A random portrait of the music industry circa 2016: Ambitious, tech-friendly artists with decent budgets and adventurous record companies behind them have spent the better part of a decade trying to come up with the perfect album-app. Here's a survey of the apps they built, many of them "no longer available, usually because they were originally funded by the marketing budget for a specific album, which made no provisions for future updates," plus "there is precious little evidence of anyone making their fortune from an album-app," plus also, do you remember any of these? Have you ever seen any of them? Meanwhile, an internet full of teenagers are in their bedrooms, making 15-second videos that are getting millions of views on sites like MUSICAL.LY and then extending their reach to YOUTUBE and monetizing themselves on the very platform that the entire music industry says it can't make any money on. Some days I just want to say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯... This explanation of why QUEEN doesn't have a great case against DONALD TRUMP for using their music at the RNC but the ROLLING STONES might is one of the best explanations I've read of how music copyright works in politics... This song featuring USHER, IMAGINE DRAGONS, CYNDI LAUPER and MICHAEL BOLTON is easily the best reaction against politicians co-opting pop songs, like, ever. Thank you, JOHN OLIVER, for making protest music great again... THIRD EYE BLIND cap off their own protest week with a new song about police brutality... On SUNDAY we lost the great MARNI NIXON, HOLLYWOOD's favorite ghost singer, the voice of a who's-who of proto MILLI VANILLIs from AUDREY HEPBURN to NATALIE WOOD to MARILYN MONROE (MONROE actually did much of her own singing but NIXON supplied the intro and the higher notes here). All art involves showbiz and illusion, so if you want to lip-sync, go right ahead. But neglecting to compensate or credit the wizards behind the curtain is a whole 'nother story. NIXON struggled with that for a long time, but her fight helped others who followed her get both recognized and paid. RIP.