15 expert musicologists have come to the aid of Katy Perry in her ‘Dark Horse’ copyright case (the court ruled she plagiarised song ‘Joyful Noise’ by Christain rapper Flame, was ordered to pay $2,8 million in damages), by sending an amici curiae letter to the court, asking the case to be reexamined.
The experimental pop duo 100 gecs is expected to make it big this year with their imaginative and uncompromising fondness for unfashionable genres - electroclash, pop-punk, emo rap, dubstep, trance, industrial rock and dance, drum ’n’ bass, death metal, chiptune, and even polka, The New Yorker says. They aren't a product of nostalgia, as much as "of nihilism, an impressively concise maximalist exercise with no rules. It does not capture specific eras so much as it celebrates a history of musical idiosyncrasies"
The harsh reality is that the pool of female talent is smaller because the record industry is terrible at nurturing female artists. Of the 193 albums submitted for consideration for this year's best album prize, only 35 were by women. Just 19% of the artists signed to record labels in the UK being women. Why is that? "Anecdotally, I've heard that labels are not too keen on signing and developing female talent because it costs more," says Rhian Jones, a contributing editor to Music Business Worldwide. "There's stylists, there's make-up artists and the shows tend to be bigger productions. Whereas Lewis Capaldi can just get a guitar out, put a t-shirt on and everyone loves it."
Nicki Minaj’s NICKIHNDRXX Tour was canceled in North America, Chance the Rapper’s Big Day Tour was canceled everywhere, and T-Pain’s 1UP DLC Tour canceled as well. Of the top 10 global tours of 2019, none of them were hip-hop. In 2018, just one (Beyonce and Jay-Z’s On The Run II). The industry needs to adapt.
"Of the top 500 charted country songs from 2014 to 2018, only 16% were by female artists. That is tragic. Those numbers reveal a truth that artists share and lament over" - country singer Jennifer Nettles wrote in her article for the Glamour. She has started an initiative "Equal Play" demanding, well, obviously, equal play for women in country music.
Six of ten top-grossing tours of 2019 were reunion tours or legacy acts, whose most prolific and successful musical output are years or even decades behind them. The top three earners were Ed Sheeran, Pink, and BTS, but then it travels back to the 20th century - Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Metallica, Paul McCartney, […]
"We’re not creating areas for Instagram, but we know the areas we create have to be Instagram-friendly" - Tamás Kádár, CEO of Sziget in Budapest, told Mix Magazine in their excellent article about how Instagram is changing design of clubs and festivals. Or, as Barcelona's Elrow David Jordan puts it - “when we prepare a new […]
"You now could be held liable for being influenced. That is bad news for pop stars, and the producers and songwriters who help them craft hits. They are now marks for frivolous litigation premised upon nebulous assertions as well as a complete and willful ignorance of how pop music is actually made" - New York […]
“Five years ago, you had to have a massive chorus. Now, it’s not the rule” - Camille Purcell, who releases music as Kamille, told Guardian about writing potential hits now - it’s all about interesting beats, not hooks. Purcell cites the dominance of hip-hop as the cause of this trend, adding how she takes inspiration […]
Chinese web giant had finalised a deal to buy 10% of the Universal Music Group from French entertainment conglomerate Vivendi for about $3.3 billion. Tencent is already the leading player in digital music in China, and exclusively represents the catalogues of various global music companies within the Chinese market, including all three majors. Complete Music […]
Variety is disturbed by the lack of women at Coachella this year. California fest is headlined by Frank Ocean, Travis Scott and Rage Against the Machine, with top 10 performers being mostly men as well - "looking at the 10 top-billed artists on each day, Friday’s is 2/10 female, Saturday’s is 3/10, and Sunday’s rockets […]
Journalist and publicist has two points in his article: streaming is killing the idea of a mainstream, and second - even the astronomically famous have had to resort to ruses to commandeer public attention. On the bright side - "in this flourishing post-geographical world of 'local' cultures not tied to location, small is bountiful and […]
Quartz wrote a nice notice about how listening to music on headphones/earpods in changing music. Selena Gomez and Billie Eilish made songs with style of singing almost like a whisper; music producers have to boost bass frequencies in the higher range in order for the bass to be heard well on headphones; producers are also […]
The Slate heard plenty of good concept albums this year, how did this happen? - "Do you think all of this deep play with pop form is taking place now because story itself has become so unstable? Did we have such a real year in music because everything else feels like fake news?".
