Today, in 2017, if I’m a songwriter or an artist, I have nowhere in which I can digitally express my rights... I come out of the studio, I put that recording on a 20 year-old format like a FLAC or a WAV or an MP3, then I send it out into the world. And I rely on all these other architectures and databases to link together, talk to each other, and get me paid. | | | | Luis Fonsi in Miami Beach, 2002.
(Rodrigo Varela/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Today, in 2017, if I’m a songwriter or an artist, I have nowhere in which I can digitally express my rights... I come out of the studio, I put that recording on a 20 year-old format like a FLAC or a WAV or an MP3, then I send it out into the world. And I rely on all these other architectures and databases to link together, talk to each other, and get me paid.”
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| | rantnrave:// For those of you still struggling to grasp how blockchain technology can, or will, work in the music-rights world—that's me raising my own hand—this BENJI ROGERS interview is as good an explainer as I've seen of the current promises and challenges. Key point: Rogers' DOTBLOCKCHAIN MUSIC envisions a single digital format that contains "the music with the metadata," in place of the current jumble of audio formats and metadata storage. Key question: In a world that's perpetually undecided between vinyl, cassette and eight-track, or between APPLE and PC, or between MP3, AAC, WAV and FLAC, or between TAYLOR SWIFT and KATY PERRY, is it realistic to imagine a one-size-fits-all answer? Or can a single standard be flexible enough to contain the shifting multitude of recording, digitizing, listening and data preferences that we snowflakes will spend the rest of our lives disagreeing with each other on?... Speaking of formats, this is the most danceable format any HARVARD student has ever used for a senior thesis... It's easy to make fun of the CANADIAN college students who apologized for playing LOU REED's "WALK ON THE WILD SIDE" at a campus event after realizing the song is "transphobic," "minimizes" the obstacles faced by trans people and is full of "dangerous rhetoric." The song, which celebrates a community Reed loved, is objectively not transphobic and it is not any song's job to explain any obstacles faced by anybody. #Art. #Misunderstanding. #Blahblahblah. But it's a little too easy to minimize how someone in 2017 might react to a song recorded in 1972. Acceptance needs to go both ways. Just because a lyric doesn't offend you doesn't mean it doesn't offend someone else. And just because a lyric does offend you doesn't mean it's dangerous... How to *not* win friends while influencing people: My friend ANDY GENSLER traces the oft-contentious career of L.A. REID, based entirely on Reid's 2016 memoir. Reid was ousted from the top job at EPIC two weeks ago for reasons that may be unrelated to any of this. But still. The cynicism chronicled here is depressing... Brief history of goths... BILLBOARD MUSIC AWARDS: A lot of DRAKE, a little CHER. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Pitchfork |
| If you were Chris Cornell in 1996, you would be the lead singer and principal songwriter of what is poised to be the Greatest Hard Rock Band in the World. And sometimes—for days, maybe weeks on end—you would be afraid to leave your house. (Originally published in Details in December 1996.) | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| The music streaming service tattles on your listening choices unless you manually tell it not to. This is madness. | | |
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 | The New Statesman |
| Gene Simmons: "If Putin is here, he will not make himself known to me." | | |
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 | The Bitter Southerner |
| When New York rapper Joe Budden went off on Atlanta’s Lil Yachty, was he lecturing a new generation, or was it 20 years of resentment toward rap from the South? | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The endeavor has become the focus of a criminal investigation, with federal authorities looking into possible mail, wire and securities fraud, according to a source with knowledge of the matter, | | |
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 | The Verge |
| The site recently opened a subscription drive. | | |
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 | Thump |
| From Nedarb to VHVL and beyond, these are the beatmakers changing the game from the inside out. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| A lot happens over the course of a thirty year music career. | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| Petra Rivera-Rideau, author of "Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico," describes the complex lineage of the song—and the implications of Justin Bieber popularizing it in the U.S. | | |
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 | Salon |
| Any reasonable person would think that it was OK to call time on the Dead. A reasonable person would be wrong. | | |
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 | The Conversation |
| Does musical taste even matter anymore? Or does a data-driven feedback loop - where what you enjoy in the past shapes what you hear today - influence what you'll like in the future? | | |
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 | Midem |
| W"e have the opportunity to get this right once and for all, and create truly modern digital pipes through which this amazing music can travel." | | |
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 | MTV News |
| While she was never alone in what she did — women like Whitney Houston, Thelma Houston, Cher, and Tina Turner all helped set the stage — Céline Dion was better than almost anyone at capitalizing on pop’s ability to articulate feelings in sensational, over-the-top ways. | | |
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 | Complex |
| The song that autoplays in Apple Music under Katy Perry's new single is a real gem. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Stars like Stormzy and Skepta have brought raw grime into the British mainstream - and to the world - while the next generation moves beyond the genre. | | |
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 | Clash Magazine |
| How the cult show invited a host of musicians into its dream-world. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| A new wave of activists and artists are aiming to change the culture of unwanted sexual advances and harassment at music festivals. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| PWR BTTM’s music has been yanked from streaming services over allegations of sexual assault. Can they get it back? | | |
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 | The Fader |
| Ruth Saxelby and Jason Parham weigh the pros and cons. | | |
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 | SPIN |
| This feature, a journal by Audioslave's lead guitarist Tom Morello detailing the band's visit and concert in Cuba, originally appeared in the August 2005 issue of SPIN. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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