April 26, 2024

About the author  ⁄ Brenna Ehrlich

SoundCloud Is Totally Helping My Friend’s Band Plan Their Tour

by 04/30/14

It’s a common lament: Band has tons of online fans. Band books tour because, hey, tons of fans! Band hits a new city. Band plays to an empty room. Band drinks beer and salty tears while sleeping in a van outside the venue until the cops come and shoo them away.

Well, a new tool courtesy of SoundCloud could help cure musicians of the empty room blues. (When it comes to lodging, though, they’re on their own.)

If you’re a musician with a SoundCloud Pro Unlimited subscription, you’ll now find “top countries” and “top cities” in your stats section, allowing you to see where your tunes are played the most. This is priceless info, folks.

When striking out on tour, a lot of bands head to city centers — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago — aiming to play out where people go out. Looking at the stats, however, this might not be the best recourse — at least for up-and-comers.

Take my musically inclined friend, Russ Marshalek of the band A Place Both Wonderful And Strange. Dude gave me a peek under the hood of his account and I was kind of blown away.

Despite residing in Brooklyn, his cities were a pretty festive melange: Atlanta, Georgia; Redding, California; Berlin, Germany; Black River Falls, Wisconsin; and Melaka, Malaysia.

New York and all the rest? Noticeably absent. Have fun in Malaysia, Russ! Send me copious postcards!

Now, I don’t know if Russ is really going to spring for that international plane ticket, but at least when ...

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Wait, Is This Harry Styles?

by 04/30/14

Hey Directioners: I have a mid-week mind-blower for you. Check out the dude in the image up there. Dreamy, right? Perfect, no? Is your heart racing like a raver on too much blackmarket Four Loko while your soul wails “Hazza”? Roger that.

Well, get this: That is not, in fact, Harry Styles. Cue a very anatomically correct exploding brain noise.

Yes, I know, this is a literally unbelievable statement, but it’s true, guys. The above well-haired one is, in fact, Dot Major of London Grammar.

Yes, he is a totally divergent human man who is not related to Harry Styles at all.

Still, when Major and the rest of the band came in to chat with MTV News about their debut record If You Wait, he had a fewer staffers confused — and more than one fluttering to my desk, screeching, “Was that Harry?”

And, it seems, the denizens of MTV News aren’t the only ones seeing double — according to the band, Major gets mistaken for Styles all the time, a state of affairs they find “weird.”

Weird or no, check out the side-by-side below. I would say they should play together — if not for that whole seeing-ones-doppelgänger-portends-certain-death thing. Damn that fickle finger of fate.

harrydot

Brenna Ehrlich is a reporter for MTV News as well as the senior writer/editor for the O Music Awards. In the past, she served as associate editor at Mashable, ...

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Nick Jonas Put His Feelings About Rita Ora In A Song

by 04/29/14

It seems that once upon a time Nick Jonas was crushing on Rita Ora — and she kind of crushed him, apparently. Well, at least that’s the case according to a song he wrote back in 2013.

As part of a slew of songs last year that never manifested into an album, Jonas penned one particularly cutting track for him and his bros titled “What Do I Mean To You,” in which he bemoans a woman named Rita’s lack of interest in him.

“No need for water, Rita, you got the wine / Searching for diamonds, when I gave you the time / Keys to an open door, don’t need a lock / Stains on a dirty floor, you don’t see a spot,” he wails.

Heavy, man.

On a recent edition of “Watch What Happens Live,” Ora said that she and Jonas never had any sort of romantic entanglement — but did suspect that the song was about her.

“I never dated him,” she said. “I actually met Nick through a friend and it was a very weird situation because we were close, but it never went to that level, and then I read the lyric and I kind of messaged him and was like, ‘I have no idea where this came from. If you want to talk about it, call me.’”

“He was like, ‘You know what, I just obviously didn’t put out how I felt across to you properly.’ And it was one of those situations,” she added. “He ...

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Zone Out To Coldplay’s Avicii-Assisted ‘A Sky Full Of Stars’

by 04/29/14

As Coldplay‘s frontman Chris Martin opens up more to the media, the band does the same. Coldplay is out with another peek at their upcoming record Ghost Stories Tuesday (April 29), an Avicii-assisted jam titled “A Sky Full Of Stars.”

According to a recent interview with BBC Radio 1′s Zane Lowe in which the singer discussed his divorce from Gwyneth Paltrow for the first time, Martin penned the band’s upcoming record with love in mind — opening yourself up to love and whatever it may bring.

“I think in life everyone needs to be broken in some way,” Martin said. “I think everyone in their life goes through challenges, whether it’s love or money, kids, or illness … You have to really not run away from that stuff. Life throws these colorful challenges at you.”

So far, many of the offerings off of Ghost Stories have been rather hushed and, well, haunted — and “A Sky Full Of Stars” is no different.

Part twinkly piano ballad, part sky-reaching EDM track, it’s the perfect complement to previously released jams “Midnight,” “Magic,” “Oceans,” “Another’s Arms” and “Always In My Head.”

Lie down, look at the stars, and listen up.

The track will be available for download on Saturday with the record dropping on May 19.

Brenna Ehrlich is a reporter for MTV News as well as the senior writer/editor for the O Music Awards. In the past, she served as associate editor at Mashable, penned ...

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Slow Jam ‘Ducktales’ Theme Song Sexily Rewrites History

It’s that time again! Time to feel nostalgic while simultaneously kind of turned on by an otherwise innocent childhood memory. The memory in question? The “DuckTales” theme song.

When I was a kid, the only sort of need I gleaned from watching the exploits of wealthy flapper Scrooge McDuck was the need to swim in a giant vat of gold coins, as McDuck does on the reg. After listening to Postmodern Jukebox’s slow jam cover of the theme song, however, my needs were a bit less clear.

Someone explain my feelings to me, please, because all I know right now is that life is, indeed, like a hurricane. A hurricane in my heart.

Corrupt your own childhood below.

Brenna Ehrlich is a reporter for MTV News as well as the senior writer/editor for the O Music Awards. In the past, she served as associate editor at Mashable, penned a netiquette column for CNN and co-authored the blog and book "Stuff Hipsters Hate." She likes trying not to die in moshpits and listening to songs on repeat. Follow her on Twitter @BrennaEhrlich for news on cats and punk bands.

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Watch The 1975 Bleed All Over The Place In The ‘Robbers’ Video

Bonnie and Clyde. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Matthew Healy and… whatever this woman’s name is. The 1975 are aiming to go down in the annals of crime-duo history in their new video for “Robbers,” off of their self-titled debut.

“I got really obsessed with the idea behind Patricia Arquette’s character in ‘True Romance’ when I was about 18,” Healy said of the video’s origins.

“That craving for the bad boy in that film, it’s so sexualized,” he added. “It was something I was obsessed with. ‘Robbers’ is about a heist that goes wrong — I suppose you can read it as a metaphor — and a girl who’s obsessed with her professional killer boyfriend. It’s a romantic ideal.”

Yup. Love is, indeed, a battlefield. Check it out.

Brenna Ehrlich is a reporter for MTV News as well as the senior writer/editor for the O Music Awards. In the past, she served as associate editor at Mashable, penned a netiquette column for CNN and co-authored the blog and book "Stuff Hipsters Hate." She likes trying not to die in moshpits and listening to songs on repeat. Follow her on Twitter @BrennaEhrlich for news on cats and punk bands.

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