It’s really a process to make one of these great songs. It’s layers. Layers and layers and layers. | | | | | The year's best-selling/streaming artist, and more. | | | | |  | “It’s really a process to make one of these great songs. It’s layers. Layers and layers and layers.”
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| | rantnrave:// More music was streamed from on-demand audio sites like SPOTIFY and APPLE MUSIC than on-demand video sites like YOUTUBE and VEVO in the first half of 2016, according to a report from BUZZANGLE MUSIC that may well be cause for champagne celebrations across a music industry that has targeted YOUTUBE as public enemy #1. If anyone in the music biz can still afford champagne, that is. Using a metric called "Album Project Consumption" that combines album sales, song sales and song streams the same way BILLBOARD and NIELSEN do and that needs to be renamed before BUZZANGLE ever issues another report, the company says DRAKE, BEYONCÉ and ADELE are the year's most-consumed artists. "DRAKE" would be a good name for that metric, actually. BEYONCÉ, for example, had nearly 2.2 million DRAKEs in the first half of the year. (Doesn't that sound good?) Eight artists overall had at least 1 million DRAKEs, including PRINCE and DAVID BOWIE. PRINCE would be in a virtual tie with ADELE for third place, with more than 2 million DRAKEs, if "PRINCE" and "PRINCE & THE REVOLUTION" were considered one artist, which I hereby declare they are. Overall, consumers consumed 6.5 percent more DRAKEs than they did in the first half of 2015, BUZZANGLE says, and streaming is entirely responsible for that uptick... MIKE WILL MADE-IT, who has been responsible for millions of DRAKEs over the past few years, has a domed forehead, hooded eyes and often mumbles, according to a lengthy NEW YORKER profile that goes deep on both of life and his production process. Best anecdote: His dad told him he should sign contracts with the rappers he sold his beats to when he was starting out. “I’m from the corporate world," Dad says. "But Michael would say, ‘It doesn’t work that way, Dad.’ And I would say, ‘Well, s***!'"... The FEELIES, who have collected an infinitesimal, barely noticeable number of DRAKES but a whole lot of XGAUs (look it up if you have to) over the course an on-and-off 40-year career, talk at some length about the art of pretty much ignoring producers... The PRINCE ONLINE MUSEUM is an archive of every website PRINCE ever built and it is amazing. Yo, internet: More like that, please... RIP BOB GOLDSTONE. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The Undefeated |
| Numbers and cultural impact don’t lie: His current three-pack is perfect, and historic. | | |
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 | The Verge |
| As the rumors about the disappearing headphone jack continue to surface, Walt reviews new earphones that still take advantage of this classic technology but adds a new twist. This sparks a new conversation about the powered audio jack and how it benefits existing technology. | | |
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 | Six Colors |
| Is Apple removing the headphone jack from the iPhone? Nobody really knows, though rumors have swirled for quite a while now. A recent exchange between Nilay Patel and John Gruber returned this debate to the foreground last week. Of course, the truth is that it's very hard to talk about this rumor in the absence of actual information. | | |
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 | NPR |
| Maxwell does things on his own schedule. The 43-year-old R&B singer just celebrated the 20th anniversary of his first album, Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite, which helped inaugurate the neo-soul movement. Now, he's releasing his fifth studio album, "blackSUMMERS'night." | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| The rise of the hip-hop producer who has created hits for Miley Cyrus, Jay Z, Kanye West, Rihanna, and Beyoncé. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| Yes, 1991 was a helluva year in music. It doesn't matter what strain of popular music you were into-whether you were bopping to the pop sounds of New Kids On the Block or Mariah Carey, nodding your head to DJ Quik or Nice & Smooth, clubbing with C+C Music Factory, having Black Box providing the backdrop, or singing along to Color Me Badd or Hi-Five-there was a lot of great stuff on the radio. | | |
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 | Thump |
| When Canadian comedian Daniel Woodrow visited Toronto nightclub EFS one Saturday evening in early June, he had an experience that's all too familiar to many people of color. As his white friends were being ushered past the velvet ropes of the King Street West venue, the doorman stopped him and told him that he wasn't getting in. | | |
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 | VSB |
| It wasn’t Eminem or Lars Ulrich (who have a combined net worth that rivals that of Jesus’ legal team) who motivated me to move away from jacking music; it was a combination of finally making the good money that allows me to afford it and the recognition of the sea change in the music industry that made things harder for artists. | | |
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 | BuzzAngle Music |
| U.S. consumption of music continued to grow in the first half of 2016, even as sales of most formats declined, according to Border City Media’s state-of-the-industry data service BuzzAngle Music. With the pace of audio streaming more than doubling activity tracked over the same period last year, Total Industry Consumption was up by an impressive 6.5%. | | |
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 | MTV News |
| Looks like it - and that's actually a good thing | | |
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 | Hazlitt |
| Released thirty years ago, Prince’s directorial debut seemed calculated to frustrate the fans who bought tickets to "Purple Rain" weekend after weekend. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| The Parisian-based, English music wiz returns with 'Summer '08'-an LP that doubles up as a time machine, looking back but looking forward too. Genius or what? | | |
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| Thump |
| From Avicii to Carl Cox, DJs are beginning to talk about the risks of the job. | | |
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 | Flood Magazine |
| Forty years since meeting--and thirty-six years since delivering an all-timer in "Crazy Rhythms"--Glenn Mercer and Bill Million remain one of indie rock’s great duos. Ahead of their upcoming sixth Feelies LP, the two New Jerseyans take a look back at their idiosyncratic discography, piece by piece. | | |
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 | Random Nerds |
| For this inaugural episode of the Getting Over podcast, Oddisee and I spoke about how a rapper evolves into an artist-as-brand, and how that allows for skilled craftsmanship to become sustainable entrepreneurship: | | |
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 | The Fader |
| As diplomatic relations thaw between the United States and Cuba, a thriving Chris Brown fan base makes itself known in Havana. | | |
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 | Red Bull Music Academy |
| Christian Eede speaks to Joshua Cheon, the founder of the goth- and italo-leaning imprint. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Changes ahead for streaming service as, with 15m paying subscribers, it continues the battle with rivals Spotify and YouTube. | | |
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 | The Root |
| The South Side Chicago rapper makes heavenly music on his latest mixtape, "Coloring Book." | | |
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| MTV News |
| Depending on how seriously you choose to take his music, Riff Raff is either a comedian, a rapper, or both. He's better known for being the (alleged) inspiration for James Franco's cornrowed Spring Breakers character, Alien - a parody of the parody that is Riff Raff - than for any particular song or verse of his own. | | |
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 | via YouTube |
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