The music industry right now is feast or famine. You're either sitting there high-fiving because you've got a billion streams, you own the master and life is great. Or you're a songwriter that's just written a song that has a billion streams... and you're making not a lot and left thinking: 'What happened?' Bernie Taupin would not be very happy right now if he was writing hits with Elton John because he would be getting nothing and no one would even particularly care. | | | | Jonathan Hultén of Swedish death metal band Tribulation in Copenhagen, June 2016.
(PYMCA/Universal Images Group/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "The music industry right now is feast or famine. You're either sitting there high-fiving because you've got a billion streams, you own the master and life is great. Or you're a songwriter that's just written a song that has a billion streams... and you're making not a lot and left thinking: 'What happened?' Bernie Taupin would not be very happy right now if he was writing hits with Elton John because he would be getting nothing and no one would even particularly care."
| | | | | | rantnrave:// MICHAEL LANG, who co-produced the muddy, messy and history-making original WOODSTOCK as well as two muddy, messy and less fondly remembered anniversary versions in the '90s, has officially announced WOODSTOCK 50, to be held Aug.16-18 in Watkins Glen, N.Y. You can pretty much count on it raining that weekend. Everything else, you'll have to guess for now. Lang says he's booked more than 40 performers but isn't naming names yet. "It'll be hip-hop and rock and some pop and some of the legacy bands from the original festival," he tells ROLLING STONE, like a restaurateur revealing that his new joint will have food, liquid and silverware. Also: some newer acts paying tribute to original Woodstock acts, which, if that means CARDI B and JANELLE MONÁE recreating SLY & THE FAMILY STONE's set, please sign me up. (KACEY MUSGRAVES and/or CHRIS STAPLETON doing THE BAND seems more likely, but I'm writing with absolutely no inside knowledge.) Also also: 50 years! Can you imagine any act from 50 years before 1969 showing up at the original Woodstock (DUKE ELLINGTON? KID ORY?) or getting an onstage tribute? JIMI HENDRIX feting IRVING BERLIN? Is 50 years not as far away as it used to be? Or is that just me? Also not so far away: the other Woodstock anniversary festival, happening the same weekend about 150 miles to the southeast... The ghost of the VILLAGE VOICE has spent the past couple weeks posting its archive of PAZZ & JOP polls and essays, in chronological order. The 1983 poll, won by MICHAEL JACKSON ("but for a while there it looked as if R.E.M.'s MURMUR—known jocularly among skeptics as MUMBLE—might actually outdistance THRILLER," Pazz & Jop godfather ROBERT CHRISTGAU wrote), went up Wednesday. A part purple and part red, white and blue 1984 poll should arrive today. They're great living histories of pop music; if you want to know what the pop literati thought about the sound of music through the decades, you can hardly do better. Though the Voice itself didn't survive 2018, Pazz & Jop somehow did. A skeleton editorial staff that's stayed on to maintain the Voice archives has been collecting ballots and appears to be on schedule to publish in late January as usual. In the meantime, UPROXX has thrown its hat in the pazz & jop ring. The site collected 178 ballots from around the musicverse for its first critics' poll, which has crowned Kacey Musgraves' GOLDEN HOUR the top album of 2018 (with a singles poll to follow today). It's an odd presentation, with all but 10 of the year's top 628 (!) albums identified by title but not artist. It'll cost you an extra click if you can't remember who made an album called FREEDOM last year (AMEN DUNES, #80 on the poll). The individual critics' lists, presented the same way, read like avant-garde poetry, but they're also where you can get happily lost in an endless sea of clicks and connections of taste and discovery, which, for a lot of polls like these, is where the real fun begins... LADY GAGA apologizes for (and explains without making excuses) her 2013 collaboration with R. KELLY, and promises to remove the song, "DO WHAT U WANT (WITH MY BODY)," from all streaming platforms... And now this MICHAEL JACKSON doc has been added to the SUNDANCE slate... The hottest sample in viral hip-hop: SIRI doing math... RIP CLYDIE KING, who lived her life 20 feet from the very stardom that her voice made possible. | | | - Matty Karas, curator | | | |  | Medium | | As investors have predicted, Spotify is actually betting on becoming the Netflix of audio — for better or for worse. | | | |  | Please Kill Me | | As the co-founder (with Richard Gottehrer) of Sire Records in 1966, Seymour Stein reshaped the direction of popular music with his signing and tireless support of acts like the Ramones, Talking Heads, the Pretenders, The Smiths, The Cure, Ice-T, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Replacements and Madonna. | | | |  | UPROXX | | Kacey Musgraves, Janelle Monáe, Mitski, Pusha T, Cardi B... | | | |  | Talkhouse | | "Congratulations, you are now ⅓ of a music booker on a cable TV show! Do not pass go, do not quit your day job." | | | |  | The New Yorker | | The documentary calls on music fans to consider how their support, while seemingly innocuous on an individual level, is one of the many threads upholding a predator's web. | | | |  | Art of a Manager | | Subscriptions are increasingly becoming more important to business in our society, from Amazon Prime to Spotify to Netflix to... Cars. Even non-tech companies are getting in on the action. But why are subscriptions so important? And will artists ever get in on the action? | | | |  | The Undefeated | | The world is clamoring for music from a happily dating creative titan of business -- how will life influence Robyn Fenty's art? | | | |  | MTV News | | K-pop idols are Freddie Mercury's biggest fans, and the Queen biopic is reaping the benefits. | | | |  | The New York Times | | Michael Lang, one of the event's original producers, will present Woodstock 50 in Watkins Glen, N.Y., with a focus on activism. | | | |  | Detroit Metro Times | | The singer/guitarist's name might be familiar to avid readers by now, as well as any Netflix subscriber, thanks to "Bird Box." | | | |  | Billboard | | Here now is Billboard's ranking of the most popular Led Zeppelin songs as voted on by U.S. consumers with their time and money, with an observation or two about each of the 94 songs in the band's catalog. | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | Consumer spending is set to increase, driven by smart speakers, wireless earbuds and competition amongst subscription music-streaming services. | | | | | Medium | | They highlighted the best music of the year. I'm highlighting the best highlights of the year in music. | | | |  | NPR Music | | The uber-viral children's song "Baby Shark" landed in the top 40 of the Billboard charts this week, years after it debuted on YouTube. | | | |  | Amplify | | Rival, the ticketing company started by former Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard will partner with Kroenke Sports & Entertainment as Rival's first client, Amplify has learned. | | | |  | Variety | | Radiohead's frontman explains why plaudits for his scoring debut mean more than lifetime achievement honors. | | | |  | Afropunk | | It was never "hiding" in plain sight. It was never behind closed doors. It was right out in the open, in the songs we sang to on the radio. | | | | | Billboard | | Billboard spoke with the British-born executive about the power of brand partnerships, the return of ABBA and The Spice Girls and why he "couldn't give a monkey's [a**]" about streaming numbers. | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | Composer Philip Glass had based symphonies on David Bowie's 1977 albums "Low" and "Heroes" and had hoped "Lodger" was next. One problem: Its musical ideas didn't interest him. Glass overcame the hurdle to compose his 12th symphony, which the L.A. Phil will premiere on Thursday (Jan. 10). | | | |  | Popula | | What if "Fire & Rain" was really about Weather? | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2019, The REDEF Group | | |
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