Although the increased royalty rates for netradio stations don’t kick in for another four days, a guy who runs a station playing nothing but Christmas carols (!) “and hundreds of other free Internet radio stations already have shut down.” More »
It always seemed a little weird for the proudly amoral record industry to be condemning listeners for their slutty file-sharin’ behavior, like your creepy uncle tsk-tsking the shortness of your skirt. And guess what? A mere eight years too late, the labels have found a way to make MP3 piracy work for them!
Or maybe it was all some beautiful dream. Hello! You may know me as Dick Malone, but my actual name is Mike Barthel. I’m the proprietor of clapclap.org, I write for the Athens, Ga., paper Flagpole, and 10 days ago I moved from Brooklyn to Syracuse, N.Y., which musically is mainly known for Earth Crisis. I haven’t had internet access since I moved, so I should make all sorts of hilariously uninformed jokes about Avril Lavigne’s songs sounding like other people’s and Hannah Montana being lame.
Beyonce’s dad is putting out a hip-hop toy line for preschoolers. Products include “Baby Jamz Cell Phone, Dance Mat, Key Chain, Boom Box Shape Sorter and Mix Master Chair.” There’s also an album of “hip-hop adapted songs,” one being “Old MacDonald.” Didn’t Nelly already put that out? More »
Beyonce’s dad is putting out a hip-hop toy line for preschoolers. Products include “Baby Jamz Cell Phone, Dance Mat, Key Chain, Boom Box Shape Sorter and Mix Master Chair.” There’s also an album of “hip-hop adapted songs,” one being “Old MacDonald.” Didn’t Nelly already put that out? More »
Parade, another Athens band, are a nice little surprise: their first album had a great cover on the outside but only had standard-issue indie inside. They’ve just put out an EP, though, that starts off with the kind of track you’d think would have bloggers rushing to their laptops. More »
Though commenters have helpfully added Dio, Masters of Reality, and Ra Ra Riot to my recitation of Syracuse’s musical offspring, it’s notable that all but the last made their names outside the city. It feels very cut off here, an impression only reinforced by reading the local alt-weekly, a New Times franchise, and noticing that it contains no national music coverage whatsoever. On the other hand, it seems that a) people are making Stop Snitching DVDs in Syracuse, and b) getting the mayor to appear in them:
Morrissey’s voice is back, and he’s using it to say offensive things about Madonna! “I wouldn’t be surprised if she [Madonna] made that African boy into a coat and wore him … for 15 minutes, and then threw it away.” Because she likes fur, you see. More »
Morrissey’s voice is back, and he’s using it to say offensive things about Madonna! “I wouldn’t be surprised if she [Madonna] made that African boy into a coat and wore him … for 15 minutes, and then threw it away.” Because she likes fur, you see. More »
Last week, a story based on an article in the Sunday Times UK and claiming that as part of Fergie’s well-documented spokeslady deal with Candie’s jeans, she would “write and perform songs about Candie’s,” made the rounds. But it’s not true! Says Fergie: “I don’t know where they got it from. I sing about a lot of things in my songs–from cars to Taco Bell–but not because I’m paid to!” Then why did the story catch on so widely and so easily?
