1.
Album
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Album, is a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item on CD, record, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century, first as books of individual 78rpm records, vinyl LPs are still issued, though in the 21st century album sales have mostly focused on compact disc and MP3 formats. The audio cassette was a format used from the late 1970s through to the 1990s alongside vinyl, an album may be recorded in a recording studio, in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places. Recording may take a few hours to years to complete, usually in several takes with different parts recorded separately. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed live, the majority of studio recordings contain an abundance of editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at times while listening to the other parts using headphones. Album covers and liner notes are used, and sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, historically, the term album was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage the word was used for collections of pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, the LP record, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. It was adopted by the industry as a standard format for the album. Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, the term album had been carried forward from the early nineteenth century when it had been used for collections of short pieces of music. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, as part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some commenters have declared that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album. Sometimes shorter albums are referred to as mini-albums or EPs, Albums such as Tubular Bells, Amarok, Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield, and Yess Close to the Edge, include fewer than four tracks. There are no rules against artists such as Pinhead Gunpowder referring to their own releases under thirty minutes as albums. These are known as box sets, material is stored on an album in sections termed tracks, normally 11 or 12 tracks. A music track is a song or instrumental recording. The term is associated with popular music where separate tracks are known as album tracks. When vinyl records were the medium for audio recordings a track could be identified visually from the grooves
2.
Twitter
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Twitter is an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages, tweets, restricted to 140 characters. Registered users can post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read them, users access Twitter through its website interface, SMS or a mobile device app. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco, California, United States, Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams and launched in July. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, in 2012, more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day, and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day. In 2013, it was one of the ten most-visited websites and has described as the SMS of the Internet. As of 2016, Twitter had more than 319 million monthly active users. On the day of the 2016 U. S. presidential election, Twitter proved to be the largest source of breaking news, Twitters origins lie in a daylong brainstorming session held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, then a student at New York University. The original project name for the service was twttr, an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass, inspired by Flickr. The developers initially considered 10958 as a code, but later changed it to 40404 for ease of use. Work on the project started on March 21,2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9,50 PM Pacific Standard Time, Dorsey has explained the origin of the Twitter title. we came across the word twitter, and it was just perfect. The definition was a short burst of inconsequential information, and chirps from birds, and thats exactly what the product was. The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber, was used as a service for Odeo employees. Williams fired Glass, who was silent about his part in Twitters startup until 2011, Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007. Williams provided insight into the ambiguity that defined this early period in a 2013 interview, With Twitter and they called it a social network, they called it microblogging, but it was hard to define, because it didnt replace anything. There was this path of discovery with something like that, where over time you figure out what it is, Twitter actually changed from what we thought it was in the beginning, which we described as status updates and a social utility. It is that, in part, but the insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really more of an information network than it is a social network, the tipping point for Twitters popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000, the Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages, remarked Newsweeks Steven Levy
3.
Hearst Communications
