News Round Up: 12/8/15

SFX Entertainment Collapsing, The Safe Clubbing Tragedy, and Are People Using Apple Music?

808 Around the World. The New Yorker joins musicians, producers, and fans celebrating ‘808 day’ (August 8th) with a cultural history of the Roland drum machine that created “a new, more potent meaning for the word ‘drums'” and was favoured by landmark artists from Afrika Bambaata to Marvin Gaye. Read in full here.

Why Nobody’s Leaving SoundCloud. Having issued new warnings to their users, SoundCloud has begun another copyrighted material purge, with many claims being traced back to Sony Music, which recently removed their artists from the audio streaming platform after licensing negotiations went sour. But with a list of alternatives, nobody appears to be leaving SoundCloud, 5Chicago explores the reasons why here.

Are People Using Apple Music? A study by music industry analytics firm MusicWatch found that 48% of the 11 million users who sampled Apple Music have stopped using the service, but of 5,000 Apple customers, two-thirds told researchers they were either “extremely likely” or “very likely” to pay for the service when their free trials ended. Find out more in the Guardian‘s report. To find out how the service’s curated internet radio station Beats 1 is doing in competition with other leading streaming platforms Spotify and Pandora, read Billboard‘s piece on the current web radio landscape here.

SFX Privatisation Bid Collapses – Bankruptcy On The Cards? According to Billboard‘s report, SFX Entertainment CEO Robert Sillerman’s recent attempt to take SFX private has failed, after his offer of $5.25 per share for the company became increasingly untenable due to a fall in stock prices, which continued to its current $1.55 per share. SFX issued a statement saying it is exploring “strategic alternatives” and wrote that it will consider offers on the company and its many constituent parts through October 2nd. Stock market insight service Seeking Alpha believes bankruptcy is next, citing a decline in ticket sales and festival popularity as another reason for the collapse here.

The Safe Clubbing Tragedy. Vice‘s clubland connoisseur Clive Martin posits the coming of a new style of going out: “A club culture that’s affluent but not gaudy, urbanised but certainly not intimidating, often utilising reclaimed, picturesque city locations such as rooftops and riverside spots.” The main criticism is that these parties are too safe, with Martin arguing that the “absolute lack of imagination just smacks of soulless organised fun.” Read the full piece here.

The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t. “Taking 1999 as my starting point — the year both Napster and Google took off — I plumbed as many data sources as I could to answer this one question: How is today’s creative class faring compared with its predecessor a decade and a half ago? The answer isn’t simple…”  Read the feature here.

Sly Stone Wins Multimillion Dollar Lawsuit. After two days of deliberations, The Los Angeles Superior Court announced its verdict that American funk singer Sylvester Stewart, aka Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone, has won his $5 million lawsuit against former manager and attorney Gerald Goldstein, who in the late 1980s induced him to sign an agreement used to divert millions in royalties, leaving him unable to get the money he said was due him. The artist was awarded $2.5 million in damages. Read the full story here.

How Trap Dominated The Decade. The Guardian looks into how, a decade since Young Jeezy’s Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101 was released, Atlanta’s trap sound, which was initially sold as a southern revival of west coast gangsta rap, has come from the Reagan-era “war on drugs” crack house to dominate the charts. Read that here.