Iron Maiden are facing calls for their tour poster to be taken down in Lithuania, where they are “reportedly under investigation for possible violations of a law protecting minors under 14 from ‘negative information,’” according to Billboard.
The 8 Greatest Quotes From Muhammad Ali
Beloved boxing legend Muhammad Ali has died at the age of 74. Though he’s best known for his brilliant fighting skills inside the ring, he was also a proud Muslim, fierce advocate for civil rights, spoke out against the Vietnam War, and knew about the Rules Of Life that govern us all. Here are just a few of his strong words to live by:
1. “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”
2. “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.”
3. “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
4. “Don’t count the days; make the days count.”
5. “The man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win the match when it’s even.”
6. “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.”
7. “It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.”
8. “The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.”
Americana Music Association, Record Store Day Launch ‘Americana Music Month’
The Americana Music Association and Record Store Day have partnered to create Americana Music Month, which will run throughout June 2016.
More than 100 independent record stores are participating throughout the month providing free music samplers, special deals on new and classic Americana albums, and in-store promotions all month long. In Nashville, those stores include Grimey’s, The Groove, and Fond Object Records. Other Tennessee stores include Chattanooga’s For The Record and Knoxville’s Disc Exchange.
That Time Muhammad Ali Sparred With Sylvester Stallone Onstage During 1977 Oscars
Sylvester Stallone and Muhammad Ali playfully fought before presenting Beatrice Straight with the Supporting Actress Oscar for Network at the 49th Academy Awards.
SiriusXM Music For Business Now Available On Sonos
SiriusXM and Sonos announced the debut of SiriusXM Music for Business on Sonos. SiriusXM will demonstrate SiriusXM Music for Business at the National Restaurant Association show in Chicago, from May 21-24, in booth #4578.
SiriusXM Music for Business is now available for the first time for businesses using Sonos wireless products. The easy-to-use Sonos app enables restaurants, hotels, offices, retailers, and other businesses to integrate SiriusXM’s wide-variety of licensed commercial-free music from every genre without additional equipment. SiriusXM Music for Business paired with Sonos allows businesses to meet the unique requirements of each environment and enhance the customer experience.
“We are thrilled to work with Sonos to give businesses an easy, powerful solution to create a soundtrack for their customers and employees,” said Joe Verbrugge, Executive Vice President, Sales and Development, SiriusXM. “Whether it’s top 40 hits or jazz, songs from the ’80s and ’90s, acoustic music by singers and songwriters, SiriusXM Music for Business is designed to give businesses a wide variety of choice and control over the music that defines their brands.”
“Now that SiriusXM Music for Business is fully integrated into the Sonos controller app, business owners can get the same simple, all-in-one solution that Sonos users enjoy at home to bring the commercial-free music they love from SiriusXM into the workplace and retail environment,” said Andrew Vloyantes, Global Business Development manager for Sonos.
SiriusXM Music for Business delivers 105 commercial-free music channels, more than 30 of which are interruption-free, to keep customers engaged, energized and entertained. All content is licensed and legally available for business use.
Stewart Copeland’s Isolated Drums For The Police’s “Roxanne”
The Police’s classic “Roxanne” was released as a single off of 1978’s Outlandos d’Amour. The track found fast success, scoring a #12 slot on the UK Singles Chart and #32 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it remains a staple on classic rock radio.
Stewart Copeland was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Police in 2003 and the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2005. In 2016, he was ranked 10th on Rolling Stone magazine’s “100 Greatest Drummers of All Time”.
https://youtu.be/HYbaXW2GEpg
Spotify has hired major artist manager Troy Carter as Global Head of Creator Services
Spotify has hired major artist manager Troy Carter as Global Head of Creator Services – a role in which he’s likely to be tasked with battling the exclusive releases currently flocking to rival services such as TIDAL and Apple Music.
A Spotify spokesperson confirmed that Carter would be starting at the company next week, reporting into Chief Content and Chief Strategy Officer Stefan Blom.
The Atom Factory founder will lead three divisions at Spotify: Artist Relations, Songwriter Relations, Label Relations.
Carter is the former manager of Lady Gaga, and has also managed the likes of Eve, Lindsey Sterling, Charlie Puth John Legend and Meghan Trainor.
