Live albums, for me, they are mementos for fans. We've done the bootleg work for you, hopefully, and done it quite well. | | | | Taylor Swift performing in Houston on Feb. 4, 2017. "Reputation" is out today on Big Machine.
(Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Live albums, for me, they are mementos for fans. We've done the bootleg work for you, hopefully, and done it quite well.”
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| | rantnrave:// The question today, as TAYLOR SWIFT finally puts her REPUTATION on the line, is not how many copies her sixth album is going to sell. It's going to sell a ton. Pre-orders were at 400,000 as of a week ago. Her label, BIG MACHINE, was predicting first-week numbers of 2 million, while the label's distributor, UMG, was projecting a more modest but still ginormous number of 1.3 to 1.5 million. Any of those numbers would amount to the biggest first week of Swift's career, paying off a postmodern media campaign that included a lightning round of advance singles, lots of TUMBLRing and zero interviews. But the question is, what happens the following week? And the week after that? Beyond a (very big) core of dedicated fans, who's listening to Taylor Swift's electropop audio diary in 2017? The first four singles are all solid pop tracks—this is Taylor Swift, after all—but none have gained any serious pop traction, and there isn't anything close to a "BLANK SPACE" in the bunch. By the time "CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT" hit last week, SPOTIFY couldn't even be bothered to place it in its NEW MUSIC FRIDAY playlist (OK, there were non-musical reasons for that). The RINGER's JUSTIN CHARITY wonders if Swift has drifted out of step with a pop fanbase whose diet is almost entirely hip-hop. The GUARDIAN's LAURA SNAPES posits that in both her music (at times "hostile") and her persona, Swift has been "shredding the image of relatability she worked so hard to establish." This NEW YORK TIMES roundtable does a nice job of filling in the context of Swift's recent public life (another battle with KANYE, powerful testimony in a trial that presaged HOLLYWOOD's season of sexual assault revelations, a strange fight with a blogger) while exploring what works, and what doesn't, so far—but, wait, what if your old take on "Reputation" can't come to the phone right now because your old take is dead and the album is, in fact, great? What if, duh, "there's more to Taylor Swift than dropping hints and creating drama"? What if she's turned a bad reputation into a good "Reputation"?... Swift has been compared favorably to JONI MITCHELL, and here's some supplementary listening for your weekend: this playlist showcasing Mitchell and the hip-hop and pop singers who embraced, sampled and paid homage to her... Chinese media company buying MUSICAL.LY for reported $800 million... If you're still holding onto your ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME ballot, this weekend would also be a good time to watch LIZ GARBUS' affecting and difficult NINA SIMONE documentary, WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? The doc is on NETFLIX. I think you'll know what to do with your ballot afterward... It's FRIDAY and that means there's also new music from ARETHA FRANKLIN, ANGEL OLSEN, GRETA VAN FLEET, TEEN DAZE, PROJECT MAMA EARTH, SYLEENA JOHNSON, WIZ KHALIFA, YUNG LEAN, CARLOS VIVES, GREGG KOWALSKY, JIDENNA, EVANESCENCE, SEAL, SLEIGH BELLS and IAN SVENONIUS.
| | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The Vinyl Factory |
| Tracing the influence of jazz photographer and artist Roy DeCarava from '60s Harlem to Kahlil Joseph's visions of contemporary America. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Questlove, Salamishah Tillet and Jon Caramanica discuss depictions of rap’s old-school days as well as new series and movies with hip-hop embedded into their frameworks. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| The rollout for Swift’s forthcoming album, ‘Reputation,’ has seen the star struggle to keep her singles on hip-hop-dominated pop charts. | | |
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 | Pigeons & Planes |
| What was once "selling out" is now common practice. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| As user base sinks to lowest point on record, is Pandora beyond salvation? | | |
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 | Noisey |
| How algorithms are not only changing the way we listen, but are changing the way we write music. | | |
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 | UPROXX |
| The fresh-faced Michigan quartet is the latest in a long line of bands who promise to revive rock and roll. | | |
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 | Complete Music Update |
| CMU Insights presents its latest masterclass 'Enforcing Music Rights: Safe Harbours And Piracy' later this month. Ahead of that, here’s a quick summary of the last year in music piracy and copyright enforcement in five steps, covering the key news stories that will be explained at the masterclass. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| On her sneakily potent sixth album, the pop star shifts away from her signature melodies, engaging with the competition on its terms, not hers. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Lee Ann Womack remains consistent through her entire career as a vocalist, even through recent release 'The Lonely, The Lonesome, & The Gone.' | | |
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| Noisey |
| A decade ago, Weezy's string of releases reimagined what rap could be, and created a blueprint musicians are still following today. | | |
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 | Detroit Metro Times |
| click to enlarge In a world where you can get virtually any song at your fingertips within seconds, vinyl records have somehow managed to survive, and even thrive. In the past 10 years or so, the format made a big comeback. To celebrate, the industry converged in Motown earlier this week. | | |
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 | Office of Copyright |
| On November 4, 2017, H.R. 1, the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” was introduced in the House of Representatives. Buried within the 429 pages are several important changes which can have an impact on the career of a musician or composer. Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., explains what the changes are and how they will affect your career as a musician or composer. | | |
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 | The Verge |
| At Cloak & Dagger: Dusk Till Dawn the bands were just the beginning. | | |
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| The Ringer |
| The country awards ceremony was not without its moments--but the renegade singer busking outside on Facebook Live was better than most of them. | | |
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 | Slate |
| Tom Petty and Prince only played together once. But their careers paralleled each other for four decades. | | |
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 | American Songwriter |
| Don’t think you can’t be taught the tools of the trade to help nurture the creative magic. | | |
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 | Song Exploder |
| Rachel Platten's “Fight Song” was used prominently by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. For a normally apolitical artist, the sudden proximity to the election had profound effects, both positive and negative. In this episode, Rachel breaks down her song “Broken Glass,” which was inspired by that experience, and written just days before the 2016 election. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| One of a tiny number of female recording engineers, Rogers was there at birth of some of pop’s classics, including "When Doves Cry." She recalls the man she knew -- and shares her theory about why he loved working with women. | | |
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 | The Root |
| Confession: I was absolutely thinking about pulling out of my first silent party an hour before I was to leave for it. I was running on minimal sleep and nursing a dehydration headache all day; and it was one of those cold, rainy fall days for which God invented cuffing season, malbec and Showtime Anytime. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "Themes for a New Earth," out today on Flora. |
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| © Copyright 2017, The REDEF Group |
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