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The Great MP3 Compromise: Credits Where Credits Are Due

Art and life co-habitate, informing, imitating, and enriching each other constantly. Each week in Better Living Through Music, RFT Music writer Ryan Wasoba explores this symbiotic relationship. For the average music listener, Mp3s are a compromise. Sound quality is traded for portability. For the ... More >>

We Test the ICP "Juggalo Locator" App, for the Sake of Journalism

While perusing Insane Clown Posse's Twitter timeline, like a person does, I came across something interesting: our favorite rap clowns announced a new update to their official smartphone app, which I didn't even know existed. For the advancement of pop journalism and human knowledge in general, I he ... More >>

Streaming Services Like Spotify and Pandora are Destroying Music

The law of unintended consequences is far-reaching. It's easy to see how it applies to things like medication, the environment, and Prohibition, but it also applies to the advances in the computerization of music over the past decade. The proliferation of the use of streaming services such as Spotif ... More >>

The Future Is Fine: Streaming music isn't evil, it's just different

Ask a Mexican: Special Year-End Edition

Does Spotify Mean the End the iPod and Your Music Collection?

When I bought my first iPod--this was the first iPod, when the scroll wheel actually spun around--it was a severe blow to my nerd-cred, which I guarded pretty jealously at the time. (It was the only cred I had.) Relying on iTunes and its untouchable database to maintain my MP3 collection, instead of ... More >>

The Class War Between Food Culture and Music Culture

Art and life co-habitate, informing, imitating, and enriching each other constantly. Each week in Better Living Through Music, RFT Music writer Ryan Wasoba explores this symbiotic relationship I'm a sucker for the Food Network. Chopped is my jam, I have strong opinions about specific Iron Chefs, an ... More >>

Ask a Mexican: Where can I find a Mexican chaperone for my date?

Illegal Downloading Is Wrong, But I Do It Anyway

Art and life co-habitate, informing, imitating, and enriching each other constantly. Each week in Better Living Through Music, RFT Music writer Ryan Wasoba explores this symbiotic relationship. Question: If you were in the middle of a riot, streets overrun with people freaking out, smashing windows ... More >>

The Beach Boys' New Album Has Leaked; How Do I Be A Good Fan?

I saw it on the message board where I'd followed everything else, from the early interviews to the speculation over the song titles to the release of the 30-second Amazon and (more excitingly) 90-second iTunes samples, and where we'd argued for months over autotune in live performances and which vag ... More >>

Fudging The Numbers With Last.Fm

Art and life co-habitate, informing, imitating, and enriching each other constantly. Each week in Better Living Through Music, RFT Music writer Ryan Wasoba explores this symbiotic relationship. I was thrilled five-ish years ago when I found out about Last.fm, the music recommendation service that d ... More >>

Jack White Featuring Pokey LaFarge & the South City Three: Listen Now

Jack White's solo record, Blunderbuss, comes out next week, but it's streaming on iTunes right now. It's his first as a "solo" artist, though he is backed by a litany of past collaborators and friends, including St. Louis' own Pokey LaFarge & the South City Three, who act as White's backing band on ... More >>

The New fun. Fan's Guide to the Format

Statistically speaking, you or some iTunes user you know has, ton-i-i-i-i-ight, confirmed that he and someone else are both young and proceeded to set the world on fire. fun., America's least search-engine-optimizable band--and, somehow, the first rock band since Nickelback to debut on top of the ... More >>

Steve Aoki Talks Hipsters, Hardcore and the Moment Electro Went Punk

Mention Steve Aoki in a crowded room and watch the reactions; some will cross themselves in reverence, most will nod their recognition at the name, and the rest will know him only as "a DJ." But Steve Aoki has never been just a DJ; he's a modern auteur with his finger rammed in the proverbial sphinc ... More >>

Megaupload Goes Down: Five Lost Music-Stealing Technologies

It's true: Megaupload has been gone an entire week, and for the millions of people who used the site because they like their totally legal for-pay cloud storage to come equipped with fake download links and massive flash banner ads I'm sure things have been difficult. For copyright holders, massiv ... More >>

The Six Most Absurd Pop Songs of 2011

​The old model of popular music: dumb it down to the lowest common denominator and make it go down easy. Reviewing the Billboard and iTunes charts of this past year, the tides have obviously changed. In days when nobody is buying, the flashiest, loudest, weirdest thing sells -- how else can yo ... More >>

iTunes Store, Wired Praise "Best Of" App

​Allow us to pat ourselves on the back for just a sec' after iTunes just named our "Best of" iPhone app as one of its five best travel apps of the year in its "Rewind" list. Wired also gave the app praise, writing that it's "what Yelp would be if only the cool kids could post reviews" and "provide ... More >>

Yeo Valley Gives Up Dairy Rapping For a Boy Band

It's been nearly a year since the Brits from Yeo Valley introduced their rapping organic dairy farmers, and seven months since Americans followed suit with Stonyfield Farms' yogurt rap. Seven months. That's enough time for the madness to stop, right? No. Seven months is just enough time for cons ... More >>

Steve Jobs' Six Best Music Innovations

Apple (the Beatles record label) once sued Apple (the computer corporation). After initial squabbles over the right to name their companies after the same fruit, the two agreed that all was good as long as Steve Jobs and crew never entered the music business. As you can probably guess, as you likely ... More >>

Thi'sl goes from murder suspect to chart topper

St. Louis' Own Thi'sl, a Christian Rapper, Tops iTunes Hip-Hop chart

Image viaThi'sl: The number one rapper on iTunes right now.​It might be a misnomer to call Thi'sl a Christian Rapper. Like many other artists, he just raps about his life. And God happens to play a big part in his life. Well, Thi'sl is one of the hottest rappers coming out of St. Louis. In ... More >>

Spotify's US Launch Approaches; Which Music Service Are You?

