The 1970s brought about the idea that rock was important – and needed a canon of greatest albums to match. But in a digital age, is definitive musical excellence a ridiculous notion? Rock’s flight into seriousness in the 1970s had many ill effects. There was prog rock, jamming, not releasing singles – and the idea…

Artists received only 12% of the $43 billion generated in music industry revenue in the United States last year, according to a new report published by Citigroup last night. The study—conducted by a team of Citigroup’s researchers and analysts—states that most of the revenue is captured by middlemen, including tech companies, radio stations, and record…

“I’ll teach you how to flow,” Antonio tells Sebastian in The Tempest. Almost as long as hip-hop has existed, scholars both professional and less so have made efforts to compare its lyrics to the work of Shakespeare. The Folger Shakespeare Library offered a lesson, “M.C. Shakespeare,” that asked students to find comparisons between the rhymes…

Come on now. He doesn’t really need an introduction, does he? Lyor Cohen. It’s not hyperbole to suggest he’s one of the most-talked about – and fiercely debated – music executives in history. The thing is, he knows exactly what you say about him. The good and the bad. That stands whether you’re a supporter…

In 2012, a group of male patients underwent heart transplants at Teikyo University’s Department of Surgery, in Tokyo, Japan. As they recovered, closely monitored by attending physicians, an alert onlooker may have noticed a subtle difference in each patient’s recovery room: the ambient noise. Some rooms were silent. In others, Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” played…

In 2012, I wrote a piece for this website breaking down the payments my first band, Galaxie 500, was receiving from streaming services, which were just starting to become a dominant force in the music industry. Spotify had sent songwriting royalties of $1.05 for the 5,960 times our single “Tugboat” was played that quarter—split between…

In little over 12 months’ time, Spotify will be out of contract with all three major record companies. Universal, Sony and Warner all inked 24-month deals with the streaming platform last spring/summer, MBW understands – with Warner the last to put pen to paper in August. One of Spotify’s biggest victories during these 2017 negotiations…

EMT 140 Plate Reverb The EMT 140 plate reverb was a game changer. Before its arrival, you needed a big studio to record in or a plastered room with a speaker and a mic(s) in it to generate artificial reverb after the fact. These days, reverb is a contemporary music production essential available at the…

Radiohead has been so good for so long that it is almost obnoxious to make this argument in public. (I’m sorry.) Depending on how you define its peak—say, from 1995’s The Bends to 2007’s In Rainbows—Radiohead remained the consensus pick for largest and best band on the planet longer than any other claimants to the…

Spotify will be the default music service on all future Samsung devices Spotify has announced a new “long-term” partnership with electronics manufacturer Samsung, making the streaming platform the “go-to music provider” across all Samsung devices going forward. The partnership includes the brand’s newly announced Galaxy S9 smartphones, as well as the Galaxy Home smart speaker,…