HOT: Dazzling Secondly Wages
For your average struggling musician, Forbes’ annual ranking of the highest paid musicians of the year can either be a soul-crushing revelation or a platinum-carrot-on-a-stick inspiration. This year, the website skyrange.net broke down the numbers to reveal how much each musician made per second, which probably puts things more on the soul-crushing side. Forbes’ highest earner, Dr. Dre (who didn’t release any music but did sell his Beats headphones brand to Apple for a reported $3 billion), made $19.66 each second last year, making the other numbers look quaint — by comparison, highest-earner runner-up, Beyoncé, made $3.65 per second and poor Taylor Swift only made $2.03 per second in 2014.
WARM: HD or BS?
Neil Young has long been one of those “do no wrong” musicians whose integrity has made it difficult for music lovers to criticize. But PonoMusic, the new high-definition audio service (selling music and listening devices) that Young has been helping roll out recently, has been receiving its fair share of criticism. Despite some positive notes (The Beatles might make their music available to Pono), some have criticized the high price of albums available in Pono’s store (Jack White’s Lazaretto reportedly costs $24.99 versus its $10.99 price tag on iTunes) and a recent New York Post story said that even some engineers working on the project don’t believe the sound is much better than CD quality. What no one is arguing against? Music from Pono will still sound a million times richer than the average MP3s millions listen to on tiny earbuds every day.
COLD: Little River Band-ish
Bands continuing on after losing key members is pretty common and often works out (see: Van Halen). Veteran groups carrying on with very few — or no — original members is less common, but it happens a lot, something music fans usually discover when a lawsuit is filed or they see the now-unfamiliar-looking band at the county fair. Australia’s Little River Band, which had a string of Soft Rock smash hits in the late ’70s, has had dozens of lineup changes over the years and hasn’t had all of its original members since the early ’80s. But that didn’t stop the group from scoring a booking on The Tonight Show to help promote its 40th anniversary tour. According to Pollstar, this didn’t sit well with original singer Glenn Shorrock, who reportedly contacted show producers about the appearance and withheld permission for the group to perform a pair of LRB’s biggest hits. The performance was cancelled as a result, but fear not — you can still soon see “Little River Band” in a dinner theater setting in Sharonville (seriously).
