Every Time I Die have started a “Curling for a Cure” auction on Ebay for their annual holiday show. All proceeds benefit the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Sister’s Hospital in Buffalo, NY.
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Melinda Newman, writing for Billboard:
Grammy album of the year nominee Lorde, Kacey Musgraves, Bleachers, Shamir, Matt Berninger and Aaron Dessner of The National and Britt Daniel and Alex Fischel of Spoon have all signed on for The Ally Coalition’s 4th annual Talent Show, to take place Jan. 24 at New York’s Town Hall.
Bleachers’ Jack Antonoff will curate the Grammy week event, which will also feature comedians Aparna Nancherla and Phoebe Robinson, with more artists to be named.
The Spotlight team at The Boston Globe have posted the first part in a series on racism in Boston:
Google the phrase “Most racist city,” and Boston pops up more than any other place, time and time again.
It may be easy to write that off as a meaningless digital snapshot of what people say about us, and what we say about ourselves — proof of little beyond the dated (or, hopefully, outdated) memories of Boston’s public and fierce school desegregation battles of the 1970s.
Except that Boston’s reputation problem goes much deeper than an online search. A national survey commissioned by the Globe this fall found that among eight major cities, black people ranked Boston as least welcoming to people of color. More than half — 54 percent — rated Boston as unwelcoming.
I’d call this a must read.
Creeper’s Hannah Greenwood has responded on Twitter to harassment at a recent show:
Manchester, let me start off and say the show last night was wild. Thank you to everyone that came and made it what it was. Unfortunately my night was slightly tainted when I came off stage to find out some guy yelled a derogatory comment at me before ‘Darling.’ This type of behaviour is not tolerated at Creeper shows – it shouldn’t happen at any show. Our shows are safe places where nobody should be made to feel uncomfortable, on or off stage. I’m just disappointed I didn’t hear the comment at the time otherwise I would have called it out there and then. Moving on from shitty comments, thank you to everyone that has come to this tour and made it so special.
SoundCloud have released their 2017 year-end data:
We’ve amped up this year’s list for a total of 17 categories that touch every corner of the SoundCloud ecosystem, from hip-hop, pop, dance and rock, to what’s new, now and next in music culture. This year’s list celebrates the diverse creativity on the platform and within our community–everything from the buzziest tags in 2017 like ChillHop and Vaporwave, to the year’s most creative cities (welcome to the list Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Seoul!).
The documents, which were reviewed by The Times, indicate that E.P.A. enforcement officers across the country no longer have the authority to order certain air and water pollution tests, known as requests for information, without receiving permission from Washington. The tests are essential to building a case against polluters, the equivalent of the radar gun for state highway troopers.
One of my favorite YouTube channels, Every Frame a Painting, has decided to call it a day. The two creators have shared a postmortem on Medium that’s full of some advice and a look behind-the-scenes at what went into making the videos:
Every Frame a Painting is officially dead. Nothing sinister; we just decided to end it, rather than keep on making stuff.
The existing videos will, of course, remain online. But there won’t be any new ones.
The following is the script for what was supposed to be the final episode, voiced by both Taylor and myself. We were never able to make it. But we think it may be useful to some of you making your own work on the Internet, so we’re publishing it here.
“We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple,” Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS. Today, it’s used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, across multiple platforms.”
I like this move for Apple as there’s lots of places Shazam’s technology can be used across their platform.
I hope everyone is having a nice weekend. Hopefully it’s not too stressful. I just wanted to quickly plug the 2017 Holiday Gift Guide I posted up earlier this week, and once again call attention to our supporter program. As we get close to the end of the year we’re closing in on my personal goal for how many supporters I wanted to hit this year. We’re not quite there yet, so I wanted to once again ask if you like this website to please consider becoming a supporting member.
Also, on that note: “Dark Mode” for the main website should be completed within the week.
Dave Elkins from Mae told an oral history of the band on a recent episode of The Local Wave Podcast.
Pet Symmetry have dropped off their upcoming show with the following message on Facebook:
Hey y’all, Marcus from Pet Sym here. We will be dropping off of the Dec 30th show at Metro. This was a decision made by Erik and I. Pet Symmetry’s mission statement as a band is “to have as much fun as possible.” Right now this band is not fun for me.
My sincerest apologies to anyone who was hoping to see us perform. I’m gonna take a long walk around the block, maybe I’ll see y’all later.
Try your best to be good to others, and most importantly, be good to yourself
Jon Brodkin, writing at Ars Technica:
Because advertised prices often don’t reflect the full cost of service, the Federal Communications Commission in 2015 forced ISPs to be more transparent with customers about hidden fees and the consequences of exceeding data caps. The new requirements were part of the net neutrality rules—and are therefore going to be eliminated when the FCC votes to repeal the rules next week.
While FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is proposing to keep some of the commission’s existing disclosure rules and to impose some new disclosure requirements, ISPs won’t have to tell consumers exactly what everything will cost when they sign up for service.
Sigh.
The 20th annual Punk Rock Bowling will be happening in Downtown Vegas from May 25-28. The lineup can be found below and tickets are now on sale.
Brian Fallon recently at down with Upset Magazine to talk about his new album:
Due for release in February, Sleepwalkers was recorded over the summer of 2017 with ’59 Sound producer Tedd Hutt. Despite the familiar faces, Fallon is still trying to push the way he writes songs in new directions. “I had these handclaps loops like drum loops. So I would start out with that kind of shuffle and look at it through the eyes of the punk rock that I grew up on and then add the Vox Continental [organ], writing riffs on that and almost using that riff as a loop, which I’ve never done before.”
“The record flipped a little bit from the more folk-oriented thing on Painkillers to a more R&B, punk-leaning thing. It’s such a drastic shift that you’ve got to get some different people and some new blood sometimes to do that because it requires a different finesse and a different perspective.”
Spoiler: I’m a fan, I think it’s a nice, confident step up from Painkillers.
Lucas Shaw, writing at Bloomberg:
YouTube plans to introduce a paid music service in March, according to people familiar with the matter, a third attempt by parent company Alphabet Inc. to catch up with rivals Spotify and Apple Inc.
The new service could help appease record-industry executives who have pushed for more revenue from YouTube. Warner Music Group, one of the world’s three major record labels, has already signed on, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private talks. YouTube is also in talks with the two others, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group, and Merlin, a consortium of independent labels, the people said.
YouTube is already the de facto music service for a pretty large number of people. Can you get them to start paying for their music consumption? Seems like it’s not a new service those people are looking for, they like browsing and listening to music on YouTube.