There's now media spread out everywhere. People are spending their time in different ways, but back in '98, for young people, this was their after-school special. This was something they'd come home to that they count on and interact with, which was new at the time. | | | | Rare sighting: Frank Ocean at the Panorama Festival, New York, July 28, 2017.
(Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “There's now media spread out everywhere. People are spending their time in different ways, but back in '98, for young people, this was their after-school special. This was something they'd come home to that they count on and interact with, which was new at the time.”
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| | rantnrave:// As an expression of the power of pop, the cultural importance of teenagers and the unscripted excitement of live TV, TRL was MTV at its best. And it had impeccable timing, debuting in September 1998, six weeks before BRITNEY SPEARS released her debut single, smack in the middle of NSYNC's and the BACKSTREET BOYS' rise from pop stars to cultural phenomen. A music fan was in the WHITE HOUSE and the record industry seemingly was printing money every week. Is it possible to re-create that in 2017? Can a cable TV channel will optimism back into existence? Can it will a TV audience back into existence? Can it reclaim the center of pop culture? Is there a center available to be reclaimed? Is the music biz thirsty for something like this? (Short answer: Duh, always. See CHARLIE WALK's thoughts in the NY TIMES article linked above.) Oh, and can it book MIGOS every week?... As BLOOMBERG reports two private equity firms are close to coming to SOUNDCLOUD's rescue—with a possible change of chief executive—BUZZFEED's RYAN MAC provides what may be the most damning overview yet of why a rescue is needed. The central question, which a few other large companies can and should be asking themselves right now: What do you think you're offering your users with your $9.99/month subscription offering, and what do you expect to gain from it? How does it complement—and how does it conflict with—your core business? (Also: management style, ugh.) MusicSET: "SoundCloudy Future"... JAY-Z's weekly rollout of videos for 4:44 has been masterful album promotion, mostly (or totally) because the videos have all been powerful and they don't feel like promotion (except for the exclusive-to-TIDAL thing, grrr). They're very much part of the album. "ADNIS" features MOONLIGHT's MAHERSHALA ALI and was directed by MARK ROMANEK and is great... I'm not normally in the business of noting songwriters switching PROs, but ADELE leaving BMI for SESAC seems kinda big. VARIETY's SHIRLEY HALPERIN and PAULA PARISI lay out the key differences in business models... 150 records by AFRICAN women you should listen to. (Thank you, NPR MUSIC and the internet, for this ongoing thread. Please keep it going)... Are the country charts getting a little friendlier to women? | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | BuzzFeed |
| SoundCloud was once a platform beloved by listeners and creators, whose leaders hoped to revolutionize the music industry. Hamstrung by management mistakes and fierce competition, they never did. Here's the story of how it all came crashing down. | | |
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 | Slate |
| The history of the epithet, from its rise among leftists and jazz critics and folkies to its recent fall from favor. | | |
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 | Chicago Tribune |
| As Chance the Rapper prepares for the biggest homecoming show of his career at Lollapalooza, it's the right moment to pause and mark what's happening here. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Remember the “TRL” studio and crowds in Times Square? Music? Carson Daly? MTV hopes you do, and will tune in again. | | |
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 | The Outline |
| Young Asian-Americans in Southern California’s MDMA- and ecstasy-filled rave and festival circuit are dying in alarming numbers. | | |
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 | Music Industry Blog |
| Streaming has driven such a revenue renaissance within the major record labels that the financial markets are now falling over themselves to work out where they can invest in the market, and indeed whether they should. For large financial institutions, there are not many companies that are big enough to be worth investing in. | | |
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 | Longreads |
| Mabel Rosenheck looks back at a group of friends, and a music festival on the Jersey Shore, that came along when she needed them most. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Five shows into their 13-night run, the band have yet to repeat a single song. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| When Shakira and Carlos Vives released their global hit, "La Bicicleta," in May 2016, the Colombian diva followed up with a personal request to her Zumba instructor, Marta Formoso: Could she do anything with the song? | | |
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 | The New York Observer |
| Rock legends like Bruce Springsteen, Metallica and the late David Bowie have recently put out quality music--so why aren’t fans listening? | | |
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 | Motherboard |
| Your ears will appreciate the end of the "Loudness Wars." | | |
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 | Brooklyn Vegan |
| At the start of his headlining set at Panorama, Frank Ocean walks out by himself to the end of the platform, which extends about 50 feet into the crowd. He's wearing Vic Firth headphones and a white t-shirt emblazoned with the words "Why be racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic when you could just be quiet?" He pops a cassette into the audio rig he's got on stage. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| After several years spent working in the Dutch music industry, I came down with the same depressive symptoms as many of my colleagues. | | |
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 | The Independent |
| Benjamin Gibbard has released his cover album of Teenage Fanclub's 1991 'Bandwagonesque' and Django Bates has managed a jazz makeover of 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.' | | |
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 | Toronto Star |
| The careers of Feist, Metric, Peaches, Sum 41, Broken Social Scene and the Constantines, among others, were incubated at Ted’s Wrecking Yard. | | |
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| Billboard |
| While the music industry has long clamored for one comprehensive database that pairs compositions with recordings that would make licensing easier, ASCAP and BMI’s recently announced plan to build their own joint performing-rights database has received a mixed reaction. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| The R&B singer endorsed by Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar explains why her much delayed album was finally - and forcibly - released. | | |
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 | Variety |
| “Why in 2017, are we still lacking females in leadership roles? … To waste half your talent pool is pure idiocy.” | | |
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 | MusicAlly |
| Mycelia has evolved into a “think and do tank” which conducts research and also runs hack days and campaigns to put artists at the centre of new technological developments, rather than on their fringes. | | |
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 | TV Guide |
| Once the network's most-watched show, the flagship series is, admittedly, past its heyday. But remember when it was prime daytime, after-school programming? The screams, the fans, the airtime actually devoted to videos, and the screams. (Originally published Nov. 14, 2008.) | | |
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| | | | | | | "The race for nuclear superiority can only end in the destruction of civilization na na na na na na..." As good as music on TV gets. |
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