US rapper Flo Rida has won a lawsuit against US energy drink company, Celsius, with the jury awarding the rapper $82.6 million, CBS Miami reports. Flo Rida was a brand ambassador for Celsius from 2014 to 2018. During that time, Dillard played an instrumental role in launching a new era for the company's brand development, growth and expansion, introducing Celsius to millions around the world, the complaint said.
"I must disclose that my mental health has rapidly deteriorated over the past several years. So, to avoid fading away and never returning, I will be taking a break from work which regrettably includes stepping away from Fall Out Boy for a spell" - Fall Out Boy guitarist Joe Trohman posted on his Instagram. Just a few hours earlier the band announced their first new album since 2018, titled 'So Much (for) Stardust'.
Snoop Dogg, Gloria Estefan, Sade, Jeff Lynne, Glen Ballard, Teddy Riley and Liz Rose have been chosen to join the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Snoop Dogg, whose hits include 'Drop It Like It’s Hot' and 'Gin & Juice', is one of the icons of hip-hop. Soul-jazz vocalist Sade's 1980s soft rock hits include 'Smooth Operator' and 'The Sweetest Taboo'. Lynne, of ELO, penned 'Mr. Blue Sky' and 'Evil Woman'. Estefan is credited for popularizing Latin rhythms with such crossover smashes as 'Rhythm Is Gonna Get You' and 'Let’s Get Loud'. Ballard helped write Alanis Morissette’s monster 1995 album 'Jagged Little Pill' and was involved in the recording and writing of several Michael Jackson albums, including 'Thriller', 'Bad' and 'Dangerous'. Riley, the singer, songwriter and producer, is credited with creating New Jack Swing and its top anthems like Bobby Brown’s 'My Prerogative' and Keith Sweat’s 'I Want Her'. Rose co-wrote many songs with Taylor Swift, including 'You Belong with Me', 'Teardrops on My Guitar' and 'White Horse'. The seven songwriters from the class of 2023 will be inducted at a gala June 15 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City.
The Quietus' dance music columnist Jaša Bužinel sheds light on the "small Slovenian electronic music scene and shares his favourite recent releases from the likes of Vid Vai, POUCH ENVY, dvidevat and Black Dot". "By including mainly names which you may never have heard of before," the writer says he hopes "to shed some light on all the talented Slovenian producers and artists who really deserve to be heard abroad".
"The Brits have always been good at repacking Black American music and then selling it back to the US. If you think about the Beatles and the whole British Invasion of the ’60s, those artists were all massively inspired by rhythm and blues and other forms of Black American music, but the white audiences that loved them wouldn’t necessarily go back and support the records that inspired these groups in the first place. The same thing happened with dance music" - Matt Anniss told First Floor. He also talks about the "Ibiza origin myth", music journalism, “hardcore continuum”... Anniss is the author of 'Join the Future', a history of bleek techno, which is being reissued this month.
"It’s great to see the artists who turn down deals because they have the means to maximize the asset on their own. They likely understand its full value... But keeping the asset just to 'keep it,' or shaming others who decide to sell, may be missing the forest from the trees. This isn’t about selling grandma’s house. This is about maximizing value for an asset that will inevitably lose its value 40 years from now. By then, those masters may be more valuable as family heirlooms than as consistent revenue-generating assets. But it all depends on the artist’s goals" - Trapital's Dan Runcie offers some views on (not) selling music catalogs. He gives some recent examples - Dr. Dre, Diddy, Justin Beber...
"I have no technical ability. And I know nothing about music" - THE producer Rick Rubin told Anderson Cooper in an interview tied to his new book 'The Creative Act: A Way Of Being', the CNBC reports. What he knows, Rubin says, is "what I like and what I don’t like. And I’m decisive about what I like and what I don’t like." He points out what he's being paid for - "The confidence that I have in my taste and my ability to express what I feel has proven helpful for artists." Watch the interview - here.
"There's plenty of good examples of incredible rock music that came out in the '80s, but the songs that stood the test of time have mostly done so by avoiding many of the cliches of the era. But what about the songs that are '80s to the core and yet still rule? Well, if you're looking for that, then we're gonna have to talk about Duran Duran," - music analyst 12tone introduces his latest video where he takes apart the quintessentially 80s song 'Hungry Life The Wolf'. Watch the video below.
