I’ve moved our Apple News feed away from RSS and over to the official Apple News format. This means it should show up more frequently if you subscribe to our channel and allows me a few more formatting options. So, if you use Apple News, feel free to follow us.
Andy Cush, writing at Spin:
Martina believes that artists can help survivors by publicly supporting their claims, especially those in tight-knit communities such as the emo and goth scenes, and those who have collaborated with figures like Control in the past. “Silence is very, very powerful. When someone they’ve worked with and are promoting to their followers turns out to be an abuser, they have a responsibility to warn the young women who follow them and not stay silent,” she said.
Panic! at the Disco will be performing at the MTV Video Music Awards.
The MTV Video Music Awards are hitting New York City a week from today (Aug. 20), and they’re not done announcing talent for the Radio City Music Hall show. Panic! at the Disco are the latest confirmed performers, as Brendon Urie and company will be on hand for a rendition of their current single, “High Hopes.”
Travis Scott has dethroned Drake as the number one album in the country this week:
The set — which was released Aug. 3 via Cactus Jack/Grand Hustle/Epic Records — earned 537,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Aug. 9, according to Nielsen Music. Of that total, 270,000 were driven by traditional album sales — the second-biggest sales week of 2018.
James Shotwell sat down to talk with Anthony Green over at Substream Magazine:
He continues, “It was through trying to realize that similarity that I learned I was bipolar. And it was during the creation of that song when I was like, this song is about being okay with the fact that you’re paranoid. You know what I mean? Yeah, you’re paranoid, it’s okay, you have to fucking trust that it’s okay that you’re feeling this way because it all goes away. Even the good stuff. And so, it was intended to be a love song about a person and a romantic feeling, and it just ended up being almost a love song about being bipolar and that it’s okay. I wanted to call the record Bipolar Love Songs, but I’m thrilled I didn’t because it came out on the same day as that Kanye record where he makes a big deal out of it.”
The new Death Cab for Cutie album is streaming over at NPR.
A GoFundMe for Warped Tour’s medic, Travis, has been started:
In the course of his job as a music tour medic, Travis is usually the one to be helping others, keeping them safe and healthy while they are away from home. While on tour in Spring of 2018, he went to the nearest hospital because he was not feeling right. That hospital sent him on his way, telling him he was fine. Unfortunately they missed the cancer that had developed and Travis wasn’t diagnosed until he returned home in the summer. Because of this, he missed valuable treatment time.
It will never not depress me that we live in the richest nation in the history of the world … and people have to crowd fund for medical expenses.
Brooklyn Vegan talked with Foxing about their new album:
I think finishing the initial version of “Slapstick” was the first time that I realized we could make something that sounded that way. That was one of the early songs that we had written. Eric and I had put together the truly initial version of the song before anybody got involved with it, before we had live drums on it or Ricky’s guitar parts or anything like that, or even the final lyrics. It was all just temporary parts — we kind of put those little vocal samples in there, and we had put some synths and some electronic drums, and Eric did the original guitar part that starts the song — and just having that skeleton of the song, it was the first time that I was like “hey this is actually something that I would listen to if I wasn’t in our band,” and that’s a feeling that I don’t think I ever had with the songs that we had made on our other two records.
Alkaline Trio talked with Rolling Stone about their upcoming album:
Now, there’s a bit of a rebirth of the band. Again, we don’t really know what’s going to happen — we’re just really excited about these songs. I think there’s a sort of freedom to not making a record in five years and coming back to it and just writing in the studio. There was no talk of a single. There was no “What song are we going to work on to push on the radio?” That’s not something we really focus on ever, but it is something that gets brought up by the producer, or the record label. People want to sell records and that’s 100 percent understandable. But this time, it just didn’t come up. We just made a record.
Ben Gibbard sat down with Noisey to rank Death Cab for Cutie albums:
In writing this album, we had this big blowout with Chris in October of 2001 and we got home from that tour and realized we needed a break. We needed to take time and do some other stuff, and we did. I had a lot of time to write. I know for a fact I will never have a year again like 2003. The Postal Service record came out, Transatlanticism came out. These two records will be on my tombstone, and I’m totally fine with that. I’ve never had a more creatively inspired year, and the proof is in the pudding.
Victor Mather, writing for The New York Times:
More Shakespearean sport: When Hamlet says “To sleep — perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub!” by rub, he meant difficulty. The term comes from lawn bowling, of all sports.
The “rub” is an unevenness in the playing surface that can cause the ball to slow or alter course. A sticky wicket indeed!
Kara Swisher, writing for The New York Times:
But by that measure, the rest of us plebes, including Mr. Jones, should probably get no protection if we err, no matter how much we rant that tweeting is a right under the First Amendment. It’s not, because Twitter is not the government and it can decide what and what not to host on its service. In any case, if you get kicked off Twitter, you can always unload your twisted mind on your very own website. And it cannot be said too many times that freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from consequence.
All this is not to say that fixing Twitter will be easy; in fact, I think at this point it is nearly impossible. Add to that the fact that this is a global issue, making it hard to have any consistent rules that address the complexity of the world and, really, its deep and abiding ugliness.
It’s time for Jack to leave as CEO. He failed at the most important tests for his company, time, and time again.
Lynn Gunn of PVRIS sat down with Billboard to talk about what the band’s currently working on:
The touring experience is “the number one thing,” as Gunn tells Billboard, but now she’s ready to go home to Brooklyn for a bit, lay low and… get to work on PVRIS’ third album.
According to a new report from Citigroup, the music industry made $43 billion in revenue in 2017 while only 12% of that actually went to the artists.
Artists’ share of music revenues is small. In 2017, artists captured just 12% of music revenue with most of the value leakage driven by the costs of running a myriad of distribution platforms — AM/FM radio, satellite radio, Internet distributors — augmented by the costs (and profits) of the record labels.
The proportion captured by artists is, however, on the rise (it was just 7% of industry revenues in 2000). The bulk of the improvement is not driven by the growth in music subscription services. Rather, it’s driven by the strength in the concert business.
To address the concerns of those who find the show to be too long and boring (thanks largely to the current existence of 24 competitive awards, of which the general public only cares about a few), Bailey and Academy CEO Dawn Hudson said in a letter to members that the board has “committed to producing an entertaining show in three hours.” They explain that this will be achieved partly by “present[ing] select categories live, in the Dolby Theatre, during commercial breaks (categories to be determined).” Those categories will not be removed from the telecast; instead, “the winning moments will then be edited and aired later in the broadcast.”
And:
At least as important, in terms of improving the ratings of the Oscars telecast for ABC, the Academy also said in its letter that it “will create a new category for outstanding achievement in popular film,” adding that “[e]ligibility requirements and other key details will be forthcoming.”
So, is this just “the Marvel movie” category?