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Hearst Communications, often referred to as simply Hearst, is an American mass media and business information conglomerate. The Hearst company is based in the Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan and it was founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, and the Hearst family remains involved in its ownership and management. Under William Randolph Hearsts will, a board of thirteen trustees administers the Hearst Foundation, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. The foundations shared ownership until tax law changed to prevent this, Frank A. Bennack Jr. former chief executive officer and executive vice chairman of the corporation John G. Conomikes, former executive of the corporation Gilbert C. In 1880, George Hearst, mining entrepreneur, American publisher, on March 4,1887, he turned the Examiner over to his son, 23-year-old William Randolph Hearst. He pushed his staff to write exciting stories, and wrote editorials worded with force. Within a few years, the new Examiner was a success, in 1895, Hearst purchased the New York Journal, laying the foundation for one of the major newspaper dynasties in American history. He established Hearsts Chicago American in 1900, renamed the morning edition of the New York Journal as the New York American in 1901, the Los Angeles Examiner was launched in 1903 followed by the Boston American one year later. Hearst experimented with every aspect of publishing, from page layouts to editorial crusades. His newspapers introduced innovations such as presses, halftone photographs on newsprint, comic sections printed in color. Stories by Hearst correspondents from around the world were sold to newspapers, giving rise to the Hearst International News Service. In 1903, Hearst Magazines was begun with the publication of Motor magazine, within the next 10 years Hearst acquired several popular titles, starting in 1905 with Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping in 1911. Also in 1911, Hearst bought a middling monthly magazine called World To-Day, in June 1914, its title was shortened to Hearsts, and it was ultimately retitled Hearsts International in May 1922. In 1953 Hearst Magazines bought Sports Afield magazine which it kept until 1999 when it was sold to Robert E. Petersen, Hearst began producing film feature in the mid-1910s, creating one of the earliest animation studios, the International Film Service. Hearst established Cosmopolitan Pictures in the 1920s, distributing his films under the newly created Metro Goldwyn Mayer, in 1929, Hearst and MGM created the Hearst Metrotone newsreels. In order to spare serious cutbacks at San Simeon, Hearst merged Hearsts International magazine with Cosmopolitan effective March 1925, Hearst died in 1951, and the Hearsts International disappeared from the magazine cover altogether in April 1952. In the 1920s and 1930s, Hearst owned the biggest media conglomerate in the world, in 1924 he also merged his Milwaukee operations with the Pfister family, owners of The Milwaukee Sentinel. Hearst owned the evening Wisconsin News while the Pfisters kept the Sentinel adding Hearsts features from the now-folded Telegram, in 1925, Hearst sold the Syracuse Telegram to the owners of the Syracuse Journal, while selling the New York Mirror in 1928
4.
How to Dress Well
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How to Dress Well is the stage name of American singer-songwriter Tom Krell. Krell was born in Boulder, Colorado, Krell graduated from The New School with an MA in Philosophy in 2009. He then moved from New York City to spend a year in Berlin, beginning in 2009, Krell started to turn out free EPs on his blog under the name How to Dress Well. He didnt release his name or his photo, but critics quickly picked up on Krells music, how to Dress Wells debut album, Love Remains, was released in 2010 on Lefse in the United States and on Tri Angle in Europe and Asia. The album assembled the best of Krells early EPs and garnered vast critical acclaim and it received a score of 8.7 and the Best New Music designation from music review site Pitchfork Media. Stereogum recognized How to Dress Well as one of its 40 Best Bands of 2010, spin gave the album 8 out of 10 stars, calling it as meditative as it is evocative. Conjuring fractured memories of Shai or TLC, in 2011, How to Dress Well released the Just Once EP — a four-song suite of Suicide Dream songs set against a string quartet. The EP collects two previously released tracks bearing the name Suicide Dream, adds a third with that title, the set was inspired by and is dedicated to a friend of Krells who died. Limited to 1000 copies, the 10 vinyl release donated $1 of every record sold to a working to raise awareness about mental illness. On the heels of the success of Love Remains, Krell signed a deal with Weird World Records, Total Loss was released on September 18,2012 in North America by Acephale Records and worldwide through Weird World Records. Krell wrote the album over the course of 15 months or so, in Brooklyn, Chicago, Nashville, the album received a “Best New Music” nod from Pitchfork Media, where Ian Cohen wrote that it is a work of poignant and devastating art. It was also named by Pitchfork as one of the Top 50 Albums of 2012, in April 2014, How to Dress Well released the first single off their forthcoming third studio album, Repeat Pleasure. The album was released on June 23,2014 via Domino Records / Weird World Records and was well received by music critics, earning an 8.8. Paste Magazine noted that “Krell has managed to indulge his experimental tendencies while at the same time achieve his most accessible sound to date. ”Capitalizing on the success of What Is This Heart, how to Dress Well embarked on a world tour, beginning in the spring of 2014. The tour started off with shows in Europe, and continued on to include stops in North America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and cities throughout Asia. The band performed at a number of major European, North American and Asian festivals, including Flow Festival, Hostess Club Weekender, on July 27,2016 How To Dress Well announced his fourth full-length album, Care. He also released the album’s first single “Lost Youth / Lost You” along with a music video. On August 30,2016 How To Dress Well premiered Whats Up on Zane Lowes Beats1 show, on September 19,2016 KCRWs Morning Becomes Eclectic premiered the next single Cant You Tell
5.
