Discovery is one of the core benefits that we provide to people. If we can get you to discover one new item of content that you absolutely love every single month, we're pretty sure you will remain a user or customer with us for a very, very long time. | | | | Shining star: Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire at the Superdome, New Orleans, Feb. 3, 1978.
(Michael Putland/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Discovery is one of the core benefits that we provide to people. If we can get you to discover one new item of content that you absolutely love every single month, we're pretty sure you will remain a user or customer with us for a very, very long time.”
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| | rantnrave:// I'm feeling this tweet about the cost of unbundled TV. I like bundles—with the exception of the fake omakase at SUGARFISH and the sushi deluxe almost anywhere else—and I remain happily amazed that the music business has concluded that streaming music generally belongs in one giant global bundle with tens of millions of songs in a single subscription with no need to buy an add-on to hear KANYE do gospel or the guy from FUTURE ISLANDS do rap. And yes I know there are exceptions, but they represent an increasingly tiny part of the market. It didn't have to turn out this way. The fact that SPOTIFY, APPLE, TIDAL and AMAZON don't have wildly different catalogs—some of them tried—was not at all a foregone conclusion. It was, and still is, a conscious choice. It isn't Thanksgiving yet, but thank you for that, music industry. If someone has a niche interest—classical music, say—she may find she has no choice but to subscribe to a second service. But there's no music equivalent of having to pay separately for DISNEY+ and NETFLIX and HBO and APPLE and PRIME and lord knows what else just so she and her family can get through a couple nights of entertainment. So why, a decade-plus into this paradigm in which anyone can hear any song or album on demand with a single subscription, and in which the streaming companies and the artists and songwriters who supply the content say they're struggling to profit from it, is everyone still paying 2008 prices for all of this? I'm not asking you to raise my prices, Spotify. Nor you, Apple. I'm not asking you to raise anyone else's prices either. I'm fully aware the economy isn't working for everyone, music fans included. But I do wonder: If the struggle to keep streaming companies afloat is real, and if labels and publishers want money in the pockets of their artists and composers, why hasn't someone figured out how to make the case that maybe it needs to cost a little more and that maybe it doesn't have to be so painful? What does Netflix know that its music counterparts don't? Is it innate to how we consume music vs. how we consume movies and TV? Is it something about the way the two industries developed over the years? Is it a lack of imagination? A lack of actual need? And, oh wait, is Spotify maybe just maybe turning the corner into profitability, and is it doing so by paying out less of its revenues to labels (and, therefore, to artists) than it used to? Just asking. And wondering. And speaking of Spotify, DANIEL EK says the potential market for streaming audio is 2 to 3 billion people worldwide and Spotify's goal is to own at least a third of that market. "So we probably have somewhere between 10, 15x from where we are now of opportunity left," he tells investor/podcaster PATRICK O'SHAUGHNESSY. "So we're still very early days in our journey." And so, OK, maybe let's keep the price at $9.99 after all. I mean, if a billion people are going to pay it. Ek also tells O'Shaughnessy that for him, music discovery (see quote of the day, above) includes "rediscover[ing] things that meant something to you 10 years ago." Ek's programmers don't necessarily need to take you to the far reaches of that record store in the sky, it turns out. Maybe they just need to take you to the back of your own closet. What's the right price for that?... CARRIE UNDERWOOD, DOLLY PARTON and REBA MCENTIRE host tonight's CMA AWARDS, which promises to shine a much-needed spotlight on the women of country. It airs at 8 pm ET on ABC... RIP JAN ERIK KONGSHAUG, who devoted his life to making records sound better. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Invest Like the Best |
| In my conversations with Daniel, I’ve found him to be one of the most interesting and thoughtful business leaders in the world. We talk about Spotify plenty, but what I so enjoy about Daniel is his way of thinking in systems and frameworks. He is committed to evolution, innovation, and growth for both himself and for Spotify. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| Kip Ole Polos travelled from Kenya to New York to raise money for wildlife conservation, with stops at the Yale Club and Madison Square Garden, where John Mayer stood in for Jerry Garcia. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Once hired guns relegated to behind-the-scenes roles in rock music, producers are now leading the sound and scene. | | |
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 | Highsnobiety |
| "Bruv, this is how mad it is right now: Highsnobiety are ringing me asking about politics," says DrillMinister, his smirking disbelief coming loud and clear down the phone line. "Our Prime Minister just got found guilty by every judge in the land. He misled the f***ing queen!" | | |
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 | Paper |
| As the world gets darker, we need MCR more than ever. | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| "This room is wild," Adrianne Lenker said Monday night from her perch at stage left. "I feel like I'm in a barn, but, like, on another planet." The room in question was the Athenaeum Theatre, an old Masonic Temple in downtown Columbus best known as a venue for weddings and other such classy gatherings. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| CEO Cussion Pang, says it's full steam ahead for paywall strategy in Q3. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| The death of Kehinde Lijadu marks the end of a wonderfully idiosyncratic partnership, where warped pop met fierce politics. | | |
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 | Popular Mechanics |
| The machine's overbuilt motor made scratching, backspinning, and breakbeats possible. | | |
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 | NME |
| Keep your authentic relata-pop: I’ll take high in the sky silliness over ‘down to earth’ any day. | | |
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 | Medium |
| A fourteen year old Apache girl testified that Berry had sex with her fourteen times in two weeks. | | |
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 | DJBooth |
| Rappers are always finding new pockets, just not the ones you might expect. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Three key reasons the streaming giant just posted its second quarterly operating profit ever. | | |
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 | Forbes |
| Rachel Lynn Karry, cofounder and president of World Artists United (WAU), along with her partner, Jalen James Acosta, cofounder and CEO, are on a mission to close the gap between the artistic side of the music industry and the independent business side. | | |
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 | Aquarium Drunkard |
| Jaimie Branch has been playing the trumpet since the age of nine, working the possibilities of her instrument to create the music that lives in her head. After studying at the New England Conservatory of Music under jazz greats John McNeil, Joe Morris, and Steve Lacy, Branch started gigging in Chicago. | | |
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| The New Yorker |
| Last month, on a warm Tuesday evening, Les Filles de Illighadad-a guitar-based Tuareg quartet from western Niger-played for a sold-out crowd at Pioneer Works, an art and performance space in Red Hook, Brooklyn. This was the first time the band (Fatou Seidi Gali, Alamnou Akirwini, Fitimata Ahmadelher, and Abdoulaye Madassane) had toured the United States. | | |
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| Medium |
| How creative direction transforms and prolongs music careers. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| A top executive of the National Enquirer’s parent company proposed using a shell company to hide the trail of money to the alleged pedophile. | | |
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 | XXL |
| Success requires patience, and Jack Harlow is more than willing to put the time in. Rhyming since he was 11 years old, the Louisville, Ky. native is staking his claim in hip-hop. He's as smooth with melodies as he is with clever quips, making the 21-year-old rapper a testament to the value of taking your time and being true to yourself. | | |
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 | Switched On Pop |
| Once upon a time, classical music was pop, so today it's worth stepping back and asking: where does one genre stop and the other begin? Can classical ever be popular again? And why do only some classical tracks makes for good samples? | | |
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 | YouTube |
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