Today, we’re offering a first glimpse of an initiative from Bandcamp that aims to address these challenges. Our new vinyl pressing service streamlines the financing, production, and fulfillment of vinyl records. With no up-front investment, an artist or label can create a vinyl campaign and start taking orders almost immediately. Once they reach their minimum goal, we press their records and ship them to their fans.
This is awesome.
Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy and producer Sean O’Keefe are on the latest episode of the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast:
Patrick and Sean dive deep on how it felt to be reunited for “Lake Effect Kid” years later, how they met, how they’ve grown as creators and some fun things that you probably didn’t know about “Take This To Your Grave.”
The Grateful Dead have announced a new graphic novel:
Grateful Dead Origins takes an in depth and personal look at the formation of one of the most important American rock bands of all time, exploring the early days of Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Pigpen, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart. The story of the band’s transformation from a bar band performing as the Warlocks to becoming the creators of their own sound and forefathers for the jamband culture is depicted in the original story written by Chris Miskiewicz and illustrated by Noah Van Sciver.
Danny Boyle is to exec produce an Irvine Welsh-penned feature about seminal British record label Creation with Rupert Everett, Suki Waterhouse and Jason Flemyng joining the cast.
Creation Stories, which has been long in the works, is based on Alan McGee’s autobiography, The Creation Records Story: Riots, Raves and Running a Label, about the highs and lows of running the label famous for putting out records by the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream and Oasis.
Notre-Dame cathedral, the iconic symbol of the beauty and history of Paris, was scarred by an extensive fire on Monday evening that caused part of its delicate spire to collapse, bruised the Parisian skies with smoke and further disheartened a city already back on its heels after weeks of violent protests.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known, said André Finot, a spokesman for the cathedral, and officials added that no one had been killed or wounded in the blaze. But even three hours after the fire began, the authorities were still scrambling to contain it — and warned that they were not certain they would be able to.
Khalid’s Free Spirit is the number one album in the country this week:
Khalid notches his first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, as his third release, Free Spirit, opens atop the tally. The set, released on April 5 through Right Hand/RCA Records, starts with 202,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending April 11, according to Nielsen Music — the fourth-largest week of 2019 for an album. Of that sum, 85,000 were in traditional album sales.
MC Lars and Mega Ran have released the new song “Sleep Hollow” to streaming services.
Richard Brooks, writing for The Observer:
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who created, wrote and starred in the eponymous BBC hit, has been brought in to liven up the script of the next James Bond film, still known as Bond 25.
She has been specifically requested by Daniel Craig, who plays 007, to bring her wit and quirkiness to the screenplay, the Observer has learned.
Taylor Swift has launched a countdown clock on her website counting down to Friday, April 26th.
Peter Kafka, writing at Recode:
Disney+ will launch in the US on November 12, for $7 a month. It will have a very large library of old Disney movies and TV shows — crucially, including titles from its Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars catalog — along with new movies and series made exclusively for the streaming service. It won’t have any ads. And it will allow subscribers to download all of that stuff, and watch it offline, whenever they want.
So much new TV. I’m already looking forward to The Sandlot series.
The image was produced by the Event Horizon Telescope, a network of 10 radio telescopes spread across the planet and functioning as if it were a single receiver, one tuned to high-frequency radio waves. It represents a technical triumph for the scientists involved, and inaugurates a new era in the study of black holes, galaxy formation, and the laws of physics under extreme conditions.
The M87 black hole appears as a dark shadow within a doughnut-like ring of hot, glowing material.
I thought this video about the black hole was fantastic.
Jay Gabler, writing at The Current:
[A]ccording to a new study from European researchers. Today’s recording industry might not put as much trash in landfills, but streaming music has actually increased greenhouse gas emissions. It turns out that it takes way more energy to store and stream music than it took to manufacture and distribute hard copies…which may seem crazy, but think about how often you have to recharge your phone.
That’s not to say the old days were all that great for the environment either. Vinyl production peaked in 1977, using 58 million kilograms of plastic. CD production peaked 23 years later, in 2000, and that required 61 million kilograms of plastic. All that plastic production, though, resulted in only about half as much greenhouse gas emission as streaming causes today.
Oh, fun.
Chris Messer, singer of Showoff, is on the latest episode of UK podcast The Wasting Time Podcast.
Larry Fitzmaurice, writing at Vulture:
What follows are 17 testimonials from working indie and indie-adjacent musicians about what they do when they’re not making music, how they perceive their financial future in the industry, and how much money they make — or, much more often, lose — in the process.