On his Facebook page, Carter said:
“I started my career as a kid who loved hip hop. I would read the back of liner notes and knew every studio, engineer, and producer you could think of. I had a crazy “rain man” like recall on all things music. I loved music so much that I dropped out of high school and dedicated my life to it. It was never about making money; it just spoke to my soul and gave a skinny, shy kid the words he didn’t know how to say and the confidence he didn’t know he had. Music gave me life and fueled the culture around me.
“When Eve asked me to be her manager, I had no clue what that meant. All I knew was that my job was to protect my friend. And that role of protector is one that I would find myself taking on for many artists over the years. So after 15 years of talent management, I’ve decided that it’s time to explore new roads.
“I’d like to thank all of the artists that gave me such an incredible opportunity by entrusting me and the Atom Factory team with their careers: Eve, Lady Gaga, John Legend, Meghan Trainor, Charlie Puth, and many many others. THANK YOU!
“There’s a famous quote from JFK that says, ‘Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.’ With that said, I’m a firm believer that Spotify is the future for music. In my new role as Global Head of Creator Services, my job is just a natural continuation of what I’ve always done – protect the voice of artists. Always have and always will.
“Through Atom Factory, my team will stay in place to run our tech, culture and hustle outlet SMASHD.co as well as launch a brand innovation agency. And through Smashd Labs and Cross Culture VC, I’ll still continue investing in great founders that have the ability to deliver next wave disruption to culture.”
Watch: John Oliver Buys $15M In Medical Debt, Then Forgives It On “Last Week Tonight”
We can tell you about the growing problem of medical debt and how hospitals are suing thousands of patients for having the gall to be both sick and poor, or how debt collectors screw-up and use illegal tactics to get paid for debts they often can’t even prove that anyone owes. But that’s nothing compared to the site of a goofy English guy forgiving $15 million in medical debt he bought for pennies on the dollar.
On Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver took a long, multifaceted look at the messy, shady world of debt collection and debt buying.
https://youtu.be/Ii6TEJuvrM0
If you’re a regular reader of Consumerist, much of what Oliver talks about is nothing news: Debt buyers purchase debt from creditors and other debt buyers. Sometimes that debt isn’t even owed, as the relevant statute of limitations has expired. If the alleged debtor begins making payments on those bills, it may resurrect the debt as so-called “zombie” debt.
Oliver says the zombie metaphor is “quite apt, because just like on The Walking Dead, zombie debt comes back from the grave, is incredibly hard to deal with, and seems to disproportionately impact minorities.”
Sometimes the debt buyers are buying nothing more than a name and a dollar figure, with little to no proof that the amount is correct or other evidence that the debt is still owed. However, because debt buyers pay so little for these lists of debtors, they only need to convince a small number of people to pay up in order to make their money back.
In more than half the states, you can legally buy debt without a license. In 17 states, you don’t even need a license to collect debts.
“There are places in this country where you need to fill out less paperwork to start collecting money from peoples’ pockets than you do to collect fish from a f*cking lake,” explains Oliver.
He continued: “It is pretty clear by now that debt-buying is a grimy business and badly needs more oversight. As it stands, any idiot can get into it, and I can prove that to you, because I’m an idiot and we started a debt-buying company… And it was disturbingly easy.”
CARPlogo
For a $50 fee, Oliver and his team registered their new debt-acquisition firm, Central Asset Recovery Professionals — CARP, named after the bottom-feeding fish — in Mississippi, complete with a website that was nothing more than the logo you see here.
“With little more to go on than that website,” says Oliver, “we were soon offered a portfolio of nearly $15 million of out-of-statute medical debt from Texas.”
The asking price was less than $60,000 for $14,922,261.76 in this zombie debt — or around $.004 for every dollar of debt owed. Purchasing the debt would give CARP the names, current addresses, Social Security numbers, and amount owed (or previously owed, as the statute of limitations had expired) for nearly 9,000 individuals.
“So, we bought it, which is absolutely terrifying,” admits Oliver. “Because it means if I wanted to, I could legally have CARP take possession of that list and have employees start calling people, turning their lives upside down over medical debt they no longer had to pay. There would be absolutely nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that absolutely everything is wrong with that.”
