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Brands became bands.

Rick Beato just posted a video about why bands have disappeared from the charts, replaced by solo artists and collabs between solo artists. Before recorded music gained mass popularity in the 1950s, music branding was all about individuals. As the industry became a well-oiled machine with global distribution, bands became

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Long Form = Long Term

I’ve been writing a lot about AI lately for big tech companies. I don’t think any of it would surprise you anymore, except for the reverberations. Every Friday I see news releases about thousands being laid off in content-related business, while I hear nothing but great things about

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Why I went back to buying CDs (and you should too)

I blame David Lee Roth. A few years ago, the final studio album from Van Halen disappeared from streaming services. No one knew why. Even Wolfgang Van Halen didn’t know why at first. Then, in an interview much later he said, “I hope people who like it have a

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They tricked us.

All of the following rock guitar gods sold tens of millions of albums. Guitar players, like myself, believed for years that these artists had access to futuristic tools and production tactics that were out of reach for the ordinary musician. The opposite was true. * Eddie Van Halen’s iconic striped

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The Era of Perfection

YouTuber/Record Producer Rick Beato mourns the loss of imperfect music [https://youtu.be/L-8EbHkc8tc]: It does seem that there’s a new generation of anxiety-filled, perfection-seekers topping the charts. But what’s topped the charts has rarely been what’s interesting to the devoted fans/evangelists of any art

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How One Music Retailer is Beating Amazon

Anderton’s is a music gear store in England, focused mostly on guitars, that really gets social media. Their YouTube videos feature really good musicians having a really good time experimenting with the equipment they sell. Their best videos [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQXro2VDjyIxWBfcR7jzOeB16hHItI3QY] involve the two primary

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A Lesson from the 90s in Finalizing Projects

I spotted this uploaded to YouTube and had to share it. It’s from a 1995 documentary called Reel Satriani on the making of Joe Satriani’s seventh, self-titled album. There’s several cool things about this: 1. It’s from the end of the analog age. Everything in it

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Violinists are Lazy

I’ve spent the past week at my son’s violin camp in Salt Lake City, Utah. It’s an incredible opportunity for him to learn from the best violin teachers in the world. 681 students work with 184 teachers for a solid week of classes. The camp started with

Violinists are Lazy
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Musicians Want Their Analog Tools Back

David Sax, author of the forthcoming book The Revenge of Analogue [http://amzn.to/2e5T4wh], on why analogue tools are making a comeback for musicians [http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-lady-gaga-finds-appealing-in-reel-to-reel] : > “I think the sound quality is one of the smaller reasons why people chose analog,” Chris Mara,

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Are You Trying To Tell Me That At Some Certain

> “Are you trying to tell me that at some certain age, you stop making good music? That’s absurd. I can only do this until I’m 20 years old? When I was 20, I was a fuckin’ idiot! I don’t check the IDs of people before I