#49 - Spin the Vinyl 🌞

Happy Sunlighter Sunday! New album drops from Post Malone, Travis Scott, and Carly Rae Jepsen kept our headphones busy this weekend. Drop a comment at the bottom to let us know what album you’re listening to.

Here's what we have queued up this week:

1. 🌶️ Review of In the End It Always Does by The Japanese House.

2. 💿 This Week in Music: Utopia drama, Mercury Prize nominations, and two music fandom studies.

3. 📈 Weekly Charts: Jung Kook becomes the first member of BTS to get a solo #1.

4. 🔀 Recommendation Station: Balanced Breakfast updates to satisfy your music hunger.

5. 🎙️ JON VINYL is our artist of the week.

Rating Rationale: This is an excellent follow-up album that easily tops Amber Bain’s debut as The Japanese House in Good At Falling. Aside from more uptempo, halcyon melodies (thanks to her continued collaboration with George Daniel of The 1975) and Amber’s trademarked lithe intonations, The Japanese House converts her catharsis into our tranquility by way of “Touching Yourself,” “Boyhood,” “Sunshine (with Matty Healy)” and “Morning Pages (with MUNA).”

🛕 Controversy in Egypt: Travis Scott’s Utopia performance was canceled earlier this week in what is described by FADER as a “controversial scenario” that potentially involved ulterior motives orchestrated by the Musicians’ Syndicate of Egypt to preserve Egypt’s strict societal values.

🏆 Mercury Prize Nominations: Nominations for the Mercury Prize, an annual award recognizing the best album released in the United Kingdom, were announced earlier this week. Here’s who made the cut.

✊ Sinéad the Iconoclast: While you might remember Sinéad for her famous rendition of Prince’s song, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” many more will remember her for speaking out against the Catholic Church for covering up allegations of their history of child abuse. Her untimely death comes right before completing a new album, which will hopefully be released posthumously.

💸 Q2 Earnings Season: This week, Spotify, Universal Music Group, and YouTube Music (Google/Alphabet) all reported their Q2 earnings. The primary takeaway is that streaming growth continues to be healthy and price hikes will support increased revenue in the future.

🌌 Dream of Antonoffication: If you have your reading glasses nearby, here’s a fantastic op-ed article that explores the (mainly negative) byproducts of Jack Antonoff’s impact on the pop genre.

📺 You Gotta Watch This: This week, Travis Scott dropped his highly anticipated trailer for secret feature film, Circus Maximus, which will be playing in select theaters to support the launch of his newly released album, Utopia.

🕺 Fandomonium: In the recently published Return to Live study by music consulting firm, MIDiA Research, and live event discovery platform, Bandsintown, “fandom” is roughly 2x more important than “location” when fans are deciding to purchase concert tickets.

💃 Spotify Superfans: Similar to Return to Live (read above), Spotify’s recent fan study revealed that fandom, specifically “superfans” who make up only 2% of an artist’s monthly listeners, drives a significant amount of monthly streams (~18%) for the artist.

🛂 Touring Visas: International musicians touring in the U.S. (Arctic Monkeys, Phoenix, etc.) are typically required to apply for a visa. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services initially voted to increase the fee for these visas by ~350%. This week, they are delaying the change until March 2024.

🔊 Return of the Mac: In our #4 edition, we wrote about the music discovery platform, Audiomack. This week, Atlanta record label, Love Renaissance (LVRN), is partnering with Audiomack to identify emerging artists through Audiomack’s ArtistRank algorithm as part of their A&R strategy. Additionally, Audiomack released a feature that allows artists to chat directly with fans.

💰 Securing the Bag: EngineEars, a music software platform that acts as a marketplace to connect artists to verified audio engineers, has raised additional funding from new investors for an undisclosed amount.

🌐 Web3 Updates: Electronic music platform, Beatport, takes their first step into the web3 space by launching beatport.io, a music NFT marketplace on Polkadot. Roc-Nation is collaborating with Puma and Legitimate to launch “HUMBLE SOLES,” a mixtape from Roc-Nation that is only accessible by scanning the LGT tag in their Puma RS-XL Mixtape sneaker.

🐕 For All The Dogs: Drake confirmed that the timeline for his upcoming album drop will be “in two weeks.”

🧑‍🔧 On Strike: Snoop Dogg has canceled his Hollywood Bowl shows celebrating the 30th anniversary of his debut album in solidarity with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

👀 Tom DeLonge, who recently reunited with Blink-182, is claiming that their upcoming album may be the best album they’ve ever made. Tyler Childers announced his new album Rustin’ in the Rain will be dropping in September. Mitski announced a new album is on the way. Jazz artist, Laufey, provides details on her next album. The Kills are back, releasing music for the first time since 2016. Tkay Maidza announced Sweet Justice. Two members from the all-female indie outfit, Hinds, have split from the band.

🚶‍♂️ Artists On Tour: After receiving backlash for Matt Healy’s anti-LGBTQ protests in Malaysia, The 1975 has canceled their next international tour stops in Jakarta and Taipei; last month, Ethel Cain collapsed onstage at Sydney Opera House amidst tour exhaustion, but this month she’s in better spirits, releasing additional U.S. tour dates; Tim McGraw announced a 2024 tour; The Head and the Heart, Pierce the Veil, STAYC.

📈 What’s Trending? After BTS announced their indefinite hiatus earlier this year, each member embarked on their respective solo career. Jung Kook is the first to score a #1 single, beating out Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” which is currently amidst music video controversy for purported dog-whistle racism.

💿 Our Playlist Collection

1. 🍳 Balanced Breakfast: A balance of genres to satisfy your music hunger.

2. 🌊 Midsommar Solstice: Songs for your summer rotation.

3. 🤠 Austin City Limits: An annual music retreat to the land of tacos and cowboys. 2023 is a return to ACL's indie roots while showcasing talented upcoming British artists. We recommend shuffling.

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See ya next Sunday 😎

Chris and Donya