Muhammad Ali has passed away. He was 74. From the Washington Post:
Muhammad Ali, the charismatic three-time heavyweight boxing champion of the world and Olympic gold medalist who transcended the world of sports to become a symbol of the antiwar movement of the 1960s and ultimately a global ambassador for cross-cultural understanding, died Friday night at a hospital in Phoenix, where he was living.
Dan, Sal, and Jer, formerly of Envy on the Coast, have released a second statement about the Envy on the Coast “reunion.”
From the official Presidential proclamation:
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2016 as African-American Music Appreciation Month. I call upon public officials, educators, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate activities and programs that raise awareness and foster appreciation of music that is composed, arranged, or performed by African Americans.
Some behind-the-scenes photos from Blink-182’s new video for “Bored to Death” are up on Mark’s website.
Colin Stutz, writing for Billboard, on the removal of lyrics from Spotify:
In a statement Spotify said, “We can confirm our partnership with Musixmatch is ending. It was a great partnership and there is mutual respect between both companies as our business strategies move us each in different directions.”
Musixmatch, meanwhile, has a bit more to say about the split, suggesting it did not come amicably.
Speaking of The Ringer, here’s Lindsay Zoladz, writing about the idea of the “surprise album” release:
“Surprise” is pop music’s latest fetish commodity, a new but widely accepted virtue in an industry desperately trying to adapt to the demands (and attention spans) of the digital age. The album promotional cycle used to be pretty uniform: Announce the release date a few months prior, send a single to radio, and tour once the album comes out. But these tactics have now been replaced by, say, obtuse teasers that often feel like perfume ads directed by Terrence Malick and promotional hieroglyphs graffitied onto urban sidewalks (and which often, in the case of Arcade Fire and more recently Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, result in apologies).
Turntable Kitchen have launched a Kickstarter for a new vinyl subscription service called Sounds Delicious. The idea is that you’ll get exclusive full-length cover albums by a variety of different artists:
We’ve asked some of indie music’s most exciting and well-respected artists to choose any full length album they love and cover it from front to back. We’ll produce their recordings on limited edition vinyl packaged in beautifully designed jackets. The records will be released exclusively through the Sounds Delicious subscription service and delivered to you every month.
Blink-182’s recent interview with Kerrang has been posted online by one nice Reddit fan. This is the good part of Reddit. The bad is this guy.
The Ringer, the new publication from Bill Simmons (formerly of Grantland/ESPN) has launched. I think it’s interesting that they’ve teamed with Medium to host and design the entire website. It leads to some confusing branding (is this on Medium, or is this its own thing), but all-in-all, I like it.
That header though.
It looks like PVRIS will be recording their new album in September or October of this year.
“We don’t get our first break until August and it’s not even 100% that we’ll get that, something might come up,” says Brian. “And then I think we’re supposed to record in September or October. That’ll be nice,” insists Lynn. “We’ve got a cool spot picked out and for me, writing is really relaxing. It’s nice downtime. It’s hanging out with Blake and these guys every day. I’m definitely more excited to do stuff in the future now because I know how much we can pull strings,” she grins as the bold get bolder.
Federico Viticci, writing for MacStories, on his history with mixtapes:
This went on for months. Listening to Luca’s CDs became a habit for me. I would listen as I perused his handwritten tracklists in the back of the CD covers. My mom would even ask me to “play Luca’s music”. I loaned a few of Luca’s CDs to my classmates. I believe that Luca kept doing it for a simple reason: he was (still is) a good friend and he thought it was cool that he could download music for free and burn an extra CD for me. Talking about new songs and old gems he included in his mixes was an excuse to catch a break between classes – no texting, no selfies, just two friends discussing songs on a mixtape.
Take the time to read this today.
Kraftwerk have lost a copyright case in Germany’s highest court, the BBC reports:
Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hutter sued Moses Pelham, alleging that his use of the clip, without asking, infringed the band’s intellectual property rights. But the German Constitutional Court decided that the impact on Kraftwerk did not outweigh “artistic freedom”.
The dispute centres on a short drum sequence looped repeatedly in the song Nur Mir (Only Me) by Sabrina Setlur.
Drake remains atop the Billboard charts this week. Ariana Grande comes in at number two and Blake Shelton is at three.
At No. 2 on the new Billboard 200 chart is Ariana Grande’s third full-length studio album, Dangerous Woman, which debuts with 175,000 equivalent album units (of which 129,000 are in traditional album sales).
Matador’s head of sales Rusty Clarke revealed to the A.V. Club that the situation where Car Seat Headrest’s album had to be recalled cost the label over $50,000.
“This is definitely an unprecedented situation,” Clarke told The A.V. Club. “We’ve never had to actually recall an album from retail before.” And while the physical loss is huge, as no part of these recalled products are salvageable—which pushes the album’s physical release to July—fans that pre-ordered digital copies were also put out. “We’d had it up for pre-order since March, so it had accrued a fair number of pre-orders at iTunes and Amazon and Google Play,” says Clarke. “We were able to switch out the audio that the artist re-recorded and we had mastered in a 48-hour turnaround, which was kind of amazing… but we had to redeliver it elsewhere. That means that we lost our pre-orders. So that was a little bit sad, too. And, of course, it’s not a great customer experience for those people who had pre-orders. Now they’ll be essentially confused as to why they’re not getting their album delivered.”
Ian Cohen, writing for Noisey, about The Hotelier’s new album:
The second path, surprisingly, was that of Brand New. Not in the sense that the Hotelier had become a band welcomed at any variation of Emo Night or that they’d even one day headline Madison Square Garden. Here was my friend’s explanation of the Brand New model: “They’ll make every wrong move that turns out to be the right move.”
Yes, the artwork is at the top.