Whatever's happening today probably won't be happening tomorrow. | | | | Phoning it in: Lil Uzi Vert at The Tabernacle in Atlanta, Nov. 28, 2017.
(Prince Williams/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Whatever's happening today probably won't be happening tomorrow.”
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| | rantnrave:// When SHAZAM launched in 2002, you had to call the company and hold your phone up near the source of the music you wanted to identify. The company would text you back the result. Seriously. How did we ever get by in the early days of the 21st century? The game-changer was the introduction of APPLE's IPHONE, which transformed Shazam from a phone call to an app, and which helped turn the app into a hit by featuring it in a commercial for the iPhone 3G. Shazam is currently ID'ing 20 million songs a day, sending 30 million links a month to streaming services and helping record companies discover and break pop stars—while struggling to find a viable business model. Enter, again, Apple, which on Monday announced it has agreed to buy Shazam (reportedly beating out SNAP and SPOTIFY). The synergy continues to be obvious in many ways. The insta-analysis of the deal focused on Apple's need to build out its algorithmic recommendation and discovery tools, and on the assumption that Apple will turn off Shazam's links to its competitors. MARK MULLIGAN called Shazam "Apple’s answer to Spotify’s ECHO NEST." He meant it in the sense that Echo Nest has served as a music-recognition engine for Apple, but what about in the sense that Echo Nest brought Spotify a host of creative talent? What can Shazam bring to Apple that perhaps neither company is even thinking about right now? Where might Apple be able to take Shazam's sound recognition technology that Shazam couldn't? And while the music synergy is clear, what are the other synergies? In addition to songs, Shazam can identify TV shows, commercials, even images. What can Apple do with that? What, at heart, is Shazam's core business? How did Shazam get here? MusicSET: "Apple Shazams Itself"... I don't expect TAYLOR SWIFT to sell tickets for stadium shows at FUGAZI prices, but I understand the anger and disappointment of fans who jumped through the hoops she set up to become official Verified Fans, only to be faced with a choice of paying $447 and up if they didn't want obstructed-view seats. Other Swift fans had better experiences, and to some extent that's the hard luck of any in-demand concert. But the optics of the former experience are weird, at least, if the goal is to both defeat scalpers and make tickets affordable for fans. If you don't succeed with the latter, who's going to care about the former?... RIP BILL HEARN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| | | banjos playing through the broken glass |
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| Apple's newest acquisition is an early digital music pioneer that's currently helping music fans identify 20 million songs a day while generating only modest revenue. What else does Shazam do, how did it become a key piece of the music ecosystem and what might Apple do with it? | | |
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| Brockhampton is redefining one of the most loaded terms in popular music. | | |
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| Regulated Internet access would restrict artists like Cory Branan from disseminating their music - and fans from discovering it. | | |
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| Drive-By Truckers frontman Patterson Hood on why the alleged sexual predator Roy Moore does not speak for his state and needs to bow out now. | | |
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| Ann Powers and Stephen Thompson join hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton to look back at the highlights of 2017 in music, from the women's march on Washington to Kendrick Lamar's DAMN. and more. | | |
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| The gloves-off battles are sweaty, verbal MMA fights, with rappers getting directly in each other’s faces. | | |
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| One of the most political groups in the history of hip-hop now backs up a late night host who has chosen to remain neutral in a fraught era. | | |
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| A new interview with the Nashville star reveals the fearless honesty at the core of her music. | | |
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| Paramore, Cardi B, the War on Drugs, Calvin Harris, SZA... | | |
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| Every era of music has its own recognizable sounds, from the tightly orchestrated pop and swampy psych rock of the '60s to the plush disco and winsome adult contemporary songs of the '70s, the brazen synthetics of the '80s, and the dour guitar rock of the '90s. | | |
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| | | can i see you and shake your hand? |
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| At a certain point in a lengthy career, it must become damn near impossible for bands to make a new album. Sure, that's what they set out to do, that's the dream, that's their job. But it has to be something of an uphill battle when you have a ton of history for it to be compared against. | | |
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| Two acquisitions and one equity-sharing deal could show that the music business, long known for its insularity, has fully entered a new era. | | |
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| If there's one thing Jessie Reyez's art leaves us with in 2017, it's that no situation will be able to trap this vibrant, bold, and hypnotic voice. | | |
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| Say this for the Golden Globes: Nowhere else is Nick Jonas likely to be nominated for an award taken home in recent years by the likes of U2 and Bruce Springsteen. A former boy-band heartthrob who can still measure his success in squeals, Jonas is up for best original song with " Home," his thumping electro-pop ditty from the animated feature "Ferdinand." | | |
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| Indie legend Mac McCaughan talks about the history of his venerated band with host Steven Hyden on The Celebration Rock podcast. | | |
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| Music has a life-changing affect on everyone, but perhaps even more so on the incarcerated. | | |
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| The pattern is all too familiar. Experiments are conducted into a new medium, engineers work on it to make it a viable product, entrepreneurs invest and roll out mass production, the great and the good attempt to claim it for high culture, then the rabble inevitably take over. It’s 1897, and for the first time the gramophone isn’t the preserve of the self-elected tastemakers. | | |
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| Scene reports Vinil Brasil is bringing the music back home Bonnie Forest 11 December 2017 We're surveying 2017 across a series of features. Next up: a profile of Vinil Brasil, the São Paulo pressing plant that's crucial to the country's scene São Paulo is the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere, home to over 20 million people. | | |
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| It’s paved with Birdman beef, Young Thug shots, and now Martin Shkreli drama. | | |
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| Aliens, Fyre Festival, fake news and more. | | |
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| © Copyright 2017, The REDEF Group |
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