Releases and Announcements: Heather Woods Broderick // Little Boots
Heather Woods Broderick – Glider
If somebody releases music under her real name, in particular if it’s such a long one, it spells seriousness to me, often a tad too much. Glider is a serious album that carries a lot of sadness, but it often opens up to lush soundscapes that can give you the chills. Out now on Western Vinyl. (Apple Music, Spotify)
Little Boots – Working Girl
Working Girl is a delightful pop record, upbeat and energetic, just maybe a little bit too polished for my taste. Out now on Repeat Records. (Apple Music, Spotify)
More
The album release day is now officially Friday, world-wide. We will try to still cover new releases here on Saturday, but we now have only one day to listen to an album, so some releases may be already a week old.
Vinyl continues its comeback: sales are up 38% for the first half of the year. And if you thoughts that is only driven by music geeks and niche genres, you are wrong:
Who’s leading the charge on all that vinyl? None other than the music industry’s favorite singer-songwriter Taylor Swift with her album 1989, which sold 33,500 LPs.
To make it easier for artists to jump on the vinyl bandwagon, there is now QRATES, a music selling platform focused on vinyl.
Here’s a bad idea from Finland: if the majority of the audience deems a concert not satisfying, they can demand a refund. While this is logistically difficult to implement and opens the door for abuse, it’s also bad for music as an art form:
Most importantly though, the art of live music would suffer. Performers would play it safe, fearing that an experimental set would leave them — or their promoters — out of pocket. So they would play the hits, faithfully. Take a recent, hugely disappointing Lauryn Hill gig I went to. She was an hour late and it was musically lazy. I’m sure more than half the crowd felt the same. But she’s an artist and is entitled to interpret her songs as she sees fit.
Finally, Facebook also wants to build a streaming music service. Maybe one with much better targeted ads?