On My Reading List This Week: Blockchain, Spotify, and Kanye of course.

For the past four years or so, I have been sharing a weekly email with my colleagues (who also happen to be my friends, which is why they bother to read it every Friday), rambling on about what is happening in music, data, and tech. Standard format reads:

  • Overly cheerful morning greeting to insinuate that I am not at all hungover.
  • The most interesting things I have read this week, or at least skimmed and noted as important enough that I (definitely!) must learn more about it later.
  • Joke about Justin Bieber.
  • Some more, but probably slightly less interesting things that I have far too strong opinions about.
  • A freaken awesome graph/viz of my choosing.
  • Some absolutely hilarious YouTube video.
  • Gif.
  • Goodbye.

Now. The reason I am telling you all this, is because I have decided to take my ramblings public. Please enjoy.

Well if it isn’t another fine Friday my friends.

So much happened this week guys: RiRi dropped her new album, Kanye lost his shit on the Twitter, a group of us volunteered at Holy Apostles, and a bunch of our engineers kicked ass working on the upgrade over the weekend. I tip my hat to you all.

Dude. Amanda Cox was made editor of the Upshot. Boom. (NY Times)

Spotify is raising a bunch of money. Like a lot. Like a lot a lot. (MBW)

All the majors have quietly signed licensing deals with a new streaming service. (MBW)

Interesting opinion piece in the Times Magazine last weekend. The gist is that artists relying on touring for income, coupled with the risks involved and money lost, is not sustainable. I didn’t quite follow. (NY Times)

Still trying to wrap my head around blockchain. (Forbes)

And then of course there is Rihanna’s not-so-surprise-kind-of-a-leak? album drop. You can’t listen to it yet unless you’re a Tidal subscriber, so here’s a complete guide while we wait. (Fuse)

And if Karl’s roundup of Kanye’s tirade in Slack wasn’t enough, here’s the full unedited (incomprehensible) version. (GQ)

Nice big bump there for our man Kanye.

I can’t tell you what rabbit hole of the internet brought me to this video, but I also can’t believe it took me like two weeks to find it. If you love Adele as much as Abby and I do, this is well worth the 15 mins (at the very least hold on until she channels Nicki Minaj). (YouTube)

That’s pretty much what I got! Happy weekend team.