St Vincent performs 'Digital Witness' and 'Birth In Reverse' on 'Saturday Night Live'

May 18, 2014 10:59

Annie Clark played two tracks from her 'St Vincent' album on the comedy show

St Vincent performed 'Digital Witness' and 'Birth In Reverse' on Saturday Night Live last night (May 18).

Scroll down to watch the musician running through both tracks on the US comedy sketch show, which was hosted by Andy Samberg.

[HD] St. Vincent - Digital Witness - SNL 5-17-14 by IdolxMuzic

[HD] St. Vincent - Birth In Reverse - SNL 5-17-14 by IdolxMuzic

St Vincent will tour the UK in August, after rescheduling a run of dates that were meant to take place this month. The shows follow the February release of St Vincent's eponymous new album, which was recorded in Dallas, Texas with Dap-Kings drummer Homer Steinweiss, McKenzie Smith of Midlake and producer John Congleton.

St Vincent will play:

Cambridge Junction (August 19)
Leeds Met University (20)
Bristol O2 Academy (21)
Glasgow O2 ABC (26)
Gateshead The Sage (27)
Liverpool O2 Academy (28)

To check the availability of St Vincent tickets and get all the latest listings, go to NME.COM/TICKETS now, or call 0844 858 6765

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Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' tops Billboard album, digital charts

Singer Robin Thicke performs on NBC's ''Today'' show in midtown New York, July 30, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Carlo Allegri

By Piya Sinha-Roy

LOS ANGELES | Wed Aug 7, 2013 3:55pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - R&B singer Robin Thicke landed his first No. 1 album on Wednesday as his latest record, "Blurred Lines," topped the Billboard 200 album chart, led by the single of the same name that has become one of this summer's biggest hits.

Thicke's sixth studio album sold 177,000 copies in its first week, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan. The album features collaborations with rappers Kendrick Lamar, T.I. and singer/producer Pharrell Williams.

The album's lead single, "Blurred Lines," featuring T.I. and Williams, spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart this summer.

Thicke, 36, son of Canadian actor Alan Thicke, first emerged a decade ago with the album "A Beautiful World" and reached a new level this year with the catchy, raunchy hit "Blurred Lines," which also yielded an eyebrow-raising, nudity-filled video.

The single also climbed back to No. 1 on Billboard's Digital Songs chart this week after being knocked off by One Direction's "Best Song Ever" last week. "Blurred Lines" sold 400,000 downloads this week, bringing its total digital tally to 4.2 million since its release in March.

Rock band Five Finger Death Punch entered the chart at No. 2 this week with its latest album, "The Wrong Side of Heaven and the Righteous Side of Hell: Volume 1," selling 112,000 copies. It came ahead of rapper Jay Z's "Magna Carta ... Holy Grail," which dropped one spot to No. 3.

Other new entries in the top 10 on this week's Billboard 200 album chart include indie rapper Tech N9ne's "Something Else" at No. 4 and boy band Backstreet Boys at No. 5 with "In A World Like This."

Backstreet Boys, one of the biggest U.S. pop bands of the 1990s, are staging a comeback with all five original members and embarked on a world tour with another 1990s boy band, New Kids on the Block, in 2012.

"In a World Like This" is Backstreet Boys' ninth album to make its debut in the top 10 of the Billboard 200.

Pop rockers Emblem3, one of the runners-up on Fox reality talent show "The X Factor" last year, entered the Billboard album chart at No. 7 with their debut record, "Nothing to Lose."

Overall album sales in the week ending August 4 totaled 5.1 million, down 3 percent from the comparable week in 2012.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Eric Kelsey and Bill Trott)

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Why Digital Music News 'Playa Hates' On Pandora...

If you don't have a problem with Tim Westergren making a million dollars a month while emailing artists to support his crusade to lower royalties, then maybe you need to look at the situation differently.  This isn't 'playa hating,' rather, it's questioning why the playing field is so uneven and distorted to begin with.   

Indeed, Westegren 'started at the bottom' and now he's here: Pandora has the most listeners and listening hours of anyone online, and accounts for nearly 8 percent of all radio listening in the United States.  Those are very significant accomplishments, and to hear Westergren tell the story of when he was at 'the bottom' is inspirational.  But it's now becoming obvious that Pandora's numbers - by design - are coming at the expense of not only profits, but artist welfare as well.  

Big numbers are mainly interesting to Wall Street, investors, and few top Pandora executives who are becoming obscenely wealthy. It makes it difficult for Apple to push Pandora off the deck; it squeezes out up-and-coming competitors like Slacker and iHeartRadio.  But this all seems to be creating a perverse disincentive against actually make money and creating a viable business, unless it involves markedly slashing artist royalty rates.

There are other ways to do this.  Since the beginning, Pandora has always argued that royalty rates are the problem, not an inherently flawed business model.  But a series of events over the past week are now substantially challenging that assumption, and potentially changing the discourse on Capitol Hill.  Because it may not be that Pandora can't solve their monetary problems on their own, but rather that they don't want to.

There's now mounting evidence of this.  It all started when Pandora, for reasons related to royalty expenses, resumed listening caps for power users.  But instead of ditching 'Netflix style,' a very substantial percentage of listeners actually stuck around.  It looked like this.

Now, there's more research confirming that forcing listeners to pay generates significant revenue.  In fact, that simple cap put Pandora at the top of this app revenue ranking (excluding games).

So, more revenues means a better model, which means less need to lower royalties, right?  Not exactly: in a recent financial call, Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy indicated that 'Pandora One' premium tiers would be used sparingly, as a mere addition to the mainline, free service. 

All of which makes it really hard not to be cynical here, especially as executives like Tim Westergren continue to curry favor with confused artists.  Because maybe a viable, workable model involves smaller listener levels but elevated revenues, while maintaining artist royalty rates.  But that's not a version that Pandora likes, or wants you to believe is possible.  

And that's why they're getting hated on.

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Pro Tools Is No Longer the Biggest Digital Audio Workstation...

That's according to Digital Music Doctor, which has been tracking Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) popularity since 2004.  And the latest results are pretty surprising: instead of Pro Tools, Imageline's FL Studio now takes the cake, both on a quarterly and yearly average basis.  

One thing to keep in mind is that this is not based on actual unit sales, rather popularity across search engines (Google, Yahoo+Bing), social networks (Facebook, Twitter) and YouTube. 

Also of note: Native Instruments' Maschine just entered as a fourth-ranked package, displacing Apple's GarageBand to number five. 

Written while listening to Bassnectar and Amon Tobin.

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TuneCore Tells Digital Music News: Keep Jeff Price's Name Out of This...

Tuesday, October 30, 2012
by  paul

Some divorces are messier than others.  And this one's definitely personal: after abruptly chopping longtime leader and cofounder Jeff Price, Tunecore now seems determined to erase the memory of Price entirely.  In fact, as a condition for interviewing a TuneCore executive about future plans for the company, we were asked to keep Price completely out of it.    

After beating around the bush a bit, this was flatly emailed to us by TuneCore's press relations group during setup:     

The interview never happened. 

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