Ten Interesting Music Items for the Week of Nov. 6

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/arts/music/hip-hop-on-tv-questlove-the-roots-the-mayor.html

http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/country-singers-honor-vegas-victims-with-music-at-cma-awards/article_a756e65d-4e86-5f01-9c27-f30e052d70ad.html

https://theconversation.com/music-only-helps-you-concentrate-if-youre-doing-the-right-kind-of-task-86952

http://www.businessinsider.com/blockchain-could-transform-the-music-industry-2017-11

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessedamiani/2017/11/07/what-bjorks-cryptocurrency-paired-album-means-for-the-music-industry/#4cccbe4813d8

http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/why-do-we-love-music

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/nov/08/best-deathbed-music-tabula-rasa-arvo-part

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/retail/When-should-stores-start-Christmas-music-Some-have-already-started_162373272

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/arts/grammys-school-district-of-philadelphia-music-education-20171108.html

https://www.csindy.com/coloradosprings/the-blasters-phil-alvin-keeps-american-music-alive/Content?oid=8444812

Here are some of the interesting music-related items that appeared online this week.

The New York Times ran a Q&A between The Root’s Questlove, Salamishah Tillet and Jon Caramanica about the influence of hip hop on media. The wide-ranging discussion notes that there recently has been a resurgence of hip-hop related movies…The 2017 Country Music Association Awards were held Wednesday at The Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The ceremony honored the 58 people killed at the Route 91 Harvest Festival last month in Las Vegas. Garth Brooks won the Entertainer of the Year Award…The Conversation takes on the weighty topic whether listening to music helps or hurts a person’s performance on a specific task. The story is interesting and, as often happens with this type of research, the answer is not a straight yes or no. Author Nick Perham writes that the type of task and the genre of music determine whether performance is helped or hindered. Hint: Don’t let your brain surgeon play The Ramones…Crytocurrencies based on blockchain is an exceedingly confusing topic. Essentially, it is bringing financial transaction into the digital world and giving value to things that are not real. (The key questions to start with are: Why is gold valuable? (Answer: Though gold has some useful properties, such as its malleability and conductivity, its market value is mostly due to the simple fact that everyone agrees that it is valuable.) Why not agree that a set of numbers are valuable as well? (Answer: There is no reason not to.) Business Insider reports on SingularDTV, which is building an entrainment app on Ethereum. Forbes writes about AudioCoin, another cryptocurrency getting into music…It’s very hard to sum up the theme of a post at Big Think called “We Do We Love Music?” The answers, which are complex, have something to do with our brains.