| There's so much stuff coming out right now that's looking to blend genres, but I'm at a point where I want to make something real and not hide behind these undertones of doing something groundbreaking. I miss straightforward rock, pop and rap music. | | | | |  | Migos in Tampa, Fla., on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 7, 2021. "Culture III" is out today on Quality Control/Motown.
(Gerardo Mora/Getty Images) | | | | | "There's so much stuff coming out right now that's looking to blend genres, but I'm at a point where I want to make something real and not hide behind these undertones of doing something groundbreaking. I miss straightforward rock, pop and rap music." | | | | Followup Friday
There's been a change in management of the US government's $16 billion relief fund for live venues. The Small Business Administration's Office of Disaster Assistance, which had been disastrously slow in allocating those dollars, has been "essentially ousted" from administering the Small Venue Operators Grant program, the New York Times reports. The SBA's Office of Capital Access, which oversaw the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program, has taken over, and is promising to speed up the process and correct the bureaucratic errors that have plagued the relief fund. Welcome news for a live music industry that's been as hard hit as any business in the US and that told Congress this week that venues across the country had run out of cash and "we can't hang on any longer." Some cash-strapped venues have reopened anyway, Billboard notes. ADAM HARTKE, whose two Wichita, Kansas, clubs are Priority 1 relief cases, meaning they lost at least 90 percent of their revenue during the pandemic, told Billboard one of them, the WAVE, had a sold-out show Thursday night even though "we're struggling just to pay the regular show expenses that occur with a sold-out show." The PALACE THEATRE in Albany, N.Y., is one of the few venues anywhere that actually received its grant money, but finance director JULIA ELBAUM told the site, "A road show/act doesn't just pop into Albany, New York. They need to be able to travel/route to multiple venues in order for things to work, so being the only venue to receive an award doesn't really fix the problem." Hopefully the real fix is now on the way and the tour routing will follow. Fund it and they will come... With little fanfare and no on-air explanation, country radio's four-month ban on MORGAN WALLEN's music appears to be all but over. "Nobody is saying, 'Guess what's coming up next, a guy you haven't heard in six months!,'" a radio insider told Variety's CHRIS WILLMAN. "It's a thing that people are going to do quietly and not want to make a lot of noise about." Most of the major radio chains, Willman reports, have left the decision to bring Wallen's music back to individual stations, and in the past week, 121 of 160 country stations reporting to MEDIABASE had spun at least one of his songs. "It just felt like our point was made," one radio exec said. Whether radio listeners understood the point, or even knew one was being made, remains unclear. While Wallen has been a focus of discussion for months in the industry and the media, and while small groups of fans have complained about "cancel culture," radio insiders believe a lot of casual listeners didn't even realize Wallen's songs weren't being played... A day after being sued for $200 million by music publishers who say their songs are being used in games without a license, ROBLOX said it's in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and accused the publishers of "a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Roblox platform operates." NATIONAL MUSIC PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION president DAVID ISRAELITE said that's "like a bank robber caught in the act telling the bank it fundamentally misunderstands money"... On Wednesday, in a rantnrave about APPLE MUSIC's new label search feature, I wrote that SPOTIFY doesn't offer a clear way to search by label. But I was wrong; it does. It's a well-hidden, barely advertised feature, but type "label:labelname" (e.g. "label:Griselda") in Spotify's search bar and the service will return lists of every artist, every album and every song connected to the label. There's still so much more Spotify and other services can be doing to connect the dots within the metadata, but my apologies to the service for not noting what it *is* doing.
