Good night. You guys be safe. | | | | Slayer's Tom Araya and Kerry King at the band's farewell show, Inglewood, Calif., Nov. 30, 2019.
(Scott Dudelson/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Good night. You guys be safe.”
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| | rantnrave:// You could drive a truckful of TYLER, THE CREATOR t-shirts and DJ KHALED energy drinks through the loopholes in BILLBOARD's new album bundling rules, which the WALL STREET JOURNAL reports were designed to strike a middle ground between music execs who wanted to ban all bundled albums from the magazine's chart and others who wanted to leave things as they are. The middle ground apparently is three dollars and 49 cents. Is that what a CD version of an album is officially worth these days? Do we need tariffs? If your $407.50 (with fees) MADONNA tickets didn't include a MADAME X CD, would you be willing to go up to $410.99 to get it? Actually, forget it, because albums bundled with concert tickets, unlike albums bundled with t-shirts and energy drinks, are exempt from the new rules. Unless the ticket buyer doesn't go ahead and redeem the album offer. Or something. "It's not going to move the needle," one exec told the Journal. And it's a hell of a needle. According to Billboard, "nearly every No 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart" is bundle-aided. Including TRIPPIE REDD's A LOVE LETTER TO YOU 4," this week's new #1, which got there with lots of streams and a few thousand CDs, and JASON ALDEAN's 9, this week's #2 on the strength of a few streams and nearly 70,000 CDs. Billboard, meanwhile, is planning to launch a merch sales chart. How long before that one becomes more important—and maybe even more pure—than the albums chart?... An ANGEL OF DEATH, fittingly, walked SLAYER into the great beyond, as one of rock's most influential bands played the final show of its farewell tour Saturday at the FORUM in Inglewood, Calif. The 10 minutes of onstage photos, onstage hugs and onstage goodbyes that followed could melt the heaviest heavy metal heart. Longtime manager RICK SALES says there may still be some kind of Slayer-related projects to come but he doesn't expect the band to change its mind and tour again. Unlike a certain other metal band with a lot more hits but nowhere near the influence. We looked back at other farewell shows through the years in our MusicSET "Last Waltzes: Artists Say Goodbye"... ARIANA GRANDE hears a wayward chord that none of her producers can hear. MAGGIE ROGERS puts her emotions into an arpeggiator. LIZZO requests an "undeniable hit" and gets it. And more stories behind the kind of songs that get you nominated for a Grammy. MusicSET: "Behind the Song, Vol. 12: 2020 Grammy Nominees Edition"... Rock star clarification of the week: "PETE TOWNSHEND Apologizes for Expressing Gratitude That KEITH MOON and JOHN ENTWISTLE Are Dead"... RIP IRVING BURGIE, ROBERT SILLERMAN and STEPHEN CLEOBURY. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The Atlantic |
| Meet the new teen-idol ticket scalpers -- average guys, no bots. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Robert F.X. Sillerman became one of the most intriguing and wealthiest men in the media business but died in bankruptcy, pursued by the government and suffering the painful complications of a decade of throat cancer, making it increasingly difficult to eat and breathe. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| Twenty-six years into his career, the musician visits the Los Angeles of his youth and says goodbye to the past. | | |
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 | OffBeat Magazine |
| When something is wedded into the fabric of everyday life, we ignore the systems that create, sustain and support it. The same cognitive dissonance is occurring with music and culture. | | |
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 | Africa is a Country |
| During Christmas 1981, Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba performed at a concert in Lesotho that deeply challenged and disturbed South Africa’s apartheid regime. The record of that concert is being reissued. | | |
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 | Variety |
| This year, some of the more offbeat or bizarre choices of nominees — and shocking snubs or near-shutouts of popular and deserving artists — are heightening talk that the system has outlived its usefulness and needs an overhaul, or should be tossed out altogether. | | |
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 | Vanity Fair |
| Vanity Fair has time capsuled Billie Eilish’s responses to the same questions for the last three years and tracked the almost-18-year-old’s swift rise to pop super stardom. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| “I never settle for anything but complete success or, in this case, victory,” artist says of his diagnosis and his planned return to the stage this winter. | | |
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 | MusicAlly |
| When most people think about the potential legal issues around AI-created music, they tend to think about the output – the music itself, and questions like whether an AI-generated track can attract copyright protection. Sophie Goossens, counsel at law firm Reed Smith, thinks that just as much attention should be paid to the input. | | |
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 | Prince: The Story of 1999 |
| As Prince pulled away from the spotlight in the winter of 1981-1982, his creative drive began whirring faster than ever. Hear some of the never-before-released material recorded by Prince during this prolific era, alongside stories about his two early '80s workspaces. | | |
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 | Mixmag |
| Mixes that shaped the decade. | | |
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 | NME |
| Here it is: the ultimate guide to the 100 essential albums of the 2010s, picked, ranked and dissected by NME experts. | | |
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 | Water & Music |
| “[If] they’re paid views, call them paid views … Don’t say that 100 million people have ‘watched’ this video. YouTube is called an ‘on-demand’ streaming platform for a reason.” | | |
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| The New Yorker |
| Pardison Fontaine is moving out of the shadows and releasing material under his own name. | | |
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 | The Tennessean |
| At just under six feet tall with brown hair and brown eyes, a guitar, a cowboy hat and an accent, Brad Paisley fits right into American country music. He’s apple pie, a fishing pole, and a Chevrolet. In Europe, he’s a Ferrari. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| By blending music from across the black diaspora - the UK, US, Africa and Caribbean - while facing down cyclical violence, the east Londoner has become a totemic figure in British music. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Dozens of bands vie for shows on the Navajo country music circuit each week, reflecting how one of the largest tribes in the United States is shattering stereotypes of “cowboys and Indians” | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| In the mid-’90s, rappers started recreating his classic films in their own clips. Scorsese’s influence on the music video medium has been consistent ever since. | | |
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 | Slate |
| The 2010s opened with digital downloads and queens of pop, and closed with a streaming jukebox and kings of the cloud. | | |
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 | VICE |
| Verve Records' new 'Hanukkah+' compilation adds to the desperately bereft Jewish holiday canon. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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