Right now there's a lot of fear in the record business. And the [parent] corporations should make it so the labels can relax a bit and be more adventurous. When the businesses are leveling out or going down, and you're still asking for growth, you don't have to be a mathematician to know what happens. | | Jimmy Iovine at Electric Lady Studios, New York, mid-1980s. (Oliver Morris/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | “Right now there's a lot of fear in the record business. And the [parent] corporations should make it so the labels can relax a bit and be more adventurous. When the businesses are leveling out or going down, and you're still asking for growth, you don't have to be a mathematician to know what happens.” |
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| rantnrave:// In a long interview headlined "How JIMMY IOVINE Plans to Take APPLE MUSIC to New Heights," we don't learn all that much about Jimmy Iovine's plans for Apple Music, a company where he has no formal title ("he’s known simply as 'Jimmy'"). We learn some other stuff, though. He believes there will always be room for multiple subscription services, which won't be separated by their nearly identical music catalogs but by their personality, feel and how each is "culturally different." He talks a lot because DR. DRE doesn't (or maybe vice versa). He believes tech companies buying up entertainment companies won't do anyone any good unless "someone at these companies [can] speak both languages." And he thinks BILLBOARD's charts should weigh paid streams more than free streams, which he obviously has a vested interest in, and which might not be a terrible idea, though I'm not sure the charts need to be more opaque than they already are... Elsewhere in the disruptive/disrupted music programming universe, PITCHFORK reports on the rapidly changing world of college radio, which is simultaneously losing traditional FM licenses (many have been sold to NPR affiliates for a quick cash infusion) while proving an effective early adopter of low-power FM licenses. Music-biz insiders tell reporter KEVIN LOZANO college stations aren't nearly as influential as they used to be, but they're still a crucial testing ground for young bands. And an unmatched breeding ground for future music-biz employees... HYPE MACHINE founder ANTHONY VOLODKIN, still cultivating his community of fans and bloggers 12 years and several internet generations after launching the site as a teenager, tells TECHNICAL.LY he offers a distinct alternative to streaming music services. "What we’re solving for is that people don’t know what to listen to,” he says. "We don’t care about your existing preferences, we want to show you what’s out there"... Subscribe to the NY TIMES, get SPOTIFY PREMIUM for free. Also possibly get less music and arts coverage... People in NEW YORK listen to sadder music when it snows than when it rains (and other music/weather statistics courtesy SPOTIFY)... This lawsuit goes to 11... Dear MIGOS: You are one of the reasons music is good right now, but your apology game is lacking. "We apologize if we offended anyone" is not the way to play it after you said those strange things (that's the nicest way to put it) about ILOVEMAKONNEN's sexuality here. Delete that "if." If you are truly sorry, just be sorry... ELTON JOHN, TALIB KWELI and GEORGE CLINTON are among the curators of a new vinyl subscription service... RIP HENRY-LOUIS DE LA GRANGE. | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Wherever Apple Music’s video strategy leads him, Iovine remains obsessed with harmonizing the respective dialects of the entertainment industry, which he claims is insecure, and the tech sector, which he calls “slightly overconfident. | |
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Read our inside account of a wild night in the studio with Migos, the hitmaking Atlanta rap trio behind "Bad and Boujee." | |
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Chance The Rapper’s “Same Drugs” video premiere on Facebook Live may be the start of a new music video renaissance. | |
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How left-of-the-dial stalwarts are fighting to stay alive. | |
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When the members of New Order arrived in New York for their first North American gigs in 1980, they were greeted by a booking agent, a drug supplier, a tour guide and their own personal chef -- all of whom were the same woman. | |
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The Australian artist's new music video is stirring up controversy across the internet and forcing people to discuss what counts as 'art.' | |
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Lady Gaga Version 20.17 is peak whiteness. No wonder "Joanne" didn’t resonate; she didn’t write it with monsters like me in mind. | |
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In a profile of the Vines frontman Craig Nicholls from a 2004 issue of "Spin," Marc Spitz’s opening line was a quip about how he wanted to hit the guy. Though he eventually warmed up to the singer, Spitz was frustrated by how purposefully evasive his subject had been, even after putting in a substantive amount of time and effort to get to him. | |
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The music discovery site still places humans and human experience over the efficiency of algorithms and software. Power to the people. | |
| An extensive interview with El-P and Killer Mike to talk their writing process, gentrification, and why dick jokes still matter. | |
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With his first No. 1 single in a decade - that inescapable 'Trolls' tune, up for a Grammy and an Oscar -- the former boy band phenom is a dad starring in a Woody Allen movie and grappling with "faint" memories from a childhood of stardom he's not sure he would choose for his son: "I could teach him a lot about what not to do." | |
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“I did think it was important for me to be cutting-edge. Now it’s just important for me to be myself-whatever that is.” | |
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As much as I love to hate Tidal, that’s only because it actually makes me sad. It’s a platform where some of my most favorite artists live, namely Beyoncé and Prince (for now), but I don’t listen to those artists very often anymore. | |
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Nick Cannon on why he's never getting married again, accepting his mortality, Mariah Carey, Bill Cosby, and more. | |
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A little-known techno jam makes a weird show sublime. | |
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How a lifelong outcast became the internet’s most divisive rising star. | |
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Drone metal, black metal, speed metal, sludge metal, death metal, groove metal, deathcore, stoner metal, deathgrind. In 2017, hard, aggressive rock has splintered into so many factions that it takes a grim-reaping interpreter to explain the terrain. | |
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Revisit a time when gabba ruled, beats were four-to-the-floor, and tartan was painted techno. | |
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You've made me so very happy. | |
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