[Motown founder Berry Gordy] stressed that the melody would be very simple, whereas even a child could hum it. He would stress as simple as you could keep it, the more mass appeal it would have. | | | | In sync: The Temptations in 1964.
(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | | | “[Motown founder Berry Gordy] stressed that the melody would be very simple, whereas even a child could hum it. He would stress as simple as you could keep it, the more mass appeal it would have.”
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| | rantnrave:// Why does one get the feeling that the people developing and implementing AI technology for radio stations that can pinpoint a song's “rhythmic profile, chordal, melodic content, harmonic and amplitude over time," mix it with another song “in concordance with the salient temporal moments" and add sound effects, background music and other stuff to complete a “more engaging overall consumption experience"—a thing that humans are biologically designed to do really, really well, at relatively modest salaries—are the same people who go on TWITTER or FACEBOOK to ask their friends to recommend some great new music because the algorithms that control their discovery on SPOTIFY and APPLE MUSIC aren't cutting it? That's a trick question. Everybody is either on Twitter or Facebook asking their friends for music or hanging out on those platforms answering their friends' questions. Everybody misses that human connection. Everybody craves vinyl, or mixtapes, or record store clerks, or some kind of carbon-based way of discovering the next salient temporal moment with a good beat or a cool sound or something interesting to say or, hallelujah, all of that. (It's possible "salient temporal moment with a good beat" is redundant, sorry, but I quit physics after freshman year so I have no idea.) Sooner or later, everybody will flock to a service or platform that offers exactly that. Human selectors. I swear it's the next great breakthrough after AI powered curation runs its course. I understand the need to compete with the PANDORAs and YOUTUBEs of the world, to keep up with them technologically, financially and creatively. I love some of their technology. But why just keep up with them? Why not leap a step or two ahead? Go back to the analog, warm-blooded basics before they do. It's possible, just possible, you're already there... Addendum 1: By "modest salaries," I mean shoutout to D'EDWIN "BIG KOSH" WALTON, a victim of this month's IHEARTRADIO layoffs, who was getting $12/hour to be a weekend on-air personality at Columbus, Ohio, hip-hop station THE BEAT, and who worked a second job as a server at OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE... Addendum 2: If the AI creating a more engaging overall consumption experience at IHEART's country stations is allowed to play two female artists in a row, I take it all back and give the AI my blessing... Earplug vending machines is a fantastic idea... Wuhan, China, is "Punk City"... ON THE RECORD, the doc about RUSSELL SIMMONS' accusers that was dropped by OPRAH WINFREY and APPLE PLUS, has a new home at HBO MAX... BRIAN WILSON is very very opposed to "The BEACH BOYS touring group licensed by MIKE LOVE" playing at a trophy-hunting convention and he'd like you to sign a CHANGE.ORG petition to protest the show, and I'd like someone to start a Change.org petition to make that the official legal name of the Beach Boys touring group... An even more worthy cause: this GOFUNDME for MARS VOLTA/RACER X bassist JUAN ALDERETE, who's recovering from a devastating bicycle accident... RIP J. SCOTT and PETER SERKIN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| The dominant player in U.S. radio has called AI the muscle it needs to emerge from bankruptcy, but there’s no clear indication that AI will solve a long-running financial challenge of the company’s own making. | | |
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| Every Blue Moon, Josh Homme and a few of planet earth's remaining rock & rollers descend upon Joshua Tree for the Desert Sessions and emerge with an album a week later. Introducing the latest iteration of one of the coolest enduring projects in music. | | |
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| But all is not lost -- sign the petition now to grant British artists a Musicians’ Passport to make touring Europe easier. | | |
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| The music of Albalabel, a pioneering women’s group in a deeply conservative and patriarchal Sudan, endures over decades of revolutionary struggles. | | |
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| Wu Wei, the lead singer of China’s oldest surviving punk band, insists there’s nothing political about his music. | | |
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| The rise of online gear stores has spawned a middle class of music memorabilia that benefits both bands and fans. | | |
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| THE COACHELLA MUSIC FESTIVAL, not necessarily known for its adorable moments, offered up the pop equivalent of two baby pandas playing when, under the pink arena lights and to the accompaniment of the cheering and frantic uploading of a thousand teenage witnesses, Billie Eilish met her idol, Justin Bieber, for the first time last April. | | |
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| In a genre dominated by forgettable hits by young male stars, a mixed-gender vocal group of fortysomethings are writing and recording new classics. | | |
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| It's been one week since the Grammy Awards, and for many people it's taken a week even to begin to process all the things that happened in the deranged ten days leading up to the show, let alone try to figure out where things currently stand. | | |
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| Thirty years after his death, the entertainer has been forgotten or dismissed -- yet, he dared to live his life in defiance of expectations. | | |
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| The passage of AB-5 speaks to the promise and the difficulty of tearing down the gig economy. | | |
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| Gibson’s Mat Koehler and Fender historian Terry Foster on how two industry titans went head-to-head in search of the ultimate electric bass. | | |
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| Progress in the music industry begins with Black music executives acknowledging that they’re just as guilty of stifling Black artists as white institutions. | | |
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| For pop stars like Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Gwen Stefani, the now legendary Vegas residency has become both a marker of success and a respite. | | |
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| Griessmuehle’s closure reveals an alarming urban trend: the nightclubs pioneering divested neighborhoods are later pushed out as a result of their own success. | | |
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| The long-running group return to take stock of a nation on the brink, its institutions in peril, and its citizenry increasingly polarized, and wonder: What’s a Southern rock band to do in the twilight of the American experiment? | | |
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| You might recognize Junia-T as Jessie Reyez’ tour DJ, but his musical history and indeed his association with Reyez goes back much farther than whaat meets the eye. | | |
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| Curb Records Mike Curb on why the slate of recent Tennessee bills are discriminatory and could hurt the state's vibrant music industry. | | |
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| The documentary “Miss Americana” pulls back the curtain (slightly) as the pop star grapples with a formidable opponent: the patriarchy. | | |
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| On her new album, ‘Color Theory,’ songwriter Sophie Allison wrestles with grief and turns up the noise. | | |
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| | | | | | | A 1975 funk jam, with Funkadelic's Eddie Hazel and Billy Bass Nelson. |
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