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"When Beyoncé's album "Lemonade" was released late Saturday night, it was available only on Tidal, a big win for that subscription streaming service, in which Beyoncé is a part owner. But Tidal's period of exclusivity appears to be quite short - just 24 hours, as the album is expected to be released for sale on iTunes at midnight on Sunday, according to two people briefed on the plans for the release, who, following the usual ironclad rules of secrecy surrounding Beyoncé's projects, were not authorized to discuss them. Apple declined to comment. The brief window of exclusivity for Tidal reflects the growing complexity and fragmentation of the digital music market. For Beyoncé, whose every move is watched intensely by the music business, releasing an album comes with seemingly irreconcilable pressures regarding, on the one hand, managing her business interests and, on the other, reaching as wide an audience as possible. Adele declined to stream her blockbuster album "25" on any service, and Taylor Swift removed all her albums from Spotify before the release of "1989," her latest album, which is available on Apple Music, the company's streaming service. Photo Beyonce with her husband, Jay Z, before the streaming music service Tidal was introduced last year. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times As a partner in Tidal - the service that her husband, Jay Z, bought just over a year ago for $56 million and reintroduced as an artist-friendly alternative to Spotify - Beyoncé faced a strong incentive to release the album exclusively through that outlet, to draw attention to the service and attract subscribers to it. Yet with Tidal claiming just three million subscribers, she would risk alienating the vast majority of the online market if she were to keep the album on that service alone for too long. (Spotify has 30 million paying subscribers, and Apple Music has 11 million.) And the extremely brief window for keeping "Lemonade" -

"A wealth of music research has argued that musical choices correctly reflect personality features. Findings across studies and geographic regions converged to show that the Big Five personality traits are consistently linked to musical preferences. In tune with this line of thinking, researchers at University of Cambridge wanted to determine how individual differences in music preferences are differentiated by cognitive type, based on the link between empathy [the ability to identify with other's mental states] and systemizing [responding to behavior based on set rules] - the Empathizing-Systemizing Theory (ES). In other words, does the music that makes your soul happy predict your thinking style?"

"For the most part, research suggests that listening to music can improve your efficiency, creativity and happiness in terms of work-related tasks. However, there are stipulations to these benefits. For example, studies seem to agree that listening to music with lyrics is distracting for most people. Therefore, it's often recommended that we avoid listening to music featuring lyrics when working on tasks that require intense focus or the learning of new information."

"A new musical explores life in high school in a way that's eerily familiar. It's called Ranked, and it's set in a dystopian world where your class rank - determined by grades and test scores - governs everything from where you sit to what your future holds." This musical, written by a high school teacher, explores some really interesting questions inspired by the students including: "How do we know the difference between who we actually are and what people want from us?" Usually, Granite Bay announces its spring musical by posting headshots of the performers in the hallway. But this year, it tried something a little different: Holmes asked students to anonymously submit personal text messages, exchanges and emails that depicted the pressure the students were under from parents and counselors. One text exchange reads: A: How was the test? B: I got an 86%! A: Oh no what happened? Another: A: I'm watching you B: Where am I currently then A: Failing class They used the messages in a collage that included headlines from recent news stories ("The Silicon Valley Suicides," "Is class rank valid?") and hung it in the hallway instead of the headshots. A banner at the top reads: "Pain is temporary. Grades last forever."

"The key to harnessing the power of streaming to create something really new might be to turn the medium's ubiquity and fluidity into an advantage. Can we meaningfully allow for a given piece of music to morph and evolve with different impact on each hearing? Can this mutability engage artists' imaginations in new ways? Can listeners - or even the entire environment - play important collaborative roles in building such a "living music" culture? Several current projects at the MIT Media Lab, where we work, explore various forms that dynamically streamed music might take."

