Column

I wanted it to be February’s Button of the Month — partly because its big honking button has an incredible click and shoots out a monster jet of flame, partly because it triples as an alarm clock (!), and partly ‘cuz it hearkens back to Casio’s original invention: a finger ring for cigarettes.

An open letter signed by AI researchers, including Algorithmic Justice League founder Joy Boulamwini and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, said governments should look to fully criminalize deepfake child pornography even with fictional children, create criminal penalities for people who make and share “harmful” deepfakes, and require developers to be held liable if their safety measures are easily bypassed.

After a very public and acrimonious breakup with Spotify, Meghan Markle has a new podcast deal with Lemonada Media. She will launch a new show with the network, which will also take over distribution for her Spotify podcast, Archetypes. The company had another splashy launch last year with Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz sent a memo to staff on Monday announcing another round of layoffs. She said that less than 3 percent (which works out to about 170 people) would be affected. Last year, the company cut 475 employees.

Spotify for Podcasters is changing, and according to some creators, not for the better.

After over three years of Spotify exclusivity, Joe Rogan’s podcast is now available via other podcasting apps — including Apple Podcasts — and will return to YouTube “within weeks.” The change comes after Rogan renewed his deal with Spotify for a reported $250 million.

The New York Times reported earnings yesterday, and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien told investors that “our digital performance, including podcasts, was impacted by marketers avoiding some hard news topics like the Middle East conflict.” The NYT has published extensive (and important) podcasts about the war in Gaza and surrounding conflicts. Conventional wisdom in podcasting goes that advertisers avoid politics and other controversial topics, which is perhaps why brands gravitate toward sports and comedy shows.

Always one to project its creator-friendly bonifides, Spotify issued a statement this morning saying that the streamer paid out $9 billion to the music industry in 2023. The company has released this figure the past few years in the context of mounting criticism that artists on the platform are not adequately compensated for their music. Spotify also recently announced major changes to its royalties system, including a new policy in which only songs that get at least 1,000 streams annually earn royalties, which the company says is intended to get more money into the pockets of working artists.

WMG CEO Robert Kyncl -- who thinks you could pay more for Spotify-- revealed the record label will lay off 10 percent of its workforce, or 600 employees. It’s winding down the podcast division behind Rap Radar and Drink Champs, and IMGN Media. It’s also in an “exclusive process” to sell Uproxx and HipHopDX.

On the latest Vergecast, Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz discuss The Verge score for the Vision Pro, which got a 7 for being fun, but perhaps it should’ve been less?

Katherine Maher, the CEO of Web Summit and former CEO of Wikipedia parent organization, Wikimedia Foundation, will be the new president and CEO of NPR. Notably, Maher does not have a public radio background. It’s an interesting choice for the networks, which went through painful layoffs and podcast cancellations last year. Although NPR previously signaled a “broadcast-to-podcast” strategy, her appointment could signal a further pivot into digital.

Will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas fame is really embracing the AI revolution. Later this month, he’ll debut on Will.i.am Presents the FYI Show on SiriusXM with bot qd.pi. “I didn’t want to just do a traditional show, I wanted to bring tomorrow close to today, and so I wanted to have my co-host be an AI,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.

Oster, an economist who has become a leading voice on millennial parenting, is taking her popular newsletter, ParentData, independent. In an email to subscribers on Friday morning, she said the relaunch “has been in the works for months.” The news comes as prominent writers like Casey Newton and Ryan Broderick have announced their departures from Substack after The Atlantic reported that a handful of openly Nazi newsletters have been allowed on the platform. Oster’s announcement did not reference the controversy.

After laying off hundreds of employees at Twitch and Prime Video, Amazon is cutting staff at its audiobook and podcast platform, Audible. According to a memo obtained by Business Insider, Audible CEO Bob Corrigan said that the cuts were made “to position us for continued success in the coming year and into the future” and it’s really not worth finishing the quote, because you know the drill by now. Variety reports that the cuts will include more than 100 staffers, but will not impact the content teams.

The nearly-decade old podcast Death, Sex & Money is getting a new home at Slate. The media outlet announced it acquired the popular interview show hosted by Anna Sale, and production will resume in early 2024.

Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) and Madeline Dean (D-PA) filed the No AI FRAUD Act building on themes in an earlier bill introduced in October. If passed, the bill will protect individual likenesses and voices at a unified federal level instead of a patchwork state-level one, giving people the right to control who can use their image and fight against AI-generated impersonation.

The app stopped functioning last week and its website had become inaccessible, but the company issued a fix on Monday. Tiny representative Aditya Ponugonti told The Verge via email that the app and website outage were related to a DNS issue, and that “we aren’t shutting down Castro.”