Live Review of Cockney Rejects Contact: sue@opaquemanagement.co.uk Web: cockneyrejects.com Players: Jeff “Stinky” Turner, vocals; Michael “Olga” Algar, guitar; JJ Kaos, bass; Ray Dust, drums There was a feeling of togetherness at the Regent Theater on a Friday evening in May, a genuine vibe of punk family. Let's face it—no casual punk fans are venturing out to see English Oi! pioneers the Cockney Rejects in 2025. No, the people at the Regent for this show were lifers. It was a mixed bag of young and old, male and female, various cultures. A Cockney Rejects crowd is anything but one-dimensional. But the one thing they have in common is a commitment to punk. There was a long list of openers and we got to the Regent in time to see the last two—Castillo and The Voids. Both were appropriately riotous, noisy, and had a few gems on the setlist. If the job was to warm up the crowd for the Rejects while earning a few new fans, then it was a case of job well done. But nobody was upstaging the Rejects. It had somehow passed us by that Toy Dolls man Olga is now playing guitar for the CRs— vocalist Stinky Turner is the one remaining OG, and he assembled a new Rejects lineup in 2024. But Stinky, Olga, bassist JJ Kaos (Last Resort, Anti-Nowhere League) and drummer Ray Dust (The Business, Argy Bargy) are a formidable presence. The setlist was perfect. Opening with "Flares 'n' Slippers," they blasted through "We Are the Firm," "Are You Ready to Ruck," and "Bad Man" with no small amount of joy. Stinky did his shadow boxing thing, the veteran football/soccer warrior that he is. And when he introduced bonafide classic "The Greatest Cockney Rip Off" as a singalong, the crowd didn't let him down. That crowd, incidentally, didn't give the band a moment's peace. There was barely a second where at least one future stagediver wasn't up there with them, throwing sweaty limbs around and yelling into the mics. Hey, that's punk! They ended with their version of West Ham F.C.'s anthem "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," and then their trademark "Oi! Oi! Oi!" Everyone then spilled out onto the Downtown Los Angeles street, drained and sweat-soaked, but very, very happy. The post Live Review of Cockney Rejects first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

As AI deepfakes spread, Denmark plans to give individual citizens copyright ownership of their own face and voiceThe proposed law is believed to be the first of its kind in Europe, but US legislators are working on similar initiatives
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Apple Music adds a Musicians hub, Replay, Apple Radio specialsTo mark its 10th anniversary Apple Music adds a musicians hub and new features to mark its 10th anniversary. The creative campus and studio will open this summer in Los Angeles.
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Live Music News Roundup: NIVA, new Maine Ticket Law, ScalpersThis latest live music news roundup includes 2025's NIVA conference news, a tough new law in Maine, scalper financing and more.
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New Music Critique: New Middle ClassContact: info@newmiddleclass.comWeb: newmiddleclass.com/arguingSeeking: Review, Film/TVStyle: Acoustic Pop-RockNew Middle Class is a duo with a distinct sound, but one voice clearly outshines the other—making for a tricky balance. The standout track, “Oh, Lord! (A Vision),” leans into funky, off-kilter production that’s minimal but bold. Barbara Borok’s vocals don’t quite rise to meet the moment like her counterpart, Mike Borok, resulting in a contrast that makes it hard to rate the pair as a cohesive unit. Still, there’s charm here, especially on the playful “Tenth Commandment.” With tighter vocal balance and more synergy between voice and production, they could carve a sharper silhouette in the indie-pop landscape.The post New Music Critique: New Middle Class first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

