After an unpleasantly long stretch on the rumor mill--even by Apple standards--complicated by a hard-bargaining Sony Music, iTunes Radio finally exists. For the most part, the rumor mill got it right: It's a lot like Pandora, it has text and audio ads (which feel strange on an Apple product), and it's integrated with iTunes, Apple's streaming-beset music behemoth.

If they'd just ended up calling it "iRadio," which is destined to be the iTouch of garbled service names, the rumor sites would be justified in declaring themselves victorious over Apple's vaunted secret-keeping.

But the most surprising thing about iTunes Radio is something we should have guessed at all along: It's not a competitor of Pandora or Spotify so much as a backdoor attempt at keeping the iTunes Music Store relevant.

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We all have bands that defined our youth--that made us love music, that maybe even introduced us to a new feeling that we didn't know existed. Whether it's the psychedelic rock of the '60s, punk of the '70s, thrash of the '80s, or grunge of the '90s, every generation has its own musical roots.

And as history has shown us, those roots always cycle back and show through again eventually. But rarely do they return as poignantly and quickly as the recent nostalgia-heavy marketing renaissance of '90s alt-rock and grunge.

It's happened so fast that I think it's best to not even think of this resurgence as a "revival."

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Benjamin Leatherman

Seasoned festival-goers at McDowell Mountain.

Music festivals have been around for decades, and they're only becoming more popular. Each year, millions of fans fly around the world to attend more than 270 fests of various genres in the United States alone. They aren't a cheap experience, either: between festival tickets, travel, hotels and basics like food and water, you end up dropping anywhere from $500 to $1000, and beyond (ahem: This might be a good time to check out our list of 11 Ways to Attend a Music Festival on a Budget.)

Which raises one inevitable question: is it really worth going to festivals out of town?

The act of actually getting to a festival out of the Phoenix area can be a love/hate relationship... or at least it is for me. (Please, PR friends--don't revoke my press applications! You can't see this, but I'm batting eyelashes that aren't nearly as convincing after a peace-treaty whiskey shot.)

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bobvoglar.deviantart.com

How much is music worth to people?

This isn't a new question for me. For the past 25 years I've fed my family by selling the stuff. And even though I haven't operated a brick-and-mortar record store for almost a year now, I'm still as curious about it, and as relatively uncertain, as always.

After all, I'm still a music fan of the highest level. I was born that way. The big difference is that now I'm out here in the real world, making buying decisions as a consumer. No more promos. No more wholesale. No more first-look at the used buys. I'm a music consumer, just like you, spending my extra cash, looking at my options.

And one thing is pretty clear from this vantage point: Things have gotten to a place where I simply do not need to spend money on music to enjoy it.

See Also:
- Steve Wiley: Study Concludes That Kids Today Are Musically Spoiled Rotten.
- Steve Wiley: What Is The Parent Hood Doing Up On The Sun?

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Friend-to-friend: Valotte still sounds unnervingly like John Lennon singing a bunch of okay-ish songs.

Twitter #Music -- the music-discovery service from the people who brought you #SomaliDirectionersLoveZayn-style declarations of collectivist fandom love -- rolled out this week, and people are . . . not especially happy with it. A blunt summary of the problems with it was passed around among tech-liberal-arts-blog types over the weekend.

The Popular pane is useless to anyone over the age of 17. Emerging seems to simply be the inverse of Popular and is therefore equally hopeless. Swipe over to Suggested and we're finally getting somewhere, save for the fact that the secret sauce of what makes an artist "suggested" is completely opaque . . .

. . . which just about covers all the means of music discovery in the app. But the real problem with Twitter #Music and social-music apps more generally is simpler and not about design at all: Do you like your friends' taste in music to begin with? All your friends?

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Lauren Wise

You know what I like . . .

It looks like all these Record Store Days are paying off. In 2012, global sales for vinyl records hit $171 million, their highest point since 1997 -- the same year that Hanson's "MMMBop" topped the charts.

This Saturday, April 20, marks the sixth annual Record Store Day, when artists and labels dish out rare and exclusive releases to fans that results in a sort-of major shopping day on the musical calendar.

There are lots of reasons to love vinyl, especially heavy metal vinyl -- besides the fact that you can play them backwards and get the messages Satan wants you to hear.

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Timothy Norris

By Brett Koshkin

As the corpses of corporate music retail chains like Tower Records and Blockbuster Music litter dying strip malls, Amoeba Music thrives as an independent juggernaut with three California-based stores the size of supermarkets. Amoeba has been a celebrated shopping destination for West Coast music aficionados for more than two decades and is a place that shines a light on small artists and labels, giving fledgling releases an audience and, in many cases, much-craved sales they might not attain in big-box stores. A large part of Amoeba's charm is the thousands of used records that are given a chance at a second life. But the store's latest move has left some music lovers and industry professionals scratching their heads.

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So this one time, my college roommate was gonna buy this album. It came in two formats: CD and MP3. The CD version was a few bucks cheaper. I argued with my roommate that a CD was a better deal because you also got a physical copy of something, but he went for the MP3 download anyway because he didn't want to wait and didn't want more shit cluttering up his life.

That was my first thought when I heard Amazon's new AutoRip program. Now, if you buy specially marked compact discs from the Internet giant, you get the MP3 version instantly, for free. No waiting! But what's the fucking point?

See also:

Why Is There So Much Indie Rock on Television?
My Stolen MP3 Collection Got Stolen
MAN-CAT's Pussy Cola Antics Grabbed Attention of Pepsi's Lawyers

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By Dave Good

It's hard not to notice: Indie bands seemingly soundtrack just about every sitcom, film and television commercial today. But why? Influential music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas swears it's not just about cheap labor.

"It's far more of a creative decision than a monetary one," she says. "We're picking out the kind of music that the characters in the show might listen to."

Patsavas worked on the music for The O.C., known for breaking indie bands, as well as Grey's Anatomy, Roswell and The Twilight Saga, the latest of which comes out Nov. 16. Since 1998 she's run her own Pasadena-based music company, Chop Shop Supervision, which became its own record label five years ago.

See also: Indie Rock Is Worth Hating
See also: My Stolen MP3 Collection Got Stolen
See also: Hydra Head Records: A Personal Recollection

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"Don't rock the boat, sink it!" commands the anonymous scribe behind I Hate Indie Rock, a fiery Twitter account that has been launching crust-punk-tinged salvos at publicists, nostalgia and vapidity in the indie rock realm. The account has been around only since October, and at this point, the feed has devolved into a rather entertaining broad-stroke fuck-all fest. It has still managed to draw the intrigue, both serious and not, of a number of music critics and sites.

See also: Why You Shouldn't Hate Indie Rock

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