​Music fans in the United States don't have a lot to envy of their European brothers and sisters, at least unless they're big fans of Abba or the kind of sticky, glitter-covered dance-pop that usually just makes me really want to leave the youth hostel and brush my teeth. One exception: Spotif ... More >>

MP3: Appreciate Nato Caliph's Knowledge Cipher Tonight @ The Gramophone

​One of the most upstanding members of The Force debuts his latest full-length release this evening at "Headquarters" the new weekly hip-hop night at The Gramophone in the Grove. Nato Caliph and has a new LP titled Knowledge Cipher (currently available at Vintage Vinyl, coming soon to iTunes) and ... More >>

Vandalyzm's Megatron Majorz Redux Hits iTunes Hip-Hop Charts

Vandalyzm is now gunning for Dr. Dre.​One of St. Louis' finest is currently sandwiched between 50 Cent and Notorious B.I.G. on the iTunes top 200 hip-hop albums chart. No, it's not Nelly (though his new single "Tippin' in da Club" is at a respectable 34 on the singles chart) -- it's Vandalyzm.The ... More >>

Mixtape Club brings back the lost art of cassette-based music mixes

Eleven Documentaries About Music's Grandest Artifact: The Record Store

I Need That Record chronicles the events that led up to the demise of many record stores​Before there was an iTunes "store" and torrent sites, the record store played a vital part in thousands of people's lives -- a church for the sinners. For some this hasn't changed. But by and large, peop ... More >>

Last Collector Standing: Carlos Ruiz Isn't a Pretentious Record Store Guy -- He Just Draws a Comic About One

Jon Scorfina​The "pretentious record store guy" has long been the bane of the record shop. Despite their wealth of archaic knowledge, music lovers were never sure whether these pompous clerks were an asset or a plague to their shopping experience. Local comic artist and graphic designer Carlos ... More >>

Last Collector Standing: Michael Allen Has a Radiohead License Plate, a Cat Named Gibby Haynes and a Thing for Weird Vinyl

Jon Scorfina​The cultural sea change of downloading has not stopped Michael Allen's quest for vinyl LPs. A collector since childhood, Allen showed an early interest in this column and emailed us to be profiled. Though he is a self-proclaimed vinyl "junkie," it hasn't stopped him from taking ad ... More >>

Apple Announcement a Big YAWNER

​So, my guess was wrong about Apple releasing the Beatles catalog on iTunes. I'm not ashamed of that. It was a long shot. But I did get some things right about the Apple announcement and I was surprised by quite a few things, too. I was right about iTunes 9. That wasn't hard to guess. I haven't ha ... More >>

Revolution 9.9.9: Will New Media Formats Bring the LP and The Beatles into Digital Age?

Photo by Crabchick via Flickr​Record companies have been dragged kicking and screaming by consumers (and Apple) into the digital age in the last ten years. And predictions are that 2010 will mark a tipping point where music purchased digitally via download will account for more than half of all mu ... More >>

Fitter, Happier, More Productive: Mono, Hymn to the Immortal Wind

(Tuesdays can be a trying day here in Club Land at the RFT. It's deadline day for the show/concert listings, and this fact hangs over my head just like all of those foreboding elementary school (and high school and college) homework assignments that I would inevitably put off to the l ... More >>

Girl Talk at the Pageant, Thursday, January 8: Show Review Photos

Better than: A crowded dorm-room party with cheap beer and cheap vodka drank out of red plastic cups, awkward grinding and an iTunes playlist full of cheesy dance hits. Actually, wait - that was kind of what the show was. Slide ShowThere's no easy way to review last night's Girl Talk show, mainly ... More >>

Ludo at Pointfest This Saturday, Hot at the Apple iTunes Store

Violent Femmes Cover Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy"

Video: National Record Store Day, Vintage Vinyl, St. Louis, April 19, 2008

National Record Store Day at Vintage Vinyl: Video from Saturday, April 19

Go! 4/4-4/6

The Raconteurs at the Pageant, Thursday, June 12

Smashing Pumpkins Release American Gothic EP January 2

Dave Matthews' "Eh Hee": What the World Really, Really Doesn't Need

New Bruce Springsteen single on iTunes -- for FREE!

Not Just Noise Homespun: Review of Not Just Noise

I Want My MP3

Digital music just gets better. See ya later, major labels.

Download Mozart

The Saint Louis Symphony is ready to hit the high-tech notes.

Ganging Up on the Sun

Last Year's Model

It might be the last dance for St. Louis' independent record stores.

The Damnwells

Thursday, March 2. Blueberry Hill's Duck Room (6504 Delmar Boulevard, University City)

ROCK

Saturday, December 10; Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center (3301 Lemp Avenue)

The Fags

Wednesday, October 12; the Creepy Crawl (412 North Tucker Boulevard)