, he argues, will "always privilege what makes money over sheer popularity." But what gets lost when listeners who can afford a subscription are counted more than people who are willing to put up with ads, who in turn are counted more than people who'd rather click on videos? How do the tastes of those listeners differ? What would a flat chart that represented every play as one play look like? How else might you chart consumption circa 2019? How will ROLLING STONE and ALPHA DELTA (formerly BUZZANGLE MUSIC) approach the question on their charts, which have already missed their public launch date? Are they still trying to figure that out?... Pop and hip-hop producer POLOW DA DON is launching a terrestrial country radio station in Nashville today that he says will be "an inclusive home to artists who may not have a platform right now." Sample artists for WYCZ, whose format Polow is calling "young country": KANE BROWN, CHRIS YOUNG, TAYLOR SWIFT, MIGOS, YELAWOLF and LIL NAS X. Hell. Yes... KELIS' 2001, NEPTUNES-produced album, WANDERLAND, which was never released in North America because of label issues, has suddenly shown up on streaming services... CARRIE UNDERWOOD was the big winner Wednesday at the CMT MUSIC AWARDS... The US Justice Department has opened a review of ASCAP's and BMI's consent decrees... Music festival TINDER. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The New York Times |
| The original queen of pop on aging, inspiration and why she refuses to cede control. | | |
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 | REDEF |
| The most famously bloated and reviled software on your desktop has finally been moved to trash, by its creator. But three new apps have taken its place. And the iTunes store lives on. You're forgiven if you're a little confused. Or still a little mad. | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| Like Madam C.J. Walker and John H. Johnson before him, Jay-Z’s rise to business mogul is testament to the power of the black dollar. | | |
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 | Penny Fractions |
| On its charts, the industry’s biggest trade publication will always privilege what makes money over sheer popularity. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| 'Music In The Air' update brings optimistic news for record companies. | | |
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 | Vox |
| The myth of the all-white American West contributes to the erasure of black musicians, cowboys, and settlers. | | |
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 | The Associated Press |
| By the mid-1980s, the Bangles were already a successful band, touring across the world with airplay on college radio, but they hadn’t hit the mainstream in a major way. That’s when Prince gave them the gift of a lifetime by crafting a perfect piece of pop confection known to the masses as “Manic Monday.” | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| On her debut album, Lucid, the 25-year-old singer mashes up contemporary R&B with traditions from the South Asian diaspora. "I just think there's room for more stories." | | |
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 | Variety |
| Mass Appeal is a hip-hop, culture-focused brand that was born in the 1990s as a New York-based fanzine-style magazine, but CEO Peter Bittenbender is adapting for the future. As choppy waters continue to batter the similarly situated Vice Media and other digital content endeavors in recent months, Bittenbender is looking toward diversification as a solution for today's unstable digital environment. | | |
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 | BuzzFeed News |
| I spent almost 20 years reporting on R. Kelly, and nine months trying to find an outlet to publish the story of the “sex cult” that would -- finally -- get the world’s attention. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Dylan’s 1975 tour was his most peculiar: nostalgic, theatrical, fiery. | | |
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 | WeTransfer |
| Often with art and artists, all we see is the tip of the iceberg. But behind the final track, film or performance, there is always another story, that usually goes unseen. That other story is less glamorous -- often hard, lonely and repetitive -- but it’s crucial to understanding someone’s creative process. | | |
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 | MusicAlly |
| Streaming was the big driver behind the recorded-music industry’s 9.7% growth in 2018, according to the IFPI. In fact, streaming revenues grew by 34%. | | |
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| MusicAlly |
| The ears of senior Spotify execs will surely have been burning this afternoon, as veteran lawyer Dina LaPolt took the company to task. | | |
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 | Texas Music |
| Fifty years on, the bluesy blue-collar trio from Houston is ready to take it up another notch. | | |
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 | FLOOD Magazine |
| We remember the psych rock pioneer with an interview originally published in the March 1995 issue of "Ray Gun Magazine." | | |
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 | Trapital |
| The "Old Town Road" rapper's blueprint is a marketing playbook, but those who follow it should focus on the factors they can control. | | |
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 | VICE |
| The cult funnyman is known for his irreverent and outlandish comedy on Adult Swim, but his new album 'What The Brokenhearted Do…' gets real about an imaginary break-up. | | |
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 | JazzTimes |
| Saxophonist David Binney argues that becoming a jazz musician today doesn't always have to include a stop in New York. | | |
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 | Paper |
| The mystery surrounding Kelis' second album, 2001's "Wanderland," has been so pressing for 18 years. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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