Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Beat.
How Much Is the Music Industry Really Worth?
The net worth of the music industry has become an attractive topic in the modern times. From the onset, it is clear that the music industry is perhaps one of the most innovative business ventures in the society. Artists express themselves in various ways according to their preferred genre. In the current music scene, there are countless genres ranging from hip hop, reggae, and raga to dancehall, classics, and rhythm and blues. The traditional music genres such as reggae and raga are getting phased out by more energetic beats from hip-hop and rhythm and blues. Musicians earn their incomes from the sale of music albums or through royalties awarded from the regulatory agency. In a properly regulated system, the returns accruing to players build them.
By Will Vasquez9 years ago in Beat
Most Awkward Album Covers
Everyone is told to never judge a book by its cover, for the contents inside might surprise you. That rule does not apply to awkward album art. More often than not the album with a gasp-inducing cover will produce gasp-inducing songs. From coming off insincere to just missing the mark completely, bad album artwork will never die and has become something of a fascination with music fans. Horizon lines? Forget those. Coherent theme? Yeah right. Wardrobe that makes you look like a normal human? You’re in the wrong business. After an extensive search and a lot of eye bleach, here is the final “cream of the crop”; please enjoy these awkward album covers.
By Adam Quinn9 years ago in Beat
Best Album Covers of the 80s
Album covers of the 80s mirrored the bright and manic aesthetic of the decade itself. Album covers, in general, are meant to be a visual accompaniment to the music contained within. In a way, these strong visual statements serve as the perfect manifestation of the electro-pop bombast of the decade. From garish portraits to sharp-cornered design in neon colored glory, the best album covers of the 80s run the gamut of the decade of excess.
By Will Vasquez9 years ago in Beat
Rise of the Ukulele
Ukuleles are largely associated with the Hawaiian islands. But they originated from a different island chain-the Portguese Islands of Madeira, based off a similar, small guitar-like instrument known as a machete. In the 1880s, the Portuguese immigrated to Hawaii to work in the sugar cane fields. Ukulele roughly translates to “jumping flea” in English, which is what Hawaiians first thought Portuguese immigrant Joao Fernandez’s fingers looked like as they played the four strings on his machete. Once immigrants Manual Numes, Augusto Dias and Jose do Espirito Santo fulfilled their contracts on the fields, they moved to Honolulu to work in their former woodworking professions. Nearly a year later, they had each opened their own stores, where they specialized in stringed instruments.
By Adam Quinn9 years ago in Beat
Nat Shapiro & Nat Hentoff's 'The Jazz Makers'
Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Billie Holliday, Fats Waller, Roy Eldridge, and Charlie Christian are a few of the jazz masters whose diverse and several talents, blossoming intensely over half a century like the dramatists of Elizabeth, Charles, and James, meet in The Jazz Makers a set of critics whose gift and moment it is to capture in prose, in virtually every essay herein, some of the most precise verbal pictures of the music these writers have heard.
By Rhonda Taylor9 years ago in Beat
Great Bands That Only Made One Album
There are a handful of great bands that only made one album, with various reasons for their lack of a second. Some of the bands met unfortunate fates, while others split up because they were only side projects to their members from the get go. Whatever the reason, there are a surprising number of great bands that you might not realize only made one album.
By Will Vasquez9 years ago in Beat
How Playlists Are Influencing the Future of Music
We rarely experience music as a single song. Popular music has always been shared in lists of some kind, whether it be in memorized performances, concerts, albums, radio selections, or sets selected by DJs. With the advent of new music technologies, more people have instant access to music and want to find more all the time. Playlists have become central to the way these users listen to and discover new music, and the element of curation remains, just in a different form. As technologies like Spotify become the norm, this curation has moved to playlists. While many playlists are still selected and promoted by celebrities and music experts, the beautiful thing is that the curation is now often in the hands of the listeners themselves. These lists have taken the form of albums, concerts, radio selections, and sets selected by DJs. Songs have always been arranged into playlists of sorts. Whether it be albums, performances, or radio selections, curation has always been an important part of making music popular, and popular music culture. But with the advent of new technologies like Spotify and Google Play Music, listening to full albums and performances seems to be taking a backseat to listening to playlists. The major difference is that now these playlists are often in the hands of users or the technology-owners themselves.
By Adam Quinn9 years ago in Beat
