Showing posts with label Kenickie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kenickie. Show all posts

Tuesday 12 May 2020

Stream Girls


I'm not sure why , maybe because I'm a sexist , male chauvinist misogynist , but I find some of the phrasing and vocabulary of Lauren Laverne and Mary Ann Hobbs a bit grating and pretentious with "down with the kids" descriptions of certain musical pieces , however I'm OK with Craig Charles and Shaun Keaveny coming out with similar things.

It doesn't stop me listening to their music though , and they are far better that the dross available on commercial radio and  other BBC stations and today Mary Ann Hobbs had a guy on discussing the state of streaming. Now as you know I will not have anything to do with Spotify because it's an unworkable model and today I found out something more about the model that makes it even worse.

When you (or the person who's giving it your free) pays Spotify or whoever their monthly fee this is what happens. They take their cut and then the money goes into a big pot. It is the paid out to artists based on the the number of streamed songs they have. So what that means ids that you may have a a predilection for Egyptian and Iranian folk and listen exclusively to that music. Which is good for you but not the artist. Why? Because the money you may is split based on all streamings so if Ed Sheeran gets a million times the streams your artists get , then he will get that chunk of your subscription and the artists you listen to get next to nothing. So basically Spotify is even worse than I thought.

So a big , big thank you to Mary Ann Hobbs (and possibly Lauren Laverne) for illuminating me on this. They are extremely good and I can put up with the bits that niggle me. Here's my last post on the situation and to go with this I will share "Stealin'" by Uriah Heep , in my opinion a great record  with a vague connection to the situation.

Wednesday 4 December 2019

Send Me A Postcard


Today I intend to do the Ingleton Waterfalls Trail , I've been coming properly to Settle but only came across it when I also found Scalebar Force last time and so thought it would be worth doing it for  a morning as I do like walking in nature.

Although I don't go abroad these days (I hate queuing, I hate airport check ins, and I also hate driving so always take the train when practical.

Ingleton is a twenty minute bus journey away, and featured heavily in the Michael Moorcock book "The Skrayling Tree" so I'm not sure if any landmarks will show upfrom that book.

Anyway I switched on 6Music and Lauren Laverne (ex Kenickie and went to school with my eldest daughter Juliet) was playing "Send Me A Postcard Baby". Now this is a record I know very well and love but I seriously don't know how it got into my mind-library, and it was only this morning I found out it was by Shocking Blue, more famous for their more famous but more mundane "Venus".

So that's the one we go with today.