It's Friday
And that means new music from Chicago rapstar POLO G, who "dives deeper into his storytelling roots and gives us the kind of from-the-ground commentary that he's perfected" on his third album, HALL OF FAME... And MIGOS, rapstars of yesteryear (hello 2017), who re-enter the conversation with CULTURE III, their first album in three and a half long and boujee years... Pop-punk revivalist KENNYHOOOPLA gets a vintage 1990s assist from Travis Barker on his mixtape SURVIVORS GUILT... Welsh singer MARINA (formerly "...& the Diamonds) continues to skate around the edges of pop while diving headfirst into both heartbreak and current politics on her fifth album, ANCIENT DREAMS IN A MODERN LAND... PATH OF WELLNESS is SLEATER-KINNEY's third album since reuniting in the mid-2010s and first in a quarter-century without drummer JANET WEISS... Masked non-singer MARSHMELLO is joined by Megan Thee Stallion, TroyBoi, Juicy J on SHOCKWAVE... Nashville (via Chattanooga via the Pacific Northwest) newcomer HANNAH JUANITA is a honky-tonkin' country-rockin' throwback who proves, on HARDLINER, that she's absolutely woman enough to take your man, or whatever she wants to take.
Plus albums from MYKKI BLANCO, LIL GOTIT (released Thursday), DEAN BLUNT, PI'ERRE BOURNE, RUTH B, GARBAGE, MAROON 5, FOLAMOUR, COLD CAVE, LING HUSSLE (released earlier this week), TWICE, SLAYYYTER, LUKAS NELSON & PROMISE OF THE REAL, the OAK RIDGE BOYS, MAMMOTH WVH (aka Wolfgang Van Halen), KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD, SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE, BRAD MEHLDAU & THE ORPHEUS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA, JULIAN LAGE, DAVE KOZ & CORY WONG, DANNY ELFMAN (first non-film-score album since 1994), DIANA JONES, ALESSANDRO CORTINI, LARRY JUNE, KODAK BLACK, SKYZOO, DRO KENJI, BOBBY SESSIONS, YL, AFI, RYAN ADAMS, WRISTMEETRAZOR, GIVRE, CRYPTA, DEAD HISTORY, DUSTIN O'HALLORAN, SANDEEP DAS & MIKE BLOCK, NEFESH MOUNTAIN, JIM WARD (of At the Drive-In and Sparta), ISLANDS, the SCIENTISTS, JESSE ROYAL, RACHEL BAIMAN, KADY DIARRA, DOWNSTAIRS J... And the soundtrack to IN THE HEIGHTS, the movie, which opens today in theaters and on HBO Max.
And—happy Friday—this breezy summer jam, a surprise gift from LORDE. And this campaign contribution from MEGAN THEE STALLION.
| | | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | |  | | Billboard |
| | How SoundScan Changed Music, Driving Metal, Rap and Alt-Rock Up the Charts | | by Michaelangelo Matos | | Thirty years ago, pop-rock dominated the industry. Then Billboard began tabulating charts using sales information from store checkouts. | |  | | The Atlantic |
| | It Wasn't Just Another Nightclub | | by Ari Shapiro | | Five years ago, I went to cover the Pulse shooting-and found myself unexpectedly close to the story. | |  | | Complex |
| | How Drill Music Took Over Chicago--and Was Almost Forced Out | | by Andre Gee | | Chicago drill was one of the most thriving (and influential) rap scenes in the country, until local officials and police tried to force it out of the city. | |  | | Kerrang! |
| | Meet KennyHoopla, the leader of pop-punk's new generation | | by Jake Richardson | | Rock music has always been there for KennyHoopla, even when it felt like nothing else was. As he prepares to release his thrilling mixtape, SURVIVORS GUILT, with collaborator Travis Barker, Kerrang! gets to know the shy star hell-bent on putting pop-punk back on top. | |  | | Music x |
| | Would you invest in a musician or band? Towards tokenized fandoms | | by Maarten Walraven-Freeling | | Catalogue sales keep dominating the news, but would anyone actually invest directly in a musician or a band? What would the return need to be to get interest for this? | |  | | Synchblog by Synchtank |
| | Are Hip-Hop Catalogs the Next 'Evergreens?' | | by Alaister Moughan | | As the genre continues to dominate music streaming consumption, will hip-hop catalogs become the next evergreens making the headlines? | |  | | The New York Times |
