Colin Stutz, writing for Billboard, on the removal of lyrics from Spotify:
In a statement Spotify said, “We can confirm our partnership with Musixmatch is ending. It was a great partnership and there is mutual respect between both companies as our business strategies move us each in different directions.”
Musixmatch, meanwhile, has a bit more to say about the split, suggesting it did not come amicably.
Speaking of The Ringer, here’s Lindsay Zoladz, writing about the idea of the “surprise album” release:
“Surprise” is pop music’s latest fetish commodity, a new but widely accepted virtue in an industry desperately trying to adapt to the demands (and attention spans) of the digital age. The album promotional cycle used to be pretty uniform: Announce the release date a few months prior, send a single to radio, and tour once the album comes out. But these tactics have now been replaced by, say, obtuse teasers that often feel like perfume ads directed by Terrence Malick and promotional hieroglyphs graffitied onto urban sidewalks (and which often, in the case of Arcade Fire and more recently Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, result in apologies).
Blink-182’s recent interview with Kerrang has been posted online by one nice Reddit fan. This is the good part of Reddit. The bad is this guy.
The Ringer, the new publication from Bill Simmons (formerly of Grantland/ESPN) has launched. I think it’s interesting that they’ve teamed with Medium to host and design the entire website. It leads to some confusing branding (is this on Medium, or is this its own thing), but all-in-all, I like it.
That header though.
Federico Viticci, writing for MacStories, on his history with mixtapes:
This went on for months. Listening to Luca’s CDs became a habit for me. I would listen as I perused his handwritten tracklists in the back of the CD covers. My mom would even ask me to “play Luca’s music”. I loaned a few of Luca’s CDs to my classmates. I believe that Luca kept doing it for a simple reason: he was (still is) a good friend and he thought it was cool that he could download music for free and burn an extra CD for me. Talking about new songs and old gems he included in his mixes was an excuse to catch a break between classes – no texting, no selfies, just two friends discussing songs on a mixtape.
Take the time to read this today.
Kraftwerk have lost a copyright case in Germany’s highest court, the BBC reports:
Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hutter sued Moses Pelham, alleging that his use of the clip, without asking, infringed the band’s intellectual property rights. But the German Constitutional Court decided that the impact on Kraftwerk did not outweigh “artistic freedom”.
The dispute centres on a short drum sequence looped repeatedly in the song Nur Mir (Only Me) by Sabrina Setlur.
Drake remains atop the Billboard charts this week. Ariana Grande comes in at number two and Blake Shelton is at three.
At No. 2 on the new Billboard 200 chart is Ariana Grande’s third full-length studio album, Dangerous Woman, which debuts with 175,000 equivalent album units (of which 129,000 are in traditional album sales).
Ian Cohen, writing for Noisey, about The Hotelier’s new album:
The second path, surprisingly, was that of Brand New. Not in the sense that the Hotelier had become a band welcomed at any variation of Emo Night or that they’d even one day headline Madison Square Garden. Here was my friend’s explanation of the Brand New model: “They’ll make every wrong move that turns out to be the right move.”
Yes, the artwork is at the top.
One of the more interesting stories in the journalism space over the past week has been the revelation that billionaire Peter Thiel has been secretly funding Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker. I think, not surprisingly, I agree most with John Gruber’s take:
It’s free speech on both sides. Thiel was free to secretly back (and apparently strategically steer) Hogan’s case against Gawker. But Gawker founder Nick Denton was free to air his suspicion that Hogan had a billionaire Silicon Valley backer, and Forbes was free to out Thiel as said backer. And now commentators who are appalled are free to express their outrage at Thiel, perhaps embarrassing him and making it less likely that he or others of similar super-wealth will do this in the future.
You’re free to do stupid shit under the banner of free speech, and I’m free to say so.
Miles Raymer, writing for MTV, looks at some ideas on fixing copyright law in how it relates to musicians and clearing samples:
Menell’s solution is to apply something called a compulsory license to sampling, remixing, and other derivative works. Compulsory licenses replace the process of gaining a copyright holder’s permission to make use of their original work with a flat royalty structure and a set of rules for how the work can be reinterpreted. We already have this kind of setup for cover songs: Under U.S. copyright law, anyone can perform and record any song that anyone else has written and recorded without getting their prior permission, as long as they pay a royalty to the copyright owner. This is why pop-punk bands can cover Top 40 songs, why iTunes is full of sound-alike cover versions of hit songs by artists it doesn’t have deals with, and why hip-hop producers often hire instrumentalists to play “interpolations” of musical passages they want to sample but can’t clear.
Aleen Mean, writing on her blog, on how in spite of the new features Twitter keeps rolling out, it remains broken in one glaring way: it’s too easy to abuse people on the service.
Time and time again, we’ve been told that the company is working on making things better for targets of harassment. What we see, however, are half-baked enhancements designed to make the service more appealing to advertisers and attempts at enticing new users. Many people have suggested changes they could implement to curb abuse. For example, Randi Lee Harper’s list of suggestions from earlier this year is still on-point.
Ben Popper, writing for The Verge, looks at just how big of a hit Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist has been:
According to the stats Spotify released, more than half of Discover Weekly users listen to 10 tracks a week and save at least one of those songs to their favorites. The company is trying to highlight the boost in listening this feature has given to small- and medium-sized artists, and noted it will be sharing data from Discover Weekly with bands to try and help them connect with their newest fans.
SoundCloud has teamed up with LANDR to offer a free “mastering” service to their members. From the SoundCloud blog announcing this partnership:
Driven by the smartest algorithms in the game, LANDR’s all-in-one, drag and drop interface makes mastering your tracks easier than ever. For this partnership, LANDR has created a new format specifically optimized for SoundCloud streaming.
Really I’m just excited I can now make jokes about how algorithms can do a better mastering job on albums than some bands end up with.
Peter Kafka, writing for Re/Code, on how Spotify lost a lot of money last year, but revenue grew:
Filings show that Spotify, based in Sweden and the U.K., generated revenue of $2.12 billion last year, up about 80 percent from the $1.18 billion it brought in the prior year (all prices in the story converted from euros to dollars at the exchange rate from December 31, 2015). Losses, meanwhile, hit $188.7 million — but that number was only up 6.7 percent from the previous year’s total of $176.9 million.
It looks like their paid subscribers hit 28 million.
Twitter has announced some changes to how they’re going to be handling tweets, media, and @-replies on the service.
[Y]ou can already do a lot in a Tweet, but we want you to be able to do even more. In the coming months we’ll make changes to simplify Tweets including what counts toward your 140 characters, so for instance, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer “use up” valuable characters.