YouTuber Rob Scallon shared a new video with Tom Grosset, the world record holder in fast drumming. Grosset offers technical tips on the position of the hand and the wrist, and suggests it all comes down to practice and time, of course. Impressive drumming!
Duo Molly from Innsbruck, Austria play an especially majestic style of dream-pop with a post-rock approach to structure and scope - Stereogum points out about their latest Album of the Week choice. It is "a chance to be overwhelmed by elegance and power and an otherworldly glow".
Pitchfork tells the story of "slack key—a distinctly Hawaiian sound with complex patterns of rhythm, bass, and a leading melody all handled by one player on an acoustic guitar. It would become synonymous with the identity of the islands". The P also chooses nine releases through which "a story emerges of how a little-known indigenous folk music transformed into an empowering voice for the revitalization of an endangered culture".
"'Bone Music' is a history of technical ingenuity, censorship, courage, tragedy, and a profound love of music" - Dan Fox highly recommends the "fascinating new illustrated book" by the British musician Stephen Coates and photographer Paul Heartfield. It tells the history of "bone records", music pressed on X-ray during the communist regimes which banned western music. Since 2013, Coates and Heartfield have produced a touring exhibition, an online archive, a documentary film, and a BBC radio programme. 'Bone Music' brings to light new material about the origins of bone records in 1930s Hungary.
"ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend... Judging by this song ‘in the style of Nick Cave’ though, it doesn’t look good, Mark. The apocalypse is well on its way. This song sucks" - Nich Cave writes on his Red Hand Files blog about a song the AI made in Cave's style. "Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what he or she recognises as their known self. This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value".
Japanese musician Yukihiro Takahashi, best known as the influential drummer and vocalist for electronic act Yellow Magic Orchestra, has died aged 70, Japan Times reports. Yellow Magic Orchestra drew significant influence from Isao Tomita and Kraftwerk, Japanese traditional music, arcade games, funk, and disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder, becoming renowned for their use of synths, samplers, sequencers, and drum machines. Numerous musicians, including Junior Boys, Sparks, Akiko Yano, Erol Alkan, Mouse on Mars, and Good Willsmith paid tribute to Takahashi.
A great article in the New York Times about the case brought against Young Thug and his rap label YSL, accused of conspiracy to commit racketeering, gang statute violations and more. Slimelife Shawty, Unfoonk, Lil Duke, the chart-topper Gunna, and four other men associated with YSL, all pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge, some to other crimes. Each agreed that the famed Atlanta rap crew they were associated with — YSL, headed by the enigmatic star Jeffery Williams, or Young Thug — was not only a renowned hip-hop collective, but also a criminal street gang. The trial is expected to last for nine months, as Young Thug is facing a possibility of a maximum 120-year prison sentence.
Drugs&parties expert Michelle Lhooq shares an interesting invitation to a "sober rave for all the freaks seeking new horizons of holistic hedonism...:
Parties are portals into a new way of being.
The womb is a vortex into what comes beyond.
MUSHWOMB is an alternate reality to a nightlife hellscape infected by the clout matrix.
It is a wormhole where a pussy portal leads you to a sunny dancefloor where the vibes are immaculate, the music is soulful, and toxic substances are abandoned in favor of sparkling shroom candies, botanical booze-free cocktails, and chaga chai teas.
The portal opens on 01.22.23 in a sacred queer space in Los Angeles—a secret yard where the underground’s sweat and joyful tears collect into a pool for baptism and rebirth."
Trapital's Dan Runcie is looking into Diddy's businesses with tequila and cannabis, building upon a successful venture with Ciroc vodka. Some interesting thoughts by the entertainment/business analyst: "Tequila is a less mature liquor than vodka, but U.S. tequila sales may soon outpace vodka as the #1 spirits category. Tequila has different drinking occasions, which shifts the marketing and messaging... Cannabis is a more complex industry. Many Black business leaders want in to help reset the narrative. Historically, the criminalization of weed affects Black people disproportionately, but the legalization of weed has benefitted white business owners the most".
