In Touch Blog |
the beat starts here |
Back in 1965, Davy Jones answered an ad in Variety looking for "four insane boys" to star in a television comedy about a band resembling the Beatles. The result was "The Monkees," a pioneering effort in prefabricated pop culture. More...
Joel Beckerman spent about 18 months developing a song that boils down to a melody just four notes long.
He's one of a handful of composers who specialize in sonic logos, or the audio equivalents of the Nike "swoosh" or John Deere's leaping deer. More concise than a theme song and subtler than a jingle, sonic logos are brief melodies or sound effects designed to cement a brand in the consumer's subconscious mind. Famous examples include the five-note Intel bong, McDonald's "Ba da ba ba ba" signoff and NBC's three-note chime, in use since 1929. More...
Contrary to myth, providing consumers with convenient downloads at reasonable prices, as iTunes did, does not appear to have ameliorated piracy at all. More...
For years Dan Storper would get an occasional phone call from an executive at iTunes or the Amazon MP3 store, asking the same question every time: “Have you changed your mind yet?”
Jerry Leiber, the lyricist who, with his partner, Mike Stoller, wrote some of the most enduring classics in the history of rock ’n’ roll, including “Hound Dog,” “Yakety Yak,” “Stand By Me” and “On Broadway,” died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 78. More...
Nick Ashford, who with Valerie Simpson, his songwriting partner and later wife, wrote some of Motown’s biggest hits, like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough“ and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” and later recorded their own hits and toured as a duo, died Monday at a hospital in New York City. He was 70 and lived in Manhattan. More...
The prefab, gaudily costumed 1970s group the Village People and its big hit “Y.M.C.A.” are enduring symbols of the disco era. But now this campy and eternally popular song has become the centerpiece of what could be a significant test of copyright law. More...
Steve Coleman and Five Elements were deep into one of their horizonless, hypnotic inventions at the Newport Jazz Festival this month, and the tent-sheltered crowd seemed duly absorbed. Mr. Coleman’s alto saxophone slashed through the air, often in off-kilter counterpoint with the vocalist Jen Shyu. The shifting rhythmic base was punctuated by the drummer Tyshawn Sorey, who called to mind an octopus, limbs moving in steady flow. It was all a vivid barometer reading from Mr. Coleman’s pressure system and, by extension, a reflection on Pi Recordings, his current label home. More...
Since their release in 1978, hit albums like Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” Billy Joel’s “52nd Street,” the Doobie Brothers’ “Minute by Minute,” Kenny Rogers’s “Gambler” and Funkadelic’s “One Nation Under a Groove” have generated tens of millions of dollars for record companies. But thanks to a little-noted provision in United States copyright law, those artists — and thousands more — now have the right to reclaim ownership of their recordings, potentially leaving the labels out in the cold. More...
In Touch Entertainment is about music. It always has been and always will be. Music enriches our lives, stirs our passion, and makes us feel good. It’s also what we do for a living.
