Four nights of unique set lists and long jams presented a much different production challenge than U2’s 40-show residency.
Not only is the first song called “Fortnight” (ignore the typo), but the lyrics from “So High School” reference both GTA and the beloved LucasArts adventure game Full Throttle. Curiously it’s not capitalized, but Swift does seem to be teasing a sequel.
It’s not just us Swifties who have been waiting impatiently for April 19th — The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) release day. It appears Mark Zuckerberg had a carefully worded pun locked and loaded for today, which also marks the pop superstar’s debut on Threads.
“No journalist is going to catch Swift in her sweatpants backstage and write about it.” I loved this profile of Tree Paine, perhaps the most influential celebrity publicist in the game.
You know, in case that sort of thing is relevant to you.
[Create Digital Music]
The new deal adds protections around using digital voice replicas, reports Reuters.
The terms “artist,” “singer,” and “royalty artist,” under this agreement only include humans. In this agreement, clear and conspicuous consent, along with minimum compensation requirements and specific details of intended use, are required prior to the release of a sound recording that uses a digital replication of an artist’s voice.
AI voice cloning improvements mean we’ll probably see more agreements ensuring performers are informed about how copies of their voices are used.
Akira Toriyama’s Sand Land manga, published in 2000, is getting both an anime and video game adaptation. The anime is out now on Hulu and Disney Plus while the video game launches on April 26th. Bandai Namco just released a new trailer for the game making use of another popular piece of sand related media and it is exactly what you think it is. They saw the opportunity and went for it.
Yesterday, a hidden message started showing up in the lyrics of songs in five curated Apple Music playlists of Swift’s music, giving Swifties a code to decipher ahead of her upcoming album, “The Department of Tortured Poets.”
According to USA Today, Apple will add random capital letters to a song per day, spelling out a word and, by April 18th, a “secret” message.
To create the X-Men ‘97 score, Andy Grush and Taylor Stewart had to work through their nostalgia and create new sounds from the future.
Because you can find just about any kind of content on the web, there’s a TikTok channel that’s almost entirely devoted to wax phonograph cylinders and the devices that play them.
One process for printing music on them, shown here by phonograph repair person Wyatt Markus, involves playing music into a metal cone. That transfers the sound waves through a cutting stylus that etches them into the wax.
Big Sean shouted out the blog era of music during an NPR Tiny Desk appearance this week, which is a reminder of so many outlets from that time that have disappeared or changed drastically.
That includes Pitchfork (even if Big Sean’s best review there was probably for a track that wasn’t on any of his albums), which was folded into GQ after a round of layoffs early this year, and was profiled more recently here by Liz Lopatto.
Instead of sharing a Tidal-specific song link with friends, now you can let them choose the service they want to open it with — whether it’s Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music. Tidal is rolling out universal links today, and you can see how it looks in the screenshot below.
Pitchfork exploded as the music industry changed, then was cut down to size by another wave of technological change. Was that it?
The artist pulled his catalog in early 2022 over its then-exclusive Joe Rogan deal, which Young said had resulted in Spotify spreading vaccine misinformation. Now, with the exclusivity deal over, Rogan’s podcast is also available on Apple and Amazon, and Young can’t keep his music off all of them.
He’s still not happy about Spotify’s lack of high-res audio quality, though.
[Neil Young Archives]
NPR posted a Tiny Desk concert with the Omaha band.
Nick Hexium, the band’s lead singer, reviewed the NPR venue: “This kind of reminds me of being in my dad’s basement, being back next to the pool table, but it smells better here.”
They did not play “Come Original,” a song I have been making jokes about for at least the last 20 years.
The new HomePod software update 17.4 lets Siri learn your preferred music service, so you don’t need to manually set it up or always say “on YouTube Music” after every request. It only works with services that support the HomePod, so if you’re a YouTube Music, Deezer, Pandora, TuneIn, or iHeartRadio user, you’re in luck!
It doesn’t work with Spotify, but you can use this workaround to get Siri to play Spotify on the speaker
JKBX (pronounced “jukebox”) is a new platform that lets music rights holders sell securities based on their royalties.
If you buy shares in a song like Beyoncé’s “Halo,” for example, you’ll get a cut of the distribution fees the rights holder collects. The only problem is that it’s already hard enough for artists themselves to make money from streaming, so even if you invest in a trending song, it could take a while to see a meaningful return.
We’re just a few days out from the Disney Plus debut of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concert film, but in case the March 14th premiere somehow slipped your mind, there’s a new trailer to get you hyped back up.
like whether your outfit matches. You can try out the new Song Psychic feature by heading to spotify.com/songpsychic on your phone and picking from a range of premade questions. The app will then attempt to answer your question with a song.
When I asked what I should have for lunch, I got “Slime” by Shygirl. Thanks, Spotify.
It compiles 25 of your frequently listened-to songs but will update daily, reports MacRumors. This way, the playlist reflects a shorter timeframe than Apple Music’s other personalized playlists (such as Favorites), which get updated weekly.
Because it’s February, and no one else knows you’ve listened to Mitski’s latest album about 840 times over the past week.
Travelers and those with finicky Wi-Fi can rejoice as offline downloading is starting to show up in YouTube Music’s web app, according to Android Police and 9to5Google. One user on Reddit posted screenshots of a “Save to Library” button, as well as a new “Downloads” tab.
Offline downloads of songs have been limited to YouTube Music’s mobile apps and only for Premium members. It seems likely the desktop feature will also remain a Premium perk.
The company put out a new statement today criticizing Spotify’s complaint to the EU about restrictions on its iOS app:
Fundamentally, their complaint is about trying to get limitless access to all of Apple’s tools without paying anything for the value Apple provides.
What kind of computing platform could possibly offer developers that kind of flexibility? Who would make such a thing?
Daft Punk (y’know the French electronica duo with the really cool helmets) is streaming their anime movie Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem on their official Twitch channel right now.
If you’ve never seen it, it’s great. If you’ve seen it a million times, watch it again. Or if you really like Daft Punk’s Discovery album and wonder what it would look like as feature length animated movie, then oh boy have I got a treat for you.
