What a week for new music! Sarah Jarosz, who’s at Iron Horse on the 26th and The Sinclair on the 38th, just released her new album, Undercurrent. And Margaret Glaspy’s “Emotions and the Math,” the debut LP for the singer who graced the Club Passim and Lizard Lounge stages night after night from 2008 to 2011, dropped on Friday. Plus, Spoon gave us this teaser on Friday. Gah, we’re gonna have new Spooooon tooooons!
Berklee and MIT Team Up To Solve The Digital Music Crisis
One of the biggest challenges facing the music industry is the the fact that digital music services, not to mention the variety of ways in which people pirate music online, make the problem of paying artists fairly for their work a more complicated one. Taylor Swift made headlines when she pulled her music from Spotify because she felt that the streaming site, which typically pays artists less than one cent per play, undervalued the worth of the artist. Platforms like Tidal, which charge listeners for the use of their site, claim to be more supportive of artists, but they also inspire listeners to search for free/illegal sources for their music.
In perhaps the biggest initiative to address this problem we’ve seen so far, the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship is teaming with the MIT Media Lab to lead a collaborative charge to find a fairer, more efficient way to both track and honor artists’ copyrights. There isn’t a specific plan in place yet for how this “Open Music Initiative” will solve these problems. But it will be an industry-wide effort — Netflix, Pandora, Soundcloud, Spotify, and Youtube are among the organizations to have signed on to aid the effort.
MIT’s innovative mindset will also shape the project. OMI’s design is based on research into innovation ecosystems and network graph theory. The group is calling it “a multi-stakeholder inclusive innovation system.” They hope the end result to be an “open source, shared ledger of rights owners and creators.”
The plan will likely appear more tangible following the first member meeting, which is this Wednesday in New York. Read more about the project on OMI’s blog and Pitchfork.
Make Music Boston
I talked about this two weeks ago, and now “Make Music Boston” is only a day away! Here’s the full list of artists and performance venues. Among the performances: “Too Many Trombones” (exactly what it sounds like) will be at City Hall Plaza from 1-2 and Liberty Mall in the Common from 7-8. The Lynnefield High School Jazz Combo plays Childe Hassam Park in Boston from 11-12:30 and The Paint Bar on Newbury St. from 2-3:30. And 375 Newbury St. hosts bluegrass fiddler Ilana Katz from 12:30-2.
Other venues to check out: and the after party at Thunder Road from 8-9:30. The Boston Architectural College on Newbury Street, Copley Square, the Frog Pond, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway. There will also be a State of Live Music in Boston Forum from 7-9 on Hampshire St. in Cambridge.
Berklee Summer Shows
Looking for artsy summer fun? Berklee has you covered with a full slate of summer shows, with over 200 performances around the city in between May and September. There will be plenty of outdoor music, with summer-long series at Somerville’s Assembly Row’s amphitheater, Atlantic Wharf on the waterfront in Boston, and the ICA (free shows on Thursday nights!), among others. There’s also the Salem Jazz and Soul Festival, a flurry of Club Passim shows, and performances in the Boston Public Library courtyard. Check out the calendar of performances here.
Selected Sounds: 5 Shows To Start Off Your Summer