Selling mixtapes is a job but it’s also a hustle. It’s a little bit like dealing drugs: You have to learn to talk to people, you have to learn to go in and make deals in unusual places. | | | | The flannel upside down: Mosh pit at a Fear concert, Reseda, Calif., 1982.
(George Rose/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Selling mixtapes is a job but it’s also a hustle. It’s a little bit like dealing drugs: You have to learn to talk to people, you have to learn to go in and make deals in unusual places.”
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| | rantnrave:// My first thought upon diving into the massive NEIL YOUNG ARCHIVES, which went online Friday with streamable, high-res versions of pretty much everything he's ever released (and more), and which is either beautifully or strangely designed (or both), and either incredibly fun or frustrating to navigate (or both), and which is currently free but will soon convert to a subscription model (price TBD), was, why doesn't every artist do this? My second thought: Wait, what if every artist did do this? Would you pay $9.99 a month for access to everything your favorite artist has ever released, recorded and or demo'd? Would you pay $5.99? $1.99? What would you pay for your second favorite artist? Or your 72nd favorite artist? Can you imagine a world where you had to separately pay each and every artist whose music you want to hear on demand? Crazy, right? But I can imagine that, and so can you. That's how the actual world worked until less than 20 years ago. Ten or 15 bucks for on-demand access to a single CD's worth of songs. And 10 or 15 bucks again if you wanted to hear another. How on earth could anyone afford to eat in 2005? The Neil Young Archives is kind of fabulous, though. It looks like Neil, smells like Neil, offers top-shelf fidelity (not that my laptop cares, but lots of people will) and contains all sorts of cool liner-note info (but, grrrr, did he have to put the songwriter's name in a smaller font than everything else? #21stCenturyMusicEconomyInANutshell) and other extras. I'd forego the occasional meal for it. Could/should ED SHEERAN do this? KENDRICK LAMAR? Your second favorite artist? Your 72nd? Do they do it instead of SPOTIFY or APPLE? Or in addition to those services, with bonuses for diehard fans? Do we want narrow and deep, or wide and shallow? Can we have both?... If TENCENT MUSIC and SPOTIFY were baseball players, Tencent might have a higher batting average but Spotify would have a way better OPS+. Or something like that. The former company, which rules the Chinese streaming market and whose parent company reportedly tried to buy Spotify earlier this year, dwarfs Spotify with its 700 million monthly users. But hardly any of them pay; Spotify's 60 million paid subscribers put Tencent to shame. That's presumably one of the reasons Tencent is interested in a deal in which the two companies would trade up to 10 percent of their stakes with each other. And Spotify's motive? "Spotify really, really feels that it needs that entry point into China" ahead of its public offering, suggests analyst MARK MULLIGAN. Industry observers have been waiting for the inevitable consolidation of streaming services. Is this the one they were expecting? Is this the one you were expecting?... LL COOL J on Sunday became the first rapper awarded a KENNEDY CENTER HONOR, with assistance from QUEEN LATIFAH and BUSTA RHYMES. The other music honorees were GLORIA ESTEFAN and LIONEL RICHIE... Sexual abuse allegations reach the classical world: The latest to fall is longtime METROPOLITAN OPERA conductor JAMES LEVINE... RIP MUNDELL LOWE and WILLIAM MAYER. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The Ringer |
| After a successful year working with Taylor Swift, Pink, Lorde, and St. Vincent, producer and part-time rock star Jack Antonoff has claimed the ground once owned by the disgraced Dr. Luke—with a considerably different approach | | |
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 | Genius |
| The NBA superstar debuted new music from chart-topping rappers and spotlighted up-and-comers on social media this year. | | |
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 | Fact Magazine |
| Reporting for Vice‘s since-folded site Thump, David Garber discovered unpaid instructors and employees and classes that were paid for but never in session. Here, Garber speaks to Dubspot’s former CEO, Dan Giove, and a slew of former students and employees to get to find out what really happened. | | |
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 | Medium |
| The tipping point for classical music. | | |
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 | The Fader |
| Tay-K, Phoebe Bridgers, Lil Uzi Vert, J Hus, Frank Ocean... | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| As awareness of inequalities in the field grows, a quorum of women who fully expect to be heard has been speaking louder. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| The Bronx rapper went from Instagram skits to dislodging Taylor Swift from the top of the US charts with one of 2017’s best tracks. But after two Grammy nominations, she’s feeling the pressure of fame. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Through the new company On Location, the NFL and Ticketmaster have launched an initiative to re-take the secondary ticket market surrounding the Super Bowl -- and bringing live music and more to the table along with it. | | |
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 | No Such Thing As Was |
| Halfway through his autobiography, Paul Stanley discusses "KISS Alive!," his band's breakthrough 1975 live album, writing honestly about the post-production sweetening that gave that album its raise-the-roof oomph and stomping vibe. I really like Stanley's perspective. He remembers that what you take away from a show is less the notes played (or f***ed up) than the playing of them. | | |
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 | RapRehab |
| I relish at the thought of rapists, molesters and sexual assaulters unable to sleep at night, tossing and turning in the manifestation of their own nightmares. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| Though Mars is arguably the most instinctive and enthralling showman of his generation, the pop singer can feel, at times, like a curiously undervalued commodity. | | |
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 | Digital Music News |
| What's the real cost of ditching net neutrality? Potentially billions in 'fast lane' tolls and 'paid prioritization' charges over the next decade. | | |
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 | Trench |
| "Saying Afrobeats is a phase is like saying reggae is a phase--it's always been there!" | | |
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 | Refinery29 |
| While you were discussing how Childish Gambino got so many awards or why Ed Sheeran got snubbed, the various categories that are never in the televised awards show are hiding some absolutely golden tracks that you need in your life. | | |
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 | Music Industry Blog |
| News has emerged that Spotify and Tencent Holdings could be swapping 10% holdings in each other's companies ahead of Spotify's public listing. There are some obvious implications for both enterprises, as well as some less immediately obvious, but even more interesting permutations. | | |
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 | Dazed Digital |
| As the post-hardcore icons release Material Control, their first album in 15 years, we speak to Daryl Palumbo and Justin Beck about hitting the reset button | | |
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 | Very Smart Brothas |
| How offensive and absurd would it be if, instead of a black person and a white person having this conversation, it was a Jewish person and a Nazi? | | |
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| Genius |
| "When I made the beat I was thinking of clouds. Like clouds in a jungle filled full of love. But not love from a girl. Love from life, and appreciation just a nice fluffy, bouncy.” | | |
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 | Esquire |
| If you knew about Tommy Keene, one of the things you knew was that more people should have known about Tommy Keene. He should have been huge, is the way the story went. He should have had the career of a Tom Petty, or at least a Bryan Adams. | | |
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 | Atwood Magazine |
| In a world where most chart-topping artists and songs seem manufactured, Tove Lo is the refreshing and genuine pop star we -- especially women -- all need. | | |
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 | SoundCloud |
| | | | | | This is my band and this is my annual self-promotional reminder. 'Tis the season. |
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| © Copyright 2017, The REDEF Group |
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