OK this isn't exactly breaking news, but reading STEVE KNOPPER in BILLBOARD about streaming services' rush to hire executive talent away from major labels, and then seeing TIM INGHAM's line-by-line accounting of 57 such hires, seems to serve as final confirmation of something you have either assumed or feared (or possibly both). Streaming IS the music business. Period. Sort of. And it's quite possible that, as much as the SPOTIFYs and YOUTUBEs need that major-label talent to negotiate with the very companies whose corner offices they're raiding, the execs need those jobs because, y'know, that's where the jobs are... Or, alternatively: Maybe it's 1992 all over again and APPLE and TIDAL are the major labels and LYOR COHEN, TROY CARTER, SAM BERGER, SCOTT SEVIOUR and all their colleagues are every band that ever owned a flannel shirt, and maybe it will turn out that signing TAD and 7 YEAR BITCH to your major label wasn't the world's greatest idea. #FeedingFrenzy... In either case, my friend JON MAPLES, who knows his way around digital music services and their products, offers some advice for label lifers going online for the first time. This is key: "[A]rtists are vital for services, but if push comes to shove, product development, not artist development, wins"... Mother of four is appalled by the VINCE STAPLES song she heard on the car radio, but says she's "not bashing the DJs... and I'm not bashing people that listen to that music." Staples responds by unconditionally supporting her. I love everything about this story, and I wish he and the mom would debate on national TV this Sunday instead of those other two people... Speaking of Staples, here he is his chatting with PHANTOGRAM for INTERVIEW... OLDCHELLA starts tonight, and while everyone else was searching for the proper thinkpiece to honor it (spoiler: everyone wrote more or less the same one), VULTURE zeros in on the one angle that matters: "Which Oldchella Headliners Can Still Hit Their High Notes?"... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from GREEN DAY, PHANTOGRAM, PITBULL, [HI:EMOTIONS] (aka DVA), GAME, PHISH, JULIA JACKLIN, NORAH JONES, BARRY GIBB, CONOR OBERST, MESHUGGAH, BALANCE AND COMPOSURE, MELISSA ETHERIDGE and ONEREPUBLIC.