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July 2017 - p.9
Nick J Townsend is the frontman and
guitarist for British band Weak13
An experienced Underground
musician and music promoter
Supporter of original music
Alleged hater of the poor and corporate
monster Kiss's Gene Simmons has now
abandoned his attempt to trademark the devil
horns Hopefully it was Satan himself who
disputed the rockstars claim that Gene himself
had popularised the gesture and responded by
attempting to trademark Simmons tongue to
prevent him from using it to talk bollocks again
One of the hurdles the money savvy rocker
would have faced would be enforcing it as
he would potentially have to sue anyone using
the sign of the horns without his permission
However many rock fans would probably have
contested that Gene really only had solid legal
grounds to copyright the middle finger seeing
as he seems to have made this particular hand
gesture more popular in recent times because
everyone is now using it at him
The conglomerate overlords of evil Apple Music
are doing so well financially that they are
offering to give the music industry a smaller
portion of revenues from streaming and are in
active discussions to renew its contracts (set to
expire in several weeks) with Universal Music
Sony Music and Warner Music the big three
record labels that own the rights to the vast
majority of songs on the streaming service
Apple currently pays a more generous rate than
industry leader and dominant competitor
Spotify who was recently able to secure more
favourable terms under the condition that it
can continue growing paid subscribers Spotify
now has
million paid subscribers whilst
Apple Music has million though the music
streaming firm Spotify is still deeply in the shit
as it reported a net loss of
m euros
(G m) more than double the figure for
So what does all this mean? Well Spotify
is growing rapidly like the Incredible Hulk but
can barely afford to keep buying new pairs of
pants whereas Apple wants more money so
that it can improve its successful pants
manufacturing business
June th was BBC Music Day an important
date to unite communities So important that I
was only made aware of it on June
th
Apparently
events took place around the
UK including Ozzy Osbourne being used as the
voice of the Midland Metro for hours and
part of me thought "How the hell did I miss
this?" Of course most of us missed it because
of the horrendous event in London which took
place the day before BBC Music Day went
largely unnoticed televisions were still
broadcasting rolling news of Grenfell Tower
burning meanwhile Black Country train
commuters were awkwardly listening to the
Prince of Darkness mouthing lyrics to "Fire In
The Sky" on their way to work whilst trying to
make sense of what was happening Recently I
saw a tweet saying "Can anyone suggest any
non wedding songs I can play? I have a two
hour set and the Bride has bolted" In a similar
manner there must have been musicians up
and down the country throughout BBC Music
Day franticly removing songs by Billy Joel
Arthur Brown and The Prodigy from their set
list for fear of bad taste For those that missed
BBC Music Day celebrations it's worth looking
up what took place as for example all BBC
Local Radio stations and the Asian Network in
England teamed up with the British Plaque
Trust to unveil
historic Blue Plaques
celebrating iconic musicians and venues This
was the third year of BBC Music Day and I really
hope it continues
STREAMINGNEWS
BBCMUSICDAY
NICK
J
TOWNSEND
GENE SIMMONS
@weak13
@nickjtownsend
