Neowin: Google Play Music shutdown will commence in September. “Google’s push to get Play Music users to transfer to YouTube Music started to get more aggressive in May when it launched a tool to move an entire music library from the old service to the new. That was in preparation for Google’s plan to shutter Play Music later this year. Today, the search giant announced the timeline for the Play Music shutdown.”
Music
Cornell Chronicle: Paniccioli’s vast hip-hop photo archive launches online
Cornell Chronicle: Paniccioli’s vast hip-hop photo archive launches online. “Missy Elliott and Li’l Kim dressed up as anime characters, resting between takes on the set of the ‘Sock It 2 Me’ music video. Biz Markie bouncing off his chair in a dressing room of the Apollo Theater. Doug E. Fresh blowing out candles on his birthday cake that’s decorated to look like a vinyl record, as Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs peers over his shoulder. These and nearly 20,000 similar images can now be viewed online as Cornell University Library launches the Ernie Paniccioli Photo Archive, a digital collection chronicling hip-hop music and culture from the 1980s to the early 2000s.”
Gearogs: Gearogs Closing
Gearogs: Gearogs Closing . “We will be shutting down Gearogs on August 31, 2020. This was not an easy decision, but we have not been able to give this project the attention and focus that it needs to prosper. At the same time, there are still many opportunities and things to improve on Discogs, so we will be putting all of our focus on Discogs. Thank you for your contributions to and support for this project over the past six years. During that time we’ve had over 21,000 pieces of gear submitted and 21,000 registered users. We will be preserving the data. Our monthly data exports are still available, so please download the latest if you would like to have your own copy of the data. We will also be storing the last export on archive.org, with images.”
New-to-me Instagram Page: Sudan Tapes Archive
Spotted via Reddit and new-to-me: the Instagram account Sudan Tapes Archive. From the Instagram page: “a small archive of digitized sudanese cassette tapes. all download links are available via soundcloud!”
The Star: M’sian music fan deejays with wind-up gramophone, playing century-old recordings
The Star: M’sian music fan deejays with wind-up gramophone, playing century-old recordings. “[Caleb] Goh has a ‘very small’ collection of over 500 shellac records, comprising mostly swing music from the 1920s. He notes that unlike vinyl, shellac records only hold two songs each (one song per side) so you need a sizeable collection to not end up having to listen to the same songs again and again. The oldest one in his possession is an American recording from 1898, but the one he considers the rarest and most interesting is a Gaisberg recording of a Japanese song from 1903.”
CNET: Snapchat testing TikTok-style music feature to release later this year
CNET: Snapchat testing TikTok-style music feature to release later this year. “Snapchat app users will soon be able to add songs to their videos. Snap, parent company of Snapchat, has reportedly inked music rights deals with several major music companies, including Warner Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group and Merlin.”
CNET: Facebook adds official music videos, taking on YouTube
CNET: Facebook adds official music videos, taking on YouTube. “Facebook said Friday it’s adding official music videos to its social network in the US, starting this week. The feature will allow people to find, watch and share music videos on Facebook, taking on the world’s No. 1 place to watch music videos online (and the No. 1 place to watch, well, all videos online): Google’s YouTube.”
Copenhagen Post: Google to remove Danish music from Youtube
Copenhagen Post: Google to remove Danish music from Youtube. “Google is set to remove Danish music from Youtube following the expiration of its agreement with Koda. The music tracks will be removed from the video-sharing platform on Saturday, reports DR. The development came after it remained unclear how Danish artists should be paid for their music. Koda manages the rights of composers and songwriters.”
New York Times: Chainsmokers Concert in Hamptons Is Under Fire Over Social Distancing
New York Times: Chainsmokers Concert in Hamptons Is Under Fire Over Social Distancing. “A charity concert on Saturday night in the Hamptons featuring performances from the chief executive of Goldman Sachs and the D.J. duo the Chainsmokers drew widespread outrage and a state investigation after video footage showed attendees appearing to ignore public health precautions.”
NPR: Classical Music Tries To Reckon With Racism — On Social Media
NPR: Classical Music Tries To Reckon With Racism — On Social Media. “Two controversies broke out this week regarding accusations of anti-Black racism in classical music. One involved two high-profile international soloists, pianist Yuja Wang and violinist Leonidas Kavakos. The other features less prominent individuals — a group of academics — but it also points to the slowness of the classical music community to take up difficult conversations about race and representation. But in both cases, the accusations and the rebuttals have played out speedily on social media — within a community that still relies heavily on hierarchical prestige and institutional power.”
Mental Floss: Explore Marian Anderson’s Handwritten Letters, Private Recordings, and More in a Newly Digitized Collection
Mental Floss: Explore Marian Anderson’s Handwritten Letters, Private Recordings, and More in a Newly Digitized Collection. “More than 2500 items of archival material, including letters, diaries, journals, interviews, scrapbooks, performance programs, and private recordings, are available to view online through a research portal called ‘Discovering Marian Anderson.’ Many of the manuscripts were donated by Anderson, who was born and raised in Philadelphia, before she died at age 96 in 1993.”
South China Morning Post: Korean pop music archive digitised and reissued for vinyl lovers – it’s ‘our living history of K-pop’, record company boss says
South China Morning Post: Korean pop music archive digitised and reissued for vinyl lovers – it’s ‘our living history of K-pop’, record company boss says. “Oasis Records Music Company is one such company that has been digitising and preserving its music collection. Established in 1952 during the Korean war, it owns more than 10,000 master tapes of Korean music recorded between the 1950s and 1990s, which it claims is the largest collection of its kind, unknown to the public until recently.”
New York Times: The Met Opera Tries to Find Paying Customers in a Pandemic
New York Times: The Met Opera Tries to Find Paying Customers in a Pandemic. “The classical music and opera offerings this spring and summer have mostly been free — and tremendously gratifying. But as cancellations continue into the fall, and beyond, organizations have worried that listeners will start taking free performances for granted. So the Met is testing whether audiences will pay for digital content with a series of recitals by some of its biggest stars; the first, on Saturday, featured the tenor Jonas Kaufmann. Tickets are $20, roughly the price of the Met’s Live in HD movie-theater transmissions.”
The Verge: TikTok turned his song into a creepy meme — until fans took it back
The Verge: TikTok turned his song into a creepy meme — until fans took it back. “Unlike most content fights, this one has mostly taken place among users, avoiding top-down moderation in favor of mass action within the strange ecosystem of TikTok. But for [Jonathan] Visger and other musicians who have used the platform to reach a new audience, it’s an ugly reminder of how little control there is over how a song is used, and how hard it can be to take back your work.”
Mother Jones: Meet the 21-Year-Old Explaining the Science Behind Your Favorite TikTok Hits
Mother Jones: Meet the 21-Year-Old Explaining the Science Behind Your Favorite TikTok Hits. “What is it about ‘Say So’ by Doja Cat that makes you want to dance? Why does “Ribs” by Lorde make me feel nostalgic? What makes ‘Love on Top’ by Beyoncé so good? Music bombards our brains, causing us to feel—shaping our interactions with content, people, and ourselves—and, most of us, don’t know why any of it happens. But Devon Vonder Schmalz does.”
