Blur
Nifty News: LooksRare the latest NFT market to sack royalties, Twitter’s tweeting tiles and more
Nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace LooksRare is the latest in a string of NFT markets to do away with enforcing creator royalties by default, following the likes of Magic Eden and X2Y2. The platform tweeted on Oct. 27 that it would not be supporting creator royalties by default, instead choosing to share 25% of its protocol fees with NFT creators and collection owners. Buyers can still choose to pay royalties when purchasing an NFT but it will be on an opt-in basis. Explaining the changes, it said 0.5% of its 2% protocol fee would go to collections, as long as that collection has a receiving address for the funds. LooksRare said the willingness of buyers to pay royalties has “eroded” as a result of many NFT markets now moving to a zero-royalty model adding that these disadvantage cre...
30 Overlooked 1991 Albums Turning 30 This Year
1991 was a transformative year for rock music, a time when alternative rock and heavy metal entered a new era of commercial dominance. Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden ushered in the explosion of Seattle grunge alongside blockbuster albums by Metallica, R.E.M. and Red Hot Chili Peppers, to say nothing of influential indie classics by My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream and Slint, or SPIN’s album of the year, Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque. But while 1991’s hits set the agenda for alternative rock for the rest of the decade, the year was brimming over with fascinating career footnotes and debuts from other promising new bands. In England, the music press was excitedly hyping up genres like shoegaze, baggy, and whatever “grebo” was, while American indie bands like fIREHOSE, the Meat Puppe...
Facebook report: U.S. a top target for foreign and domestic influence operations
The United States topped a list of the countries most frequently targeted by deceptive foreign influence operations using Facebook between 2017 and 2020, the social media company said in a new report released on Wednesday. It also came second on a list of countries targeted by domestic influence operations in that same time period. Facebook Inc said one of the top sources of coordinated inauthentic behavior networks targeting the United States in the year leading up to the 2020 presidential election was domestic campaigns originating in the United States itself, as well as foreign operations from Russia and Iran. The tallies were based on the number of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” networks removed by Facebook, a term it uses for a type of influence operations that relies on fake acco...
Watch Nandi Bushell Cover Blur’s ‘Song 2′ in a Union Jack Outfit
It didn’t take long for Nandi Bushell to share her first cover of 2021. On Sunday, the 10-year-old musical prodigy uploaded a performance of Blur’s “Song 2,” in which she plays drum, bass, guitar, and sings while donning a pretty fierce Union Jack outfit. “This week I have been learning about #Britpop, the 90’s and about this awesome battle between 2 bands called @blurofficial and @oasis,” she tweeted alongside the clip. “The 90 [sic] seemed like a fun time for music. Wahoo!!! Loving this song” See Bushell crush yet another cover below. Bushell said goodbye to 2020 with a sweet sing along accompanied by her family. “I wrote this song for you all and asked my family to jam it with me. I hope it puts a smile on your face even if its a little cheesy!” she wrote, thanking everyone for their su...
Watch Nandi Bushell Cover Blur’s ‘Song 2′ in a Union Jack Outfit
It didn’t take long for Nandi Bushell to share her first cover of 2021. On Sunday, the 10-year-old musical prodigy uploaded a performance of Blur’s “Song 2,” in which she plays drum, bass, guitar, and sings while donning a pretty fierce Union Jack outfit. “This week I have been learning about #Britpop, the 90’s and about this awesome battle between 2 bands called @blurofficial and @oasis,” she tweeted alongside the clip. “The 90 [sic] seemed like a fun time for music. Wahoo!!! Loving this song” See Bushell crush yet another cover below. Bushell said goodbye to 2020 with a sweet sing along accompanied by her family. “I wrote this song for you all and asked my family to jam it with me. I hope it puts a smile on your face even if its a little cheesy!” she wrote, thanking everyone for their su...
The 25 Best Albums of the Britpop Era
Contrary to popular belief, Britpop was not a subgenre. It was also not a catchall for every bit of culture being manufactured in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. (That would be “Cool Britannia,” and like Britpop it almost exclusively applied to English entities.) Instead, Britpop was originally a press-driven crusade to champion domestic talent that represented the customs and lifestyle in their music. The credit (or blame) for the whole thing really goes to journalist Stuart Maconie, whose “Yanks Go Home” cover story in the April 1993 issue of Select framed indie acts like Suede, Pulp, Saint Etienne and the Auteurs as an antidote to the “bad grunge” that was “killing British music.” Although Suede frontman Brett Anderson graced the Select cover, he publicly derided th...
The 25 Best Soundtrack Albums of the 1990s
In the 1980s, music and film collided for cross-promotional blockbusters both transcendent (Purple Rain) and transcendently cheesy (Footloose). In the ‘90s, soundtracks continued to sell in the millions, capturing cultural moments like the Seattle grunge of Singles or the Britpop and electronica of Trainspotting. Auteurs like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson reached deep into their record collections to set the mood while movies like Above the Rim and Menace II Society pioneered the concept of soundtracks as hip-hop mixtapes. A great soundtrack can propel an unsuccessful single, like Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose,” to the top of the charts, or revive a decades-old hit, like Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It can also push a cult singer-songwriter like Elliott Smith or Aimee Mann to an Oscar perf...
A Complete History of Musicians Running for Office
Celebrities making a run at public office is hardly a fresh phenomenon. That’s how we wound up with two terms of the Gipper in the White House, a former professional wrestler in the governor’s mansion of Minnesota, Gopher from the Love Boat in the House of Representatives, and the current political shitshow we find ourselves in. Nor is it a surprise to any regular person why they would think they could leverage their celebrity into a political career. This pathology isn’t unique to actors and reality TV stars either. Over the decades, a number of famous musicians have tried their hand at politics, some of them succeeding in their goals of policymaking and advocating on behalf of their constituents. While it may be jolting to see Kanye West weeping through a campaign event for his potential...