In March 2016, Major Lazer played an outdoor concert in Havana for half a million people. Then the Rolling Stones gave their first-ever show in Cuba, a massive free event that for many Cubans symbolized the dawn of a new era. Since 2017 a series of travel regulations and economic sanctions have been put in […]
The aggregation site Album of the Year compiled End of Decade lists by two dozen magazines. Turns out the majority of artists on the list were already superstars when they made their decade-defining albums - The Outline notices, and tries to explain in an interesting article. Also, they analyze what music critics are today. Below […]
"Hip-hop is both a reflection and a force on its environment. Lean, mud, drank—whatever you wanna call it— has been intricately weaved into the cultural fabric and business model. Most don’t realize the full extent of its reach" - Trapital writes about rappers' addiction to cough syrup, in the shadow of Juice WRLD's death.
Experimental metal band Wrekmeister Harmonies has Swans’ Thor Harris and Xiu Xiu mastermind Jamie Stewart featuring on their new album ‘We Love to Look at the Carnage’, out February 21.
Unlimited access to a catalog of 50 million songs for $10 is how much music-streaming subscriptions have cost their entire existence, but next year that might change, Rolling Stone is speculating. The first reason - Spotify recently entered its second decade of existence towing 250 million users, 110 million of whom are paying subscribers; when […]
"Fandom is intoxicating. Anyone who truly, wholly loves a boy band or a football team will tell you the same. But there’s something transcendent about the way Elvis fans love Elvis. It’s eternal" - Guardian's journalist writes about Elvis Presley festival that she went to planning to make good jokes about it, but ended up joining the […]
"Those simple opinions have carved out a mini-empire and made him the most famous music critic on the planet. Whether you love him, rate him, don’t know what to rate him, the fact that his unfiltered discussions continue to capture millions proves that fans are more eager than ever to dissect the nuances and intricacies of […]
Mix Magazine explores influences Instagram has on artists' mental health with particular focus on comment sections, unwanted feedback and how these dangers magnify when it comes to DJs and producers from marginalised communities. Mix Mag proves a point to some extent, but largely just proves the obvious - there's way more good than harm from […]
Lyrics service Genius is suing Google for allegedly copying its song lyrics and using them in search results. Genius is asking for $50 million in damages from Google and its partner LyricFind, the Verge reports. Genius says they caught Google twice - first they placed straight and curved apostrophes within the lyrics of 301 songs […]
The Guardian has an excellent article about female role models of this decade, in comparison to the ones from the noughties: "In their fallibility and resistance to commodification, the women who have defined this decade in pop look a lot more like role models than the corporate innocents sold to girls in the early millennium. […]
Guardian has an interesting essay about Sunn O))), especially about what did the American drone metal greats do to a change of perspective on metal music. "In an age where people crave spiritual meaning, psychological healing and escape from the hellscape of rolling news and the 'constant on' of social media in VR or expensive […]
"Pop music is having a potentially fatal existential crisis: when did pop cease to suggest a life more glamorous or exciting than your own? When did it cease to be aspirational, strange and intriguing?" - Alexis Petridis asks - "how did we go from Lady Gaga wearing the contents of a butcher’s counter to the […]
The Quietus looks at the long history of fizzy drinks brands getting involved in popular music in an attempt to sell sugar to children: "Soft drinks exhibit the very essence of predatory behaviour. Reach them while they're young, addict them to sugar, caffeine, addict them to addiction itself, addict them for life. Both music and […]
Guardian looks back and Thunderdome 2019, held last week in Utrecht, with 50,000 ravers at a convention centre making it the biggest indoor hardcore dance event ever staged. It all started in October 1992 with four relatively unknown DJs, organized by two plucky 20-year-old schoolfriends from a village outside Amsterdam, to become the world’s greatest […]
The new breed of punk isn't so punky sonically, it's the attitude, BBC argues: 30-year-old US rapper JPEGMAFIA channels the aggression of the crowd into brutal bursts of movement that sit somewhere between an intoxicated Iggy Pop and an irate DMX; snarling Northampton rapper Slowthai blasts what he sees as the toxicity of Brexit Britain […]
"For someone who claims to be a rock star, he’s missing a major point of the job. Rock’n’roll was about subverting traditional engrained ideas, of not doing and believing what you’re told, of questioning the world and everything in it. Every radical musician from Lennon to Frank Turner has questioned religion in song and to […]
