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The Week According to Prefix: 1.20.11

11:44 a.m. · January 21, 2011 · by Daniel Kolitz

You might have heard elsewhere that the music industry is on its last legs. Maybe you saw that fake news story about Cake landing the #1 spot on the Billboard charts (that was a fake news story, right?). Maybe you read our article about independent record stores losing serious business to online companies like iTunes and Amazon. But I would like to submit to you, dear Prefix readers, that things are nowhere near as grim as they seem.

For one thing, live music is thriving (and you no longer have "proper ear maintenance" as an excuse when you elect not to go to shows--they're developing a cure for tinnitus!). Take Brooklyn's Shea Stadium, which this week opened a web archive of over 134 live performances. Or, on a larger scale, take Coachella, which announced its stellar 2011 lineup this week. Last year's festival sold out with a much weaker line-up (at least in terms of straight-up star power), so one can only expect this year's to do the same (say what you will about the Kings of Leon, but they can sell tickets better and faster than you can do anything). Then there's the news that Pandora doubled its audience in 2010, which bodes well for musicians who are not popular musicians but who sound similar to (and subsequently may be enjoyed by people who like) musicians who are popular.

For those of you who had things like "read more" and "call mom more often" as New Year's Resolutions, I have bad news: to get even the loosest grip on what's going on in music this year, you are going to have to be glued to your iPod and/or computer pretty much 24/7. This week alone, we brought you info on the long-anticipated new Strokes album (tentatively titled Angles!), along with details on upcoming releases by artists aesthetically diverse and uniformly awesome: Low, Raekwon, The Feelies, Grouper, Bjork, Slaughterhouse, and Blur. Now, keep in mind: none of these acts have ever scored a #1 record. A couple haven't even come close. Cake has. Because of us. Let's all make a promise to start buying records from now on, okay guys?