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Month: March 2016

Blink-182 Has New Music; Single Coming at the End of April

Jason Tate

Blink-182 are gearing up to release their first new music with Matt Skiba in late April. KROQ’s music director got to hear some of the new tunes and is saying good things. So, the hype begins.

“I think any fan of Blink-182 is going to be ecstatic when they hear the music. I really do! It sounds like Blink-182 but it sounds like Blink in 2016. Lyrically it’s clever.” Worden explains that of the songs she’s heard, it’s primarily Hoppus on vocals with Skiba adding harmonies. “I didn’t know what to expect.”

This goes right along with stuff I’ve been hearing as well — that it’s very Blink sounding but more rock tinged than atmospheric. I think I’m most looking forward to hearing Mark and Matt together, if that works, and Travis is as good as we know he is, I’m sold.

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Jack Antonoff Writing A Book Called ‘Record Store’

Bleachers
Jason Tate

Jack Antonoff, of Bleachers, is writing a book called Record Store. The New York Times has an interview with Jack:

Mr. Antonoff, 31, explained in an interview that the project was based largely on his own youth as a voracious CD consumer in suburban New Jersey — far from the popular perception of a record-store patron as a crate-digging vinyl obsessive.

“It seems like the nerdy, record-collector type owns the conversation,” Mr. Antonoff said. “But that wasn’t my experience growing up, and it wasn’t the experience of a lot of people I know.”

“Record Store” will be “the opposite of an old, crotchety, ‘things-were-better,’ dusty book about vinyl,” he added.

Is the Album Review Dead?

Jason Tate

Dan Ozzi, writing for Noisey, asks: is the album review dead?

We are living in that age Bangs never got to see. There are enough services competing to offer us streaming music—Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Apple Music, Tidal, Google Play, Amazon Prime, Rhapsody, 8tracks, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp, to name a few (and that’s not even mentioning the illegal download market)—that it would take hundreds of thousands of years to listen to it all. So with every new album available at our fingertips completely for free at the instant of its release for our own personal judgment, you’ve got to wonder: Do we still need the album review?

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Streaming Music Surpasses Digital Downloads

Jason Tate

The RIAA has released their report on the state of the US music industry in 2015. Streaming is now the biggest revenue source.

The U.S. recorded music industry continued its transition to more digital and more diverse revenue streams in 2015. Overall revenues in 2015 were up 0.9% to $7.0 billion at estimated retail value. The continued growth of revenues from streaming services offset declines in sales of digital downloads and physical product. And at wholesale value, the market was up 0.8% to $4.95 billion – the fifth consecutive year that the market has grown at wholesale value.

The Complete Conceptual History of the Millennium Falcon

Jason Tate

Michael Heilemann, writing for Kitbashed, goes deep on the history of Star Warsʼ Millennium Falcon:

But the Falcon’s conceptual development has always intrigued me because the conceptualization phase is unclear and hard to discern. I’ve researched this subject extensively over years and it’s only recently I’ve been able to make out some sort of sensible process.

So this then is The Complete Conceptual History of The Millennium Falcon or How I Started Worrying and Lost My Mind Completely Over a Fictional Spaceship Someone Please Do Something Send Help Why Are You Still Reading Someone Do Something.

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