Our selection of five releases that cut through the noise this week, from Kelela, A.K. Paul, La Roux, Ravyn Lenae, Phoebe Bridgers + Tyler, The Creator…
Merck Mercuriadis has won a legal battle with the liquidators of one of the original Hipgnosis companies. During the case, the spotlight fell on the investors in that company, who turned out to be fraudsters, one of whom allegedly tried to choke Mercuriadis during a particularly tense lunch meeting…
Chloé Caillet mixes in key, thinks in harmonics, and her music is bubbly and beautiful for it. New single ‘Bad Bara’ is warm, playful house; rolling bassline, shimmering synths, the kind of track that channels a dance festival daytime set in the sun, which is exactly where Caillet tends to be…
Ticket touting regulations in South Korea are due to be ramped up this August. But before that even happens, the government has reported fifteen touts to the police, because the quantity of tickets they are selling suggests they have been illegally employing bots to source their tickets…
Live Nation has filed a summary of its communications with the US government when it was trying to get the DoJ to settle its antitrust lawsuit, including a conversation between CEO Michael Rapino and Donald Trump. The settlement is controversial, which means this filing will get extra scrutiny…
The European Commission is currently drafting a new EU Digital Fairness Act, and live music and consumer rights groups reckon it should include a ban of dynamic pricing for live events. They say dynamic pricing in ticketing means “consumers increasingly face unpredictable price increases”…
StubHub in the UK has been fined £900,000 for illegally employing drip pricing, where mandatory booking fees are not declared upfront and are only revealed at the end of the ticket-buying process. The secondary ticketing company insists that the drip pricing occurred because of an error on its site…
The European Copyright Society has published a paper considering and rejecting arguments against introducing a performer equitable remuneration right in relation to streaming in Europe. It’s in response to Belgium introducing such an ER right and a legal case that seeks to block in…
Record industry veteran and Arista Records founder Clive Davis has died. He had a long-term association with Sony Music, where he was most recently Chief Creative Officer. It says that Davis’s “instinct for artists and his ability to shape music across genres helped define generations”…
Four childhood friends from El Paso who moved to Austin after a life-altering My Bloody Valentine show in 2008, Holy Wave have spent the years since becoming one of the most satisfying underground psych-rock bands America has produced. New single ‘dewey’s dirge’ is gloriously disorientating…