The new Stephen Malkmus album is out today. It’s meandering and nonsensical and great.

Nerds mourn: R.I.P E. Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons.

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Bullz Eye has nice round-up of essential music books.

What I learned from reading this week’s Sync: Dwarf strippers, the Little Sisters — Little Pixie and Little Lacy — are coming to Paper Moon at the end of the month. Shouldn’t they be the Lil’ Sisters?

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Wired’s Listening Post has an interesting post about a new music industry model, fan-funded albums. Here’s the gist:

Anyone can become an investor in a SellaBand artist by buying an advance copy of an album and a single share in the recording for $10. The site has raised more than $1.5 million from more than 25,000 investors. They’ve deposited an average of $50, but investments have run as high as $25,000.

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Out of 6,500 bands, 14 have reached the $50,000 mark, which is when SellaBand helps find a studio and a big-name producer to record the album. (SellaBand artist Cubworld got paired with Gwen Stefani’s producers.) Advertising revenue and sales revenue are split between SellaBand, the artists and investors. (Both SellaBand and Slicethepie keep the float: interest on fans’ money in the time between collection and disbursal to the bands. If a band doesn’t raise enough to record an album, the money is returned to investors.)

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