He has to exist in a vacuum and can’t leave his house. All doable things for an artist in 2019 and beyond. | | | | Billie Eilish at Life Is Beautiful, Las Vegas, Sept. 20, 2019 .
(Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “He has to exist in a vacuum and can’t leave his house. All doable things for an artist in 2019 and beyond.”
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| | rantnrave:// I saw MADONNA last Thursday, as I may have mentioned. A fearless show that fell somewhere between pop concert, Broadway revue and performance art, consisting mostly of new material, heavy on politics, about a quarter of it dedicated to a re-creation of a fado club in Lisbon, the star upstaged at one point by her 22-year-old daughter (on video) and at another by the Portuguese percussion-and-vocal troupe ORQUESTRA BATUKADEIRAS (in the flesh). And then there was the moment where, after some bargaining, she traded a Polaroid selfie to a fan in the super-expensive seats for $1,000 cash. This is not a BLACK KEYS show. If you go, plan to arrive late, like Madonna does. And as, thankfully, did I, only to be taken aback for a moment when the woman at the door of the BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC said the tickets in my APPLE WALLET, delivered four months ago by TICKETMASTER, were no good. We need a bar code, she said. Isn't this a barcode?, I asked, trying not to panic. No, it turns out. Not that square thing. They needed a rectangular thing. Which, phew, could be found in my account in the Ticketmaster app that I didn't remember I had, and which the woman at the door helpfully navigated for me. These are Ticketmaster's SAFETIX, introduced right around the time the Madonna tour went on sale and which weren't yet compatible with the Apple Wallet. Tech takes time. They feature barcodes that continually refresh so resellers can't take screenshots and sell those. These are tickets that give the artist and promoter more control. And these are the tickets that caused panic, mayhem and sadness at a Black Keys show in Los Angeles the same night. The band, launching its first tour in four years at the 1,850-capacity WILTERN, charged $25 for tickets, sold them as SafeTix and made them nontransferable (an option, but not a requirement, for this type of ticket). No scalpers, no STUBHUB, no anyone who wasn't in on that initial run of ducats. Which is fine, admirable even. But neither the Black Keys nor their partners did a very good job of telling everyone who needed to know. Including the band's fans, some of whom, despite the band's terms and conditions, got tickets secondhand via StubHub, SEATGEEK and VIVID SEATS. Whatever you think of those particular companies, they're longtime members of the legitimate ticket-selling chain (occasionally they *are* the legit ticket-selling chain). They're an obvious place for a ticket-seeking fan to go. Fans like BEATRIZ ZARAGOZA, who bought heavily marked up tickets at StubHub for herself and her two children, arrived at the door only to be told the tickets were no good. Several hundred were initially turned away, according to the LOS ANGELES TIMES. There was video. There were tweets. The club, to its credit, eventually let most of them in—the band reportedly played to a 97% full house—but some had already left and the damage was done. Beatriz Zaragoza had no more way than I did of knowing her barcode—presumably a screenshot by one of the countless brokers who use StubHub as a platform—was illegitimate. StubHub may well not have known either. That's on the band and its team (and that anonymous broker). The intent was good. The technology is good. The messaging needs to be better. By all means, slay the bots and beat the brokers. But keep the big platforms on your side—you're going to need them—and think of your fans as customers, too, which means they're right. Almost always. Anticipate what's going to go wrong and fix it before it does... Is TEKASHI 6IX9INE "the biggest rapper ever to say there is no difference between his life and his art"? And is he headed for the federal witness protection program even though "it is unlikely the United States Marshals Service would pay for the removal of [his] signature face tattoos"?... Will the members of BTS get to serve side-by-side in the Korean army?... Have appellate judges in the "STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN" plagiarism case already tipped their robes in LED ZEPPELIN's favor?... Teardrops on the city, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN is 70 years old. The NEW YORK TIMES' A.O. SCOTT sees him as something like the BARACK OBAMA of rock (give or take 12 years of earthly experience). To singer-songwriter LUCY DACUS, recent coverer of "DANCING IN THE DARK," he was a revelation of a different, unexpected kind of masculinity. He's proof, to singer/songwriter/novelist JOHN WESLEY HARDING, that rock and roll still matters. To the people of my beloved Asbury Park, he's a man of many stories and many ways to tell them. And he's just released "one of the most delightfully shocking albums" of his career, says ROLLING STONE's resident Bruce chronicler, BRIAN HIATT... BERRY GORDY retires... RIP HAROLD MABERN and LARRY WALLIS. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | GQ |