"If you need to recover from anything, whatever it may be, whatever sort of fundamental change you want, there’s usually a darkness there. I think everyone has a shadow within those periods of isolation that we were confronted with" - The Murder Capital's frontman James McGovern says to The New Cue about the process of writing their new album 'Gigi's Recovery', written in isolation in rural Ireland. "When we were out there making this album we were alone, it felt like that old world had departed to a different side of the galaxy, so we had to iron out the creases ourselves. To make authentic music it requires honesty. We were calling out our own shadows and just being like, we need to change this darkness". Also, good advice about New Year's resolutions: "A good resolution is to be kind to whatever parts of yourself were good in the year before and to continue on with them. Focus on them more because they already exist."
Taylor Swift sold 1.695 million vinyl albums in the U.S. in 2022 across her entire catalog of releases, more than any other act by far last year, Billboard reports. Nearly one of every 25 vinyl LPs sold last year in the U.S. was a Swift album - 43.46 million total vinyl albums were sold by all artists. Swift’s latest release, 'Midnights', was the top-selling vinyl album of 2022 in the U.S., with 945,000 copies sold across all of its vinyl variants and editions, benefiting from the availability of a range of alternative versions and color-vinyl variants. 'Midnights' was available in four standard vinyl LP editions, each with a different cover and colored vinyl, with back covers of the albums fitting together like a puzzle to display a clock face. A side fact - while vinyl album sales continue to gain each year in the U.S., only half of those fans buying records actually own a vinyl record player.
"Social media and online music content is being prejudicially mined for evidence in criminal trials" - Ciaran Thapar looks back at years of trials against young rappers, based on their lyrics. "Most older adults are still coming to terms with the mere existence of social media, let alone the mind-boggling speed of TikTok, the nuances of British rap or the respawning etymologies of slang. But these are the people overseeing the metaphorical guillotine that now hovers over a whole generation of lost youth. Young people who have grown up under a mounting cost-of-living crisis, cared for by public services — youth clubs, schools, the NHS, the judiciary itself – that have been gutted by austerity".
Despite all the hype, vinyl album unit sales only grew 4% in 2022, after a 95% growth in 2021. Those numbers are a HUGE disappointment - Ted Gioia argues. This is what the music industry did, according to his opinion, to cause it:
"There’s an exciting energy in the air at the start of each year, knowing that a whole new wave of exciting music and dancefloors moments are soon to be experienced" - MixMag introduces the selection of 24 DJs, producers, and rappers to watch in 2023. Included are English rapper Clavish with "some of the most formidable wordplay in UK rap right now", Irish DJ Fio Fa - "expect to see him get dancefloors shaking in 2023", Chinese DJ Hao who "pulls dancers through pneumatic beats up to blinding trance-inflected climaxes with a sense of momentum that’s relentless and exhilarating", and LA DJ Introspekt because "any artist who can master the full stylistic range garage offers is immediately essential".
Providing insight from artists such as Nile Rodgers, Four Tet, Radiohead’s Philip Selway, and others, the new book 'Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual', is looking at the impact touring can have on musicians' mental health, JamBase reports. Written by psychotherapist and former booker, Tamsin Embleton, in over 600 pages the manual attempts to cover a variety of psychological difficulties that can occur whilst on a tour that includes addiction, performance anxiety, group dynamics, relationship problems, and more. Contributing advice and knowledge to the book are experts including psychotherapists, performance coaches, dieticians, sexual health experts, and many more to cover all basis.
Teledisko, the world’s smallest nightclub at just one square metre, has opened a new location in Madrid - five tiny nightclubs are already set up in and around the city of Berlin. Once inside the disco-booth, a selection of songs including ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’, Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’, and Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’ can be chosen from, while effects such as strobe lighting, a spinning disco ball, and fog machines can be altered by punters. "What happens in the teledisko stays in the teledisko. Dance like there's no tomorrow!” - reads Teledisko’s website. The club fits three people at a time and lasts for just three minutes once a song has been chosen and activated from the screen outside the club, Spanish outlet Informacion reports.
