This was announced earlier this year but I didn't see a post about it here, and the academy was on my mind recently. Many of my favorite indie artists have attended their programs, and I loved their lecture series.

This BLOWS.

Red Bull Music Academy and Radio to Shut Down
Long-running programs will close as company “phases out the existing structure”
Red Bull Music Academy is to shut down after 21 years, the company announced in a statement Wednesday (April 3). Red Bull, an unlikely patron of underground music since the academy’s launch in 1998, said that RBMA and Red Bull Radio would close on October 31 in a move to “phase out the existing structure” and decentralize its operations in the creative industry. Yadastar, the marketing and consultancy company that partnered with Red Bull to develop RBMA, said in a statement that the companies had “mutually agreed to part ways.”

RBMA had long been held up as an apparently sustainable model for corporate partnership with artists. Acts including Flying Lotus, SOPHIE, Objekt, and Nina Kraviz benefitted to various degrees from a broad infrastructure that included international concerts and festivals as well as access to high-end equipment and studios. The funding model emulated some benefits of the traditional record label system without putting a premium on mainstream appeal, some pundits argued, despite wariness in underground music of brand tie-ins, particularly given Red Bull’s heavy branding at dance events. RBMA also ran an editorial platform and long-running lecture series, which featured talks with D’Angelo, Björk, and many more alternative music figures. Red Bull will continue to operate a decentralized music arm, Red Bull Music, without Yadastar’s involvement.

Read the rest here: https://pitchfork.com/news/red-bull-music-academy-and-radio-to-shut-down/

I'm mad. Where is a music industry capitalist when you need 'em? Like for real. Where Jigga man at?! LOL.

--
"Music is not to be possessed; it's to be shared.” - James Mtume

"Just stay loose, keep it raw, and bang ya drums out sometimes." - Madlib

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"