[MTV] started out in the gutter in 1981, and 11 years later, you’ve got the president of the United States crediting you in part for helping get him elected. | | | | Boo-ya! Demi Lovato at her own Halloween Party, West Hollywood, Calif., Oct. 31, 2013.
(Christopher Polk/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “[MTV] started out in the gutter in 1981, and 11 years later, you’ve got the president of the United States crediting you in part for helping get him elected.”
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| | rantnrave:// Is it weird for me to think it's weird that I'm still paying the same $9.99 for my SPOTIFY subscription that I was paying when I first signed up? Not that I'm complaining, but I know a few artists who are. After years of rejecting the idea of raising prices while pursuing a strategy that emphasizes growth over revenue, CEO DANIEL EK in April floated the possibility, for the first time, that the company might consider a price hike in the US at some point in the future when the economy is better and the trade-off makes sense. Actually, he didn't quite float it so much as he pointed out that it's "encouraging" to know the "opportunity" is there should the company ever, in fact, think doing so is a good idea, which the company, at the time, did not. But Spotify has been experimenting with prices in other markets, including an ongoing test of an increased basic subscription fee in Norway and higher family rates elsewhere, and on Spotify's Q3 earnings call Thursday, Ek floated the idea a little harder. Users in those test markets "have shown a willingness to pay more for our service," he said, and as Spotify's fast-growing podcast library leads to increased engagement and value per hour (not without some controversy), the service moves closer to "determining when we are able to use price as a lever to grow our business." (Though Ek cautioned that there's "one big caveat" to that—the Covid economy). NETFLIX, meanwhile, just went ahead and raised its prices for the second time in two years, without much hemming and hawing, no big deal. That market is well outside my area of expertise but I can personally attest I'll happily pay a dollar more. Spotify for now continues to successfully execute on its growth-over-revenue strategy, with paid subscribers and overall users up and average revenue per user down in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, as the service continued to expand into markets like India and Russia at discounted prices. Spotify lost €101 million in the quarter. Record companies have been reporting booming revenues at the same time, largely thanks to Spotify and its competitors. Everybody's happy in one way another except artists, who presumably would benefit from a price hike but for now will have to settle for the, um, exposure that comes with all those new users. What about you? Would you pay another dollar a month for Spotify? Or even two dollars over two or three years? What's your trade-off?... A good, down-the-middle response from the NATIONAL INDEPENDENT VENUE ASSOCIATION to ex-WME music head MARC GEIGER's plan to rescue American rock clubs by buying a controlling interest in as many of them as he can through his new SAVELIVE venture. While reaffirming that NIVA's "sole focus" is on pursuing emergency financial relief from Congress (where the $10 billion SAVE OUR STAGES ACT has passed the US House while getting no response from the Senate), NIVA executive director REV. MOOSE said the organization is "pro-independent venues and promoters, not anti-anything." Member clubs, he said, will make "their own decisions based on what’s best for their business, which was the case before the pandemic, now, and in the future. This is the very independence we’re fighting to preserve"... Voting is "A BEAUTIFUL NOISE," ALICIA KEYS and BRANDI CARLILE sing in a get-out-the-vote duet they debuted on Thursday night on the CBS special EVERY VOTE COUNTS: A CELEBRATION OF DEMOCRACY. An all-star lineup of eight women wrote it... Great HALLOWEEN albums, from 1962 (BOBBY "BORIS" PICKETT) through 2019 (KIM PETRAS)... HALLOWEEN weekend livestreams from FLYING LOTUS, MR. BUNGLE, PC MUSIC, CODE ORANGE and many others... More witchy, ghostly and candy corny content below... KEITH RICHARDS is "impervious" to Covid, in case you didn't already know (probably to candy corn, too)... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from ARIANA GRANDE, WIZKID, SAM SMITH, CAM, TRIPPIE REDD, DIZZEE RASCAL, KEITH JARRETT, KING VON, $NOT, DAVIDO, COMMON, ELVIS COSTELLO, BUSTA RHYMES, CHUCKY73, MADEINTYO, OMARION, WAR ON WOMEN, EMMA RUTH RUNDLE & THOU, MR. BUNGLE, PUSCIFER, TOBACCO, JIM-E STACK, ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER, POWELL, BADI & BODDHI SATVA, ANE BRUN, MARY HALVORSON'S CODE GIRL, EMI MAKABE, JUNK MAGIC, BEN WENDEL, MOURN, NOTHING, TOM MORELLO (yes that link is his EDDIE VAN HALEN tribute), KING KHAN, DJ E-CLYPS, SERENGETI, MIDNIGHT OIL (first album in 18 years), ANDREW BIRD, JUDITH HAMANN, EELS, ARO (aka AIMÉE OSBOURNE, daughter of OZZY), BRING ME THE HORIZON, THEM, SALEM, SINAI VESSEL, AMY MACDONALD, WYNONNA, QUEEN NAIJA, A$AP TWELVYY, SUZZY ROCHE & LUCY WAINWRIGHT ROCHE, SMOKESCREENS, LUNCHBOX and the five-disc JONI MITCHELL ARCHIVES VOL. 1. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Over the last 30 years, the nonprofit has registered 12 million voters (and counting) via its platform and played a significant role in the election of two presidents. They couldn’t have done it without the pop, rock, and rap stars who were willing to use their fame for a cause. | | |
