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Frank Ocean’s Album Is the Straw That Broke Universal Music’s Back

Frank Ocean
Jason Tate

Dan Rys, writing at Billboard, about how Frank Ocean’s latest release is causing all kinds of headaches over at Universal:

After an interminable wait (in music industry standards, at least), Ocean fulfilled his contractual obligations, sources tell Billboard, and increased his potential profit share from 14 percent to 70 percent of total revenues from Blond within a 24-hour period, seemingly pulling a fast one on the biggest music company in the world in the process. Def Jam and its parent Universal, stuck with an overshadowed visual album that isn’t for sale, and cut out of any revenue from the “proper” album that’s headed to the top of the charts on the strength of 225,000 to 250,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Aug. 25, were left with what amounts to a very long music video and without one of their marquee artists.

Spotify Looking to Fine-Tune Music Rights

Jason Tate

Hannah Karp, writing at The Wall Street Journal:

Spotify is now operating on short-term extensions of its old contracts with all three major record companies, having been on a month-to-month basis with at least one of the labels for nearly a year. It is negotiating new deals that would make its finances more attractive to investors.

Spotify, which saw its net loss increase to roughly $200 million last year even as revenue doubled to more than $2 billion, wants to pay a smaller share than the nearly 55% of its revenue that it currently pays to record labels and artists, according to people familiar with the matter.

It pays roughly an additional 15% to music publishers and songwriters.

But some major label executives want Spotify to pay them as much as 58% of revenue from both its free and paid tiers. That is what Apple Inc. pays for Apple Music subscribers who aren’t on free trials, people familiar with the matter said. Apple has more than 5 million users on free trials, they said.

Blog: For the Colonel, It Was Finger-Lickin’ Bad

Food
Jason Tate

From The New York Times archives, Colonel Sanders visits a KFC in 1976 and is pissed:

And when told that many Kentucky Fried Chicken salesclerks packed hot chicken in buckets well in advance of its sale, he almost fumed. If they do that, he said, the chicken will have a terrible smell.

“You know, that company is just too big to control now,” he said, “I’m sorry I sold it back in 1964. It would have been smaller now, but a lot better. People see me up there doing those commercials and they wonder how I could ever let such products bear my name. It’s downright embarrassing.”

Blog: Blonde Bombshell

Jason Tate

A great takedown of the insufferable Bob Lefsetz from Nick Heer at Pixel Envy:

The gist of Lefsetz’s piece is that the exclusive-to-Apple Music release of “Blonde” is, somehow, the canary in the coal mine of the music industry. That its exclusivity is, somehow, a symptom of a music industry that doesn’t know how to build a fanbase and is, instead, spitting in the face of everyone from committed fans to casual listeners.

But, for some reason, Lefsetz is only angered now by the release of Frank Ocean’s record on Apple’s platforms.

Mylan’s EpiPen Price Gouging

Science
Jason Tate

Matt Novak, writing for Gizmodo:

EpiPen, the life-saving allergy product, is now a $1 billion a year business for Mylan, a drug company that’s currently enduring a wave of bad publicity over the extraordinary surge in EpiPen pricing. In 2007, an EpiPen cost about $57. Today that price has skyrocketed to over $600 — all for about $1 worth of injectable medicine.

EpiPen is an emergency medication that’s stabbed into a person experiencing anaphylactic shock, a life-threatening allergic reaction that can be triggered by anything from bee stings to food. I’ve never used an EpiPen, but as someone with a peanut allergy who once made his own trip to the ER after a particularly unfortunate restaurant experience (“these Chinese beans sure are crunchy…”) I can tell you that anaphylactic shock is really no fun.

This is such bullshit.

Blog: The Public Option

Vox
Jason Tate

Jacob S. Hacker, writing for Vox:

Since the early 2000s, I had been calling for letting the public sector compete with private insurers to sign up people younger than 65: not “Medicare for all,” a dream of the left for decades, but “Medicare for more,” a public insurance plan for working-age people that could compete with private insurers and use its bargaining power to push back against drugmakers, medical device manufacturers, hospital systems, and other health care providers.

