January 11, 2008

Friday’s Sly Music News Day

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mojo-photo-news0111.jpg

  • Okay, I knew that pneumonia story was suspicious. It turns out Eminem wasn’t just in the hospital for a cough. The rapper has apparently ballooned into a “fat Elvis,” this according to his mom, who’s quoted in a gossip blog saying the 5 foot 7 rapper now weighs over 200 pounds and was hospitalized for possible heart problems as well as the pneumonia. Apparently the rapper is “depressed.” But it feels so empty without you!

  • Following in the wake of Radiohead‘s post-EMI success, both Coldplay and Robbie Williams are reportedly considering leaving the label as well. Well if you have a “pay what you want” internet site, please do it in dollars so I don’t screw it up again. Oh wait, I don’t buy music from either of you.

  • Soulja Boy has set a digital sales record. His irrepressible hit “Crank Dat (Soulja Boy),” whose eponymous subtitle confuses and infuriates me, has become the first track to sell 3 million downloads. The music videos have been viewed over 50 million times on YouTube. Soulja Boy responded to the news by saying, “Yuuuuaaaa!!” Seriously.

  • This year’s Coachella music festival near Palm Springs is set for the weekend of April 25-27, and now Idolator has what they call the “first fake line-up” for this year’s festival, although Stereogum posted one back in November. Nothing, however, beats the one you can see after the jump:
    •

    mojo-photo-fakecoachella.jpg

    Toto and Crash Test Dummies on the same stage? Don’t tease me.

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    WE'LL BE BLUNT

    It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

    The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

    Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

    The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

    Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

    And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

    Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

    If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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