Month: July 2025

Matt Healy Warns of Threat to Small Gig Venues

Jason Tate

BBC:

More than 1,000 pubs, bars and restaurants across the UK will host music events as part of a new nationwide festival backed by The 1975’s Matty Healy, who has warned about the talent pipeline drying up.

”Local venues aren’t just where bands cut their teeth, they’re the foundation of any real culture,” the frontman said in a statement.

”Without them, you don’t get The Smiths, Amy Winehouse, or The 1975. You get silence.”

Spotify Stock Falls on Earnings Report

Jason Tate

Digital Music News:

After posting solid MAUs growth – along with a net loss – for Q2 2025, Spotify has seen its stock price plummet by about 12% on the day.

In the appropriate earnings report, Spotify disclosed an average of 696 million MAUs, including 276 million paid subscribers. Both figures represent double-digit YoY improvements and exceeded guidance. […]

“However,” CEO Daniel Ek elaborated during the earnings call, “as I look at our progress, the one area that hasn’t yet met our expectations is our ads business. We’ve simply been moving too slowly, and it’s taking longer than expected to see the improvements we initiated to take hold. It’s really an execution challenge, not a problem with the strategy.”

My Life In 35 Songs, Track 19: “Dusk and Summer” by Dashboard Confessional

My Life in 35 Songs
Craig Manning

Days like that should last and last and last…

I treat end-of-summer songs the way most people treat Christmas music.

There is an entire segment of the music industry that is built around the fact that, for at least a month at the end of every year, a significant percentage of the music-listening population only wants to hear holiday songs. It’s why Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” will have an annual stint atop of Billboard charts from now until the end of time, and why Spotify Wrapped cuts off streaming stats for its users around Halloween. The last six weeks of the year is holiday music season.

Well, for me, August is end-of-summer music season. I have an entire playlist of songs that I associate solely with the fading of Earth’s most glorious season. Most of those songs, just like Christmas carols, sound wildly out of place to me if I hear them at any other time of year. But play them for me in August, especially in those last two weeks before Labor Day, and my heart will ache with all the melancholy of watching another summer die.

No song on the planet captures the sweet, sad feeling of summer’s end better than Dashboard Confessional’s “Dusk and Summer,” and its perennial re-entry into my life has made it one of my most cherished songs of all time. To tell that story, I have to break with the typical mold of this essay series – most parts so far have focused in on one specific memory or period of time – and explain the evolution of my end-of-summer ritual, and how music came to be a core part of it.

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I Am Waiting For You Last Summer – “Nulla” (Video Premiere)

I Am Waiting For You Last Summer
Adam Grundy

I Am Waiting For You Last Summer, the cinematic/ambient post-rock band, has returned with a cool new single and video for “Nulla.” On this key song from the band’s forthcoming LP called Without/Within, this artist leans heavily into their epic sound. The band shared, “‘Nulla’ was inspired by the idea that we — as living matter—are part of an evolving process that, at some point, begins to question itself. There’s something powerful in the image of consciousness emerging from the same material that forms stars and planets — and then turning inward to ask: What am I? What is this?” If you’re enjoying the new music video, please consider pre-saving their new LP here.

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Review: The Haunt – New Addiction

The Haunt - New Addiction
Adam Grundy

I’d love to introduce everyone to South Florida hard rock band, The Haunt, who are led by a sister and brother duo, Anastasia (vocals) and Maxamillion Haunt (guitar/production). On their latest record, called New Addiction, The Haunt quickly re-solidify themselves as major players in the Alternative/Hard Rock scene with this album that was produced by Kevin Thrasher (Escape the Fate, Jelly Roll). The set includes The Haunt’s breakthrough single of “Masochistic Lovers,” that features Craig Mabbitt (Dead Rabbitts/Escape the Fate), that showcases the band’s knack for writing big hooks with plenty of emo-laced substance. The Haunt are a great mix of scene nostalgia, paired with powerhouse female vocals, and slick production in the same vein as Greywind, Paramore, and Evanescence. New Addiction lives up its name, because you will likely be obsessed and charmed by The Haunt.

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