Event sponsor 7UP has shared video of a recent concert Dutch DJ Martin Garrix performed for members of the deaf community. The concert took place at a venue specially designed to amplify vibrations.
https://youtu.be/kvIpVSA81Bw
That Time AC/DC Outsmarted Religious Protesters
AC/DC singer Brian Johnson recalls outsmarting a group of religious protesters while touring in the United States.
RIAA: Slight Upswing In Revenue Last Year, Thanks To Streaming Revenues
RIAA’s 2015 year-end music sales & shipments report is now out with a unique and comprehensive look at the state of the U.S. music business. A quick snapshot reveals that streaming, now the largest revenue-generator for the industry, helped grow the overall business by just shy of 1% year-over-year, with paid subscriptions leading the way.
The U.S. recorded music industry continued its transition to more digital and more diverse revenue streams in 2015. Overall revenues in 2015 were up 0.9% to $7.0 billion at estimated retail value. The continued growth of revenues from streaming services offset declines in sales of digital downloads and physical product. And at wholesale value, the market was up 0.8% to $4.95 billion – the fifth consecutive year that the market has grown at wholesale value.
2015 was a milestone year for streaming music. For the first time, streaming was the largest component of industry revenues, comprising 34.3% of the market, just slightly higher than digital downloads.
All parts of the streaming music market grew in 2015, and total streaming revenues exceeded $2 billion for the first time ever. Combining all categories of streaming music (subscription, ad-supported on-demand, and SoundExchange distributions), revenues grew 29% to $2.4 billion.
Paid subscription services were the biggest – and fastest growing – portion of the streaming market. The launch of new services like TIDAL and Apple Music made this one of the most watched and talked about spaces in the industry. In 2015, revenues from paid subscriptions grew 52% to $1.2 billion. At the same time, the number of paid subscriptions grew 40% to an average of 10.8 million for the full year.
SoundExchange distributions grew 4% to $803 million, and on-demand ad-supported streaming grew 31% y-o-y to $385 million.
Digital accounted for 70% of the overall market by value, compared with 67% in 2014 (note Synchronization excluded from this figure). Even though digital download revenues (including digital tracks and albums) declined 10% to $2.3 billion, the total value of digitally distributed formats was up 6% to $4.8 billion, compared to $4.5 billion in 2014.
Total value of shipments in physical formats was $2.0 billion, down 10% versus the prior year. Vinyl LPs were up 32% by value, and at $416 million were at their highest level since 1988. Synchronization royalties were $203 million, up 7% versus the prior year.
Overall, the data for 2015 shows a music industry that continues to adopt digital distribution platforms for the majority of its revenues. While overall revenue levels were only up slightly, large shifts continued to occur under the surface as streaming continued to increase its market share. In 2015, the industry had the most balanced revenue mix in recent history, with just about 1/3 of revenues coming from each of the major platform categories: streaming, permanent downloads, and physical sales.
You can download the full report here.
Keith Moon’s Isolated Drums From “Going Mobile”
The Who’s “Going Mobile” is a track from their 1971 album Who’s Next. The track helped drive the album, which also contained the classics “Baba O’Riley” “Behind Blue Eyes” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” to #1 in the UK and #4 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums charts. It was recorded at Olympic Studios in London and produced by The Who with Glyn Johns. Rolling Stone’s John Mendelsohn described the song as “inane”. However, in The Rolling Stone Record Guide, John Swenson described “Going Mobile” as one of “Townshend’s most beautiful songs”, so, yeah.
AC/DC’s “Back In Black” Isolated Vocals, Bass, Guitars
The classic AC/DC track “Back In Black” appeared on their same-titled album in 1980 although this seems to be a live version from the 1992 Live At Donington release given the crowd noise at the end. While the original was produced by Robert John “Mutt” Lang, this Donington version was produced by Bruce Fairbairn.
No offence to the drummers out there, but think of it this way – you can use it to practice!
Blondie’s Clem Burke gives you the best punk hair tips
Blondie drummer Clem Burke often prepared for CBGB gigs by applying a motley combination of DIY hair products: beer, sugar water, or whatever else was around. He then placed his head inside a preheated oven until his ’do baked to perfection. “You would put the back of your head in the oven,” Burke explained, matter-of-factly, “kind of leaning back in a chair.” Now that’s dedication to style!
