As artists, activists, and citizens, we ask you to pledge that all candidates you support will seek consent from featured recording artists and songwriters before using their music in campaign and political settings. | | | | Superstar: Karen Carpenter in Copenhagen, 1974.
(Jorgen Angel/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “As artists, activists, and citizens, we ask you to pledge that all candidates you support will seek consent from featured recording artists and songwriters before using their music in campaign and political settings.”
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| | rantnrave:// Two small bits of sort of good news for which we can thank the fact that we're in the middle of a pandemic, in case anyone's in need of a viral silver lining or two. If you live in Nashville and have a home studio (does anyone in Nashville not have one?), for the first time in 20 years you can legally operate it as a business, which is to say, for the first time in 20 years you can legally have an employee (but only one employee) and legally record someone else in exchange for money. This controversial, long-debated change to zoning law in Music City, which allows a not-very-secret underground music economy to come out into the open, was approved three weeks ago, with some officials saying they were moved to act because of the pandemic's ruinous affect on the city's music economy. The law allows for a select group of other home businesses, too, but recording studios have always been the focus. The argument against was that home businesses would ruin the character of residential neighborhoods and owners of studios and other small businesses would be disincentivized from opening up shop in commercial zones and paying commercial property taxes. But Nashville's Metro Council sided with musicmakers like LIJ SHAW, who was told to shut down his East Nashville home studio after a neighbor anonymously complained in 2015—shortly after he won a Grammy for an album he recorded there, as one does in Nashville. "Without being able to start a music career from a safe, inexpensive environment, there's not going to be successful musicians," Shaw told the TENNESSEAN. No string quartets or live four-piece country-rock bands though; y'all are going to have to take that business somewhere else. The law allows only three customers in a home business at a time... The pandemic has also prompted SPOTIFY to convert one of its most useless new features into an actually promising one. The Group Session feature, introduced in May, allows multiple people to listen to, and control, the same playlist in real time. At first it was available only to groups in the same physical location, which was weird, because if five or 10 of are you in the same room, you don't need high-tech assistance to listen to music together. But now, apparently responding to the fact that friends aren’t supposed to be gathering in the same room anymore, Spotify has turned it into a remote feature for up to five people, so you can listen and share communally with friends wherever they are—a celestial jukebox feature I've been screaming for, in one form or another, for more than a decade. A way of connecting in a time where any human connection is a luxury. Thank you... Shimmy-Disc Shimmy-Disc Ya: Wow this Q&A with KRAMER, in which novelist RICK MOODY asks the storied underground producer/musician/label owner exactly three questions and Kramer responds with three answers totaling, no lie, 14,000 words—14,000 hilarious, beautiful and sometimes unbelievable words—that should be bound in leather and published as a memoir about one man's amazing musical journey through the worlds of GONG, ANTHONY BRAXTON, ORNETTE COLEMAN, the BUTTHOLE SURFERS and scores of other alternate-universe boldface music names. H/T PIOTR ORLOV for the link... KAMASI WASHINGTON, LABRINTH, LUDWIG GÖRANSSON, INGRID MICHAELSON and the NEPTUNES are among this year's musical EMMY nominees... SLIPKNOT, the RESIDENTS and other bands who wear masks offer advice for civilians who should be wearing masks... RIP MISS MERCY. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| The producer and founder of Shimmy-Disc speaks. | | |
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| Getting official editorial support from Spotify is tough, forcing some artists to turn to third-party playlist networks to build fans. | | |
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| Pandemic productivity and streaming consumption have created a deluge of expanded versions of existing hip-hop albums. | | |
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| “We had no denials on this album.” | | |
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| Aging used to be a death sentence for a rap career -- now it’s a way to forge a tighter bond with fans. | | |
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| Hot lines < hot songs < hot albums. Here are the best of the best. | | |
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| Today, the Artist Rights Alliance is demanding politicians on both sides get clearance on the music they plug at their events and campaigns. | | |
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| NMPA President David Israelite on a historic opportunity for modern US lawmakers to shift power away from Big Tech -- and towards songwriters. | | |
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| Pharrell Willliams, Labrinth (pictured) and Isabella Summers of Florence & The Machine could all wind up with Emmys this year. So, for that matter, could Ingrid Michaelson, Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor and veteran pop producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. | | |
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| A cherished friend and a historic keyboard instrument have given me a new way of listening. | | |
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| As clubs close at an alarming rate, and lockdown further sucks the life out of nightlife, the UK’s illegal rave scene has risen from the ashes. | | |
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| The nightlife hiatus brought on by the pandemic is a valuable opportunity to reshuffle power structures that have negatively affected Black communities. Events of the past few weeks have magnified that urgency. | | |
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| The cottagecore aesthetic of ‘Folklore’ fits it neatly into the lineage of musical exile narratives, both good and bad. It’s a story we love to indulge in--even if it rarely gets at the true meaning of being alone. | | |
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| We speak to members of the underground subculture making anti-capitalist music fuelled by discontent. | | |
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| China is digital. Its music market is almost entirely digital. Physical sales here comprise only about 20% of the total market. China has more than twice as many internet users as the US has people. There are about 900 million mobile internet users here, 70% of whom consume music online. | | |
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| A folk virtuoso will be the artistic director of the cross-cultural exchange organization founded by Yo-Yo Ma. | | |
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| With "folklore," "Gaslighter," and "Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass" out, it’s the perfect time to review -- and define -- the Jack Antonoff Sound. | | |
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| A remarkable run of new music from female artists have flawlessly captured the kaleidoscope of lockdown anxieties and emotions, from Lady Gaga to the Chicks and, now, Taylor Swift. | | |
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| A preternaturally talented artist shifts gears. | | |
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| The 83-year-old is heralded by everyone from Bono to Basquiat for his ‘fourth world’ vision for music -- and pop has caught up with him. | | |
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| | | | | | | "We've been observing your Earth / And one night we'll make a contact with you." |
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