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Beyoncé's $900 record box (records not included); Macklemore, Ed Sheeran and politics on-stage; The giant streaming platform you've never heard of; The UK 'homegrown' artist chart; and more!
Description
This week, Stu and Joe tread verrrrrry carefully around a bunch of hot-button topics: on-stage politics, billionaires billionaire-ing, and whether AI music is getting to the believable stage. In this week's show:
You've probably already heard about the Macklemore and Ed Sheeran kerfuffle over the former's statements on Palestine. Now one big festivals promoter has launched an ‘artistic code’ explaining its policies when artists make statements on-stage...
The UK now has a ‘homegrown’ albums chart to showcase British artists. What’s it for, and will it work?
167 million people are using a streaming platform called Soda Music... and most of us have probably only just heard of it. So what – and where – is it?
Suno has released a "wild" version of its AI-music model, that gives you less-predictable results. Is it any good – or is AI music just like a covers band: you can be impressed by how convincing they they are, but you don't want to listen to their music?
Some unusual sounds are coming out of Lime Bikes in London this month. But no, it’s not because teenagers hacking them to ride without paying…
The music industry has launched its latest war on streaming fraud with a ‘Streaming Integrity Initiative’. Which sounds very dry, but how could it help beat the fraudsters?
Good news if you collect Beyoncé vinyl and like giving lots of money to billionaires – Beyoncé is selling a record box made of pine, and it costs a whopping $900 (and you have to buy the records separately).
And in the special post-show lock-in section just for our Patreon Superfans, Stu and Joe prop themselves up at the bar – in this week's bonus material:
Joe was sent into a spiral of self-reflection by this fact: “The Rolling Stones still performing today is like a band formed in 1898 still performing when the Stones formed in 1962.” But what other fascinating temporal pop facts are there?
More songs of the summer! Mungo Jerry’s In the Summertime VS Stardust’s Music Sounds Better with You? (Plus: “The ‘Song of the Summer’ Is Dead. Thank God for That”)
How do you file your records at home? This is extremely telling about a person's approach to life, and so Joe reveals his objectively chaotic system and Stu explains why CD singles and CD albums MUST be kept separate...
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