It's not that often that I hear a Christmas song that doesn't make me want to quit music. | | | | Esa-Pekka Salonen, the new music director of the San Francisco Symphony, at work in New York on Nov. 8, 2012.
(Hiroyuki Ito/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "It's not that often that I hear a Christmas song that doesn't make me want to quit music."
| | | | | | rantnrave:// These are the things BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN's team did to try to stave off bots, scalpers and STUBHUBs during the Boss' 14-month run on BROADWAY: It partnered with TICKETMASTER's Verified Fan program, which restricted ticket sales to people who appear to be legitimate fans and entered them in a secretive lottery just for the right to access the ticketing website. It limited the winning verifiables to two tickets per show. It set the top price at a sky-high $850, in line with the priciest VIP seats at hot Broadway shows and also, not coincidentally, in line with the going resale rate for decent seats to HAMILTON. The idea, presumably, was to cut scalpers out not by undercutting them but by matching them, as in "just try selling tickets for more than we're already selling them!" It made the cheapest seats, at $75, available only through another lottery held the day before each show. The seemingly complicated process left a lot of fans unhappy and, worse, heartbroken. But that's the price you pay to fight a war that musicians and their agents have been angling to fight for some time. But is it a winnable war? STUBHUB this week named its best-reselling acts of 2018, and #1 and #2 were Springsteen and TAYLOR SWIFT, who also uses Verified Fan and is equally committed to the anti-scalping fight. Do artists have go thermonuclear to gain any ground at all? Connect tickets to names and faces and make it impossible for anyone but the original buyer to use the ticket? The problems with that approach are self-evident, I believe. Automatically cancel any barcode that passes through any reseller's platform? That seems equally problematic. Play five or 10 more shows in every city to satiate all potential demand? Charge $5,000 per ticket for the good seats and $500 for the cheap ones? Stop performing live altogether and concentrate instead on recording and releasing digital files that wouldn't be worth 9 cents on the resale market? What are the actual questions I, or anyone, should be asking here? What *is* working? Is it possible the current resale market is one of the things that is, in fact, working? Do fans accept it, or even like it, more than they let on? Do they accept it more than they'll accept any plausible alternative? Is it the crisis that we all think it is?... I don't resent Springsteen's ticket prices at all, btw. The demand was obviously there, and SPRINGSTEEN ON BROADWAY, which he performed five nights a week for over a year—the first steady job he's ever held, as he told the audience each night—was worth every penny and more, a lot more. A transcendent experience. It closes Dec. 15, and if it's even half as good when it moves from Broadway to NETFLIX the next day, that will be something, too... Progress at SAG-AFTRA, upheaval at the New York chapter of AFM... I believe he's trying to say "innocent until proven guilty," but this is not a good way to say it... HRISHIKESH HIRWAY will turn the host seat at his SONG EXPLODER podcast over to musician THAO NGUYEN next year. This deliciously nerdy episode with LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM breaking down FLEETWOOD MAC's "GO YOUR OWN WAY" will be one of Hirway's last... WU-TANG storm the TINY DESK... A a a a a very good song to download to your IPHONE... Best wishes to our friend MATT PINFIELD. | | | - Matty Karas, curator | | | |  | Longreads | | Listening to music with a Tokyo record store owner forges a deeper bond than any shared language. | | | |  | Stereogum | | For musical taxonomists, it's anarchy out there. | | | |  | Variety | | There is one group, and one group only, that should be crusading against the performance of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" in public: vicious maiden aunts. These treacherous protectors of niece-ly chastity have no coalition in 2018, so far as we've heard. (Speak up and say your piece if you're out there, Auntie Lame Society.). | | | |  | XXL | | Pusha-T speaks with "XXL" about his participation on 1800 Tequila's compilation project '1800 Seconds', his new music and his plans after hanging up the mic. | | | |  | Billboard | | Struck by loss, Grande made the best and most widely embraced music of her career. Owning her sadness and her strength, she exemplifies the unshakable spirit of the artists recognized in Billboard's annual celebration of top female talent. | | | |  | Classic FM | | Queen's progressive rock classic is an absolute masterpiece of 20th-century music, but is it a Rhapsody in a true, music theory sense? | | | |  | The New Yorker | | Esa-Pekka Salonen will be the next music director of the San Francisco Symphony. | | | |  | NPR Music | | Childish Gambino, Lucy Dacus, Janelle Monáe, Ariana Grande, Soccer Mommy... | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | "This just makes us go back into boot camp and train harder because now we are very aware of what we're up against," Drea Kelly says after "Surviving R. Kelly film screening is shut down. | | | |  | The Tennessean | | The Oak Ridge Boys have taken a suit and tie everywhere they've gone for the last couple of months in preparation for the call members knew was coming sooner than later. | | | |  | The Ringer | | With the #InMyFeelings challenge and the Pete Davidson saga, music's biggest stars became more responsive and self-referential than ever. | | | |  | The New York Times | | The 20-year-old singer and rapper, who was killed in June while facing charges that he abused a woman, left behind superfans and vocal critics. | | | |  | 5 Magazine | | The Roland TR-808: How a fledgeling Japanese electronics company changed the sound of electronic music forever. | | | |  | Detroit Metro Times | | In advance of her Detroit concert, Ronnie was kind enough to chat with us about why those songs of the '60s still captivate modern listeners, the differences between Motown and the Ronettes, and more. | | | |  | Penny Fractions | | The pattern appears fairly obvious: Where Spotify was early to market and was able to build on smartphone growth it found success, but in markets with more competition for those same smartphones notsomuch. This issue for Spotify in India is primed to follow, not buck, this trend. | | | |  | UPROXX | | The Atlanta-based independent label Quality Control has indeed controlled the streets, but how long can they keep it up? | | | |  | Playboy | | "Playboy" reflects on the musician's unique catalogue and inspiring perseverance. | | | |  | Vulture | | You can thank him for acting roles from David Bowie, Randy Newman, and also the career of Hans Zimmer. | | | | | The New York Times | | Adolescent fixations can be an antidote to the compromises of adulthood. | | | |  | The Guardian | | While the Oscar-buzzed remake of A Star is Born stuck to its romantically old-fashioned roots, the Natalie Portman-starring drama offers a toxic alternative. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | Phoebe Bridgers with Jackson Browne | | | | Cover of a 2008 song by the Omaha band McCarthy Trenching. | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group | | |
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