New Music Critique: MOTOContact: mpdrpic@gmail.comWeb: instagram.com/motomusiclandSeeking: Radio, Film/TVStyle: Americana RockMOTO brings gritty, raspy vocals that nod to classic rock ‘n’ roll; however, on the breakneck “Immortal,” it’s more growling than singing—energetic, sure, but lacking nuance. “The Jist” slows things down for a more narrative feel, but the production and vocals don’t quite carry the weight, leaving the track feeling a bit flat. They clearly aim for that raw, old-school feel, but without the chops, it’s difficult to really make it pop. With sharper focus and stronger delivery, they could own that vintage energy—but for now, they’re still carving out their place, with glimmers of promise that haven’t yet cut through the retro noise.The post New Music Critique: MOTO first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Independent Musician News: Community, Cringe, and Getting PaidListen up! Last week’s collection of independent musician news and helpful tips includes a guide on converting listeners to fans, cringe becomes a commodity, and more… Independent Musician News
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Out Take: Grayson SandersFounder of ChordalWeb: chordal.comMusic licensees often face this problem: a song or a piece of music has multiple rightsholders, and all of them have to give their approval before the music can be licensed. This can make music clearance a cumbersome, costly and/or completely prohibitive process for licensees, as well as prevent an artist’s music from reaching a broader audience. To address this common issue, music licensing platform Chordal created InstantClear, a technology designed to streamline the licensing process by getting music licenses approved in advance so licensees can tap into a wealth of music they otherwise would not be able to access.  “Too often we hear, ‘Well, we’d like to license that song, but we’d have to find all the rightsholders and get them on board, so it’ll never happen,’” says Chordal founder Grayson Sanders. “InstantClear builds upon Chordal’s existing technology that allows different song owners to be hands-on with how they control their shares of music rights. Our format kind of creates a happy medium between giving the rightsholders agency and licensees a pathway forward.” InstantClear doesn’t have set pricing models for songs for several reasons, including giving rightsholders more power. “In some areas of the music business, it makes sense to have unification around rates, but there is a lot more nuance to sync licensing,” Sanders says. Sanders sees a lot of potential for growth on the horizon for music rightsholders, particularly in the social/video game space, where music integration is expanding and creating unprecedented opportunities for fans to discover and engage with music. “There are a lot of possibilities for platforms to take advantage of user data to integrate music in more personalized ways, where it’s a central part of the user experience, and the user is empowered to listen to the music they want to hear.”The post Out Take: Grayson Sanders first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Gallery: Out West, presented by Milk & Honey with LaPolt Law, Music Business Worldwide and other friendsHosted by Milk & Honey CEO, Lucas Keller, Out West was a 'Social Sunday' for LGBTQ+ creatives and executives in the music industry.
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Live Music Industry News: NIVA ’25 wraps • How scalpers evade laws • Tixel to US • DJ events rule • Eventbrite study • Blue Note to LA • MoreLatest Live Music Industry News Under The LIVE INDUSTRY NEWS tab above
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How Ticket & Scalper Financing Inflates Prices and Excludes FansChris Castle on how ticket and scalper financing inflates prices and make it harder for real fans to buy. As resellers get millions in credit to hoard tickets, fans are left paying more - or missing out entirely.
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Book Store: "501 Essential Albums of the 1980s" Edited by Gary GraffMC contributor Graff has played an absolute blinder here, working with a long list of esteemed scribes (Cary Baker, Rob St. Mary, many more) to compile the 501 essential albums of the '80s. Naturally, with any sort of book like this, everyone will point to albums that should be in there but aren’t. That said, this is damned extensive. All the appropriate new wave, new romantic, pop, and hair metal albums from that decade are present and correct. But Graff makes sure that gospel, country, jazz, punk, hip-hop, soul, and just about everything else gets a fair shake too. Essential reading for anyone with even a passing interest in that decade.(Hardcover) $40The post Book Store: "501 Essential Albums of the 1980s" Edited by Gary Graff first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Court shoots down Sarah Silverman’s case against Meta’s AI – but declares using copyrighted works for training is NOT ‘fair use’The latest ruling contradicts another ruling on AI and fair use, issued by a different judge in the same court just two days earlier
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Streaming is both retail and radio. It shouldn’t beIn a brutally simplified view of the past, the recorded music industry had two lanes: retail and radio. Piracy killed retail. Streaming killed piracy, then went on to, if not kill, then seriously maim radio. The two lanes converged into one – reverse bifurcation. 

