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Apple Announce Music Festival Lineup

Jason Tate

Apple has announced their Apple Music Festival lineup: Alicia Keys, Bastille, Britney Spears, Calvin Harris, Chance the Rapper, Elton John, Michael Bublé, OneRepublic, Robbie Williams, and The 1975.

The full lineup was announced today by Julie Adenuga, the London voice of Beats 1, an Apple Music radio station that celebrates the best new music every day. Apple Music lets fans get even closer to their favorite performers during the Apple Music Festival with exclusive playlists, artist news and backstage interviews throughout September. The 10 spectacular nights of live performances will be made available live and on-demand to Apple Music members in 100 countries on their iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, PC, Apple TV and Android phones.

Reports: SpinMedia on the Block Looking to Sell

Money
Jason Tate

NY Post:

Perpetually struggling SpinMedia, the collection of music and pop culture websites once known as Buzz Media, is officially on the block, sources tell Media Ink.

The company, which snapped up both Vibe and Spin and promptly converted the music magazines to all-digital sites, has retained the investment bank Petsky Prunier to shop for a buyer.

The websites, which also include The Friskly, Idolator, Go Fug Yourself, Celebuzz, Buzznet, Death & Taxes and others, is estimated to be losing at least $5 million a year on revenues of around $18 million, sources said.

I feel bad because a lot of people I know are probably going to lose their jobs. But the writing has been on the wall for half a decade, at least.

A GIF of Aly Raisman’s Floor Routine Got Someone Banned From Twitter

Twitter
Jason Tate

Jim Weber, writing on LinkedIn:

I had read that the IOC was banning the press from using GIFs but I didn’t see how that applied to me. Sure, I didn’t have the rights to any footage at the Olympics — just like countless blogs and users don’t have rights to the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and NCAA footage that they create GIFs out of and profit from every day.

But I figured the worst thing that would happen is the GIF would be deleted from my account, as Twitter often does in these situations.

Boy was I wrong.

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?