For me music is a daily practice that I try to deepen in the sense that I get to understand more about what music really is. | | | | "Star Wars" composer John Williams in Boston, April 1980, with his droid, who handles all the electronic parts and tape loops.
(Janet Knott/The Boston Globe) | | | | |  | “For me music is a daily practice that I try to deepen in the sense that I get to understand more about what music really is.”
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| | rantnrave:// All I want for Christmas—or Hanukkah—is you, and by you I mean your taste buds, and by your taste buds I mean I want to know what you're listening to. I'd trade 100 APPLE MUSIC curator playlists, 75 SPOTIFY algorithmic playlists, 50 hi-res QOBUZ albums and 25 year-end critics' lists for a window into the play queues of five or 10 trusted friends. What are my smart friends listening to right now, right this second? What's in the recently played pile of my New York friends? What playlists do my Nashville pals have on repeat? What's in FOUR TET's headphones? (OK, FOUR TET isn't a friend. But damn if his public playlist doesn't make me feel like he is.) On some days, possibly all days, that's the entirety of what I want out of a subscription music service—like the FRIEND ACTIVITY feed on Spotify's desktop app, but with interactivity and controls and not just on desktop. In the one meeting I had with TOM FRESTON (what's in *his* ears right now?) in my MTV days a decade-plus ago, I told him a long-term goal for URGE, our subscription music service, was to have social tools where a 12-year-old in Virginia could program directly to a 12-year-old in Ohio, with no need for mediation by us middlemen and middlewomen in a Times Square highrise. We provide the music and the connection; they take it from there. So you want to program yourself out of your job?, he asked. Well yes, that was the idea. MTV eventually did give me the "out of your job" wish, but that's another story for another day. Spotify, are you doing this? Please say yes. It's hard to put much faith in speculative stories about future features based on the drafts and prototypes that internet snoops find behind hidden URLs. But this is too good not to be true. Name, or maybe it's just a working name: TASTEBUDS. Make it happen, Spotify or anybody. Make it raw and make it simple. Let me see the virtual records lying around on Four Tet's virtual desk, and let me listen in when he picks a few out and plays them. Let me virtually borrow one. Just like people with real desks can do with their real friends and neighbors. New tech, old school... LIVE NATION and the US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT have agreed to extend and toughen the consent decree designed to prevent Live Nation from using its concert promotion business to force venues to use its subsidiary TICKETMASTER for concert ticketing. Live Nation has repeatedly violated the decree, according to the government. But will the new rules, which include the appointment of both internal and external compliance monitors and steep penalties, have any tangible effect? No, indie promoters told the NEW YORK TIMES. The company's stock price rose 9 percent after the announcement... Will COX COMMUNICATIONS actually have to pay the $1 billion a federal jury awarded to the three major labels for ignoring widespread music piracy? That seems like a no, too. But in a sign that the labels' aggressive stance against ISPs is paying off, the jury award represents 10,017 individual infringements at just under $100,000 per infringement. Cox says it will appeal... SOFAR SOUNDS, which has faced criticism for using unpaid volunteers and for underpaying artists, gets transparent with a blog post detailing the finances of its shows, down to the $94 it spends on marketing for a typical night and the $176 it makes when the night is done. The company says it will increase the pay for artists at many shows starting in February... Year-end messages from LUCIAN GRAINGE and ROB STRINGER... Best vinyl (mailers) of 2019... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from NLE CHOPPA, SOB X RBE, POPCAAN, CAM'RON, SEAN PRICE & LIL FAME, GUCCI MANE and the soundtracks to CATS and STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Record stores, labels, and even artists can’t get a hold of their own merchandise. They’re pointing the finger at Direct Shot Distribution. | | |
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 | Slate |
| Lana Del Rey attacked Ann Powers over a positive review. The critic still supports her. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The Justice Department and the giant company have agreed to amend and extend the legal agreement that allowed it to merge with Ticketmaster in 2010. | | |
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 | UPROXX |
| Uproxx assembled more than 200 music critics and writers to pick the best albums of the year. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Her debut album confirmed her as the most exciting pop artist of her age. In the week she turns 18, Eilish talks about fame, fandom and her fears of adulthood. | | |
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| Slate |
| By the time “Carol of the Bells” became a global hit, its original composer had been killed by the Soviet secret police. | | |
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 | Tracklib |
| What’s the overall state of sampling right now? How common is sampling in today's music? What's being sampled? The Tracklib team dug deep into statistics from 2019's music to answer all of your questions. | | |
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 | Sofar Sounds |
| In February, we’ll be introducing a series of new features and improvements, one of which is a change to artist compensation at bigger shows. In the meantime, we want to share details about how money works at Sofar shows — it’s a common question we receive, so we want to answer that for everyone. | | |
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 | Bloomberg |
| Record labels have been itching for Facebook to step up and give them a credible alternative to YouTube. | | |
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| UPROXX |
| Music critic Grayson Haver Currin discusses the impossibility of listening to everything, and the futility of authoritarian lists. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| The ambitious 26-year-old M.C. has a new album, “Heavy Is the Head,” and is ready to spread his gospel. | | |
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 | TechCrunch |
| Spotify is prototyping a new way to see what friends have been listening to, called "Tastebuds." Despite how discovering music is inherently social, Spotify has no features for directly interacting with friends within its mobile app after axing its own inbox in 2017 and keeping its Friend Activity ticker restricted to desktop. | | |
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 | OneZero |
| It’s just the latest trick in a long history of hacking digital music services to promote your own songs. | | |
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| Pitchfork |
| From the collected satire of The Hard Times to the queering of Karen Carpenter, these books captivated our staff and contributors this year. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Here’s how one of 2019’s biggest No. 1 hits, "Someone You Loved," came to be. | | |
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 | Guitar World |
| Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Dr. John, Vaughan's former bandmates and more recall the development of one of the greatest guitarists of all time. | | |
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 | Music Tectonics |
| Music Ally just released Stuart Dredge’s “The 42 Trends of 2019,” a comprehensive end-of-year report for the music biz. With the digital ink barely dry on the virtual page, Stuart sits down with host Dmitri Vietze to explore 5 overarching megatrends that emerged from his report-and his predictions for 2020. | | |
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 | Mixmag |
| The LPs that have defined this electronic era. | | |
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 | JazzTimes |
| Colin Fleming celebrates the one and only Christmas song ever recorded by Bessie Smith: 1925's "At the Christmas Ball." | | |
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 | The Bitter Southerner |
| A new mother keeps up the annual tradition of watching Dolly Parton’s Christmas as a way to remember her mountain roots. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From the "Cottonwood" EP, out today on UnitedMasters. |
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| © Copyright 2019, The REDEF Group |
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