Pitchfork (website)
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Pitchfork is an American online magazine launched in 1995 by Ryan Schreiber, based in Chicago, Illinois and owned by Condé Nast. The site generally concentrates on new music, but Pitchfork journalists have also reviewed reissues, in late 1995, Ryan Schreiber, a recent high school graduate, created the magazine in Minneapolis. Influenced by local fanzines and KUOM, Schreiber, who had no writing experience. At first being Turntable, the site was updated monthly with interviews and reviews, in May 1996, the site began publishing daily and was renamed Pitchfork, alluding to Tony Montanas tattoo in Scarface. In early 1999, Schreiber relocated Pitchfork to Chicago, Illinois, by then, the site had expanded to four full-length album reviews daily, as well as sporadic interviews, features, and columns. It had also begun garnering a following for its coverage of underground music and its writing style. In October, the added a daily music news section. Pitchfork has launched a variety of subsidiary websites, Pitchfork. tv, a website displaying videos related to many independent music acts, launched in April 2008. It features bands that are found on Pitchfork. In July 2010, Pitchfork announced Altered Zones, a blog devoted to underground. On 21 May 2011, Pitchfork announced a partnership with Kill Screen, Altered Zones was closed on November 30. On December 26,2012, Pitchfork launched Nothing Major, a website that covered visual arts such as fine art, Nothing Major closed in October 2013. On October 13,2015, Condé Nast announced that it had acquired Pitchfork, following the sale, Schreiber remained as editor-in-chief. On March 13,2016, Pitchfork was redesigned, some publications have cited Pitchfork in having played a part in breaking artists such as Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Interpol, The Go. Conversely, Pitchfork has also seen as being a negative influence on some indie artists. A dismissive 0.0 review of former Dismemberment Plan frontman Travis Morrisons Travistan album led to a sales drop. On the other hand, an endorsement from Pitchfork – which dispenses its approval one-tenth of a point at a time, up to a maximum of 10 points – is very valuable, indeed. Examples of Pitchforks impact include, Arcade Fire is among the bands most commonly cited to have benefited from a Pitchfork review
6.
Exclaim!
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Exclaim. is a monthly Canadian music magazine that features in-depth coverage of new music across all genres with special focus on Canadian and cutting-edge artists. Content is based on the print publication, publishes 11 issues per year. Exclaim. began as a discussion among campus and community radio programmers at Ryersons CKLN-FM in 1991 and it was started by Ian Danzig, together with other programmers and Toronto musicians. The goal of the publication was to support great Canadian music that was otherwise going unheralded, the group worked through 1991 to produce their first issue in April 1992, with monthly issues being produced since. Ian Danzig has been the publisher of the magazine since its start, similarly to an alternative weekly newspaper, the magazine is distributed as a free publication at campus and community radio stations, bars, record stores, libraries, and coffee shops. The magazines website features reviews, interviews and profiles not found in the print publication and it includes a news page that is updated with the latest in music and music-related culture. The site reaches 211,000 unique users every month, TV, which includes weekly instalments of video interviews with musicians, as well as a section titled Click Hear where readers are guided to the latest music released on the Internet. As well as music, exclaim. ca reviews films, DVDs, music DVDs, concerts, exclaim. ca is also increasing its coverage of film festivals, such as the Toronto International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival. The magazine also covers smaller Toronto festivals such as the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival, the magazines website also has contests where readers can enter for a chance to win various music-related prizes. These artists are featured on the cover of Exclaims monthly issue, x3 artists of the month have included Knaan, Malajube, Thunderheist, Japandroids, Apostle of Hustle, You Say Party. We Say Die. and The Rural Alberta Advantage
7.