I’ve long been a proponet of the public option and this article does a great job of laying out the argument why.

Amazon Looking to Launch Two New Music Services

amazon
Jason Tate

Peter Kafka, writing for Recode, on Amazon’s hope to launch an unlimited, ad-free, $4-$5 a month, “Echo only” music streaming service:

Amazon wants to launch a music subscription service that would work the same way services from Apple, Spotify and many others work: $10 a month, for all the music you can stream, anywhere you want to stream it.

But Amazon is also working on a second service that would differ in two significant ways from industry rivals: It would cost half the price, and it would only work on Amazon’s Echo hardware.

The World Really Wanted Britney Spears to Fail: She Didn’t

Britney Spears
Jason Tate

Issy Beech, writing for Noisey, on Britney Spears:

LeAnn Rimes also said in her interview with Metro that she admired Britney. “I look at her and think it’s really amazing what she’s overcome. It’s nice to see someone come out the other side and be successful again.”

That’s the quote that deserves follow-up articles. That’s the quote. Because Britney Spears is still one of the most successful women in pop.

Travis Barker Talks Tattoos and Pain

Travis Barker
Jason Tate

GQ has an extensive profile on Travis Barker of Blink-182. This passage about the possibility of a Box Car Racer reunion sure is interesting:

I think we were both under the impression in the beginning that it was going to be a Blink album. Then it was like, no let’s do this cool little side project, but we won’t put an album out. Then the label heard it and wanted to put it out. Then there wasn’t going to be a tour, but they were like ah, you can do this tour. It just spiraled out of control. . . But I don’t know. [Mark’s] not in the band, so would it cause a lot of problems? Would it not? I have no idea. It’s something I can’t even wrap my head around just because I’m so proud of this album that we’re currently supporting. But I love Box Car. It was a cool album and cool sound.

Pandora Nears Deals for On-Demand Streaming

The Wall Street Journal
Jason Tate

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Pandora is looking to get into the on-demand streaming game:

Pandora Media Inc. is aiming to start expanding its internet-radio service as soon as next month, offering its hallmark free tier as well as two new monthly subscription options that will mark its foray into on-demand music streaming, said people familiar with the matter.

Can they fix their shitty Flash based web app and awful streaming quality first?

Japandroids Have Been Missed

Japandroids
Jason Tate

Steven Hyden, writing for Uproxx, on missing the Japandroids and how to follow up Celebration Rock:

Japandroids make music that should, theoretically, be relatively easy to produce more than once or twice per decade. And yet, when you make a record as good at being simple as Celebration Rock is, it doesn’t leave you with a lot of options moving forward. If you repeat the formula, you have to compete directly with your most beloved record (and your audience’s distorted memory of that record). If you change up the formula (assuming you’re even capable of doing that), you run the risk of losing what people liked about you in the first place.

On the End of Yellowcard

Yellowcard
Jason Tate

Evan Lucy has a nice interview and feature on the end of Yellowcard over at Alternative Press:

The sense of finality led Key to approach writing Yellowcard from a different angle lyrically, as well. The singer felt especially galvanized by the ability to have the album’s lyrics serve as his farewell to friends, fans and family, and he challenged himself to use each song to express a different sentiment of saying goodbye. Some, like the affecting wistfulness of “Empty Street” (“Boxing up the fireworks/cancel my parade/the street is empty tonight”) and album closer “Fields & Fences,” complete with a goosebump-inducing orchestral outro, find him staring down his rapidly approaching future as Yellowcard’s ex-frontman, while the fiery “Savior’s Robes”—with its biting chorus, “Play us a song I know/Make it an older one”—seems aimed at those who’d prefer the band’s Ocean Avenue selves be fossilized forever.

Trying to read the article and having an Ice Nine Kills video pop up in my face sure was fun.

Gawker.com to Shut Down

Jason Tate

Gawker is shutting down:

After nearly fourteen years of operation, Gawker.com will be shutting down next week. The decision to close Gawker comes days after Univision successfully bid $135 million for Gawker Media’s six other websites, and four months after the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel revealed his clandestine legal campaign against the company.