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One Liners: Festicket, Taylor Swift, Will.i.am, more

By Andy Malt and Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 8 November 2017

Other notable announcements and developments today…

• Festival ticketing start up Festicket has hired Matt Ephgrave as its new COO. Ephgrave has previously worked for Ticketscript, YPlan and Seatwave. “Ambitious planning for 2018 called for someone of Matt’s skills and know-how”, says CEO Zack Sabban.

• Taylor Swift is likely to window her new album off the streaming services for a short time when it is released later this week because, well, of course she will. What does this tell us about the state of the streaming market in 2017? Fuck all, that’s what.

• Will.i.am’s I.am+ tech company has raised $117 million in venture capital funding to develop its own voice assistant, to compete with Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s… Google. “I wanted to create something that allows us to do many things”, Will.i.am tells Reuters. “There’s so much you can do with a voice platform”. Will.i.am’s previous tech projects include a massive camera attachment for iPhones and a smartwatch.

• Goldie and Skepta are releasing a vinyl-only collaboration, ‘Upstart (Road Trip)’, through the drum n bass producer’s Metalheadz label on 22 Dec. “Goldie and Skepta share a birthday, an elemental connection and an impeccable taste in beats”, notes the Bandcamp page for the release.

• Morrissey has released another new track, ‘Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up On The Stage’. It is, thankfully, better than previous track ‘I Wish You Lonely’, but I don’t think you’re going to be rushing to listen to his new album. He’s selling gig tickets though. He’s just added a third London date to his 2018 tour, at the Palladium on 10 Mar.

• Field Music have announced that they will release their new album, ‘Open Here’, on 2 Feb. Here’s a trailer.

• Brontide have shared a film of their farewell show at The Garage in London in August this year. “When we booked the farewell show earlier this year we were aware that not everyone that wanted to be there, could be”, say the band. “With that in mind we decided to enlist the help of our good friend Al Pott to capture the night on film. So, get it on the TV and turn the volume up, enjoy”.

• Check out our weekly Spotify playlist of new music featured in the CMU Daily – updated every Friday.