DJDS – Hold Up

DJDS (the electronic duo of Jerome LOL and Samo Sound Boy formerly known as DJ Dodger Stadium) have shared a remix of Beyoncé’s Lemonade standout “Hold Up” (the song that Ezra Koenig, Father John Misty, Diplo, and more worked on). In a note on their SoundCloud, they write: “we made this to play last weekend at our show in LA. wanted to share it with everybody now. much respect to Beyoncé. love the new album.” Listen to DJDS’ remix and see the artwork below. Read our interviews with “Hold Up” co-writers MeLo-X and MNEK, as well as with the video’s cinematographer Pär Ekberg.

Read the rest of this article at Pitchfork

How many times have you heard a track and wished you could tweak it to fit your own desires? Sadly, for most of us, we can only visualize abilities to do such things, but rare individuals like Astronomyy are able to manipulate at will and make original track sounds better almost all the time. Last year, we found the UK artist adding his touch to Billie Eilish‘s “Ocean Eyes” and making it a viral hit in the process, and now he’s taken to Terror Jr’s debut track, “3 Strikes”. The original has already clocked over a million plays on SoundCloud alone, and with Astronomyy’s new Sophia Black-featuring edit here, it’s about to rack up millions more.

Read the rest of this article at Hillydilly

Gundelach – Fjernsynet

Norwegian mystery man Gundelach, whose 2015 debut single “Spiders” catapulted him into the public eye and blogosphere, has just released his second single.

“Fjernsynet” (Norwegian for “television set”) is a laid back, soulful track that’s driven by gorgeous rhythmic elements and accentuated by spacey, analog-electronic production. The melancholy nature of the track (which the Nordic’s seem to do so well) is right up my alley.

Read the rest of this article at indie shuffle

While face to face interactions rely heavily on non-verbal communication, now our typed messages rely heavily on how they’re written. Use cap locks and you’re yelling, don’t send a smiley and people think you’re in a bad mood, add the wrong smiley… and you’re meaning can be lost entirely. The Wombat’s latest track “Emoticon” touches on this very relatable subject.

They use their polished talent as a band to create a high energy, feel good track that I’ve had playing on repeat. The track starts off with clever lyrics and a well punctuated beat. The Wombats have perfected their ability to play a unified front. The vocals of Matthew Murphy hold their own even when the band increases their intensity.

Read the rest of this article at Earmilk

Dâm-Funk and Nite Jewel‘s project Nite-Funk have shared the lead song from an upcoming self-titled EP, which is due July 1 via Dâm-Funk’s new label Glydezone. The song is called “Let Me Be Me” and it’s mixed by Cole M.G.N. Hear the track, and find the tracklist and artwork below. Dâm-Funk and Nite Jewel both recently put out new records: DJ-Kicks and Liquid Cool, respectively. Last year, they shared a Nite-Funk track called “Can U Read Me.”

Read the rest of this article at Pitchfork

That Digital Music Service You Love Is a Terrible Business

Every few months, the ongoing upheaval in the digital-music business forces its way into the public consciousness—Rdio goes bankrupt, Pandora hangs out a “For Sale” sign and then gets rid of its CEO, artists and labels ramp up their criticism of YouTube. Now we have Tidal in acquisition talks with Apple, while Spotify complains about Apple treating it unfairly.

The media and music community seem divided on whether an Apple-Tidal combination would be a good idea. Some say it would be a huge mistake for Apple AAPL 0.30% , in part because Tidal hasn’t proven to be successful in either adding users or growing its business—although it has a number of popular features, including its access to artist exclusives.

Others, however, argue that buying Tidal may make sensefor a number of reasons, depending on the price.

From a macro perspective, there’s a common theme among all of these developments: Namely, that the digital music business is becoming an industry in which only a truly massive company with huge scale and deep pockets can hope to compete. And that spells trouble for Spotify and every other independent music service.

Read the rest of the story at Fortune

The Day Napster Died and Changed The Music Industry Forever

Today, file sharing is second nature. The sanctity of intellectual property is at the mercy of Dropbox, Google Drive, and, above all, our own individual moral codes (which, judging by thefinancially strapped music industry, aren’t very high). Piracy is a culturally permissible form of theft, and even those that have never pirated anything are expressly familiar with the technology that made the practice popular: Napster. The infamous file sharing service was unassailably influential, documenting more than 80 million users during its heyday. It was short lived, though, and 15 years ago this week, Napster shuttered its digital doors, but not before permanently altering the way we think about the intrinsic value of music as both an art form and a commodity.

In 1999, Shawn Fanning developed the software that would become Napster, launching it alongside co-founders John Fanning (his uncle) and now-billionaire Sean Parker (aka the first president of Facebook, aka Justin Timberlake in The Social Network). It wasn’t the first technology to facilitate file sharing—IRC, Hotline, and Usenet all already existed by then—but its friendly interface and specialty in MP3 file transfers made Napster the most popular.

Read the rest of the story at Nerdist

How sample pioneers DJ Shadow and the Avalanches adapted to the YouTube era

In the fall of 1996, DJ Shadow blew minds around the world using materials he found in a dusty Sacramento basement. Four years later, the Avalanches did much the same from their headquarters in Melbourne, Australia.

DJ Shadow’s “Endtroducing” and the Avalanches’ “Since I Left You” were landmarks in the art — and science — of sampling.

Both debuts made new music almost exclusively out of old sounds: riffs and grooves and snippets of speech harvested from forgotten vinyl records and carefully assembled into original songs. The works felt modern and ancient at the same time. Neither act invented the method, but each expanded its potential for emotion, humor and technical finesse.

Since then the landscape has changed, of course. Sampling became simpler thanks to YouTube and other vast digital-media archives. Technology made it easier, too, to stitch the samples together.

And that made room for the likes of Girl Talk, the pop-wise party-starter who’s been the most prominent cut-and-paste specialist of the past decade.

Read the rest of the story at Los Angeles Times