Controlling the distribution of music — and thus making sure composers get paid for their labour and talent — has been a problem that dates back to the invention of the printing press. In 1498, less than 50 years after Johannes Gutenberg revealed the printing press, a savvy entrepreneur named …

Hip-hop has a long, tragic history of murder and mayhem. Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G., Big L., Fat Pat, Mac Dre, Big Hawk, Magnolia Shorty, XXXTentacion, Nipsey Hustle, Pop Smoke and dozens of others have been shot since the late ’80s. In terms of infamy, the unsolved murders of Shakur and …

Every generation or so, a major artist enters what’s called their imperial phase, a period of their career where they can’t seem to do anything wrong. Everything aligns perfectly and it seems that the universe now revolves around that act. Right now that artist is Taylor Swift. This kind of …

When I was in high school and university, every Wednesday afternoon required to the Rexall drug store in my small prairie hometown. That was the day any new music magazines appeared in the racks. Using money I earned stocking shelves in the local grocery store, I’d grab the latest editions …

I’ve always dreamed of seeing a genuine honest-to-God UFO. Like Fox Mulder of The X-Files, I really want to believe there’s something Out There in the maybe two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. My grandparents lived just a few miles from the location of the infamous Falcon Lake Incident …

I’m a curious fellow when it comes to music and how the world interacts with it. This makes me a sucker for press releases touting brand-new information about music and … well, it could be anything. Usually, it’s the results of a study commissioned by an ad agency on behalf …

A wise music industry person once told me that the average lifespan of a band is about seven years. You form, get better, get big, peak, enter a decline, and then break up. You burn through all your youthful angst and energy, grow older, gain new perspectives, find yourself with …

There’s a scene in the biopic Creation Stories where Ewan Brenner, channelling Creation Records founder Alan McGee in a scene with his therapist, rants about the demands of finding The Next Big Thing in music. “I’m spending millions on noises that I have no idea if anyone will like!” Welcome …

I still remember the Delco AM radio in my dad’s 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 that sat smack in the middle of the dash with its two knobs. The one on the left set the volume as well as turned it off and on. It had an inner ring on the …

Before the internet, a band could break up, its members retire, and still be a profitable venture. The Beastie Boys, for example, sold so many records that they could count on albums like Licensed to Ill and Ill Communication to each sell a million or two copies a year. The …

On the last Wednesday in August, the good citizens of Buñol, Spain, gather in the main square to throw tomatoes at each other. No one is entirely sure why, either. All most people care about is that it’s fun to pelt friends and strangers with tomatoes, so the La Tomatina …

Last weekend, I spent a couple of hours at the semi-annual Downtown Record Show in Toronto. I brought along my usual amount of gambling money, $200, and started digging through the crates and boxes looking for … I don’t know, really. Treasure? Something I didn’t know I needed? A lost …