"The music industry has spent a decade obsessing over how to get a million people to listen to a song once. The next decade will be defined by artists figuring out how to get 1,000 people to care forever."
vibeshiftvibeshiftvibeshiftvibeshiftvibeshiftvibeshiftvibeshiftvibeshiftvibeshiftvibeshiftvib
Some of them are asking for their billion dollars back
I followed the biggest story of the week: how an Amazon delivery van became marooned on the Broomway www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
DEMIS #totp
Roger Deakins might be the greatest cinematographer of our age, so I’m intrigued to read his memoir www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...
very grateful to The Quietus for publishing this essay- on everyday fascism and the promise and problem of “beauty” as an inadequate but therapeutic response to the ugliness of the present - plus there are some thoughts on disco and Patricia Highsmith- this felt like a risk but I’m glad it’s out
No adverts on the ridiculously named DuckDuckGo browser. I think it works well.
RIP Kenny Morris: original punk, Banshee drummer extraordinaire. I knew him well in the Banshees and was in touch with him recently about his memoir. Which I hope will be published. God bless you Kenny
Every year, Luminate releases Spotify data on streaming numbers, payouts, uploads, etc. The data for 2025, released today, shows that a whopping 88% of tracks on Spotify have been demonetized.
That’s Ambrose looking at you, his Brother, Claude, sleeping next door 😊 - Half Maine Coone and half Snow Bengal Panthers.
‘New Rose by The Damned is often said to be the first punk single, but Ubu’s debut preceded that by almost a year, and the first releases by Joy Division, Wire, Magazine and PiL by considerably more than that'
Remembering Those We Lost In 2025: David Thomas of #PereUbu
buff.ly/JzGyvR9
Edition of only 100 CD-Rs
What is this release? Not on Discogs. Is this some photoshop devilry?
Not many CDs left when I checked earlier… no digital either
This is Virginia Astley's beautiful new record The Singing Places. It can be ordered from her Bandcamp page, I think. One of the many delighful things about this music is that the field recordings of birds, from chiffchaff to wren, are listed in the credits in the order that each species appears.
i post this story every christmas, and will keep doing so until it stops making me cry
merry christmas xx
James Ransone, star of 'The Wire' and 'It: Chapter Two,' dies at 46
A little flavour of #Ramsgate harbour at #Christmas. 🎥🌅🎅😀👍 #visitramsgate #ramsgateilluminations #Thanet
They played this before the revival screening this summer and it killed. Full theater, laughing uproariously.
A U.S. customs officer having to go through my social media history
‘Here’s a snide way of summarising modern British history: a 400-year campaign by the propertied classes to make the English forget about the 1640s.’
Neal Ascherson on England’s monarchism problem:
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...
SOTL posted a 2016 tour diary this week. I never mourned someone famous i had never met until Brian died, there’s a void in my heart knowing I will never see this band again. truly I hope everyone in this world feels this way aboit one artist at some point in their life. youtu.be/I5zCV7RJR50?...
I put it to you that Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” is not merely the worst Christmas song but is also in fact the worst song in the history of recorded sound.
Only…
