This is becoming the Fyre Fest of crowdfunding. | | | | Fidlar in Long Beach, Calif., June 30, 2018. Their third album, "Almost Free," is out today on Mom + Pop.
(Scott Dudelson/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “This is becoming the Fyre Fest of crowdfunding.”
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| | rantnrave:// Meet the new accounts payable boss, same as the old accounts payable boss. PLEDGEMUSIC's problem paying artists isn't breaking news, but it went a little viral again this week when BOB LEFSETZ devoted an issue of his LEFSETZ LETTER to the $20,000 the crowdfunding company owes the band FASTBALL and then published responses a day later from 30 other dissatisfied artists and artist reps who aren't getting paid (and often aren't getting their calls returned either). BILLBOARD and other sites picked up the ball and the company was forced to acknowledge, apologize, promise to fix "within the next 90 days" (context: that's three long government shutdowns), and, weirdly, brag about how much money it's paid out to artists (context: not enough, obviously). There's another way the PledgeMusic story isn't breaking news, and it's what makes this especially heartbreaking. Artists have been the victims of suspicious accounting since long before anyone knew what crowdfunding was. The music industry of the last century was infamous for the creative ways it employed to underpay them, and it kept finding new ways well into the digital age. Services like PledgeMusic were explicitly built to make things better for artists. To be transparent. To be accessible. To improve on the "sorry, but you're still unrecouped" math of the late 20th century and the "10 pennies for 10,000 plays" math of the early 21st century. To be artist-friendly. There's nothing less artist-friendly than not paying them what they're owed when they're owed it. And that's the promise that was broken here: the promise to be better, to be different, to be a path forward. Billboard quotes a producer whose band, OHGR, is owed $100,000. He told a PledgeMusic rep he was going to go public with his experience and the response was, "Do you really think anyone would care?" The next music industry, the transparent one, the one that works, will be built around more than data and metadata. It will be built around people who know the answer to that question... DAN REED's four-hour-long and already controversial MICHAEL JACKSON documentary, FINDING NEVERLAND, is among the music docs screening at SUNDANCE, which kicks into high gear this weekend. Also: STANLEY NELSON's wide-ranging MILES DAVIS: BIRTH OF THE COOL; the first two episodes of SACHA JENKINS' WU-TANG CLAN: OF MICS AND MEN; NICK BROOMFIELD's MARIANNE & LEONARD: WORDS OF LOVE, chronicling the relationship between IHLEN and COHEN, and A.J. EATON's DAVID CROSBY: REMEMBER MY NAME, which, if it does nothing more than let its famously blunt subject talk for 95 minutes, will leave you remembering a lot more than that. On Sunday, Sundance has the premiere of GURINDER CHADHA's feature BLINDED BY THE LIGHT, about a Pakistani boy in 1980s Britain obsessed with the music of BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN. Springsteen licensed a number of songs for it, and FEIST, the HEAD & THE HEART and PATTY GRIFFIN are among the artists who'll pay tribute to it at the fest's Celebration of Music in Film concert Saturday night... Not paying quite as much tribute to music in film will be the OSCARS, which reportedly is making room for only two of the five Best Original Song nominees to be performed this year... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from DAWN, BOOGIE, WILLIAM TYLER, DREEZY, MIKE KROL, RAT BOY, LEYLA MCCALLA, RUDIMENTAL, MONO, FIDLAR, SUNFLOWER BEAN, BASSEKOU KOUYATE & NGONI BA, BLOOD RED SHOES, SANTANA, VANGELIS, JULIA KENT, SNEAKS, JULIA MICHAELS, BACKSTREET BOYS, BRING ME THE HORIZON, JOE LOVANO/MARILYN CRISPELL/CARMEN CASTALDI, JUAN WAUTERS, DJ KAY SLAY, LULA WILES, SADA BABY, SWALLOW THE SUN, GUM TAKES TOOTH, MICHAEL FRANTI & SPEARHEAD, KEUNING, KID KOALA, SAY ANYTHING, SWERVEDRIVER, RIVAL SONS, DANDY WARHOLS, WATERMELON SLIM and the BEAT FEATURING RANKING ROGER... Plus new old music from ERIC DOLPHY and the soundtrack to TIM LAWRENCE's book LIFE & DEATH ON THE NEW YORK DANCE FLOOR... RIP RITA VIDAURRI and NACHO NAVA. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Slate |
| Mozart’s operas seem to glorify the behavior of bad men. But listen closely. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| From 1983 to 1985, Stuart Swezey organized a series of guerrilla punk shows in Southern California. His new film, “Desolation Center,” tells their story. | | |
