How Discogs built — and broke — a community of diehard music fans and sellers.

1 track album

The problem is, Kanye behaves as if the only real and brave truth tellers today are conservatives with money. He acts as if the rich right wing holds a monopoly on criticisms of the Democratic party or liberal activists. This ignores a host of progressives and radicals – people like Cornel West, Nick Estes, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Mariame Kaba, Aja Monet, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, and too many artists and grassroots organizers to name who criticise the liberal establishment more fiercely than the right and with commitments to end oppression. In fact, entire progressive and radical traditions exist where people of all races offer vigorous critiques of the status quo with surgical precision. We need fewer “free thinkers” and more critical thinkers who ask about these traditions and find their places within them. The question for me is whether billionaire Kanye can ever really know about these robust traditions. Not because he doesn’t already know or will never learn about them, but because to know them is to also learn their critiques of gross wealth accumulation, Black capitalism, desire for imperial leadership, and so much more of what Kanye currently represents. Supporting free thinkers with weak conservative analysis does not threaten his status, land, antisemitic views or bank account.

The Wolf Parade member talks about his new solo album, parenting during COVID, and adjusting to livestreams.

A great summary of the shift in music writing and coverage around 2013 as music publications shifted to covering more pop music (and did it in a more take-based fashion) and pop music itself made a comeback critically.

A site dedicated to format changes? Why not; what’s more historic than when something begins or ends? The Format Change Archive is your home for airchecks of the beginnings and endings of some of the most historic radio stations (and some you may never have heard).

As life in the Anthropocene tips into a gradual decline brought on by the irreversible effects of climate crisis, the past becomes a highly valuable commodity in criticism because the future gets more volatile by the second. Those of us with a lot of time in the bank account sit comfortably on hundreds of thousands of pre-pandemic hours, while younger, more time-poor people wonder every day what kind of past they will actually inherit—what will their past be worth?

“It’s what I call the old-comfortable-shoe phenomenon,” says Jonathan McHugh, a music supervisor, director and founding member of the Guild of Music Supervisors. “You give people something familiar, like Destiny Child’s ‘Say My Name’ in the new ‘Candyman,’ and all of a sudden they’re more engaged in the content and predisposed to enjoy what they’re watching because they love the song.” Says Brian Monaco, president and global chief marketing officer at Sony Music Publishing: “It’s called ‘trailerizing’ a song. That means changing every aspect of the song but leaving the lyrics. People know the lyrics. The goal is to catch people’s attention. Maybe they’re not paying as much attention to the trailer, and they start to hear the chorus of the song, and they go, ‘Wait, I know this song.’ They start paying attention, and now they’re watching the trailer.” At Sony and in his four-times-a-year writing camps, Monaco has teams of writers working on reimagined versions of legendary artists’ catalogs. He has entirely reworked ELO’s discography, has redone a large portion of the Beatles’ songs and now is tackling Paul Simon’s newly acquired hefty songbook.

enter a sentence and get a playlist ⚡ Makes a Spotify playlist that spells out a sentence you provide.

The act of writing has always been an art. Now, it can also be an act of music. Each letter you type corresponds to a specific musical note putting a new spin to your composition. Make music while you write.

Scott has long asserted that his shows are a place where fans can let loose and rage through mosh pits, crowd-surfing, stage-diving, and general mayhem. He is far from the only rapper to borrow specific elements from the punk or hardcore underground, but the Astroworld tragedy underscores how important it is that chaos coexist with an ethos of community and accountability. A mosh pit is a collective, physical release of energy and there is the understanding—unspoken or otherwise—that if someone falls, you pick them back up. This is not to suggest that concertgoers at Astroworld did not try to help those who were fighting to stay upright: people crowd-surfed unconscious bodies to safety even while the crush made it extremely difficult for anyone to lift their arms, and at least one attendee testimonial describes pleading with event staff to stop the show. But footage from the festival also suggests a pervasive “every-man-for-himself” mentality, from the fans who pushed others to the ground to get inside, to those who danced atop an ambulance as it inched through the crowd to help people who were literally dying. It can never be said enough: one person’s good time should never come at the expense of another’s safety. These kinds of tragedies should lead to a re-evaluation of safety procedures—and in prominent examples, this has been the case. After the Who concert, Cincinnati banned general-admission concert seating for nearly 25 years. Following Roskilde, Pearl Jam took a six-year break from festivals and returned with strict, hands-on safety policies that included the right to “evaluate all operational and security policies in advance, such as design and configuration of barriers and security response procedures in relation to ensuring our fans’ safety,” as well as the ability to stop a show if needed. Roskilde itself implemented preventative crowd safety measures, including a barrier system that divides the audience into separate pens and more intensive training for security workers. This is the level of oversight we need *before* something horrific happens.

A peek into a hot boy summer filled with new highs, disappointment and growth.

Web developer Matthew McVickar has quite amusingly remixed the classic Steve Miller Band song “The Joker” so that the iconic “wolf whistle” that takes place after the line “Some people call me Maurice” occurs after every line in the song itself. This little edit appears to make the song a bit more provocative than it already is.

Philip Sherburne asked for my opinion on earbuds for this article, and here it is! The Jabra Elite 65t is the current entry-level model, offering 5 hours of battery life (or up to 15 with the charging case), Bluetooth 5.0, wind noise reduction on calls, and three sizes of molded tips; it’s also rated IP55 waterproof. “I’ve used the Jabra Elite 65t daily for a few years,” says Portland, Oregon, web developer Matthew McVickar. “They’re considerably cheaper than AirPods and sound great, but the essential difference for me is that you can control volume, track skipping, and the hear-through—which amplifies the outside sound for better environmental awareness—with the on-earbud buttons.”