"By being unreal, she is an error-proof ideal. And by being the ideal, she represents a liberation from celebrity as much as its fulfillment. A pop singer today is, mostly, a beautiful image of a person who sings other people's material, and those other people, the creators, are mostly forgotten. "There are plenty of people who can do great music but who will never get on stage because they're not young, fit, beautiful people," says Amy Fineshriber, a fan who also occasionally works for Crypton Media. She has a point. When was the last time you saw a bad-looking pop singer? Hatsune Miku spares the creators the need to have the bodies they cannot have. For the imperfect, the overweight, the shy, the normal kids with regular bodies who just love pop music, Hatsune Miku bears the burden of the perfection demanded from celebrities, so that these kids can make the music they want to hear."

"On Thursday night, as millions tuned in to see Carrie Underwood ambitiously take on the role of Maria von Trapp, croon about the hills being alive, and make children's clothing out of drapes in NBC's The Sound of Music Live, DiGiorno Pizza was also watching-and live-tweeted the whole thing. The Nestlé brand's tweets were funny and hilariously pizza-related"

"As Instagram and YouTube supplanted blogs, Twitter and Vine as the most popular platform for social engagement among millennials, Cotton followed his audience. All interviews were filmed and uploaded; breaking news and truncated clips of music videos could neatly fit onto a medium that swiftly delivered content in pellet-sized bursts. Most notably, Cotton's platform helped launch the career of Tay-K, the controversial 17-year-old incarcerated rapper from Arlington, Texas. Today, with hip-hop having surpassed rock as the most popular music genre, its independent media tastemakers have experienced a commensurate rise in popularity. This is partially due to the social media savvy and innate self-promotional streak of its stars, but it's also a byproduct of the whims of fans. For every Lil Yachty or Post Malone that comes up squarely within the confines of the major label system, there is a Tay-K or 6ix9ine, Soundcloud superstars, whose court cases and controversies fuel their meteoric rise but who are often treated as persona non grata by mainstream publications."

"The Oscar-nominated sound mixer went on to explain the process of creating the live-concert experience on film in front of an audience, all while avoiding having Lady Gaga's exclusive music leak into the world."

"A tear-jerking viral video, called "2012: What Brought Us Together," is making the rounds online. Posted to YouTube on Tuesday, the six-minute video is a montage of major moments over the past year, from silly to serious. Set to the music of This Will Destroy You's "The Mighty Rio Grande," It includes clips about Hurricane Sandy, KONY 2012, the Costa Concordia disaster and the suicide of Amanda Todd."

"When news spread Thursday that Prince had died, everyone from Oprah to the president of the United States posted their love for the legendary pop music icon on social media. Then something weird started to happen. Cereal, liquor and office-supply companies took to social media to say how sad they were about Prince's passing -- by using their products as the means of communicating sorrow. When Cheerios posted a purple graphic with the text "rest in peace" (with a single Cheerio dotting the "i"), Prince fans were outraged the company would inject its brand into its condolences. Cheerios later deleted the tweet."

But the relentless mass marketing of cool has tainted this style of behavior and made it seem inauthentic or contrived to a growing number of individuals. It is almost inconceivable that anything could happen, at this late stage, that would restore to cool the freshness and vitality it possessed in the fifties and sixties. Cool now lacks conviction and energy. Above all, its economic force is diminishing. And this, more than anything, will accelerate its decline. The arbiters of taste - at record labels, in films and TV, in consumer marketing, in media - will respond to these economic shifts rather than lead them. But follow they must, or disappear from the scene. Their successors will not make the same mistakes. Over time, this will transform even the last institutional bastions of cool into promoters of the postcool worldview. One of the most interesting spectacles of postcool society will involve the dominant forces of the old paradigm scrambling to co-opt the new one. Packaged and slick and phony will attempt to become down-home and natural and authentic. We can see this playing out in many arenas - from music to clothing, politics to daily news. But let us take one sector of our economy and show how this works.