| | In the '80s, Post-Punk Filled New York Clubs. Their Videos Captured It | | by Rob Tannenbaum | | An exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York documents a brief moment when rogue videographers shot an influential sliver of the music scene. | |  | | CNN |
| | Can indoor concerts ever be safe again? | | by Keri Enriquez | | There's a growing body of scientific literature that shows that with the right Covid-19 mitigation measures, large, indoor concerts could be held safely. But some scientists -- including those leading the studies --- have reservations on how broadly these findings may be applied. | |  | | The Ringer |
| | The Return of Danny Elfman, Party-Crashing Punk | | by Tim Greiving | | The famous film composer is going back to his roots with his new album, 'Big Mess.' And no, he doesn't care if you don't think he belongs. | |  | | Lefsetz Letter |
| | The Bob Lefsetz Podcast: Merck Mercuriadis | | by Bob Lefsetz and Merck Mercuriadis | | Merck Mercuriadis runs the most talked about company in music today, Hipgnosis Songs Fund. We cover Merck's history, his theory in starting Hipgnosis, his relationship with artists and much more. | | |  | | Pitchfork |
| | What Would Tupac Be Doing Today? | | by Sheldon Pearce | | An excerpt from the new oral history "Changes" in which the late rapper's friends, colleagues, and admirers imagine what could have been. | | | | Billboard |
| | Struggling Indie Venues Begin Reopening Without Badly Needed SBA Money | | by Taylor Mims and Dave Brooks | | There were plenty of cheers, smiles and carefree hugs as fans filled Phoenix's Rebel Lounge on Friday to see Sydney Sprague perform the venue's first 100% capacity show since the pandemic forced the closure of the 300-person space. Owner Stephen Chilton was one of the first people to join a group of fellow indie promoters to form the National Independent Venue Association. | |  | | VICE |
| | How 'Sheesh' Became Hip-Hop's Favorite Ad-Lib | | by Ashwin Rodrigues | | The sound, prominent in songs like Young Thug's "Digits" and Drakeo the Ruler's "Flu Flamming," is the Swiss army knife of musical garnishes. | |  | | Stuff |
| | That vinyl boom? Blame teens buying Dire Straits records | | by Chris Schulz | | Demand for vinyl helped record stores survive Covid-19. Ahead of Record Store Day, meet the store owners who say they have teens to thank for that. | |  | | Variety |
| | Morgan Wallen's Four-Month Ban at Country Radio Is Quietly Lifted | | by Chris Willman | | After being banned from the airwaves by major radio chains for the better part of four months, Morgan Wallen has quietly slipped back onto the air at most country stations in the last two weeks, even as he remains persona non grata at awards shows and other high-profile events. | |  | | The Washington Post |
| | CMT Music Awards: 5 things to know, from Gladys Knight and Mickey Guyton's duet to Kelsea Ballerini's speech | | by Emily Yahr | | Five years ago, the country music industry didn't know what to make of social media sensation Kane Brown. Were his enormous streaming numbers real? Was he a songwriter? Could he translate YouTube and Facebook virality into Nashville stardom? The answers all turned out to be "absolutely yes." | |  | | Sound Field |
| | Do You Know How Much Classical Music Is Edited? | | by Nahre Sol | | When we think of editing in music, we might think of quantizing lining up rhythm in an R&B song or autotune fixing the vocals of a pop singer. Many people don't realize that editing exists in classical recordings as well. This episode of Sound Field explores the current debate in classical music of how much recordings should be edited. | |  | | Vulture |
| | It's Peter Rosenberg's Job to Be Polarizing | | by Craig Jenkins | | The HOT 97 host on his debut album and remaining one of hip-hop radio's key voices, hate him or hate to love him. | | | | | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" | | |  | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator | | |  |
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