Philip Sherburne asked for my opinion on headphones for this article, and here it is! Portland, Oregon, web developer Matthew McVickar says, “I have yet to find a pair of over-ear headphones that don't feel uncomfortable with glasses after more than half an hour or so, but I love the Sony MDR 7506.”

A song released 20 years ago continues to inspire curiosity and covers by classical, experimental and pop artists.

With more people making lists on BMC since the start of Bandcamp Fridays, the way people are organizing music on the site is expanding, too—from themed lists to collections based around geography or era, all with a natural bent towards the lesser-known. “Over the past year, we’ve seen a lot of growth that we didn’t anticipate,” says Reynaldo. “On Juneteenth, when there was a big focus on finding and supporting music from Black artists, we had a huge influx, hundreds of lists getting made in a single day.” What’s immediately appealing about BMC is how sparse and self-contained it is. You don’t have to make an account to publish a list. There are no social media-style features to speak of—you can’t follow users or individual lists, you can’t track your engagement, and you certainly can’t pay for promoted exposure. Outside of selected homepage picks by the site’s team of volunteers, the only way you can sort new lists (for now) is by “Most Recent,” which can make using BMC feel like sifting through the world’s most egalitarian record shop.

Nobody that fell for/was repelled by AraabMuzik’s dizzying 2011 LP Electronic Dream was under any illusion that the record did much to hide its source material. The Dipset affiliate’s breakthrough release bolted hard-edged hip-hop beats over iffy Eurotrance fare – the results were exhilarating, if too brazen for some. ‘Streetz Tonight’ was the record’s calling card, cribbing liberally from Adam K and Soha’s remix of Kaskade’s ‘4AM’. Although Electronic Dream is now well over a year old, Adam K has suddenly launched a cataract of invective in AraabMuzik’s direction, accusing the producer of straight-up theft.

Unassuming as they may seem, these technologies are far from neutral. Like social media platforms, dating apps, and all data-driven algorithms, music production tools have the unconscious biases of their creators baked into their architecture. If a musician opens a new composition and they are given a 4/4 beat and Equal Tempered tuning by default, it is implied that other musical systems do not exist, or at least that they are of less value. […] It is vitally important to Allami that Leimma and Apotome are accessible to everyone, which is why the programs are available for free and run through web browsers, rather than as plug-ins for expensive music production software (though they may be released as plug-ins in the future). He is particularly interested in the educational potential of the software. For too long, the world’s tuning systems have been presented as an academic concern—something to be studied rather than heard. Leimma offers an intuitive, tactile introduction for anyone. Even if you know nothing about the musical systems of Indonesia, Japan, or Iran, you can jump in and hear the differences immediately.

The ’80s that Kelly remembered wasn’t bright or fun. It was teenage kids getting into dumb arguments over the sex habits of the Smurfs. It was authorities falling for the shallow charm of a motivational speaker — ’80s icon Patrick Swayze, still beautiful. In 2000, there wasn’t a lot of cool-kid cachet in Echo & The Bunnymen or Tears For Fears or Duran Duran. They weren’t influences that bands mentioned in interviews, and they hadn’t yet become parts of a lucrative nostalgia circuit. They were just songs that sometimes got played on alt-rock stations’ flashback-brunch shows. Only Duran Duran’s “Notorious” was fresh in the cultural memory, and that was just because of a posthumous Biggie single. Kelly made them fresh. Later, in a director’s-cut DVD, Kelly swapped out “The Killing Moon” for INXS’ “Never Tear Us Apart” and made it even more tingly. Richard Kelly built beautiful little fantasias around those songs, and those scenes hit like a drug. The songs were key to the cult of Donnie Darko. Eventually, one of those songs even became a strange new kind of hit. The film ended with a montage of its characters pondering the imponderable, and Michael Andrews, composer of the film’s plinky-piano score, set that montage to a new version of “Mad World,” the Tears For Fears song from 1982. Andrews’ friend Gary Jules sang the angelic vocal, and Jules and Andrews replaced the drum-machine boom of the original song with shivery pianos and cellos, turning it into an eerie meditation. As Donnie Darko slowly became a word-of-mouth cult hit, Jules and Andrews released their version of “Mad World” as a single. Michel Gondry directed a dreamlike video. In the UK, the “Mad World” cover exploded. Nearly three years after Donnie Darko had its Sundance premiere, the “Mad World” cover had become an out-of-nowhere smash, earning the coveted position of Christmas #1. All the movie trailers set to moody orchestral versions of pop songs are a direct result of “Mad World” doing what it did.

By publicly identifying and discussing unlicensed samples, hip-hop fans on websites like WhoSampled and YouTube may be unwittingly putting their favorite producers at risk.

Works like a charm.

In the early days of Linkin Park’s dominance, a lot of us made fun of the band for being whiny suburban kids in love with their own anguish. Today, it’s tragically clear that Chester Bennington had always had real demons — a history of sexual abuse and substance dependency that he’d discuss at length whenever anyone asked. Hybrid Theory was a product, a laser-calibrated angst-engine sold to America’s teenagers in the closing days of the CD era. But every album is a product. Listening to Hybrid Theory today, I’m struck by the thought of how many kids found real solace and relief in an album like that, and how Linkin Park had a plan to get it to them.

I found A bunch of obscure menomena tracks/early demos and put them on youtube (Rose EP, Split EP, etc.)

Winamp 2.9 reimplemented in HTML5 and JavaScript.

Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) has, a few times, released a ton of music via Soundcloud. This is all that, organized and notated.