Male and female images As one dramatic example, the image and representation of women and girls in the media has long been a subject of concern. Research shows that there are many fewer females than males in almost all forms of mainstream media and those who do appear are often portrayed in very stereotypical ways. Constantly polarized gender messages in media have fundamentally anti-social effects. In everything from advertising, television programming, newspaper and magazines, to comic books, popular music, film and video games, women and girls are more likely to be shown: in the home, performing domestic chores such as laundry or cooking; as sex objects who exist primarily to service men; as victims who can't protect themselves and are the natural recipients of beatings, harassment, sexual assault and murder. Men and boys are also stereotyped by the media. From GI Joe to Rambo, masculinity is often associated with machismo, independence, competition, emotional detachment, aggression and violence. Despite the fact that men have considerably more economic and political power in society than women, these trends - although different from those which affect women and girls - are very damaging to boys.

"A feminist parody of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" - a song that has been accused of blurring the lines between consensual sex and rape - was briefly removed from YouTube yesterday, leaving its creators mystified. "Defined Lines", created by a bunch of University of Auckland law students, features three fully dressed women responding to the attentions of scantily clad men as they sing about sexism. The video, which has been watched more than 450,000 times since it was posted three days ago, was removed from YouTube yesterday having been flagged by users as containing "inappropriate content", but has now been restored."

"Facebook's News Feed, a homepage built by our friends and organized by our clicks and likes, isn't really a "news" feed. It's an entertainment portal for stories that remind us of our lives and offer something like an emotional popper. In fact, news readers self-identify as a minority on Facebook: Fewer than half ever read "news" on the site, according to a 2013 Pew study, and just 10 percent of them go to Facebook to get the news on purpose, as opposed, say, being assaulted by a breaking news event when you're just scanning baby photos. To see this more clearly, let's compare the BuzzFeed network's most viral stories-i.e.: the stories that go biggest on Facebook-to the top stories on Twitter and the most-searched stories. First, here are the top stories on Twitter in 2013. It's a blend of news, like terrorist attacks and music shows, and evergreen silliness with Ryan Gosling and Kim Kardashian. "

"Once a mark of rebellion, tattoos are fast becoming one of corporate America's favorite branding tools. This spring, Red Bull and the British e-tailer ASOS also set up pop-up tattoo parlors (at Miami Music Week and SXSW, respectively), and Sailor Jerry rum hosted a SXSW party where attendees were offered free tattoos of anchors and other brand-related designs. Last year, HBO gave away Game of Thrones tats, and this August free tattoos will be offered at a VIP Lollapalooza event hosted by Chicago's Hard Rock Hotel. For today's marketers, tattoos are just another gimmick-a sort of permanent promotional T-shirt. "Who needs a food truck at your party when you can do a tattoo truck?" says Bruce Starr, a partner at BMF Media, the agency behind the Hard Rock and ASOS events."

" What is the responsibility of powerful commercial media entities (including news outlets, music labels, movie studios, and fellow artists) that protect and profit off of sex offenders, and what will it take to hold the media accountable?"

"We've compiled a mage-list of 40 viral videos (in no particular order) that summarize life on the Internet in 2013. And even though some of the year's most watched YouTube videos were ads (Dove, WestJet, Kmart and Volvo) or music videos like Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball, we left those off to make room for some classics from the everyday man."

"The searches we make, the news we read, the dates we go on, the advertisements we see, the products we buy and the music we listen to. The stock market. The surveillance society. The police state, and the drones. All guided by a force we never see and few understand. A series of calculation procedures that come together to constitute capitalism's secret ingredient - the all holy algorithm, that which binds and optimizes. Those strange numerical gods who decide whether or not you're a terrorist and what kids' toy is going to set the market on fire this Christmas. But what are they, where did they come from and how did they get so powerful?"

"Consider the possibilities! "What if we did for buying mortgages," the voiceover asks over guitar riffs, "what the Internet did for buying music and plane tickets and shoes?" There are so, so many problems with this concept, the first of which is that lack of an app isn't what's keeping 36 percent of American households from owning a home. The bigger obstacles tend to be thorny things like poor credit, the high cost of housing, steep down payments, lender discrimination, multi-generational inequality."