Since they couldn't just outright buy Spotify ( a la Beats, LaLa) they tried to sweep its legs out from under it.
Sidenote: Remember LaLa guys? FWIW, I feel like their model created the fairest environment for both artists and fans. But Apple bought them so they could shut them down and launch Ping, which is a thing we all forgot about before it even started.
Lala Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lala_%28website%29
This makes my blood boil. Tennis should be getting paid for the use of their song.
Sidenote: Nothing shameful about licensing your music! It's a revenue stream that works for a lot of great artists and often a necessary one considering the current difficulties of other revenue streams.
Man I live right around the corner from Supreme in LA, and I see folks line up around the block all the time for whatever the new thing is. This is the first time I'll actually know what everyone's waiting for.
This band that became famous because they acted like teenagers (and captured the fun and frustration of being a teenager) has never really stopped acting like teenagers. Only now they're pushing 40 and it's not funny, nor do they really have a sense of what it's like being a teenager anymore. It's sad to see a band go down like this because I think if they'd managed their legacy a little bit, we might be talking about their importance and impact as one of the last torch bearers of rock's dominance over pop culture. Hell, the small corner of pop radio that makes room for rock is playing Fall Out Boy, who can thank bands like Blink-182 for paving the way for them.
Spencer Tweedy's drumming is pretty excellent. That part starting around 4:30 is no kids stuff. This is like when Ken Griffey and Ken Griffey Jr. batted next to each other in Seattle.
I feel completely ambivalent about Coldplay these days, except for the fact that every time they put out a new album I go back and listen to "A Rush of Blood to the Head."
On a related note: why aren't more music critics upset over the absence of the great book series "Best Music Writing"? It was a great place to showcase the different formats and approaches to music criticism. It seems like we might not be having this discussion if it were still around, or at least we'd be able to draw from more sources as examples writing style and criticism.
Okay, the campaign has begun. #BringBackBMW
In basketball (or really any sport) a ref will sometimes miss a call and then realize it after the fact. To maintain fairness, he makes a call going against the other team to make the game "fair." It's not openly acknowledged, but everyone just kind of accepts that this is the way things shake out and continue playing. This is how I feel about the New Artist Category of the grammys.
Arcade Fire just posted the album "Reflektor" on Spotify, with a 15 second clip titled 9pm 9/9. I believe it's the same audio we heard in the original instagram video we heard, but much clearer audio.
What if we all adopted a "first three songs" rule? Everyone gets their snaps off at the beginning so they can instagram it, youtube it etc., and then we all carry on with the experience of the show. I see 2 to the 3 shows a week and taking pictures of bands helps me remember who they were and what their performance was like a week, a month, a year later, so I'd hate to see a total ban.
Furthermore, doesn't this debate bring into question why we take pictures of anything? If you're against pictures at concerts because it "takes away from the experience," shouldn't that rule apply to the world outside concerts too? It's an exaggerated thought extension, but its meant to draw attention to a larger point: taking pictures is part of how we experience the world now. Modern camera technology (i.e. relatively high quality photography combined with complete portability) has democratized photography in a similar way that modern music technology has democratized music: everybody can do it now, but that means you're going to have to put up with everyone doing it.
Back to my original point: can we see if we can all do our camera phone stuff a little bit less, so that they continue to let us do it at all?
Sometimes the way to resolve conflict is to walk away from it. Also, how about These New Puritans?! I didn't know they had Fields of Reeds in them. So good.
Can we all acknowledge the brilliant marketing strategies that we've seen this year from Daft Punk and Kanye? They're not really re-writing the book on marketing albums, but they're definitely adding new chapters.
This just goes to show it's not such a far cry between Death Cab and T. Swift. A helpful reminder for those of us with elitist tendencies.
Pun retroactively intended.
i think the success of Once--first as a movie, then as a Broadway musical--is also a telling precursor. I also think that this is one of the reasons why so many people have issues with Mumford and Sons--compared to Glen Hansard, every Mumford song sounds disingenuous. It's a shame Swell Season aren't together anymore, because Irglova and Hansard would have made a great "first couple" of indie-folk-rock-gone-mainstream.
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