Music instruments producer Roland has revealed its 50th anniversary concept - a piano with flying speakers, Hypebeast reports. Built from one piece of Japanese oak, the speakers have been set on drones to “hoover over the piano” in order to achieve a “360-degree experience”. There are 14 general 360-degree speakers that aim to recreate a three-dimensional sound space not achievable with conventional stereo speaker systems found on digital pianos.
Scientists in Denmark have created the world’s smallest “vinyl” record, which is so tiny that it can barely be seen by the naked human eye, EDM reports. Measuring just 15x15 micrometres, with grooves of a depth of just 65 nanometres – the tiny record contains music - it plays 25 seconds of ‘Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree’, in stereo. Professor Peter Nøggild explained that the technology could be critical in future scientific research: “While we make these kinds of grooves here with nanometre precision, we can transfer these to a number of other materials, where that will fundamentally allow us to manipulate material properties on a nanoscale.”
Lisa Marie Presley, singer-songwriter and only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, has died at 54 following a cardiac arrest, CNN reports. Lisa Marie's passing comes just two days after she attended the Golden Globes, where Austin Butler won best actor in a motion picture, drama, for playing Elvis. She appeared deeply emotional as the actor thanked Priscilla and Lisa Marie, saying, “I love you forever.” He later told reporters that he is “endlessly grateful” to the Presleys for “welcoming me into their family in such a beautiful way.”
Harry Styles and Wet Leg lead the nominations for this year's Brit Awards, with four each, including nods for the coveted best album award, the BBC reports. A year after the Brit awards abandoned the gendered categories, the nominations for the replacement artist of the year prize are entirely male, comprising Central Cee, Stormzy, Fred Again, George Ezra, and Harry Styles, the media ephasize.
"The commercial debut of the compact disc was not publicly applauded as it turned 40. There was no ticker tape parade" - MBW writes on the CD's 40th anniversary. "The CD is being allowed – encouraged, even – to atrophy. There is no hipsterised rebirth being planned for it like with the cassette... This format made you as a fan. It built the business you operate in today (for good and for ill). You would not be doing what you do today without it. The least you can do is give it a decent eulogy so that it can roll off into the sunset with at least some dignity".
The English folk trio Daughter have shared their new single 'Be on Your Way', the first from their new album 'Stereo Mind Game', out April 7. 'Be on Your Way” was inspired by a romantic connection that bandleader Elena Tonra encountered while recording in California. On the track, she reflects on fond memories while acknowledging the bad timing - “I won’t hold you back/Time throws us around/ And there is never just one future plan.” Daughter promise the new album will be more optimistic.
Ticketmaster will refund some of its fees to The Cure fans buying tickets for their US tour, after frontman Robert Smith contacted Ticketmaster over their “unduly high” fees that were, in certain cases, adding up to more than the price of a ticket, Upworthy reports. The Cure had purposefully kept tickets affordable, with some as low as $20, but fans had to pay the service fee of $11.65 per ticket and a facility charge of $10, plus an overall order processing fee of $5.50, adding up to more than the price of a ticket. “After further conversation, Ticketmaster have agreed with us that many of the fees being charged are unduly high, and as a gesture of goodwill have offered a $10 per ticket refund to all verified fan accounts for lowest ticket price (‘ltp’) transactions,” he wrote. Ticketmaster would also issue a $5 refund per ticket for any show on the US tour for all fans who bought more expensive tickets. The band had chosen to use Ticketmaster in order to combat scalping, but had declined to participate in the company’s dynamic pricing and Platinum ticket schemes as they did not want ticket prices to be “instantly and horribly distorted by resale”.
"Scott was one of the finest arts and culture writers in the country, engaged and passionate and capable of delivering insightful articles at short notice on almost any subject... Somehow he combined a deep earnestness and total dedication to his craft with a childlike innocence" - music writer Ted Gioia writes in the introduction of the posthumous collection of writings by Scot Timberg, entitled 'Boom Times for the End of the World', including texts about jazz, pop and classical music. "Here he still survives in the role he played best: the passionate and earnest culture writer".
