Alex Gaskarth Enters Baltimore Beer Scene With Full Tilt Brewing

Libby Solomon, writing at The Baltimore Sun:

All Time Low singer and Dulaney High School graduate Alex Gaskarth is entering Baltimore’s nightlife business with an investment in Full Tilt Brewing.

The craft brewery, which has been brewing beer for six years, opened its own location for the first time this year on York Road in Govans, in part thanks to Gaskarth, said Full Tilt co-founder Nick Fertig. […]

The 6,000-square-foot taproom and brewery at 5604 York Road in Govans, less than a mile from the county line, is full of what Fertig said are unique touches — arcade games, graffiti on the wall, a shuffleboard and garage doors that can roll up in the warmer months to let in fresh air.

Zane Lowe on Why Apple Music Is ‘In the Storytelling Business’

Zane Lowe sat down with Music Business Worldwide to talk about Apple Music and various other topics:

Well the artist, first and foremost, has to create an environment which offers a 360 degree creative experience for fans before we even think about how to collaborate with that [and] help them build their story.

An artist like Billie Eilish thinks in sounds, she thinks in colors, she thinks in visuals, she thinks in collaborations, she thinks in all kinds of different forms of creativity. When you’re dealing with an artist like that, it opens all these other areas that you can help build things around.

Music Labels Sue Charter, Complain That High Internet Speeds Fuel Piracy

Legal

Jon Brodkin, writing at Ars Technica:

The music industry is suing Charter Communications, claiming that the cable Internet provider profits from music piracy by failing to terminate the accounts of subscribers who illegally download copyrighted songs. The lawsuit also complains that Charter helps its subscribers pirate music by selling packages with higher Internet speeds.

While the act of providing higher Internet speeds clearly isn’t a violation of any law, ISPs can be held liable for their users’ copyright infringement if the ISPs repeatedly fail to disconnect repeat infringers.

Panic! at the Disco’s “High Hopes” Is Longest-Leading Adult Pop Songs No. 1 This Decade

Panic at the Disco

Billboard:

After becoming Panic! at the Disco’s highest-charting Billboard Hot 100 hit, reaching No. 4 in January, the Brendon Urie-led act’s “High Hopes” is now the sole longest-leading No. 1 on the Adult Pop Songs radio airplay chart this decade, as it leads the latter list (dated March 30) for a 15th week.

“Hopes,” which became Panic’s first Adult Pop Songs No. 1 in December, breaks a tie with Maroon 5’s “Girls Like You” (featuring Cardi B), which ruled for 14 weeks in 2018. The reign of “Hopes” is the chart’s longest since The Fray’s “How to Save a Life” also led for 15 weeks in 2006-07.

Juice WRLD Tops the Charts

Juice WRLD’s Death Race for Love spends a second straight week at number one:

A trio of previous No. 1s follow Death Race, starting with Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next, which holds at No. 2 with 66,000 equivalent album units (down 9 percent). Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born soundtrack is steady at No. 3 with 40,000 units (down 16 percent) and A Boogie Wit da Hoodie’s Hoodie SZN climbs 6-4 with a little more than 33,000 units (down 2 percent).

‘Parks and Rec’ Cast Reunites for Ten Year Anniversary

Parks and Rec

The cast of Parks and Recreation reunited for the show’s ten year anniversary last night:

“The show had an argument to make,” Schur said. “The argument was about teamwork and friendship and positivity, being optimistic and not getting cynical and believing that people can do good and believing in the power of public service and believing that if you work hard and you put your head down and believe in the people around you who are part of your team, that good things are possible. That you’ll achieve the things you want to achieve, and I don’t feel like we left anything on the table. I feel like the show sort of made its argument. And we also — maybe this was like a preventative measure or something — we did jump ahead to the year, like, 2074.”

