Article: Mutually-assured destruction: How Spotify and Apple Music will kill each other off

While it makes a certain type of business sense for Spotify to hold back on promotion if an artist strikes a deal with their direct competitor, this latest round of complaints suggests that Spotify has extended this lack of promo to music that appears ‘anywhere in advance of Spotify’ – in one case, a premiere on a music blog.

Digital Music News viewed written correspondence from Spotify, explaining their ‘release parity’ policy: they won’t promote any new music that appears ‘anywhere’ in advance of it landing on their platform. This includes banning the music from their editorial playlists, inclusion on which drives huge first-week streaming numbers, which many artists rely upon for a strong chart debut.

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Viewers are trained to expect television companies to compete with each other – from free-to-air to streaming, this has always been the way. But music seems different, somehow. It’s in the waterstream. It’s carried through the air. It belongs to everyone. It’s older than language. And nobody is going to put up with streaming services that offer up every third new release, bouncing angrily between apps as they try to work out where they can listen to the new Childish Gambino record.

They will just give up, and the foothold that Spotify, Apple Music have gained over the past five years will be lost – to piracy, to YouTube, to any easier option that presents itself. And if Spotify and Apple Music continue their game of mutually assured destruction, blacklisting artists, scrapping for exclusives, and trying to wipe out blogs and radio while they are at all, a better option will jump in and fill the gap. It always does.

(Via Mutually-assured destruction: How Spotify and Apple Music will kill each other off.)

Video Day #tzachill

Blood Orange has a new video for Dark & Handsome, featuring none other than Toro Y Moi.  Kele Okereke released his new video for Guava Rubicon with this message: "The Black woman is the most maligned figure in today’s society and I wanted to make something that celebrated her smarts, her sexiness and her magic.”  Yoke Lore continues to charm me with his steady release of videos, most recently with this video for Body Parts.

Bonus:  I’m still riding high after seeing Toro Y Moi live in Detroit, and wanted to share his newest video. 

Video Day #tzaupbeat

I couldn’t be happier that Basia Bulat has a new single and video for Your Girl, off an upcoming album, Are You In Love out on 3/27!  Tennis releases such beautiful music, and I’m thrilled they’re back with this video for Runner.  TR/ST goes a completely different direction, having just released his newest video for Iris.

Bonus:  Milky Chance just keeps releasing great new singles and videos, most recently this other-worldly party video for Oh Mama

Dylan LeBlanc / Night Moves (11/13/19)

I was able to catch Dylan LeBlanc back in 2016 opening for Son Little, and his brand of folk rock at the time really resonated with me.  I’ve been following his releases since, and was happy to see him coming back to the Beachland Tavern.  This time it was with the band Night Moves, who were new to me.  This time Dylan performed without his band, which at times left the show feeling a little thing, but his Neil Young leanings and great songwriting really buoyed this show for me.  Was also able to bring my sister along for a night at the Beachland!

Night Moves were up next, and they had a pretty sizable and emphatic crowd.   These guys were SO 70’s!  Not always a bad thing, but it was a little much for my taste...

Maya de Vitry & Anna Tivel (11/8/19)

This show by Anna Tivel & Maya De Vitry at GAR Hall in Peninsula couldn’t have been any better.  You may remember me gushing about The Stray Birds over the years, and my favorite part about the band was Maya De Vitry.  I was thrilled to see her striking out on her own with a new album and this tour.  I was unfamiliar with Anna Tivel, but listening to her, she instantly won me over.  Put these two together at this location on a crisp Fall afternoon - perfection.

These ladies intertwined their sets for the night, playing on each others songs, harmonizing, but also allowing for some solo time on stage.  Both ladies were extremely entertaining, insightful and creative.  However, their voices and approaches differed, but with full complement.   The only thing that could have made this show better was to partake in a bottle of wine and fresh, hot cookie.  Next time… 

I also wanted to share this video of these ladies, for a bit more context.

Video Day #tzaupbeat

MØ has released a trio of new videos for  her new album, with the most interesting is this beautifully eccentric dance video for Beautiful Wreck. I stumbled up on this captivating video for Furguson’s Crystalline video.  Spanish artist Rosalía released her captivating new video for A Palé.

Bonus:  There’s little that is upbeat in this video other than Sam Fender’s soaring Springsteen influenced guitars and vocals.  He's back with another video showing the struggle of angsty British youth, this one telling a heartbreaking story between childhood friends. Beautifully shot.

Toro Y Moi (11/2/19)

Another month, another trip to Detroit for a concert.  This time I was seeing Toro Y Moi performing at the Majestic Theatre, which is in the same complex as Magic Stick where I saw Moon Boots.  The trip was so structurally similar that we ended up staying at a different Air BnB, but on the same exact street!  The only other parallel I’d be able to draw was that they’re both upbeat and danceable shows.  However, this Toro Y Moi show was on another level.  I’m not just talking the size of the venue, but that Toro Y Moi continues to generate a catalog of music that only gets better.  His last official release, Outer Peace, was epic. He also just released a mixtape and a short film just days before this sold out concert.   He and his band sounded on point, with a good mix of music from throughout this extensive catalog.  I highly recommend checking out the video footage I captured.

