Jazz composer and big-band leader Maria Schneider works with ArtistShare, another fan-funding site. I asked Schneider if she would accept a recording contract from a major label, if offered one, and even before I finished asking the question, she blurted out, “No way!” Her latest album, Winter Morning Walks required two orchestras and features Dawn Upshaw—a $200,000 project that no label would finance. All of Schneider's recordings have been profitable, possibly because she, a tireless advocate for changing the copyright laws to better protect artists, is adamant about keeping her music off streaming services and file-sharing sites. “For a pittance, you can listen to the entire worldwide collection of music. That's insanity.”

There's a bunch of problems with this article; but, this one got me.

This only works because Maria's recordings are also un bit torrent-able. Adele (mentioned earlier in the article) also does not make her music available for streaming and it's basically available everywhere.

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[…] what I find is absent from streaming music is everything that complements the act of listening to music. It’s the very thing that digital music, more even than records and CDs, should excel at: metadata.

Who produced that debut album from Lorde? Who were the musicians who played with her on it? Where was it recorded, and when? Does Lorde thank God, her parents, and/or her cat for making the record possible? I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, because I’ve only ever experienced Lorde’s music via Spotify, where such information is absent entirely.

Federico Vittici on Macstories

I’d rather see lyric metadata in the songs I purchase from iTunes, which would show up when that album artwork is tapped on iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches. Heck, Nine Inch Nails was doing simple stuff like embedding individual pieces of artwork into their digitally downloaded songs and that was actually cool. Making digital music feel like it has more substance doesn’t need to be complicated.

I don't think these guys have explored the wasteland that is the Spotify or Rdio classical catalog. (Who knew J. S. Bach was such a popular artist?)

There is no such thing as a difficult piece. There are merely moments in pieces which are problematic.

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1. “How do you really feel about 21st century repertoire?”

Let it all out.

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[R]esearchers found that both breathing and heart rate variability synchronised during group work – be that singing or chanting.

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Of course, if you took the jackass out of Kanye, he wouldn’t be Kanye.

If you think that you don’t understand hip-hop, you should read this review. Rosen is giving something of a masterclass here.

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One of the cool things you can do with this is verify the validity of a lossless audio file. If you toss in a plain 128 kbps .mp3 file you will see the spectrogram top out far lower than if you feed it a .flac, .alac, or .wav. This is super-useful for DJs and beats-makers.

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There is no evidence that Vikings wore horns on their helmets. In fact, the image of Vikings wearing horned helmets stems from the scenography of an 1876 production of the Der Ring des Nibelungen opera cycle by Richard Wagner.

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