Alternative R&B
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Alternative R&B is a term used by music journalists to describe a stylistic alternative to contemporary R&B. Alternative R&B was once used by the industry during the late 1990s to market neo soul artists, such as DAngelo, Erykah Badu. There has been a variety of discussion about the differing genre terms, the term hipster R&B has been commonly used, as has the term PBR&B—a combination of PBR and R&B. The first use of PBR&B was on Twitter by Sound of the City writer Eric Harvey on a March 22,2011 post, three years later, amazed and distressed at how far the term—meant as a joke—had traveled, Harvey wrote an extensive essay about it for Pitchfork. The genre has sometimes been called noir&B, however, the terms are often criticized for pigeonholing artists into hipster subculture and being used in a derisive manner. Brandon Neasman of The Grio observes a changing of the guard in R&B, from the smooth, cool heartthrobs to these vulnerable, additionally, for the most part, it doesnt feel as if these artists are selling sex as their main entrée. Granted, they sing about the topic, and in explicit detail. You don’t get that same diversity in subject matter from the majority of modern R&B singers, hermione Hoby of The Guardian writes that the music is quietly radical and observes an ongoing, mutually enriching dialogue between indie and electronic musicians and R&B artists. Gerrick D. Kennedy of the Los Angeles Times feels that the new movement feels like the most significant stylistic change in R&B since neo soul rolled around in the 1990s, janet Jacksons sixth studio album The Velvet Rope is cited as one the genres stylistic origins. Frank Ocean states that he does not like being called an R&B musician, how to Dress Well was not offended by the term PBR&B, but found it tacky. Miguel has said that he is comfortable with the term indie R&B because it insinuates a higher art, or a deeper or somehow more artistic delivery of rhythm and blues music. It suggests theres more artistry within a genre that has more of a cliche of itself. Eric Harvey, the writer who coined the term, wrote a response to its proliferation. FKA Twigs does not like the term, she told The Guardian Fuck alternative R&B. She finds the term racially charged, When I first released music and no one knew what I looked like, I would read comments like, Ive never heard anything like this before, and then my picture came out six months later, now shes an R&B singer. Stereogum described the genre as a fad that reached its point in early 2014. List of alternative R&B artists Hipster hop Neo soul Abebe, Nitsuh, PBR&B – A subgenre is born. Love vs. Money, The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, and R&Bs Future Shock
8.
Lo-fi music
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Lo-fi music are sound recordings that are of lower quality than the usual standard for modern music. The term was adopted in late 1986 by WFMU DJ William Berger, the music also refers to a movement which grew primarily from American underground music scenes in the early 1980s. Associated artists include Sebadoh, Pavement, Liz Phair, and Beck, allMusic writes, Throughout rock & rolls history, recordings were made cheaply and quickly, often on substandard equipment. In that sense, the earliest rock & roll records, most of the rock of the 60s. JW Farquhars home-recorded 1973 album The Formal Female is considered a forerunner to lo-fi artists such as R
9.
Total Loss (album)
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Total Loss is the second studio album by American musician How to Dress Well. It was released in September 2012 on Acephale Records in North America, the track Cold Nites, which was co-written and co-produced by Forest Swords, was released as a single. Acclaimed by critics, the album was listed 33rd on Stereogums list of top 50 albums of 2012, how to Dress Well spoke about the influence for the album, Janet Jacksons The Velvet Rope. The main thing I took from her is sort of this self-trust, self-care, Velvet Rope is an amazing example. She set such an example for trusting yourself, and following that intuition wherever it takes you and she couldve made an entire record of Together Agains—eleven of those. But she made a sprawling masterpiece with a song from every genre. Because you see her discerning taste in every track, and every single track. Some songs her voice is all distorted, and in other songs its so close to the mic that it sounds like shes singing in your ear—you can hear her lip-smacking and its a total statement, This is me kind of record. And I like writing different kinds of songs, Total Loss is a bunch of different kinds of songs on it. I was like, Shit, how do I make this record, do I pick one and stick with it and write all those. No, that would be truncating this sense I have that all songs are special. And for me, Together Again is infinitely more special because its this little gem on that very different record. If it were a record of Together Agains, Id probably love the song. Ive loved The Velvet Rope since it came out and its been one of my favorite records for many years. I think when I started working on Total Loss and seeing like shit, and I kind of learned over the course of making my record, and really attentively listening to Janets record, that it had more of an influence on me that I had even realized. So like, its funny to learn through making a record that Ive had this record playing in the back of my mind for a decade. I mean theres some shit on The Velvet Rope thats absolutely next-level—still today, a cover of Janet Jacksons Again appears on a bonus 7 included with select versions of the album
10.