Opening for Toro Y Moi is LA based dance artist Channel Tres.  I first caught wind of his name on a remix from Toro Y Moi.  While I enjoyed what I heard leading up to this show, their performance blew me away.  I already knew I liked his house beats backing his vocals, but pairing that with a vibrant stage performance with two amazing dancers - it all really shined.  Check it out below.

Article: Vinyl, Books and Glossy Magazines Will Never Go Away

Every time there’s a new technology, there are those that proclaim the death of the old.  It’s rarely true, if at all.

"According to the Recording Industry Association of America, vinyl album sales grew 12.9% in dollar terms to $224 million and 6% in unit terms to 8.6 million in the first half of 2019, compared with the first six months of 2018. Compact disc sales held steady, and if the current dynamic holds, old-fashioned records will overtake CDs soon, offsetting the decline in other physical music sales. Streaming revenue grew faster for obvious reasons: It’s cheaper and more convenient. But people are clearly not about to give up a technology that hasn’t changed much since the 1960s.

In 2018, hardcover book sales in the U.S. increased by 6.9%, paperback sales went up 1.1% and eBook sales dropped 3.6%. The number of print magazine titles published in the U.S. rose to 7,218 from 7,176, according to the Association of Magazine Media. That’s more magazines than the U.S. had in 2009. For all the havoc the digital revolution is wreaking on newsrooms, people are still starting new titles – and 96% of the magazine industry’s subscription revenue still came from the print editions, with digital providing the rest.

One explanation could be that, as Ozgun Atasoy from the University of Basel and Carey Morewedge from Boston University wrote in a paper based on a series of experiments, people are more willing to buy physical goods than equivalent digital ones, and they’re likely to pay a higher price for them. Offered an easy choice, people would rather have a vinyl LP than its digital image in the cloud somewhere; it’s just that the choice isn’t there most of the time. Atasoy and Morewedge wrote that the effect is mostly explained by ‘psychological ownership’: It’s hard for people to feel they own something they can’t physically touch.

They wrote, however, that other, unidentified factors were also at play, since psychological ownership didn’t fully explain the difference in people’s willingness to pay for the two kinds of products. I think Michael Palm from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill put a finger on those factors in a paper published earlier this year. He suggested that physical vs. digital, or new vs. old, could be a less relevant differentiation point than corporate culture vs. independent culture.

The record industry got rid of vinyl fabrication when CDs appeared. Big store chains stopped selling LPs. But small producers and record stores that also function as community centers have kept the culture and the format alive. Now, the big companies see a commercial potential again – but they’re ordering vinyl records from independent producers, who can’t always keep up with the orders, and distributing to small stores, not just to giant chains like Best Buy, which are also stocking vinyl records again.

‘To combat the corporate incursion into vinyl markets, some independent labels are vertically integrating and beginning to manufacture as well as distribute and sell their own records,’ Palm wrote. ‘The stakes of vinyl’s future involve the viability of an independent supply chain for popular music, and these stakes are raised in a media landscape dominated by online access to content controlled by corporate gatekeepers.’"

(Via Vinyl, Books and Glossy Magazines Will Never Go Away - Bloomberg.)

Jonathan Bree (10/28/19)

Jonathan Bree is a unique singer-songwriter and producer from New Zealand.  His imagery for his newest album, dominated by his covered face, is what first caught my attention (not unlike Orville Peck).  Listening to his album quickly showed me that this was more than just a cheap ploy for attention.  The more I listened to the album (find it here), the more intrigued I was.  Seeing him in the Beachland Tavern, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the entire band’s faces masked, but it was jarring at first.  Their performance was artful and enjoyable.  Jonathan spent the whole night posing on stage, whether he was performing a song or not. This was one of the more pleasantly surprising shows I’ve been to for awhile.

I wouldn’t have expected Shilpa Ray to be opening at this show, particularly with her having been through the Beachland plenty of times before.  I first caught her live in 2010, then again in 2011, 2014, 2015.  Each time was enjoyable.  This time was as well, though she didn’t seem to have the full ferocity that drove some of her earlier performances, probably because she only toured with a keyboardist this time.  I’m sure I’ll see her again, but would love to see her release a raging album to tour on.

The very first opener was our own Istvan Medgyesi.  It’d been a minute since I’ve been able to catch him, but his unique sound continues to warp and expand the mind.  I’m here for it.

Video: Robyn's Honey Tour Video

Robyn’s been showing up a lot on this blog this last year with shows in New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco.  As her tour is winding down, she’s released this 10 minute concert film from her shows at London’s Alexandra Palace, April 12th & 13th 2019.  Her recent album and this extensive tour has been a delightful dance experience.  This video does a wonderful job of demonstrating that.