Is YouTube a Music Industry Devil or Buzz-Making Deity?

YouTube
Jason Tate

Eamonn Forde, writing for The Guardian, looks at manager1 Peter Mensch’s claim that YouTube is the devil.

Perhaps part of Mensch’s attack on YouTube stems from him, and many others, in the 1980s handing the keys over to MTV before realising what a huge mistake it was. Cliff Burnstein, his long-standing management partner, has been quoted in the past saying that MTV was key in breaking Def Leppard, who they managed at the time and made them into, for a period, the biggest band in the world. MTV happily played expensive music videos but paid no broadcast royalties in the US, allowing its parent company Viacom to become one of the biggest media companies in the world. There are echoes here of what is happening with YouTube, and Mensch is understandably not keen to be bitten for a second time.

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Summer Scouts – “Vessel” (Video Premiere)

Summer Scouts
Jason Tate

Today I’m excited to debut the new video from Summer Scouts for their song “Vessel.” The track comes from the band’s upcoming album, Furthest Reach, which is set for release on May 20th. The song deals with the loss of a parent and confronts the realities of how this changes the home. When describing the track, the band explained it as:

Family life and norms change dramatically after the death of a parent. The home itself takes a drastic shift in its overall aura, a shift that slowly continues for years after the death, forever losing its original feeling. While the family’s personalities experience alterations as well, the house itself holds the significant, glaring symbolism of this dark familial change. “Vessel” visits this feeling that no one in the family wants to face and confronts it in an emotional conversation between the singer (an affected family member) and the house.

I was drawn to the vocal harmonies and rhythm section immediately and would probably say this is a good fit for fans of PVRIS and Mayday Parade — it’s definitely pop-rock but with this atmospheric tinge.

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Rihanna Surpasses Beatles on Hot 100 Chart

Rihanna
Jason Tate

Robbie Daw, writing for Idolator:

Rihanna has now spent more weeks at #1 on the main singles chart than the Beatles. Rihanna’s 14 chart-topping songs have racked up 60 weeks at the upper-most spot on the Hot 100, though it took nine years and 11 months do so. (RiRi’s first #1 was “SOS,” which hit the top in May 2006.) The Beatles amassed 20 chart-topping singles on the Hot 100 over a six year and four month period, between February 1964 and June 1970 — all for a cumulative 59 weeks at #1.