DIGITAL strings up boxset racket?

(Theory link: Simon Reynolds' Retromania)

'The Beatles or Radiohead can forever flog key works to consumers prepared to pay £100 for unheard sessions on picture-disc vinyl. Icons like Morrissey can keep on reissuing even the unlamented likes of Maladjusted as part of their bigger story, safe in the knowledge fans want to buy into that idea too. But digital closes the door on nostalgia as much as it mucks with the album as a format. Will the 2026 reissue of Solange’s A Seat at the Table meet with the same ripe whiff of remembrance from a generation who recall where they were the first time they opened Spotify and it was algorithmically recommended to them? If not, Our Love to Admire may be one of the last albums in history to make it to its 45th anniversary super-deluxe box set.'

The reissue racket: how many more ‘classic’ albums will be repackaged? https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jul/28/reissue-racket-how-many-classic-albums-repackaged?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

WOMEN still controlled by men, Instagram only space for genuine expression?

A good look here at how patronising patriarchy, an assumption that women are more pliable and will do as instructed, remains ingrained in the music biz, and an interesting side note on how being 'woke' (Katy bloody Perry's farcical attempt to show her socially conscious side leading to that garbling of language) is seen as important for branding and the opportunity to land marketing deals with brands.

A perhaps too uncritical, but useful, highlighting of Instagram especially as social media being the only space where female artists are permitted to freely express themselves - ignoring the product placement rife in these platforms and other forms of artifice.

Pop’s glass ceiling: why new female stars can’t break through https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jul/21/pops-glass-ceiling-why-new-female-stars-cant-break-through?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger