Friday Roundup (of News and Thoughts and Such) - February 4th Edition

Welcome to the Friday Roundup (of News and Thoughts and Such) which, at two consecutive weeks, is channel.WAV’s longest running and most prestigious column, where I, Brandon Slone, the Andy Rooney of channel.WAV, talk about some of the week’s biggest stories that we didn’t cover in long form this week. Let’s dive into this week’s news.

1. Spotify loses more artists 

Last week, we touched on Neil Young pulling his music from streaming titan Spotify in protest of its platforming of Joe Rogan’s podcast, which has hosted numerous guests who have espoused COVID disinformation and conspiracy theories. Since then, more names have entered the fray, including Joni Mitchell and Young’s former bandmates, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash. India Arie also announced that she would be pulling her music from the service due to unrelated (racist) comments made by Rogan. 

Rogan has issued an apology (to Spotify) and has pledged to “do better,” while Spotify has added a disclaimer to episodes of the show which discuss COVID. 

It remains to be seen if more artists will follow suit. Ultimately, a lot of this is going to come down to rights issues; many artists quite simply lack the control over their own catalogs to make these types of decisions. I don’t foresee Sony or Warner Bros or Universal taking any moral stances in the near future, so I still don’t expect there to be any mass exodus of talent capable of hurting Spotify’s bottom line. I will continue to monitor the situation in the hopes of milking it for further content.

2. Crypto collective sells music NFTs, without artist permission

In what is somehow not the dumbest thing I am going to talk about this week, HitPiece, a website with the stated goal of selling NFTs “for every song in the world” has created a firestorm of controversy when it was discovered that it was hosting auctions for NFTs of “songs” without their writers/performers/owners/what-have-you being aware. Yes, in spite of the company mission statement of “building a community where you can purchase one-of-one unique music NFTs directly from your favorite artists,” they decided to streamline the process, cut out the middle-man, and leave the artists out of the process altogether. It would be almost inspirational in its audacity if not for the fact that it serves as a nice reminder that we are living in a hellscape.

Being that I am not a craven money-obsessed libertarian dude-bro, I don’t have a lot of patience for NFT nonsense in general. I hear those letters together and my bullshit meter hits a baseline of 8/10 or so. But these folks really went the distance to earn those last 2 points since, as noted by Engadget in their write-up on this story, “Like many other NFT business models… it’s not clear what HitPiece was selling, exactly.” Because these NFTs would appear to basically be glorified Spotify links. HitPiece, for its part, insists that artists are paid for every HitPiece transaction, stating, in part, “To be clear, artists get paid when digital goods are sold on HitPiece…”

In other news, the bulk of the site appears to have now been taken down. Visiting the URL brings up only a homepage stating, “We Started The Conversation And We’re Listening.” And yes, I did say this wasn’t the dumbest thing I’d be talking about this week because…

3. Rudy fucking Giuliani was on The Masked Singer 

We’ve covered The Masked Singer on this site before. Dane is going to insert a link here to that article now because he is a very good editor and reads every word I write. Anyway, our take at the time is that the show is stupid, absurd, surreal, and also top notch television. 

Sarah Palin rapping Sir Mix-A-Lot aside, the show generally strays from any potentially overly controversial guests, mostly focusing on washed up actors, athletes, and whatever-the-fuck influencer I’ve never heard of it can get its hands on. But even Sarah Palin hadn’t recently made efforts to overthrow American democracy. For those of you who like a little sedition with your karaoke, however, things got a bit spicier when America’s Mayor turned melting-cartoon-vampire Rudy Giuliani was revealed to have donned a mask for the first time since the pandemic started at a recent taping of the show. 

Giuliani’s appearance apparently spurred Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke, two of the show’s panelists, to walk from the stage in disgust. Nicole Scherzinger stayed for banter, as did Jenny McCarthy (who presumably wanted to swap thoughts concerning vaccines). 

The episode is set to air in March on Fox. 

4. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announces nominees for the 2022 class

In lighter news, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced the slate of nominees who will be eligible for voting into this year’s class. Some big names include Eminem, who is in his first year of eligibility, as well as Dolly Parton, who has been eligible for like 30 years and for some reason they just said “nah” up until now. 

The full list is as follows: Duran Duran, A Tribe Called Quest, Eurhythmics, Eminem, Lionel Richie, Judas Priest, Devo, MC5, Kate Bush, Dolly Parton, Dionne Warwick, Carly Simon, Fela Kuti, New York Dolls, Beck, Pat Benatar, and Rage Against the Machine. Voting is live on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website through April 29. 

channel.WAV staff Hall of Fame picks

Slone: 

1. Eminem (not the biggest fan of the fella but longevity + popularity + first ballot makes him as close to a lock as anyone could be)

2. Dolly Parton (HOW HAS SHE NEVER BEEN NOMINATED)

3. A Tribe Called Quest 

4. MC5

5. Lionel Richie

Ritter:

1. Rage Against the Machine

2. Dolly

3. MC5

4. Dionne Warwick 

5. Lionel Richie

Botts:

1. Dolly

2. Eminem

3. Judas Priest

4. Lionel Richie

5. Dionne Warwick

 

What is channel.WAV listening to this week?

Slone: 

I found out that Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart was quietly added to streaming services lately; so yeah, that. 

Ritter:

I’m currently reading through Miles Marshall Lewis’ biography of Kendrick Lamar, so of course, I had to listen to To Pimp a Butterfly!

Botts:

Radiohead. Specifically, The Daily Mail. Because who doesn’t enjoy a mix of what Coldplay could have been and revisiting one of the best band cameos in South Park’s history. Will I be reviewing a Radiohead album next week? Idk, maybe.

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What do you think was the biggest music news story of the week? Sound off in the comments below and Dane will do something funny. Do people like this joke?

- Slone