MUSIC BUZZ: Gazelle Twin // Warpaint // touring on a budget // More
The Quietus’ alternative Top 100 in 2014
Gazelle Twin live at Rough Trade NYC
No War on Drugs on the top 100 of the UK blog the Quietus. Instead they gave Gazelle Twin the crown. Kudos!
Warpaint makes number one album at The Skinny
The Skinny declares Warpaint as the album of the year and interviews drummer Stella Mozgawa, who talks about some interesting future plans of the band:
Drawing a comparison with the way electronic artists release single tracks or EPs without feeling pressured towards a full album, Stella enthuses, “I think that’s the future of the band, for sure. We’re just ready to re-imagine that format. It doesn’t have to be so homogenous all the time. But… I don’t want to spoil too much.”
For sure I would be happy not to wait another three years for an album.
Tours don’t have to be that expensive!
Nick Wood writes a counter piece to Pomplamoose’s Jack Conte and asks one you really needs $147k to go on to tour:
Shit like this pisses me off because it implies that being in a band in the US is financially impossible for smaller groups like yours and mine. It puts a stigma on the idea of touring—that it’s too complex and commercially driven. But the truth is, on my band Direct Hit’s first longer US tour, despite playing to probably 15 to 25 people every night in basements and dives, we came home with enough to at least take our pissed off girlfriends out for a night on the town to say sorry for leaving for more than a month. How is it that a tiny, G-list group like ours makes more than one with more than 100 million views on YouTube? Turns out, it’s fucking easy.
To Jack Conte’s credit, he was not trying to make a point that you have to lose money on tour – he rather wanted to show that you can make it happen if you just work hard enough.
Spotify detroys music! Spotify saves music!
The only common sense in the discussion about streaming music is that there is none. Ben Berry writes for Wired that Spotify made his band Moke Hill possible. And he raises a point that has made me also scratching my head:
The biggest issue with most of the arguments against Spotify is that we don’t know the terms of the artists’ contracts. What are the details of their label deal? Do the songwriters have a publishing deal? Did the songwriter get an advance on his publishing deal? What is the songwriter’s split on the song(s) they wrote? Without any of this information, we can’t tell exactly what is happening to the money after Spotify writes the check.
Could it be that there’s a lot of apples-to-oranges comparing going on when artists moan about their meager payouts?
Warpaint remixes Daughter, Daughter remixes Warpaint, Part II
Here’s the second installment of their mutual remixing experiment: Warpaint’s Feeling Alright, remixed by Daughter.
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