"If you were to put together a perfect black metal book, one that captures that essential complexity while also providing historical and personal insights, it would be 'Black Metal Rainbows', a sprawling collection of essays, interviews, band and label profiles, and all kinds of art for both the true kvlt and the curious. It sets the new standard for how we should think about this music” - The Creative Independent reviews the new book which shows the true colors - antiracist and pro-diversity - of black metal.
'Swarm', created by Janine Nabers and Donald Glover, is a "bizarre new... thriller" about a young woman's obsession with a pop star that takes a dark turn which "serves as a spikey admonishment of celebrity worship." "It expresses a discomfort with and cynical attitude toward social media and fame to sometimes frustrating results" - NPR expresses in awe of the new Prime TV series. It is "at its best when it leans into the absurdities of social media and the ease of slippage between internet selves and 'real' selves". There are some interesting cameos as well - Paris Jackson plays a stripper who claims to be Black on her dad's side, whereas Billie Eilish shows up in a commune made up of woo-woo influencer types.
the beginnings of rock'n'roll. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a Black queer gospel singer and guitarist from Arkansas who emerged in the 1930s, daring to mix gospel with secular music, laying the foundations for rock and roll. Memphis Minnie was a blues musician from the 1930s with a master finger-picking guitar style. Barbara Lynn was the R&B guitarist and singer who came to prominence in the 60s. Beverly Watkins was one of the first women to be recognised as a lead blues guitarist. A few of the representatives of the new generation are: Stephanie Phillips, guitarist and singer of Black feminist punk band Big Joanie; artist Lava La Rue who came to play guitar through a government scheme to support music tuition for lower-income families; vocalist/guitarist Amy Love is one half of English rock duo Nova Twins, together with bassist Georgia South.
There were 589 million users of paid subscription accounts at the end of 2022, according to IFPI, the organization that represents the recorded music industry worldwide, MBW reports. This means that 7% of the world's population has a paid music subscription account. Global recorded music revenues grew 9% year over year in 2022, to reach $26.2 billion, IFPI's also noted in their Global Music Report 2023. Streaming continues to be the driving force behind the overall growth. Subscription audio streaming revenues increased by 10.3% year over year to $12.7 billion in 2022, with total streaming - including both paid subscription and advertising-supported - grew by 11.5% YoY to reach $17.5 billion in 2022, and accounted for 67% of total global recorded music revenues. Last year marked the global music market’s eighth consecutive year of growth.
"As a result of the upheaval, 2022 became one of the most creative and prolific years ever for Ukrainian culture and the country's music scene. The achievement was a significant one: preserving the country's unique identity" - Resident Advisor presents its selection of the best Ukrainian electronic music released since February of last year. It begins with John Object who released his ambient compilation 'Life' the very same day he joined the army ("I guess there was a good chance that was it—my life—and I'd be killed tomorrow"), and finishes with a dark electronic album 'Katakomba' by Chaosy.
According to Spotify's latest Loud and Clear report, 14,700 DIY artists generated $10,000 across recorded music and publishing royalties on the service in 2022, MBW reports. This means that DIY artists comprised approximately 25.8% of the subset of 57,000 artists who generated $10k+ on Spotify in 2022. However, compared to the previous year, the news isn't that good. In 2021, Spotify helped 15,140 DIY artists generate over $10,000.
"On 'Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)', they share some of their catchiest and most openly introspective songwriting yet" - Guardian reviews the new album by Yves Tumor. Pitchfork highly recommends the "ecstatic fusion of alt-rock and R&B, seeking the mysterious nexus where 'Loveless' meets 'Purple Rain'" (tagged it Best new music, rated 8.4). Consequence insists "they’ve turned themselves into a ravenous rock deity, a masterful songwriter", whereas NME hears as "evidence of how brilliant rock can be when ambition and talent are met with a creative who isn’t afraid to be strange".
A new moment in the developing story of artificial intelligence being used in making music. Complex reports about fans of Lil Uzi Vert and Juice WRLD making full songs out of snippets recorded by the two artists, all made with the help of AI, and of course knowledge about how to use exciting new tool. Fans had taken low-quality snippets they found on the internet - mostly Instagram and Snaphat - and used AI technology to turn them into full songs with much higher audio quality. Songs went viral on Twitter.