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 | Complex |
| Everyone is talking about viral sensation Blueface rapping offbeat, but the flow is far from new. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| "I can deal with failure, I can deal with excuses, but incompetence is just something that drives me crazy," says Fastball manager Peter Wark. "Just tell me what the f***'s up." | | |
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 | BBC News |
| Mysterious musicians have cropped up on Spotify accounts. How did they get there - and do they point to a security problem? | | |
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 | The Paris Review |
| In the end, as in the beginning, what I loved first and foremost about Randy Travis was his voice. It was the whine that resonated, that wavering, wind-burred bellow, the sadness and the apathy of it, the pathetic beauty. | | |
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 | UPROXX |
| If there’s one thread between the graffiti boom, punk rock of the 80s, the golden age of hip-hop, and our modern streetwear movement, it’s Futura. He’s the nexus point. He toured with The Clash, he dated Madonna, he hung out with Basquiat. In this episode of "The Masters," we dive deep on Futura. | | |
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 | Variety |
| Are we living in a gilded age or in a glut? | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| It's Saturday night in Las Vegas, and Lady Gaga is doing that cataleptic-in-victory thing -- an applause-bathing pose in which the singer's freeze-tagged frame sponges up the hot rumble of 10,000 clapping hands while her cold eyes shoot death beams into the middle distance. Who's she staring at? | | |
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 | Vulture |
| Thousands of adults already knew the song from their childhoods, though in most cases the version they remember probably involved eating swimmers' legs or being reincarnated with some help from Jesus. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| Fest organizer (and Noisey metal editor) Kim Kelly explains how Black Flags Over Brooklyn 2019 is both a labor of love and a call to action. | | |
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 | Daily Mail Online |
| Billy McFarland managed to scam over $26 million from deep-pocketed moneyman and image-obsessed millennials in the lead-up to his disastrous Fyre Festival with the help of forged documents. | | |
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 | Soundfly |
| Here are 2018’s trendiest tonalities, keys, tempos, and more - PLUS individual stats and commentary for all 40 songs. | | |
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 | Dazed Digital |
| 20 years ago, the Metalheadz duo released their seminal DJ-Kicks mix - here, Goldie, B.Traits, Mumdance and more reflect on their legacy. | | |
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 | MusicAlly |
| The recorded-music industry has returned to growth, but what impact is that having on external investors like VC funds and high-net-worth individuals? | | |
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| The New York Times |
| The 21-year-old rapper has proven he can be introspective. But on his latest album, “Dying to Live,” and in interviews, he’s demonstrated little desire to discuss his own morality. | | |
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| Billboard |
| The show about what happens to two siblings when their 13-year-old brother becomes a Justin Bieber-esque sensation got real help from pop songwriter Leland. Creators Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider take Billboard inside their process. | | |
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 | Afropunk |
| The Zimbabwean guitarist, singer-songwriter and activist didn't choose political sides, but his music served the people, crossing musical and social borders. | | |
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 | Bloomberg |
| Speaker maker Sonos Inc. is planning to expand beyond the home with high-end headphones, according to people familiar with the plans. | | |
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 | Toronto Star |
| The Canadian pop star had pretty much retired, but his children and Bob Ezrin convinced him to share his music with the world again. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | Title track from "New Breed," out today on Local Action. |
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