It should be noted that your correspondent is no great fan of 50 Cent, the Queens-born MC/smart drink mogul who has made himself over into something of a Twitter celebrity in recent months, simultaneously acting like a prankster and making big declarations about healing the world in a way that has so profoundly affected some, they've gone so far as to commit online shenanigans in his name. (It's like a religion!) But his announcement that he's no longer releasing albums is certainly worthy of note.

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If you can snag this, congratulations, you've won.

​Saturday marks the fifth annual Record Store Day, the celebration of all things indie, vinyl, and limited edition-slash-noble ploy to get customers through the doors of the music stores still standing in the spring of 2011. It's basically the record shop equivalent of a Hallmark holiday, but that's OK, since this year's list of special releases looks pretty killer. Here's a look at how different players in the retail system benefit from the celebration.

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​The scene outside the New York Institute of Technology Auditorium Monday night suggested a Latin jazz celebration; pianist Eddie Palmieri, pianist/bandleader Larry Harlow, drummer Bobby Sanabria, trombonist Chris Washburne, and trumpeter Brian Lynch milled about. But this wasn't a concert, nor was it a celebration; it was an informational meeting organized by the New York chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) where the musicians gathered would soon sound off in polite yet impassioned protest of the Grammys' elimination of the Best Latin Jazz Album category.

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Behold, the future of music.

​The Grammy Awards are a bit of a punchline in music nerd circles, a place where, say, MGMT battles Hall & Oates for a trophy that will inevitably be won, and then dropped on the ground, by the more telegenic and industry-saving Taylor Swift. The Grammy voters hate rap and r&b--or at least, they hate The-Dream, which amounts to the same thing--and they will not hesitate to put the Jonas Brothers and Stevie Wonder together on the same stage. Two years ago Herbie Hancock beat out both Kanye West and Amy Winehouse for Album of the Year. Nuff said. However, here they come, as they do every year, forcing us to care, or at least forcing the artists we care about to care, which amount to the same thing. Last night, they announced the 2010 Nominations. We have some thoughts.

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Behold, the Amazon-pixelated artwork of a man who will stop at nothing to be #1.

​Many rap fans probably didn't notice a couple weeks ago when Taylor Swift's Speak Now debuted, selling over a million copies in its first week--the fastest sprint to that number since Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III, in 2008. You know who definitely noticed though? Kanye West. There was a lot of speculation, earlier in the month, that West would look to do whatever he could to match or beat the woman with whom he's spent the last year inextricably linked. And now--after the stellar reviews have come in, capped, we should note, by a perfect 10.0 on Pitchfork today--we know just how badly West wants it.

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Better go get this now.

​If you want a one-URL "major" vs. "indie" battleground -- what defines and/or divides them, which lifestyle brand the discerning-legal-downloader demographic really prefers -- you could do far worse than eMusic, the excellent monthly-subscription MP3 service (which employs several of our colleagues and friends) that's both continually growing and continually enduring growing pains. The latter today, mostly: This week the site is adding 250,000 tracks (including the entire Universal Music Group catalog) but losing the mega-indie labels -- Matador, Merge, Domino -- that continually top its download charts.

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​About three weeks ago, Asthmatic Kitty, the small independent label that is home to Sufjan Stevens and an assortment of smaller acts, sent out a kind of tortured email. It was directed, in theory, at prospective buyers of Sufjan's then-upcoming, now just-released Age of Adz, and laid out all the different options consumers would eventually have in terms of buying the record: everything from illegally downloading it to buying it more or less directly from Asthmatic Kitty to taking advantage of Amazon's steep, $3.99 discount. It was an uncommonly blunt (if not entirely clear) portrait by a small label of the difficult economics of releasing a new record in 2010, and seemed worth following up on--so we did, writing Michael Kaufmann, A&R for Asthmatic Kitty Records. We asked Kaufmann to help guide us through all the tough decisions a label like Asthmatic Kitty must make in between receiving a new record from a guy like Sufjan Stevens and finally putting it on the market. He was kind of enough to oblige:

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Lupe Fiasco and Atlantic President Julie Greenwald, pals again.

​Last week's most unlikely good news? That a grassroots, online, surprisingly young movement of Lupe Fiasco fans seemed to have actually convinced Atlantic Records, the label sitting on Lupe's new album for going on two years now, to finally up and give Lasers a release date. They did it just in time, too, announcing the news just a week before Fiasco Friday, the massive, real world protest set for October 15th. Too bad for Atlantic it's happening anyway. Protest co-organizer Matthew La Corte tells us things will be proceeding as planned. "We are still going," says La Corte. "We are marching as a celebration of the release and everyone's hard work, we are still protesting the injustice of Atlantic and music corporations, and we are also using this as a tool of promotion for Lupe's album." He adds: "Lupe will also still be coming." Really? We asked La Corte for more info:

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​Today's New York Times brings a startling bit of news: the sneaker company Converse is opening a recording studio in the heart of Williamsburg, to be called Converse Rubber Tracks, where bands "deemed dedicated and needy enough" will be able to record for free. Artists selected to use the space will retain the ownership rights to whatever they record there. (Though Converse also promises that the studio will "give bands the means to expose their music to a much larger audience through content captured while recording, including songs and behind-the-scenes video," meaning that those things will be posted to the Converse website. Whether that's optional, they don't say.) The article's author, Ben Sisario, after first detouring through why Converse (and a host of other companies) would do this (it's good branding) and why bands would cooperate (they're broke, and don't care), arrives at the central question that arises from such an unconventional arrangement. To paraphrase: does doing business with Converse necessarily mean selling out? And, more basically: Is it even possible to sell out in 2010?

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Won't somebody please liberate this record?

​Matthew La Corte is a 17-year-old rap fan from West Paterson, New Jersey. Specifically, Matthew's a fan of Lupe Fiasco, the bright, tortured, socially-conscious Chicago rapper whose third album, Lasers, has been infinitely delayed by his record label, Atlantic. About a week ago, someone made a proposal on the Kanye Live Forums message board that Matthew frequents: what if Lupe's fans staged a protest against the label? A Twitter hashtag, #FiascoFriday, begot a Facebook group, begot a real, honest to goodness protest, and so it came to pass that La Corte found himself planning a march on one of the biggest labels on the planet. He has help though: in addition to his Kanye Live confederates (many of whom, Matthew says, he's never even met in real life), more than 900 people have RSVP'd to the event; one of them appears to be Lupe Fiasco himself. Is this a real thing? We called the kid up to find out.

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