This week, I’m editing a new blog called Reader Music Live. It’s part of a project for my final quarter at the Medill School of Journalism, and it’s a great excuse to write about music in Chicago for school. Check it out here, and be sure to follow the project on Twitter and Tumblr.
Germany’s Love Parade, an annual dance music festival, was the scene of a terrible tragedy this weekend [via the L.A. Times]: At least 19 people reportedly died at the Love Parade, a well-known dance event in the German city of Duisburg, and more than 340 were said to be injured as the apparent closure of … [Read more…]
Another day, another e-mail from Universal Music Group Distribution CEO Jim Urie. Last time he urged people to write to Congress to support Music Rights Now, an organization that wants Congress to step in on music pirating. All well and good, except that their thinking is fairly backwards, and the organization’s wish to get Congress … [Read more…]
For the past four years, Baltimore’s Whartscape presented pop music on the edge of the avant-garde: Any hot band worth talking about now and several years from now seemed to play Whartscape at some point. As the festival hits its fifth year, it will also meet its untimely demise, as Dan Deacon told The Baltimore Sun … [Read more…]
“Welcome to the magic kingdom,” said a ticket-taker at the Pitchfork Music Festival. Irony and humor aside, the volunteer’s invocation of the idea of Walt Disney World was quite apt. Music festivals – especially multi-day fests – are often not terribly pleasant experiences. Long days on your feet out in the sun, packed in with … [Read more…]
B.I.G. news in the hip-hop world: 50 Cent has a beef with someone. So, he took to Twitter to protest the latest, gravest event hurting the hip-hop community with a petition. Diddy’s exploitation of the Notorious B.I.G. [via Rap Radar/The Daily Swarm]: Enough is enough, Biggie’s name should never have become Diddy’s Black Card. Just … [Read more…]
Free the Music is a guide to new albums, EPs and songs that are available for free online. Today’s drop is: Childish Gambino – Culdesac. Donald Glover lives a charmed life. At 26, he’s been a YouTube sensation with Derrick Comedy, wrote for the critically-acclaimed comedy “30 Rock,” and stars in another hit NBC comedy, “Community.” Then … [Read more…]
Popular indie music site Pitchfork announced it will launch Altered Zones, a sister site dedicated to DIY sounds so obscure not even those on staff at Pitchfork have heard of some of the bands or dreamt up cool new tags for the zany new tunes. Pitchfork has some lofty goals for the site, which will … [Read more…]
Matt Harmon has a lot on his plate. The 25-year-old DIY musician and concert organizer is the bassist in mathy screamo quintet Suffix and plays guitar and sings for a punk trio called Cloud Mouth, which is about to drop a new six-song 12-inch, That Ghost Is Always With Me (Ice Age), and on July … [Read more…]
Musicians, critics and crazy people alike have claimed the end is near for the music industry. But perhaps the clearest sign of its impending demise is when Jim Urie, president and CEO of Universal Music Group Distribution, mass e-mails a desperate plea to anyone and everyone somehow connected to the music world, including yours truly. … [Read more…]