The plague rave agency which periodically gets mentioned on this blog – although never by name – haven’t had a good year. Firstly, one of their DJs admitted to me that he’d been doing...
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1 Minute
Is an overpriced baseball cap REALLY the best you can do, Mike? Nervous release limited edition cap just in time for Christmas – and they’ll send them anywhere!
Christmas is on its way. Nearly every advert on TV makes some sort of reference to it, the shops are full of food ready for the big day itself and kids are getting excited...
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Yet another reason (as if any were needed at this point!) that streaming doesn’t work – the price of a streaming subscription has only gone up 4 cents since Rhapsody came along in 2001…
More than once in the past on this blog, I’ve expressed the view that major record labels made a monumental mistake when the internet came along, and it’s one that everyone – except themselves...
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The latest contradiction at the heart of MDL Beast? They’re hosting a conference on helping out the region’s music industry – whilst their Soundstorm festival is stuffed full of foreign DJs!
The more I look at MDL Beast, the more baffled I become. This blog has been writing extensively over the past two weeks about their Soundstorm festival, due to take place between December 16th...
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Want an example of why longer sets make sense? Judge Jules has to travel for 3 hours and 39 minutes this weekend – to play a set lasting just one hour!
One particular bugbear of mine – and admittedly, it’s a very long list – about dance music today is the length of the average DJ set. When the first clubs playing house music in...
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As Spotify Wrapped makes its annual appearance to get music makers feeling warm and fuzzy inside, a reminder the only person winning in this system is Daniel Ek…
Earlier this week, this blog published all about Traxsource’s 2021 In Review. I offered up a defence of the platform for carrying out this annual tradition. And one thing I forgot to include in...
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Criticising Jeff Mills for going to MDL Beast Soundstorm is racist – and other equally dubious feedback from last week’s articles on this blog…
Last week. this blog ran a five-part series of posts all about the MDL Beast Soundstorm festival being held in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh in a few weeks time. As anyone who...
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Is there ANYONE left in dance music with any principles, part five: MDL Beast Soundstorm – whose lineup is a who’s who of dance’s biggest earners – claim to “amplify the unseen”… and even Ri-Chun Hee would struggle not to laugh
Whenever North Korea has a big announcement to tell the world, they always bring in the lady dressed in pink. Her name is Ri Chun-hee – and if their latest dictator has died or...
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Do we need yet more reasons not to tune in? The Brit Awards tinker about with gender neutral categories – yet the biggest winners of this plaster sticking exercise will be four white men!
One of the things that bugs me about the times we live in is an increasing tendency to tinker pointlessly with the edges whilst not addressing the central problem. You see this in politics...
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Whilst you’re at it, could you tell Spotify to pay more to artists? Adele requests Spotify remove shuffle as default button on albums – and Daniel Ek is too starstruck to ignore her!
Is there a way to get Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify, to take any notice of you? Well, unless you’re Sofia Levander – she’s his wife and most men can verify you ignore...
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4 Minutes
Is there ANYONE left in dance music with principles, part two: a closer look at the human rights injustices in Saudi Arabia, which begs the question – why would any DJ agree to play MDL Beast Soundstorm?
Yesterday, I wrote about something which has started bubbling up over the last few days – the lineup of the MDL Beast Soundstorm festival in Saudi Arabia next month. I posed the question of...
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They bring it on themselves, don’t they? Now Universal ban artists from re-recording their music for longer – whilst profiting as Taylor Swift does exactly the same thing!
There are few people more cynical in the world right now than Universal Music Group. This one is a whopper, even by their standards. In 2018, Republic Records – whom they own – signed...
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Nervous Records, the cartoon? Believe it or not, but this very prospect was on the table in 1993 with MTV offering “a decent sum” – yet label boss Mike Weiss turned them down…
Occasionally, you’ll find this blog berating dance music press journalists and writers for refusing to ask difficult questions of DJs and those more generally in the scene. Aside from potentially providing a very insightful...
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Warner Music Group reached 249 million people last month on their own platforms – Spotify reached 381 million in that time… so is it time for Warner to say adios to Daniel Ek yet?
For the last few years, I’ve predicted that some kind of seismic shift is due in the music streaming world. The streaming sites don’t make any money, the artists don’t make any money. Only...
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As Defected’s promotion of Detroit continues, the REAL reason behind it is revealed – but have you also noticed one particular name has been missing from the moneymaking love-in?
It seems to be one of those weeks where I write about something at the beginning and it develops later. On Tuesday afternoon, I published a piece about Defected suddenly getting behind the city...
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2 Minutes
Three private islands with change left over – what Lucian Grainge could buy with £150million… and now he’s got another idea on how to make even more!
Judge Judy had a long-running show of the same name which ran for 25 years. A few years ago, a legal case against the show brought the revelation that the judge – real name...
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