2020
August
06
Thursday

Monitor Daily Podcast

August 06, 2020
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During the pandemic, many musicians have enrolled in Bandcamp. No, I don’t mean a place where young music geeks spend summers scaring woodland creatures with squawking clarinets and burping tubas. Bandcamp is a burgeoning online music company where artists stream music and sell CDs, vinyl, and merchandise directly to fans.

As I documented in a recent story, professional musicians have struggled to make a living since the quarantine quashed most live shows. Bandcamp has stepped up to help. Since March it has waived all its fees for artists on four occasions. Artists and labels made a cumulative $20 million over those days. Starting tomorrow, Bandcamp will waive its revenue share on the first Friday of each month through the rest of 2020.

“Every time Bandcamp announces the waiving of fees, my inbox gets a bumper crop of PayPal notices,” singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop says via email. “Every little bit helps ... especially for the little guys.”

Bandcamp has long been renowned for supporting racial and social justice organizations. And it has facilitated ways for artists to easily donate to their favorite charities and causes.

“The platform provided a way for me to offer up some fresh side project recordings as added incentive for people to give to The Movement For Black Lives,” enthuses Ms. Hoop.

She adds, “This direct support and honest pay fortifies the sense of give-and-take within the artist/platform relationship.”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

A deeper look

Eva Marie Uzcategui/Reuters
Guillermo Maldonado (left), the pastor of El Rey Jesus church, prays for President Donald Trump before he addressed evangelical supporters in Miami on Jan. 3, 2020. Conservative voters of faith, as much as any other group, must remain motivated to vote for Mr. Trump if he is to win a second term.
Hussein Malla/AP
An aerial photo shows the scene of a mammoth blast that hit the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 5, 2020. A ragged crater, at right, was created by the explosion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored for years with few safeguards, despite warnings.

The Explainer

SOURCE:

Chart 1: Keith Belton and John Graham of Indiana University (published by Cato Institute), Chart 2: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (with Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy), Chart 3: Columbia University Law School’s Sabin Center deregulation tracker

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Timmy Broderick, Correspondent; Mark Trumbull and Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Flavio Lo Scalzo/Reuters
A seagull is seen by the Grand Canal amid the coronavirus pandemic in Venice, Italy, July 9, 2020. Tourists are making a timid return, but officials say they do not want the crowds to swell to their previous size.
Courtesy of Tayo Fatunla
Tayo Fatunla, a Nigerian artist, is the creator of "Our Roots," a comic series about Black historical figures from Barack Obama to the first Nigerian Olympic bobsledding team. His work is featured in the Afropolitan Comics exhibit.

The Monitor's View

Reuters
People walk toward Beirut's port area to clean near the site of Tuesday's blast.

A Christian Science Perspective

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A message of love

Eugene Hoshiko/AP
Kazumi Matsui (right), mayor of Hiroshima, and the family of the deceased bow before they place the list of victims of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima Memorial Cenotaph during the ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of the bombing, at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park Aug. 6, 2020, in Japan.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for reading today’s package of stories. If you’ve been missing the postponed Olympic Games, then come back tomorrow. We’ve created a video of the international sporting event’s most inspiring moments from years past.

More issues

2020
August
06
Thursday
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