Swift loomed so large on vinyl in 2022, nearly one of every 25 vinyl LPs sold last year in the U.S. was a Swift album (1.695 million of 43.46 million total vinyl albums 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. The album has the largest yearly sales total for a vinyl album since Luminate began tracking sales in 1991.
Jeff Beck has passed away. He was 78.
Jeff Beck, one of the most skilled, admired and influential guitarists in rock history, died on Tuesday in a hospital near his home at Riverhall, a rural estate in southern England. He was 78.
The cause was bacterial meningitis, Melissa Dragich, his publicist, said.
During the 1960s and ’70s, as either a member of the Yardbirds or as leader of his own bands, Mr. Beck brought a sense of adventure to his playing that helped make the recordings by those groups groundbreaking.
Jake Kring-Schreifels, writing at The Ringer:
The sketch, which eventually ends with Steven stalking the graphic designer outside his home, quickly became an SNL modern classic and has racked up more than 18 million views on YouTube—a testament to its utter randomness, Ryan Gosling’s commitment to a niche bit, and the general absurdity of a billion-dollar movie attaching itself to an overused and often-mocked font. Despite Avatar’s long-gestating sequel—and new logo—debuting this week, “Papyrus,” more than five years later, continues to leave a distinct, “tribal yet futuristic” mark on the movie franchise’s legacy. “There’s something kind of charming about a director that’s not obsessed about a poster, or trailer, or marketing,” Torres says. “The fact that this subject matter is so trivial makes it so funny.”
Modest Mouse’s drummer Jeremiah Green is battling cancer.
In a separate Facebook post, veteran radio DJ Marco Collins said Green is currently undergoing chemotherapy treatment. “Despite having a stage 4 diagnosis, his prognosis is good!” Collins added. “Also his oncologist is a big MM fan (so he’s got that in his corner!)”
The Punk Rock Museum has a new opening date (March 10th) and have announced some guided tours.
Kristin Robinson, writing at Billboard:
To William Gruger, global music programs for TikTok, these kinds of music curators are already this generation’s “new media personalities,” pointing out the similarities in cultural taste making between these creators on TikTok and VJs at the height of MTV’s reign.
Within a year of posting as Mostley Music, Motley found himself suddenly able to break into the industry which felt impenetrable to him just months earlier. Atlantic and Interscope/ Darkroom offered him A&R consultant gigs and Spotify tapped him as co-host of their Spotify Live show Lorem Life. And just a few months ago, Motley co-founded a label of his own. Called Music Soup, the record label provides expertise in digital marketing and was the first to use TikTok Sound On as a distributor. Motley says if it hadn’t been for building out Mostley Music during quarantine, he’d probably be working his way up slowly in the ranks from the assistant level of a record label – not founding his own at age 24.
Us silly bloggers are so behind the times it’s not even funny.
The “Shake It Off” copyright infringement lawsuit has been dismissed.
A copyright infringement lawsuit against Taylor Swift has been dismissed with prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs cannot refile the same complaint in the same court. The suit had been filed in a California federal court in 2017 by songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, who claimed that Swift who took lyrics from 3LW’s “Playas Gon’ Play” for her 1989 single “Shake It Off.”
Sufjan Stevens talked with Craig Jenkins of Vulture:
I’m very democratic in how I live and move through the world, understanding that there are many possibilities and explanations for why we’re here. This is just my personal practice. Christmas music gets to the heart of the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane. Christmas music is such a madcap genre because you get the high art, the low art, the deeply sublime, and the sacrilege. You get beautiful traditional hymns about incarnation of God’s son born in a manger surrounded by animals. That’s what I love about it, is it’s completely in the public domain at this point, and there are no rules and regulations when it comes to Christmas culture.
John Voorhees, writing at MacStories:
Many of the statistics you’ll see as part of your latest Replay will be familiar, but there’s a new twist too. For the Replay 2022, Apple has added a Highlights Reel, which is a video of cards animating on and off-screen with highlights of the music you listened to in 2022. As the cards animate on and off your screen, the music that defined your year plays in the background. Replay’s highlights are only available on the web, and the Highlights Reel looks best on an iPhone, but it can be viewed in any web browser.
This is pretty cool and a big step up from what they had before. Being able to share the stats as images is nice, but I wish I could share the full reel, or a better “recap” of the entire year in one compact image. The closest is probably that last image in the reel. (They must not be counting anything listened to in your downloaded library, because there are two albums I played more than the one they have here, but both racked up a lot of plays as advances. Yet another reason I (and a few others) still use Last.fm.)
And, while I know I’m basically alone on this island, the year isn’t over so none of these count yet.
Ticketmaster have posted a lengthy explanation:
We strive to make ticket buying as easy as possible for fans, but that hasn’t been the case for many people trying to buy tickets for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour. First, we want to apologize to Taylor and all of her fans – especially those who had a terrible experience trying to purchase tickets. Next, we feel we owe it to everyone to share some information to help explain what happened.
From a new study on the risk of hearing loss due to unsafe music exposure:
Unsafe listening practices are highly prevalent worldwide and may place over 1 billion young people at risk of hearing loss. There is an urgent need to prioritise policy focused on safe listening. The World Health Organization provides comprehensive materials to aid in policy development and implementation.
Claire Woodcock, writing at VICE:
Over a dozen public libraries in the U.S. and Canada have begun offering their own music streaming services to patrons, with the goal of boosting artists and local music scenes. The services are region-specific, and offer local artists non-exclusive licenses to make their albums available to the community.
The concept originated in 2014 when Preston Austin and Kelly Hiser helped the Madison Public Library build the Yahara Music Library, an online library hosting music from local artists. By the time they completed their work on Yahara, they were confident they had a software prototype that other interested libraries could customize and deploy.
“That became kind of the inspiration for building MUSICat,” Austin told Motherboard, referring to the software platform he and Hiser created under a startup called Rabble.
A judge Wednesday dismissed on free-speech grounds a lawsuit brought against Phoebe Bridgers by a music producer who alleged the singer-songwriter made false and defamatory statements on social media as part of a vendetta to destroy his reputation.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Curtis A. Kin heard arguments on Bridgers’ dismissal motion on Aug. 11, saying at the time that he was leaning toward tossing plaintiff Chris Nelson’s case. He instead took the issues under submission before ruling Wednesday.
Nelson filed the suit in September 2021, also alleging false light and emotional distress. On Feb. 14, the 28-year-old, Pasadena-born Bridgers’ attorneys brought a motion to dismiss the suit on free-speech grounds, arguing that Nelson was “seeking to chill Ms. Bridgers’ allegations of abusive conduct, which are protected by the First Amendment.”
Steve Boom is the VP of Amazon Music, and he has a great name for the music business. He’s on the show because Amazon just announced that it is upgrading the music service that Prime members get as part of their subscription. Starting today, one of the benefits for Amazon Prime members is that you now get access to the entire Amazon Music catalog, about 100 million songs, to play in shuffle mode. That service used to only contain 2 million songs.