“There’s a whole chapter in Rod Stewart’s memoir about hair,” he said, “and then he does the exact same thing, because it’s before people had blow dryers. He would put his hair, his head, in the oven. I was like, ‘Wow. I used to do that.’” Burke added, “So you don’t put your face in it”—otherwise, it would look too much like you’re trying to commit suicide.
Via and go get the latest 33 1/3 book on Blondie’s Parallel Lines written by Kembrew McLeod
French Bulldog Struggles to Eat Pasta
While lying with his owner’s lap, this French bulldog is having problems figuring out how to eat slippery penne pasta noodles. The struggle is real.
https://youtu.be/RIJ6N1nsNFY
The US military is funding robots that play jazz
The US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding a new project to develop musical robots that can improvise a solo when playing with human jazz musicians. A collaboration between new media researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and musicians at the University of Arizona, the goal of the MUSICA (Musical Improvising Collaborative Agent) project is to explore non-traditional “languages” for people and computers to interact. From Scientific American:
“There is definitely a desire for more natural kinds of communications with computational systems as they grow in their ability to be intelligent,” Ben Grosser, an assistant professor of new media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told Live Science. “A lot of us are familiar with various methods of interacting with computers, such as text-based and touch-based interfaces, but language-based interfaces such as Siri or Google Now are extremely limited in their capabilities….”
To develop a machine capable of playing improvisational jazz, the researchers will create a database of jazz solos from a variety of musicians and have computers analyze the recordings to figure out the various processes that come into play when a musician improvises. The researchers will then develop a performance system to analyze the components of human jazz performances, including the beat, pitch, harmony and rhythm. The system will also consider what it has learned about jazz solos to communicate and respond musically in real time….
“Let’s face it—trying to develop a system that can play jazz is a crazy idea,” Grosser said. “It’s not going to be Miles Davis. I think if we can make this thing play like a high schooler, we’ll really have done our job.”
Ultimately, Grosser hoped this research could shed light on the nature of the creative process. “By finding the limits of computational creativity, we can get a different understanding of human creativity, on our own creative processes,” Grosser said.
Roger Daltrey: The Who Wouldn’t Exist Without Skiffle
Roger Daltry, The Who singer speaking in a recent edition of MOJO ’60s explains that though they may have been worlds apart in terms of volume, the band owe their existence to the skiffle explosion.
“Every young person could make music – even people with no melody in them, no sense of pitch – could make some kind of noise with a washboard, a tea chest and a broomstick for a bass,” he explains of the original DIY genre in Volume 4 of our decade-spanning spin-off magazine.
“Music became very communal and every street would have a skiffle group. The original nucleus of The Who grew out of Percy Road in Shepherd’s Bush. We used to pretend we were Johnny Kidd And The Pirates. We were a substitute for other guys. That was our purpose. They couldn’t see the real deal but they’d come and see us doing it.”
While You’re Waiting For That New Radiohead…Here’s Thom Yorke Singing On New Song From Mark Pritchard
– Yesterday Mark Pritchard premiered on BBC Radio1, “Beautiful People”, the latest track from his upcoming album Under The Sun. Following the previously released “Sad Alron”, the hauntingly gorgeous song features a vocal collaboration from Thom Yorke, and demonstrates the producers ability for sonic storytelling.
Pritchard says “The original instrumental to Beautiful People is a personal song about loss, hopelessness and chaos, but ultimately the message is love and hope. Thom’s contribution to this collaboration captured perfectly what the piece is about. I will be forever grateful to have worked with such a immense talent.”
Pritchard will also be participating in this year’s RBMA NYC, showcasing the new album with an immersive audiovisual installation in collaboration with visual artist Jonathan Zawada.
Tracklist:
1.?
2. Give It Your Choir (feat. Bibio)
3. Infrared
4. Falling
5. Beautiful People (feat. Thom Yorke)
6. Where Do They Go, The Butterflies
7. Sad Alron
8. You Wash My Soul (feat. Linda Perhacs)
9. Cycles Of 9
10. Hi Red
11. Ems
12. The Blinds Cage (feat. Beans)
13. Dawn Of The North
14. Khufu
15. Rebel Angels
16. Under The Sun