Instagram Is the Internet’s New Home for Hate

Instagram

Taylor Lorenz, writing at The Atlantic:

Instagram is teeming with these conspiracy theories, viral misinformation, and extremist memes, all daisy-chained together via a network of accounts with incredible algorithmic reach and millions of collective followers—many of whom, like Alex, are very young. These accounts intersperse TikTok videos and nostalgia memes with anti-vaccination rhetoric, conspiracy theories about George Soros and the Clinton family, and jokes about killing women, Jews, Muslims, and liberals.

Apple Updates AirPods

Apple has updated their AirPods:

Apple today announced new AirPods, the second generation of the world’s most popular wireless headphones. AirPods revolutionized the wireless audio experience with a breakthrough design and the new AirPods build on the magical experience customers love. The new Apple-designed H1 chip, developed specifically for headphones, delivers performance efficiencies, faster connect times, more talk time and the convenience of hands-free “Hey Siri.” AirPods come with either a standard charging case or a new Wireless Charging Case for convenient charging at home and on the go.

I use mine every single day and they’re one of my favorite purchases in a long time. Holding out to upgrade until the battery dies or they release them in black though.

New Hayley Williams Interview

Cariann Bradley, writing at L’odet:

I told Zac that if all three of us feel good about it, we do it. In moving forward, if the three of us are happy, then we will just do whatever we want to do. If that means collaborating with each other, bringing other friends in to collaborate — there are seven band members when we tour. We’re all friends and we all make music in different parts, together. So I feel like, yes, I want to be in Paramore. I never want to have to put out a press release that says we’re over or that I quit or that we’re taking a hiatus, which is essentially a marketing ploy these days. I would rather it just be. It just is a part of each of our DNA. If we choose to move into it as a brand and put a name on these songs and make a new t-shirt, then awesome. But I’ve been in a band with them since I was 12; I don’t think the band is going anywhere. As long as we’re friends, the band just is. It’s just in us.

This whole interview is fantastic.

Inside Garageband

Rolling Stone

Amy Wang, writing at Rolling Stone:

Patrick Stump was livid. On a lurching tour bus rigged with a wobbly Jenga tower of recording equipment, the singer and Fall Out Boy frontman had been trying to lay down demos for the band’s second album — it’d been hours, fiddling with rubber cords and finicky software — and nothing was working well together. Stump can still precisely recall the panic in the moment he finally finished the rough sketch of a song only to see the whole apparatus glitch and crash on his computer. “I just lost it, screaming in the back of a bus,” Stump tells Rolling Stone, a decade and a half later. “When you’re being creative, you just want to get your idea out. When you’re composing, time is everything, because you’re thinking the second guitar has to do this and the background vocals are going to do this and you just want to get it all out as quickly as possible. I thought: I’m not going to be able to do this.”

Madly clicking around on his laptop in search of a new route, Stump happened to open one of its pre-loaded programs. While he’d heard of Garageband, a piece of free software shipped with all Mac computers, he’d thought it was more toy than tool — and no one else was giving it much attention then, in the early 2000s. “But I opened it that first time and never looked back,” says Stump, who talks about the software with a particular fondness, as if remembering his meeting with an old friend. “I just started recording, without having to learn a new program, which was always one of the scariest things about music.”

I really enjoyed this article looking at the 15-year history of Garageband.

Fall Out Boy Is Sued for Overuse of Llama Puppets in Videos, Marketing

Fall Out Boy

Jonathan Stempel, writing at Reuters:

Fall Out Boy was sued on Friday by a stuffed animal company that accused the rock band of illegally exploiting the wearable, life-sized llama puppets it made for a music video by featuring them in other videos, a tour and an extended-play album.

In a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, seeking damages its lawyer said could reach millions of dollars, Furry Puppet Studio Inc said Fall Out Boy did not have permission to use the puppets anywhere other than its 2017 video for its song “Young and Menace.”

Now that’s a title I never expected I’d write.

MySpace Says It Lost Years of User-Uploaded Music

Shannon Van Sant, writing at NPR:

MySpace — the once-dominant social media platform that was largely subsumed by Facebook — may have lost a decade’s worth of music uploaded by users, the company says. […] According to several media reports, it posted a message on its site recently reading, “As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from MySpace. We apologize for the inconvenience.”