“The music industry was built on the passions of record collectors. The album wasn’t just a physical object, but a lifestyle accessory, almost a fetish and talisman. People didn’t just listen to their records, they displayed them as quasi-holy relics. The album cover might seem irrelevant — a baby swimming after a dollar bill, a painting of a big banana, or even a blank white slate with only tiny text (The Beatles) emblazoned on it. But to the owners, these served as supercharged personal emblems. The image could change, but the message stayed the same: This is my music. This is who I am.”
Category: music
The Grammys’ Fear Of Progress
“Black artists from Prince to Michael Jackson to Kanye West have been on the forefront of this sort of expansion of what pop music means. Maybe that fact has something to do with why they have mostly fared poorly in the Grammys general categories over the years even as they have served up exactly the kind of performances that make the Grammys worth watching at all. Or maybe it’s just a deeper sort of bias.”
Here Are All Of 2017’s Classical Music Grammy Winners
The Boston Symphony, Nashville Symphony and more…
Gender Breakdown Of Top 40 Music – An Odd Correlation
In 2005, Billboard changed its methodology to include digital downloads, and in 2007, it included digital streaming. In 2013, they added video streaming from sites like YouTube. There’s certainly a correlation between the music industry’s digitization, and women’s drop in representation. In 2016, only 22 percent of popular songs were performed by only women. That’s a huge drop from the 41.4 percent that women performed in the decade 1997-2007.
An Epidemic Of Music-Related Injuries?
“Playing-related injuries are approaching epidemic levels. A 2012 Australian study on that country’s professional symphony orchestras showed that 84 per cent of musicians had experienced injuries in their lifetime and 50 per cent were currently having pain while playing. Why is this happening?”
The Third Show At The Apollo: Backstage
“One of the Apollo Theater’s fans got it almost right when she told Earl Caldwell of The New York Times: ‘You get two shows at the Apollo. That’s what I like down there. You get the show on the stage and the one in the audience.'” And then there’s the space where the performers, and the journalists, escape the crowds.
Adele – And David Bowie – Is The Big Winner At The Grammys
Beyoncé won Best Contemporary Urban Album for “Lemonade” but lost out to Adele in the other big categories; David Bowie won his first Grammys for Blackstar; Chance the Rapper had a big night – and politics took center stage for some performers, like Katy Perry and A Tribe Called Quest (google “President Agent Orange”).
Will Spotify Survive 2017?
The Swedish firm, which accounts for a huge percentage of music consumed in the U.S. and has delayed its public offering to 2018, might be “too big to fail” – or it might just fail. “Spotify must pay ever larger sums to its creditors just to settle the interest on its loan, while the amount of money it can raise from its IPO is trimmed by an ever greater amount.”
Grammys Host James Corden Honestly Loves Music, And The Musicians Behind It All
Corden, who sings with musicians during the popular “Carpool” segment of his “Late Late Show,” is hosting the Grammys tonight, and he loves everyone, including the two ultra-famous women up against each other for major awards: “I’m pleased to live in a world where I would never have to make a choice between Adele and Beyoncé.
The Surprise – And Challenge – Of Suddenly Being Asked To Conduct The New York Phil
When conductor Semyon Bychkov fell ill halfway through an afternoon rehearsal, assistant conductor Joshua Gersen stepped in – and then got to lead the orchestra at that night’s performance as well, “leading impassioned and incisive accounts of Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poem ‘Francesca da Rimini,’ a piece he had never conducted, and the intense ‘Pathétique’ Symphony, a work he had previously led only in part.”