At first, it was all upside: the consumers that retail had lost began spending on subscriptions, and audiences migrated from lower-paying broadcast radio to higher-paying streaming. However, artists and songwriters then became unhappy with per stream rates, contextualising them against retail rather than radio. Meanwhile, record labels realised they had inadvertently capped the spending of people who in previous generations had been high spending superfans. This is the problem with squeezing two highly distinct models aimed at serving opposite ends of the music aficionado / passive massive spectrum into one space. In the growth phase – when everyone was waiting for the bright future – it felt like a best of worlds. When growth slowed, however, and everyone realised how things are now is how things will always be, it began to look like an unsatisfactory compromise that delivered the best of neither. 

If streaming was only benchmarked against radio, in rightsholder remuneration terms, it would be an undisputed success. However, because rightsholders and creators alike also depend upon it for the income stream retail used to represent, critiques and criticisms have become part of streaming’s narrative. For the majority of mid-tail artists, streaming is in many respects like radio was 15 years ago. It is a badge of success, but you have little idea who listened – or any means of connecting with them. It sets up other income streams (live, sync, merch, etc), generates income (decent, but not enough to live on), and it builds audiences rather than fanbases.

Supremium: Can streaming monetise fandom?

Enter stage left supremium. The concept is logical: tap the latent spend of superfans by delivering them scarce and high value experiences and content from their favourite artists in the app where they do their music listening. The problem is that this might not be the best place to tap fandom. Streaming has made music listening more passive with playlists, stations, and other forms of algorithmic programming. Streaming took the price point from retail but the format from radio.

The risk with fitting a superfan product into streaming is that it commodifies and generalises fandom in the same way it has music. Music might be always on, but except for a small niche of obsessives, fandom is not always on for most people. Most people are fans of multiple artists and do not listen to them all the time. As our superfan report found, many do not even listen regularly to those they consider themselves fans of the most. Social has already done its bit to commodify fandom, compelling creators to become content factories to meet the algorithm’s insatiable appetite and not be forgotten by it. Social is free and so commodification is tolerated. The premise of supremium is premium scarcity – but in an always on, on-demand environment, users will expect something much more frequent than occasional. By making scarcity frequent, it will lose its specialness and, well, scarcity. Sometimes it is better to give people what they need rather than what they want, or in this instance give them less when they think they want more.

Music listening is like breakfast, you eat every day and generally do not put too much store by it. Fandom is like eating out at a fancy restaurant – something you typically do infrequently and make an occasion of. Think about the attention you pay to an artists’ YouTube notification versus their Instagram notification. The former is likely infrequent and so you pay more attention to it, the latter is ‘great, yet another notification’.

The future of music fandom

Digital fandom products can absolutely work (as long as the expectation is to convert superfans, not suddenly turn the passive massive into superfans). In MIDiA’s recent streaming pricing study, in fact, many subscribers showed willingness to convert to a tier unlocking ‘superfan’ features. However, it will be difficult for streaming to design a product that works for those it is intended to serve. It means building a mass-market, one-size offering for a consumer segment that is inherently niche and diverse. It also means that the more consumers who sign up, the less “exclusive” and scarce the subscription becomes – and therefore, success ironically breeds failure. Fandom products may need to be somewhere else to fulfil their potential. That might mean standalone apps, but we have had a good few years of fan apps trying to make 

headway and realising that consumers already have more apps than they want. 

So, the challenge is to work out where fandom products should live (and what they should be, if not the traditional retail offerings). Social platforms would be an even poorer choice. This leaves the Bifurcation go-tos of YouTube, SoundCloud, and Twitch – each of which has respective strengths and weaknesses. 

The hard truth is that there probably is no ideal location for digital fandom products right now, but streaming is probably not the right place either. Artists and labels alike need a successor to retail. This does not necessarily have to actually be retail (e.g., Bandcamp) but it does need to be somewhere where people can be fans as frequently or infrequently as they like, converse with likeminded others, express themselves, and spend on their favourite artists, whether that be actual products or digital items.  Social platforms may enable the former behaviours, but are far less efficient when it comes to the latter (spend), at least for music. Streaming may well have taken the retail part of its equation as far as it can. Now is the time for something else to grab that baton and run with it.

The Unexpected Rise of Cringe as a Music Marketing StrategyCringe content is no longer a liability — cringe is a music marketing strategy. As audiences crave authenticity over polish, artists who lean into awkward, overly earnest moments are breaking. Continue reading
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