On platforms like Spotify and Netflix, specific artists and their works are not the objects offered to the users for consumption. Instead, the object of consumption is the platforms themselves. More than watching certain shows, we watch Netflix; more than listening to songs, we listen to Spotify... We can choose not to pay attention to the details beyond that. | | | | Rosalía at the MTV EMAs, Bilbao, Spain, Nov. 4, 2018.
(LLuis Gene/AFP/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “On platforms like Spotify and Netflix, specific artists and their works are not the objects offered to the users for consumption. Instead, the object of consumption is the platforms themselves. More than watching certain shows, we watch Netflix; more than listening to songs, we listen to Spotify... We can choose not to pay attention to the details beyond that.”
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| | rantnrave:// I'm living and working in a construction zone this week. It's loud in here, with a clanging industrial timbre but no recognizable beat. I have no kitchen and I'm grumpy and I'm imagining what it would be like if, after all the work was done and the clanging stopped, I didn't own my new kitchen. I'm wondering what it would be like if I had to subscribe to every pot, pan, fork and spoon. If I could have any pot I wanted, any time I needed it, for a perpetual $49.99 a month. These are the waking dreams you have on a day like this after reading DREW AUSTIN's essay, for REAL LIFE, on streaming media and the decline of book covers and album covers and how those missing details change the way you interact with the books and the albums themselves and how maybe eventually you realize you aren't reading books or listening to albums at all. You are, rather, reading your KINDLE and listening to SPOTIFY. The books and albums have ceased to exist, replaced by the allure of the very platforms on which you have found them with their covers and spines having gone missing. And then maybe you remember that time LYOR COHEN mentioned to you how YOUTUBE MUSIC was using the word "shelves" to describe the groups of albums and playlists you are shown every time you open the app. At the time, you liked the familiarity and analog warmth of the word. Now you can't help but notice the irony of the word, since actual shelves no longer serve any purpose and maybe that familiar human terminology is a cover for lethal robot technology. And I'm a committed streamer who gave up on buying most media a decade ago; I can't imagine what my waking dreams would be like today if I weren't. And then I click on this video in which TED GIOIA tells me streaming companies cannot be trusted to preserve the history of recorded music because they have no incentive to do so, and it's a reasonable, plausible argument, and I remember one of my favorite music reads of the past year, AMANDA PETRUSICH's 2014 book DO NOT SELL AT ANY PRICE, about 78rpm record collectors and preservationists, and I want to put on a SKIP JAMES record to drown out the kitchen construction and then turn up the volume so loud that streaming companies are drowned in a tsunami of preservationist instincts. Anyway, that's my 2018 year-in-review for today. Later this week maybe I'll write my pro-streaming version... It's even more that time of year than it was last week, and we now have more than 100 entries in our MusicSET "Best Music of 2018: The Year in Lists." Shoutout today to the sites and writers who march to the beat of their own hivemind, with no need to sound like anybody else. RAVEN SINGS THE BLUES. TEXTURA. THE VINYL FACTORY. GUITAR.COM... APPLE MUSIC adds to its ability to work with emerging artists... SONY and RHAPSODY go up against SPOTIFY in Japan with high resolution streaming... RIP ALLAN BREGMAN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Real Life |
| What is lost when we “watch Netflix” rather than shows and “listen to Spotify” rather than songs? | | |
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 | Interview Magazine |
| For our winter cover story, the rapper spoke with the emperor of streetwear about creativity, ambition, and the weird places those two things come from. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| A new exhibit at New York’s Museum of Sex shows that punk’s transgressive spirit extended far beyond the songs themselves. | | |
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 | Resident Advisor |
| Tom Faber meets the artists behind SET, a festival championing electronic music in the capital of Iran. | | |
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 | CNET |
| CNET talks being a "woman in tech," body augmentation and Harry Potter with the Grammy Award-winning musician. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Mitski, Kacey Musgraves, DJ Koze, Robyn, Snail Mail... | | |
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 | Ted Gioia |
| The psychology of owning music is just as important as the economics, maybe even more so. Because there is a deep connection between people owning music and their loyalty and commitment to it. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| Members of the pop star’s fan base brave wintry weather to toast Carey’s new album, “Caution.” | | |
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 | Passion of the Weiss |
| Vic Rosecrans explores the swift and merciless nature of internet hate. | | |
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 | Vanity Fair |
| The charts changed, reliable stars flopped, and bizarre newcomers triumphed. It was a weird year, but a promising sign of what’s next. | | |
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| Rolling Stone |
| With the dawn of AI and the rise of social media, technology is scarier -- and more exciting -- than ever. Here’s how it’s changing music, TV, sports and more. | | |
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 | Okayplayer |
| Tierra Whack was the breakout artist of 2018. In the midst of the G.O.O.D. music rollout, she dropped her whimsical 15-minute debut 'Whack World.' | | |
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 | Vulture |
| This Mortal Coil's legacy endures in any artist who prizes atmosphere and texture, and who explores the loneliness of infinite space. | | |
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 | Boston Review |
| Kanye represents what happens when the liberties of artistic genius are confused for political insight. | | |
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 | Are.na |
| As an EDM superstar, Steve Angello is both the business and the product, and an unlikely representation of this particular economic moment. | | |
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 | The Tennessean |
| 33-year-old Jamie Floyd scores spot on the new Real Country TV show after the Nashville waitress has several thrilling - and heartbreaking - runs at stardom. | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| "It certainly has been … a surprising year," Lindsey Buckingham joked from the stage at Manhattan's Town Hall last week. Fleetwood Mac's erstwhile singer and guitarist is playing shows in support of Solo Anthology, a career-spanning collection that's somehow his first-ever hits package 37 years into a successful solo career. | | |
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| Vulture |
| This year has been a surreal moment in hip-hop because it is a time when people seem to care as much about image and artifice as they do about true grit. | | |
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 | CBS News |
| After a childhood of anger and violence, the 32-year-old now commands the stage around the world. | | |
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 | CNN |
| Baby, it may be cold outside, but this week, it's been colder on 96.5 KOIT's Facebook page. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | Two Christmas songs, one that sounds happy but is melancholy and one that sounds melancholy but is happy, in 3 minutes and 45 seconds. |
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| © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group |
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