Thus, rather than try to collect on the debt, Oliver decided to stage the “largest one-time giveaway in television history,” nearly doubling the estimated value of that time Oprah gave everyone in her audience a new Pontiac G6, a moment that has been a gift for meme-makers, but didn’t do much to save the Pontiac brand.
No surprise: Millennials are using radio less, smartphones more, than older groups
When it comes to life choices, nearly every generation has drawn at least a little ire from their longer-lived predecessors—be it their style of clothing, political views or taste in media. From music to movies, younger, often early adopters, have a penchant for blazing their own, new paths.
According to Nielsen’s Generational Snapshot study, which looked at media usage and device penetration of Millennials (18-34), Generation X (35-49) and Baby Boomers (50-67), distinct differences—as well as a few notable similarities—exist when it comes to connecting with content.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Just where these different generations predominantly live can help provide a line of sight to content creators and marketers alike—perhaps even acting as a barometer for a future populace.
In certain Designated Market Areas (DMAs), such as Pittsburgh, Detroit and St. Louis, Baby Boomers—who can spend over 184 hours per month watching Live or time-shifted television—make up more than one-quarter of the population in their respective regions. It’s no surprise then, that, according to Nielsen’s most recent Local Watch Report, these DMAs are three of highest in terms of daily traditional and/or timeshifted television use at an average of over five hours per day!
Conversely, the markets that are tops among Millennial consumers have higher subscription-based video on demand (SVOD) penetrations. They also have higher tablet and smartphone penetration rates. For instance, while only 23% of Sacramento’s population are Millennials, the DMA has the country’s highest smartphone penetration overall (92%). It’s also the market that has experience one of the largest year-over-year gains in penetration (12%).
MULLING THEIR OPTIONS
While time spent on traditional television has decreased across most generations over the past several years, device fragmentation has led to more content options, and consumers are taking full advantage of them—regardless of age. For example, tablet penetration among all generations analyzed has increased 9% from 2014 to 2015. At 70%, Generation X leads the way in terms of national tablet penetration.
Multimedia devices (such as Roku, Apple TV and Google Chromecast) have also made their mark on a wide swath of consumers. These relatively inexpensive options extend viewing choices, and consumers continue to spend time with them. In fact, according to the study, monthly time spent using multimedia devices has increased across all of the generations. What’s more, while Millennials spend the most time on these devices, Baby Boomers show an increase year over year in time spent on multimedia devices by two hours and 56 minutes in fourth-quarter 2015.
The study also looked at multicultural consumers in these same generational groups and found that across all races and ethnicities—regardless of age—black and Hispanic consumers spend more time per month using an App/web on a smartphone as well as watching video on a smartphone. Black Millennials spend an average of more than 68 hours per month using an App/web on a smartphone, over 10 hours more than the average Millennial.
THE EARS ACTUALLY HAVE IT
Perhaps no other form of entertainment is as different, and in many cases as polarizing, throughout the generations as music. From big band to rock and roll to hip-hop to electronic, music preference is often generational. The study looked at the music formats and found that both Millennial and Generation X listeners prefer to tune into the modern classics of Pop Contemporary Hits, with weekly total audiences of 27.5 million and 19.3 million listeners, respectively. And regardless of the disparity with regard to the weekly cume numbers, both of these groups spend more than three hours 15 minutes tuning in to this format.
Baby Boomers, on the other hand, prefer the Adult Contemporary/Soft Adult Contemporary genre, spending more than four hours weekly listening to the smooth sounds. That group is also more disposed to listen to the News/Talk format, with about 15.7 million listeners tuning in for an average of six hours 45 minutes weekly. This compares to three hours 45 minutes for Millennials and five hours for Gen X.
In a world of seemingly endless content choices and a viewer that perpetually takes advantage of these options, knowing both adoption and use among the different generations helps provide the industry with a look at where eyes—and ears—are and how old those consumers may be.
The Top Pop Stars of the Past 103 Years Come to Life: Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Prince, Justin Bieber, and More
The past century has seen a whole range of music icons, with distinct personas and styles, and, in this visual journey, as we did for female pop stars already, we take a look back at some of the most notable male artists from the past 100 years. We begin with Joe “King” Oliver, a preeminent 1910s jazz performer, and then work our way up through the likes of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson, before reaching modern-day stars Kanye West and Justin Bieber.