It’s a supply chain—if the rubber for the wheels isn’t available you can’t make a car. | | | | At a fest... In the West... Tierra Whack and a plate of green eggs and ham at Outside Lands, San Francisco, Aug. 10, 2019.
(FilmMagic/Getty Images) | | | | | | “It’s a supply chain—if the rubber for the wheels isn’t available you can’t make a car.”
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| | rantnrave:// Good news bad news worse news for the live music economy: 86 percent of ticketholders for concerts rescheduled because of the pandemic have held onto their tickets rather than requesting refunds, and two-thirds of those with tickets for canceled festivals have opted to hold onto those, too, to be used (hopefully) in 2021, according to LIVE NATION's Q2 earnings report. That's a reassuring sign, it would seem, of consumer confidence in the future of live music. People can envision returning to clubs, theaters, arenas and stadiums. But the refunds Live Nation did have to pay out still swamped any new sales during the pandemic quarter ending June 30, for which the company reported a whopping 98 percent (!) drop in revenue from a year earlier and a $568 million net loss. That's the good and the bad, and Live Nation says it has "sufficient liquidity to maintain critical operations" until those venues are full again, which it predicts will happen a year from now. The worse news? What about everybody else? What about smaller promoters—which is to say, nearly all others—who don't have that kind of liquidity? What happens to them? It's become an article of faith in the past couple of months that the live music business is going to be vastly reshaped by the pandemic and that a significant percentage of companies won't survive it. Reports like this, while delivering a ray of hope, also serve, unfortunately, as a reminder of how significant that percentage might be. But also, so much remains unknown. The idea that concerts won't be back at full scale until a year from now would have seemed preposterous to most people three or four months ago; now it sounds like a reasonable, prudent prediction. What will be the reasonable, prudent prediction three or four months from now?... In the meantime, indie music venues could use some help, and DAVID BYRNE is here to tell you why (cc: members of Congress)... One of the boss's pet peeves (he has a few) is that every doctor makes you fill out the same neverending forms, instead of digitally sharing them with each other and saving you the rage-inducing repetition. Boss, meet ZOË KEATING, whose message to the US COPYRIGHT OFFICE, which is currently taking comments on how to deal with music's enormous "black box" of unclaimed royalties, is: automate the damn process for songwriters and publishers. "Why is it necessary in the first place to register works in so many places?," the cellist asks. "Why can’t I as a self-published composer who owns all my copyrights, register my compositions and my recordings with the copyright office and have that information shared with the MLC [Mechanical Licensing Collective] for mechanical rights, SoundExchange for digital performing rights and a selected PRO for the performance right?" Why not indeed? Let's do music publishing this year and doctors and dentists next year... INSTAGRAM's REELS, which "looks quite a lot like TIKTOK," launched Wednesday in more than 50 countries... If it's Tuesday and you're in danger of losing your #1 spot on the UK albums chart to some upstart Irish rockers, just go ahead and release the CD version instead of waiting until Friday as you were originally planning, no biggie... HULU has broken up with HIGH FIDELITY... RIP HELEN JONES WOODS (what an amazing life) and BILLY GOLDENBERG (what a great theme song). | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| I’m not the person to get into the numbers or the details on the bills being debated in Congress, but I can offer my own insights from a working musician’s point of view. | | |
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| Black superfans have been erased from the story of pop for decades. Now, in looking for visibility and change, they’ve found each other. | | |
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| With his supremely catchy Afro-fusion and a new album due Aug. 13, the Nigerian songwriter, singer and rapper makes music as a true global citizen. | | |
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| Reels enters the fray as TikTok, threatened with a ban by President Trump because of its Chinese ownership, has opened negotiations to be acquired by Microsoft. | | |
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| I find the average virtual concert dull and inconvenient. It's usually not more stimulating than a conversation with a friend, playing a video game, reading a book or watching TV. So, what is better than all those things? What can make people decide to stay at home, rather than catch some fresh summer air? | | |
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| The rap star behind viral hit ‘Bored In The House’, who rakes in more than 40 million monthly Spotify streams, reflects on building his empire around good times. | | |
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| A documentary four years in the making is finally about to rear its unwashed head and peel back the Boy Howdy Beer-soaked curtain on the music, the mayhem, and the food fights that forged Creem magazine's legacy, which solidified that rock stars are never our friends. | | |
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| How many incongruously cheerful songs playing over a violent montage is too many? Ask "The Umbrella Academy." | | |
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| Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong reflects on his almost-50-years on Earth and how he straddles his punk rock roots with global stardom. | | |
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| There’s been a startling lack of mischievous, dissenting voices when it comes to Beyoncé’s visual album ‘Black Is King.’ Cassie da Costa finds that troubling. | | |
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| Mess with her at your peril. | | |
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| Three summers ago, "Despacito’s" lilting Spanish lyrics dominated the UK charts, but since then nearly all pop hits have been in English. Is it just a language barrier -- or a sign of a narrow culture? | | |
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| Milford Graves devoted himself to studying the rhythms of the heart. It turns out he was creating a technique to treat himself. | | |
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| COVID-19 was always going to have a significant impact on the music business, and with the Q2 results for all of the major music companies now in we can start to look at just how big that impact has been so far. | | |
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| Rap’s introspective new superstar sinks deeper into himself. | | |
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| Artists must get involved in the 2020 election and it's not as complicated as they may think. | | |
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| Phoebe Bridgers was already a rising star when her sophomore full-length "Punisher" was released in June, but the rapturous response the album has received from fans and critics has vaulted her career into the fast lane. Needless to say, Bridgers' view of her incipient stardom is almost entirely from her Los Angeles apartment. | | |
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| The Netflix ta-dum sound has quickly become one of the most iconic sound logos of our generation. I bet you can hear it in your head right now. This sound is heard countless times, every single day, all over the world. But the Netflix sound was almost very different than the one we know today. Hear the story of how one of the biggest sound logos of all time was made. | | |
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| Everyone wants to make the sound that makes the girls dance. Twerking reminds us that women's contributions to Southern rap and culture, while often devalued, can create space for liberation. | | |
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| With “The Dutchman” and other widely recorded songs, he created emotional realities that let you feel along with his characters. | | |
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| | | | | | | "I should run for president / Anything's possible / I live in the hospital." From "Whack World" (2018). |
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