Paste (magazine)
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Paste is a monthly music and entertainment digital magazine published in the United States by Wolfgangs Vault. Its tagline is Signs of Life in Music, Film and Culture, the magazine began as a website in 1998. It ran as a print publication from 2002 to 2010 before converting to online-only, the magazine, headquartered in Avondale Estates, Georgia. It was founded as a quarterly in July 2002 by Josh Jackson, Nick Purdy and it later switched to a bimonthly format. In 2005, Paste fulfilled remaining subscriptions for the competing magazine Tracks, Paste became a monthly with its August 2006 issue. For two years in the mid-2000s, Paste had a segment on CNN Headline News called Paste Picks. In October 2007, the magazine tried the Radiohead experiment, offering new, amidst an economic downturn, Paste began to suffer from lagging ad revenue, as did other magazine publishers in 2008 and 2009. On May 14,2009, Paste editors announced a plan to save the magazine, by pleading to its readers, musicians, cost-cutting by the magazine did not stem the losses. The main crux cited for the financial troubles is the lack of advertiser spending, in 2009, Paste launched an hour-long TV pilot for Halogen TV called Pop Goes the Culture. On August 31,2010, Paste suspended the print magazine, on May 28,2011, Paste announced it was bringing back its weekly subscription services in a digital layout. The digital magazine now covers music, movies, TV, comedy, books, video games, design, tech, food, each issue also includes a digital version of the Paste Sampler with seven new songs each week. Although Pastes focus was music, covering a variety of genres with an emphasis on adult alternative, Americana and indie rock. Each issue originally included a CD music sampler but was dropped in favor of digital downloading as a Going-Green initiative, many of these artists also contributed to the Campaign to Save Paste. In 2005, Paste was listed at #21 on the Chicago Tribunes list of 50 Best Magazines, Paste was also named Magazine of the Year by the PLUG Independent Music Awards in 2006,2007 and 2008. In 2008,2009 and 2010, Paste was nominated for a National Magazine Award in the category of General Excellence, and in 2010, associate editor Rachael Maddux writings were nominated for Best Reviews
11.
Sputnikmusic
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Sputnikmusic, or simply Sputnik, is a music website offering music criticism and music news alongside features commonly associated with wiki-style websites. Over time, the site has come to be established as a source, becoming a featured reviewer on Metacritic. As a general rule, the writers tend to focus on new releases, however. In June 2006, following claims made by the MPA about the illegality of music tabs, MXTabs was closed. At this time, Sputnikmusic became its own entity, with MusicianForums renamed as the SputnikMusic Forums. It was at point that the focus of Sputnik began to shift toward providing professional content, with a news page added. As part of this shift, several features have also sporadically been provided by the staff writers, including live reviews, interviews, exclusive MP3 streams. Currently on Sputnikmusic, four classes of reviewer exist that demarcate whether content should be considered professional or not, staff Writers are the writers who contribute the professional-standard content, which includes featured articles in addition to reviews. There are currently 25 staff reviewers, three of whom act as moderators and administrators for the site. Contributing Reviewers can contribute features, but are not eligible for inclusion by either Metacritic or Wikipedia, there are currently 23 contributing reviewers. Emeritus is a given to former staff writers who no longer contribute to the site. Reviews by these users are acknowledged as professional, users includes everybody who has not yet been promoted to any of the higher levels. Despite this, they can contribute new reviews, artists, and albums to the database, edit data already present. Sputnikmusic operates a simple 5-point rating system, starting at 1, as a guide to new reviewers, each of these values is assigned a word, ranging from Awful to Classic. However, certain albums have a rating system, where users cannot rate the album lower than a 2.0. This is the case with Kendrick Lamars To Pimp a Butterfly, the staff of Sputnik have not commented on this, despite being asked. As well as showing the score a reviewer has given to the album, a page will also show the scores given by other individual reviewers. A bar chart will also show how many votes each rating has once it has received at least two and a review
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