| DMX's life and career have been a roller coaster of highs and lows. Now, after a year in prison, he's out and ready to start living again. | | |
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 | Medium |
| I miss listening stations at record shops. I miss having 3 opening bands and showing up early to see the bill. Most of all, I miss human recommendations. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Across audio, video and other entertainment formats, there is a growing buzz around really short pieces of content on the one hand (TikTok) and really long pieces of content on the other (extended podcast interviews or Netflix docu-series). The purgatory in the middle has become more difficult to frame as a source of future growth or innovation. | | |
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 | The Face |
| Before Instagram existed, Tyler and his crew built their own aesthetic universe, inviting fans along for the wild ride. The music industry watched closely. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| He became a star witness for prosecutors, drawing death threats. Can a viral sensation now truly disappear? And would he want to? | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| He is essentially the biggest rapper ever to say there is no difference between his life and his art. | | |
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 | Twenty Thousand Hertz |
| Join us on a musical journey from the Golden Age of analog mastering to the digital methods of today. We’ll find out why the music industry became obsessed with loudness, and learn how the digital era transformed the way that music sounds. Featuring Greg Milner and Ian Shepherd. | | |
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 | Fast Company |
| With acquisitions of the fan app Weverse and commerce platform Weply, boy-band impresario Bang Si-hyuk is putting together a music “super app.” | | |
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 | BBC Radio 4 |
| Thom Yorke, singer and songwriter with Radiohead, chooses the eight tracks, book and luxury he would want to take to a desert island. | | |
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 | The Outline |
| I’m late to the party, but satellite radio is the best accidental discovery I’ve ever made. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| Through albums, film scores, operas, and his multi-media “Caravan,” jazz artist Terence Blanchard’s music takes aim at violence and intolerance, setting its sights on compassion. | | |
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 | Forbes |
| Live Nation is one of the world's leading live entertainment companies, hosting 30,000 events in 40 countries a year, selling over 500M tickets annually. On average, every 32 minutes there is a Live Nation event starting somewhere in the world. It's one of the most well-orchestrated global operations in live entertainment, and their financials reflect it. | | |
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 | The Globe and Mail |
| Country musician Mike Plume still recalls the heyday of his career in the early 2000s. With a 15-year publishing deal at a Nashville record label and regular touring opportunities, he was able to earn a decent living. | | |
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| Medium |
| Can an industry prize be considered anything other than establishment? Well, maybe not now. Take The Mercury Music Prize for example. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Anthony Wong is one of the few celebrities condemning the Chinese government in wake of Hong Kong protests. He performs in L.A. on Tuesday. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Bruce just turned 70, and Asbury Park is now one of the country’s coolest shore towns. A sold-out weekend festival celebrated its musical heart. | | |
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 | Community Impact Newspaper |
| The Live Music Capital of the World’s governing body will send millions of dollars in annual tourism revenue to its namesake industry, in a nod to growing | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| The Quin sisters' new memoir and its accompanying album are out this week. | | |
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 | The Boston Globe |
| Few people were aware of the debut album by a Boston band called Milkwood when it came out in 1973. Had they picked it up, they would have heard a self-conscious singer narrating his own life story to date: "There was a man from Maryland who said he could not feel/He had a hard time telling just what was real." | | |
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 | Truthdig |
| Ken Burns' documentary "Country Music" and its book tie-in present country music with a naive affection that misses key American tensions. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "Herstory in the Making," due Friday on Young M.A./3D. |
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