Lauren Levy, writing for Vulture:

But despite the artist’s problematic pasts (and, for some, present), the labels have come running. That’s because these musicians have acquired relevance and cultural cachet, but even more so because of their financial potential. They bathe in an ocean of endless streams, the most valuable currency in today’s music industry.

Kaitlyn Tiffany, writing for Vox:

Looking at the past several years of the charts, this polarization looks like more than garden-variety cultural sexism — it looks like something new that our algorithm-based platforms have wrought. The biggest question facing Spotify in the coming year should be whether it can do something about it.

Bobby Olivier, writing for NJ:

It’s being swept under the stage, gig after gig, weekend after weekend, in the bars, clubs and basements that weave together New Jersey’s local music scene.

Female musicians say they have been stalked, groped and relentlessly demeaned in an arts community with no controls in place to report such abusers. They feel collective frustration and invalidation. They are sick of being diminished and ignored.

Sacha Goldberger has made a series of superhero portraits as if they were 16th-century Flemish paintings.

Kevin Alexander, writing at Thrillist:

In my office, I have a coffee mug from Stanich’s in Portland, Oregon. Under the restaurant name, it says “Great hamburgers since 1949.” The mug was given to me by Steve Stanich on the day I told him that, after eating 330 burgers during a 30-city search, I was naming Stanich’s cheeseburger the best burger in America. That same day, we filmed a short video to announce my pick. On camera, Stanich cried as he talked about how proud his parents would be. After the shoot, he handed me the mug, visibly moved. “My parents are thanking you from the grave,” he said, shaking my hand vigorously. When I left, I felt light and happy. I’d done a good thing.

Five months later, in a story in The Oregonian, restaurant critic Michael Russell detailed how Stanich’s had been forced to shut down. In the article, Steve Stanich called my burger award a curse, “the worst thing that’s ever happened to us.” He told a story about the country music singer Tim McGraw showing up one day, and not being able to serve him because there was a five hour wait for a burger. On January 2, 2018, Stanich shut down the restaurant for what he called a “two week deep cleaning.” Ten months later, Stanich’s is still closed.

Tim Ingham, writing at Rolling Stone, makes the argument that the LP as we know it, is in trouble:

Sure, hits on streaming services make a lot of people a lot of money. But as the death knell rings for the album — and the music industry returns to the pre-Beatles era of track-led consumption — are fans being encouraged to develop a less-committed relationship with new artists? […]

The music industry is facing a bit of an existential crisis, then: How can something (streaming) be considered the “equivalent” of something else (an album sale) when, by your own measure, the former now completely dominates the latter?

In 2018, “streaming-equivalent albums” seems like daft phrasing. It is e-mail-equivalent faxes. It is car-equivalent steeds. It is Netflix-equivalent Betamax.