Now, Geever has been ordered to pay Sarhadi $1.9 million, having been found liable by default for failing to respond to the allegations or appear in court. The verdict was handed down last Tuesday. Judge Brenda K. Sannes granted Sarhadi $1,170,800 in damages, with a further $750,000 awarded for punitive damages. However, Judge Sannes denied Sarhadi’s claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress.
404 Media (paywalled) is reporting on how Spotify is allowing AI-Generated songs on various dead artists’ pages:
According to his official Spotify page, Blaze Foley, a country music singer-songwriter who was murdered in 1989, released a new song called “Together” last week. The song, which features a male country singer, piano, and an electric guitar, vaguely sounds like a new, slow country song. The Spotify page for the song also features an image of an AI-generated image of a man who looks nothing like Foley singing into a microphone.
Craig McDonald, the owner of Lost Art Records, the label that distributes all of Foley’s music and manages his Spotify page, told me that any Foley fan would instantly realize “Together” is not one of his songs.
Consequence has more:
Update: In a statement a spokesperson for Spotify said, “The content in question violates Spotify’s deceptive content policies, which prohibit impersonation intended to mislead, such as replicating another creator’s name, image, or description, or posing as a person, brand, or organization in a deceptive manner. This is not allowed. We take action against licensors and distributors who fail to police for this kind of fraud and those who commit repeated or egregious violations can and have been permanently removed from Spotify.”
Matt Thiessen mentions that he’s been writing but there’s no current plan for Relient K to enter the studio in a new interview:
”I’ve been musing over what the set is going to look like for us,” Thiessen said of the songs they’ll play. “I know we’ll definitely play songs from (the album) ‘Mmhmm.’ I think I want to keep the show as casual and fun as possible.”
From there, the future of the band seems to be pretty loose and open.
”I’d love to record some new music and keep playing shows,” Thiessen said.
”I’ve been working on lots of new songs, but as of now, we don’t have any plans to get into the studio.”
All Time Low talked with Rolling Stone:
That question also came as the band was embroiled in a major legal drama, which involved a defamation suit All Time Low filed in response to serious accusations of sexual abuse by fans online against founding guitarist Jack Barakat. A storm of controversy ensued as the All Time Low fanbase split into two camps: supporters and detractors of the band, both unequivocal in their stances. It all made the band’s next move particularly important.
After 129 shows, the Springsteen and E Street Band 2023-25 Tour grossed $729.7 million and sold 4.9 million tickets, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. Any way you slice the data, it’s the biggest of his career.
Jeff Rabhan, writing for The Hollywood Reporter:
With a market cap now topping $145 billion, Spotify is worth more than most of the companies it licenses music from. Universal is valued at $56B. Warner? Just over $15.5 billion. And Ek? He’s sold more than $800 million in stock since 2023 alone — more than many of the songwriters on the platform have made combined. That’s not just a bad look. It’s a stat you can’t explain away.
Yes, he earned it. He helped assemble the biggest music library on earth. But when the guy holding the keys to the industry cashes out like a Silicon Valley titan while songwriters are still being paid like baristas, something’s broken. Ek’s net worth is closing in on $10 billion according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. He can afford to lead — and it won’t cost him much to do it.
Scrubs is officially returning.
A long-discussed revival of the 2000s comedy series has landed a series order from ABC, where it’s been in development since December 2024 — though series creator Bill Lawrence and members of the cast have talked about reuniting for years before that. Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke, who starred in the original version of the show, have signed on to join series lead Zach Braff in the revival. All three will also be executive producers on the show, which is set to premiere in the 2025-26 season.
Tom DeLonge talked with Kerrang:
“Film stuff takes a long time, you know,” he says. “I work on these things for years. I’m juggling a lot of projects – some are at casting, some are writing outlines, some are in script, some are in production.” Between them all, there’s the small matter blink-182’s year-closing Missionary Impossible tour, culminating at Las Vegas’s When We Were Young festival. “I’ll probably start doing some demos for blink here shortly as well,” he excitingly adds. “I’ve got to start working on recording stuff now, because I’ll be gone for a bit of time when I would normally start next year…
Good Charlotte talked with Rolling Stone:
We all feel that way sometimes. It’s OK to feel that way. When I say, “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t born at all,” I don’t mean it where I want to be gone. I am not suicidal and, thank God, I’m not depressed. But I’ve had times in my life where I was, and I had to figure that out, and it was a lot of work to figure out my own mental health and self-esteem. I’m still working on all of it all of the time. We’re all a work in progress.
