These Days: Thursday, February 2nd, 2017
Streaming Prince: As the world awaits the Prince catalog on Warner Brothers return to the major streaming services in ten days, one assumes the NPG releases can’t be far behind either, here is a question: Prince didn’t leave a will but he explicitly removed his music from streaming services a year and a half ago. Why is his wishes being ignored by his inheritors. OK, we know why, but Prince was rich enough. They don’t need more. I am not sure what the answer is but at the least I think album by album should be remastered and released. Deluxe editions are prickly for an artist as careful with his product as Prince was, but can we agree that at least a live show from the same period could be added. Outtakes and demos? I think Prince was too important to just throw em away despite what might have been his wishes. And who will write the booklet. A video of a performance, maybe interviews from the time… But just throwing the Warner Brothers albums onto Spotify is really naff.
The Media: Everybody I know is watching news channels nonstop as the Trump years unfold in glorious technicolor. I’m not sure if you know much about how the advertising business works, but General sells in the upfront at negotiated rates and CPPs and the networks provide added inventory for short falls. If the networks are over delivering (and the news networks are at least over delivering) , they don’t have to air makegood commercials and therefore there is more inventory for the scatter market. In other words, Trump is good for business.
The Nuclear Option: Of course Trump recommends it, but killing the filibuster could come back to haunt the GOP one of these days.
New Music: January was about singles, and there were a handful of good ones. As opposed to the disappointING album releases. February will bring Ryan Adams’ Prisoner so we know we have one great album in the works.
Old Music: Back to Prince before Tug Of War, and The Chocolate Invasion, though a compilation of songs previously released through the NPG club, is very very good. I prefer it to Musicology. That’s the great thing about going deep into back catalogs, there are so many surprises.
