HOT
Streaming with Pride
As Apple and Google continue to pursue launching music streaming services and sites like Spotify and Pandora continue to justify their tiny payouts to artists, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) gave the pro-streaming side some ammo when it announced that audio and video streaming numbers would now factor into Gold and Platinum sales certifications for digital songs. A half million downloads equals Gold certification and a million equals Platinum; now, around 100 streams of a song equals one extra download. With the change, 56 songs instantly had their status upgraded. And some recording artist somewhere just started streaming their own song over and over and over …
WARM
Major in Metal
According to the BBC, the U.K.’s New College Nottingham is offering a two-year program in Heavy Metal performance and composition. In the first year, students will be schooled on things like Metal history and the music biz; in the second year, students will tour venues across the U.K. Though the course was carefully put together by one of the college’s music-performance lecturers, some poseurs think it’s just a cop-out degree, like Art History. The chairman of the Campaign for Real Education said too many degrees have no credibility: “I suspect that may be the case with this course, unless you want to be a heavy metal star, in which case why would you need a degree in the subject?” Uh, so you can write prescriptions? Duh.
COLD
Fantasy Culture Warrior League
The Catholic League has kept busy defending “the right of Catholics … to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination” by denying the church still has problems with “priestly sexual abuse” and awkwardly attacking any “anti-Catholic” pop culture happenings. The latest musician trying to bring down Catholicism is David Bowie, whose religious imagery in the music video “The Next Day” earned a “thumbs down” from the League’s prez, Bill Donohue. Dismissing the clip by saying it “reflects the artist — it is a mess,,” he also called Bowie “the switch-hitting, bisexual, senior citizen from London.” Because, as it says in Roman 12:14, “Bless those who persecute you (though a little snark and name-calling never hurt anyone).”