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 | NPR |
| In the early 2000s, mixtapes transformed Tyree Simmons into DJ Drama and molded T.I., Lil Wayne and Jeezy into rap superstars. But in 2007, those same mixtapes landed Drama in jail with a bank account balance of $0.00. We break down the raid that turned the mixtape from cultural innovation into criminal conspiracy. | | |
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 | Scientific American |
| Flooding and a wood-boring beetle threaten supplies of storied “swamp ash.” | | |
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 | iHeartRadio |
| Dive into the frighteningly wild backstory behind Bobby Pickett's iconic novelty song "Monster Mash"- which hit the top of the charts not once, but twice, more than ten years apart. | | |
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 | Disgraceland |
| The Misfits blazed a path of annihilation trading on fictional B-movie and scandal rag imagery to create one of the most enduring cult followings of all time and combating the very real sense of alienation that fueled Glenn Danzig’s creativity and violent behavior. | | |
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 | Haulix Daily |
| Most of 2020 has been a disaster, but the ever-resilient music industry is finding a way to continue growing in spite of the global pandemic. | | |
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 | TorrentFreak |
| The RIAA has obtained subpoenas compelling Cloudflare & Namecheap to hand over all of the data they hold on more than 40 'pirate' sites. | | |
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 | Highsnobiety |
| The iconic video game series has a cultural legacy which, in no small part, includes an innovative, collaborative relationship with hip-hop music. | | |
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 | Elite Daily |
| "I definitely feel like women have to fight, and not just in music, but also in the corporate world or in any other industry.” | | |
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 | American Masters |
| Filmmakers Sofian Khan and Joseph Patel explore the music of Anik Khan, the Bangladesh-born, Queens, New York-raised hip-hop artist whose music sketches the immigrant experience with rare poetic flare, incisive depth and a whole masala of influences at his fingertips. | | |
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 | Okayplayer |
| We spoke with "The Remix: Hip Hop x Fashion" co-director Farah X, who talked about her career path and how you can’t tell the story of fashion without having women as a prominent voice. | | |
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 | Water & Music |
| Whereas there used to be a few commercial signals such as ticket sales, record sales and chart placement, A&Rs can now draw upon dozens of KPIs to evaluate an artist's ability to acquire and retain an audience. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Today the company rolled out SmartEvent, a technology roadmap for the 2021 concert experience. | | |
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 | Pollstar |
| Scientists at the medical center of Halle University in Germany conducted a scientific experiment at the Quarterback Immobilien Arena in Leipzig, Aug. 22, in order to gather data on crowd management that could provide useful for live event professionals. | | |
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 | GQ |
| The prolific songwriter’s raw new collab with Justin Bieber is just his latest artist-therapeutic hit. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| A five-disc archival collection traces the beginnings of one of the most daring trajectories in popular music. | | |
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 | Real Life |
| Sonic “wellness” frequencies are more about ideology than health. | | |
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 | Toronto Star |
| From the beloved opening lines of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" to the rousing, children's-choir conclusion of the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want," President Donald Trump's campaign rallies have been filled with classic songs whose authors and their heirs loudly reject him and his politics. | | |
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| Billboard |
| House producer DJ E-Clyps shares on op-ed on the long history of racial inequality within the dance music community and his own experiences with this issue. | | |
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 | Paper |
| "More blood, more guts, more sex and more spooktacular fun to soundtrack your horror needs." | | |
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 | YouTube |
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