At UPS there are people who work at the top, they push the boxes down; you got the feeders, you got the people who shove the boxes to the loaders. There’s so many important parts just to get the boxes onto the trucks. So I put that same format into my producing, I said to myself: 'This is a team effort; everybody’s a part of this block right here.' | | | | Put another dime in the jukebox, baby: Miley Cyrus, rock and roller, at the iHeartRadio Music Festival, Las Vegas, Sept. 21, 2019.
(Denise Truscello/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “At UPS there are people who work at the top, they push the boxes down; you got the feeders, you got the people who shove the boxes to the loaders. There’s so many important parts just to get the boxes onto the trucks. So I put that same format into my producing, I said to myself: 'This is a team effort; everybody’s a part of this block right here.'”
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| | rantnrave:// Reminder that SPOTIFY's annual WRAPPED campaign, which is currently drowning out everything in your social media feeds—even bodegas and corner stores—is a savvy marketing campaign in which each of us serves as an unpaid synapse, as well as an astonishing display of how much data the company has on us, and, in the eyes of a lot of artists, an illustration of how little they're getting paid for those tens of thousands of minutes of listening time everyone's been putting in. Also, of course, it's fun. Who doesn't love lists and who doesn't love looking in mirrors and talking about themselves? This is all of those things. Like I said, it's a savvy campaign. Share all the slides you want. Or don't. Your call, your friends, your followers. Me, I've apparently listened to 75 genres in Spotify this year, including 39 new ones (new to me or are the genres themselves new?). These are paltry numbers. It's a reminder for me that, despite being a longtime Spotify subscriber, most of my listening happens in APPLE MUSIC, which shows up first alphabetically in SONOS. Curious to know what that placement is worth to Apple. Or doesn't it matter because I'm a weirdo outlier for subscribing to both, which isn't a thing 98 percent of music fans need to do? (Also curious if "indie jazz" is a phrase people actually use in conversation or if streaming services made it up. Does it sound different from non-indie jazz?)... MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE, doing the not uncommon internet detective work of scouring job listings or, in this case, patent applications, reports Spotify is working on a "plagiarism detector" that can look at lead sheets in real time and tell songwriters if their new song is a bit too close to someone else's old song. (Do pop songwriters actually create lead sheets?) This doesn't mean Spotify will actually build this, but just in case, it sounds like a terrible idea. I'm willing to bet a section or two of virtually every song ever written inadvertently cribs a section of some existing song (or songs). If songwriters had to adjust a couple notes every time their computer provided them with real-time verification of that fact, pop music—all music, actually—would be worse for it. Songwriting is, almost by definition, inadvertent plagiarism. Or, to put it in nicer terms, it's absorption, inspiration and variation. The last thing most songwriters need is software telling them they've failed on the last part of that equation. Encourage them, Spotify. Don't discourage. Or, better, leave them alone. An anecdote from my Thanksgiving reading, about how ARLO GUTHRIE wrote "ALICE'S RESTAURANT" half a century ago: "We were sitting around the table, the dining room table, and I made up that little tune. At least, I thought I made it up. Years later I found that I had heard it somewhere else, or whatever. But OK." OK?... KERRY TRAINOR is stepping down as CEO of SOUNDCLOUD. SoundCloud president MICHAEL WEISSMAN will take over in January... RIP DICK ALEN, LEON CHUE and RYAN BRADY and MAX PERENCHIO. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | | wrapped around your finger |
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 | Billboard |
| Twenty-five years after the Latina icon's death, the appetite for her story — now the subject of a new Netflix series — is as fresh as ever. So is the endlessly complex legal battle over who has the right to tell it. | | |
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 | Forbes |
| Three years ago, Scott made the 30 Under 30 based on his music credentials. Now he’s helping major companies rethink their brands—and changing how celebrities and corporations interact. | | |
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| Forbes |
| In 2020, Compton-bred rapper Roddy Ricch says he got $20 million richer. After his first album Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial debuted at No. 1 last December, Ricch won a Grammy, spent 18 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, and dominated one of the industry's favorite apps-TikTok. | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| The albums on this list still represent a kind of miracle — a year where the great music never stopped. | | |
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 | The Song Sommelier |
| Should Sonos Radio succeed in carving out a third way, then not only does the service stand a good chance of longevity but it may prove to be a catalyst for a new wave of investment in music curation. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| How Anthony White went from selling beats to working at UPS, and from personal tragedy to award-winning glory. | | |
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 | Input |
| The band's merch has come a long way since being sold in parking lots, thanks to mainstream collaborations with Nike, Crocs, and other brands. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Paul McCartney, like the rest of us, this year found himself with an unexpected amount of time stuck indoors. Unlike the rest of us -- or most of us, anyway -- he used that time to record a new album. | | |
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| Billboard |
| Dua Lipa's Future Nostalgia finally got the concert experience it deserved thanks to her Studio 2054 livestream. But how did it stack up to the real concertgoing experience? | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| With live performances constrained by the pandemic, musical ensembles are streaming productions for listeners curious enough to seek them out. | | |
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| Stereogum |
| With 'Plastic Hearts,' released over Thanksgiving weekend, Miley Cyrus has finally let herself embrace rock music as more than an extracurricular pursuit. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| NPR Music speaks with the LA rapper, who struck a plea deal earlier this month resulting in his release from prison after a four-year legal battle. | | |
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 | Pollstar |
| The UK government has announced a three-tiered system of restrictions, which is going to replace the nation-wide lockdown that ends Dec. 2. The different tiers are meant to place different territories and the people living in them under different restrictions, all depending on the Covid numbers in any given territory. | | |
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 | The Quietus |
| These are our favourite albums of the last 12 months. | | |
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 | Route |
| Experts across the fields of journalism, live music, marketing and more talk through the terms they wish they knew before they started the job. From 'advances' to 'riders' to 'above the line' - Industry Jargon Explained will help to demystify the language of the music industry. | | |
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 | CNN |
| Ebo Taylor's signature Ghanian highlife has influenced the West African music topping international charts today. At 84 years old, Taylor is still making music. | | |
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 | Essence |
| Steve McQueen's new film 'Lovers Rock' has awed audiences, so dub-reggae legend Dennis Bovell talks about the music behind the beauty. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Two years before an official Gay Pride rally arrived in the United Kingdom, the Kinks released one of pop's first big hits with an L.G.B.T. theme. In 1970, homosexual acts were still outlawed in parts of the United Kingdom and would remain so for more than a decade. | | |
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 | IDAGIO |
| What makes the Nordic countries' attitude toward classical music different, and can we hear it in their music? Andrew Mellor thinks we can. | | |
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 | Aeon Magazine |
| If dementia is like a pair of cutters, trimming down the brain’s tree of knowledge, then music is for John a stubborn branch. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | Recorded for the NIVA Save Our Stages Festival, October 2020, and available as a bonus track on "Plastic Hearts," out now on RCA. And, yes, she does the Cranberries and the late Dolores O'Riordan justice. |
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| © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group |
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