Signed in, fan code ready, in the ticketmaster queue, 22,000 customers ahead of me for a 1,500 venue. Honestly something really f’d up is happening here. There’s absolutely no way 22K actual human fans with fan codes in the DC area were online trying to buy tix for the DC show this morning.
My senior aged mother lives alone, is a hoarder, and has suffered two falls (that required lengthy hospitalization and rehab) in less than two years. It’s obviously time for her to move to assisted living, or at least get an in-home aide, but she’s refusing and I can’t seem to put any sense into her.
She also has a variety of health problems, including uncontrolled diabetes, and can’t keep up with her bills, taxes etc. Not because she doesn’t have money, rather because she forgets, doesn’t know how, or refuses to pay. Her finances and debts are a mess, but she’s highly secretive and refuses to give me power of attorney, so I have no idea how bad it really is. She says I can clean up her mess when she’s dead.
So, I’m at a point where she demands my help and attention for little things like errands and home projects, but she doesn’t give me the tools or information I need to really help her. At this point, and I hate to think or say it, but the situation may actually be easier to handle when she’s dead - and at this rate, she’ll likely die while home alone.
Do any of you have aging parents that refuse assisted living, in-home aides, and giving power of attorney to help manage finances and medical obligations? How did that turn out? Kind of at my wits end here.
So, this past year I’ve noticed that popular music websites that have long been free to access, albeit with heavy advertising (Pitchfork, Stereogum and others), have implemented paywalls and subscription plans to access most of their content - probably still featuring advertising.
Has anybody opted into those subscription plans to keep reading their content? I used to visit those sites daily but haven’t subscribed, so I just don’t read them anymore.
I get that music journalism is tough these days, and people gotta eat, but on the scale of priorities these days, buying *another* subscription to something just isn’t in the cards for me - as I assume is the situation for a lot of folks.
What effect do you think this is gonna have on music and music culture as a whole, where information is increasingly siloed and inaccessible to must of the general public. Can’t be good.