Sometimes you have moments in life where it’s really fucking hard. It has nothing to do with your family or your success or your failure or whatever. But it’s a moment of aloneness, and you question stuff, and even have to give yourself the room to feel OK with those moments. That line, that just came out of me. I feel like everyone can relate to it, no matter who they are. They have those moments where they have to take a knee or let out a deep sigh or whatever, and then just keep getting on with it.
Good Charlotte talked with Kerrang:
“Watching my little sister, this woman who I’ve known since she was seven and has loved Good Charlotte, and I love her husband – it was such a beautiful moment for our family,” he smiles. “And to be a part of it with Good Charlotte was not something I expected. Of course we would do anything for them, and so we went and played – and the band showed up. I fucking love these guys. They dropped everything, came, put effort into it, and we had this amazing time, which makes me love those guys. And we would all do that for each other. We were just laughing and hanging around and we were like, ‘We should make another record.’
Warner Music Group (WMG) has announced a significant new round of layoffs as part of a sweeping restructuring and cost-savings initiative. The news comes from a staff memo from CEO Robert Kyncl that went out to staff today, July 1.
This move marks yet another major workforce reduction at the company, which has undergone several rounds of layoffs and reorganization since Kyncl assumed his leadership role in 2023.
While the exact number of employees affected in this latest round has not been disclosed, a Securities & Exchange Commission memo details that WMG aims to achieve approximately $170 million in savings through workforce reductions. This is part of a broader plan to cut annual costs by $300 million, with the remaining $130 million coming from reductions in administrative and real estate expenses.
Warner Music Group and Bain Capital are launching a joint venture to allow for the purchase of up to $1.2 billion in music catalogs across both recorded music and music publishing. The partnership was formed through equal equity commitments from WMG and Bain Capital.
WMG and Bain will together source and acquire the catalogs, while WMG will manage all aspects of marketing, distribution, and administration. The deal combines WMG’s infrastructure and relationships with Bain Capital’s global resources and financial capabilities.
Apple Music has unveiled a new studio near its Culver City headquarters, an expansive 15,000-square-foot space the streaming service hopes will serve as an all-in-one creative hub where musicians can come for radio interviews, write and record new music, conduct photo shoots and film video content.
Apple Music Studios opens this summer and will serve as the home for some of Apple Music Radio’s marquee programming including the Zane Lowe Show.
Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie completed the Wester States 100-miler ultra marathon:
But by mid-afternoon, he was so consumed by the 90-degree heat that he literally couldn’t see straight.
The 48-year-old Seattle resident is a veteran ultrarunner who has finished more than two dozen trail races since 2012, including four previous 100-mile events. But in his first crack at Western States, he thought he was doomed.
“I think I was having heat stroke or something,” Gibbard said. “By the time I got to the top of the canyon at Devil’s Thumb, I couldn’t see. I was really nauseous. I was seeing double and had to lay down. I was shivering even though they were putting blankets on me. I was in bad shape.”
Eventually, Gibbard started to feel better and the aid station volunteers helped him get rejuvenated by sipping warm soup broth. From there, he got back on his feet and continued his journey and made it to the 62-mile aid station in the small town of Foresthill at 8:50 p.m.
Shoutout to my college friend Nick (mentioned in the article) for helping train and pace Ben!
Has an AI “artist” topped 474,000 Spotify monthly listeners (and counting) in just weeks? It sure seems that way, and the development is raising new questions about machine-generated tracks’ streaming prevalence.
Word of that presumably AI-powered “band,” The Velvet Sundown, appears to have started circulating earlier this week on Reddit. There, multiple users said some of the relevant tracks had arrived in their Discover Weekly playlists.
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