Boards of Canada beef with, erm, The White House; Turning text message drama into songs; Universal says "no" to $55bn; Stream League lets you play Fantasy A&R; Last•fm goes indie; and more!

Your easy weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. Become a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Superfan of the podcast for free – and enjoy the exclusive weekly Lock-in bonus section! ⁠ This week:→ Enigmatic duo Boards of Canada have beef with the White House. What on earth is going on?→ €55bn: the amount that hedge fund Pershing Square WON’T be paying to buy Universal Music Group, because it has rejected the offer.→ Last·fm was once so buzzy, a big US media corporation bought it for $280m. 19 years after that acquisition, it’s going independent again. → Warner Music Group is on the verge of settling its lawsuit with US cookies chain Crumbl. But why are so many brands and retailers getting sued by major labels for their social posts?→ Another day, another 17 baffling trends on TikTok made up by young people to confuse older people. But the ‘text to song’ trend IS both amusing and interesting…→ Talking of charts and rankings, a new site called Stream League wants to turn music releases into a fantasy-sports-style game…→ Do you use Google’s Waze navigation app when driving? Have you always wished that its voice could be a bit more, well, a bit more Jamaican-music-royalty? Well, it’s your lucky day!And in the special post-show lock-in section just for our ⁠⁠Patreon Superfans⁠⁠, Stu and Joe prop themselves up at the bar – in this week's bonus material: Joe tries to persuade Stu, who has never listened to a Boards of Canada album, to play one of them – with the promise of satanism, the occult, biblical allusions, mathematics, numerology, cults, and, by the sound of their new LP, the end of the world itself. Stuart has turned one of his messaging threads into a song; and he and Joe wonder if actually we need to think about music in a whole new way now.Stream League! Does Stu fancy himself as an A&R now? Does he sit back in his black leather chair with his finger steepled, nodding along as he listens to new song? We find out...===================================As ever, we welcome your feedback, emails and – in particular – any questions you might have about how the music biz works!Email us: ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠See you next week!Stuart and Joe======TPOM online: http://tpom.uk/Support The Price of Music on Patreon:⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/ThePriceofMusic⁠⁠Follow Stuart on X - @stuartdredgeFollow The Price of Music on X - @PriceofMusicpodFor sponsorship opportunities, please email - ⁠⁠[email protected]