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Jack Antonoff Named Songwriter of the Year

Bleachers
Jason Tate

Jack Antonoff has been named ASCAP’s “Songwriter of the Year.”

Antonoff was recognized for his co-writes on songs like Sabrina Carpenter’s smash hit “Please Please Please,” as well as for his work on Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero,” “Fortnight,” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” “Is It Over Now? (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)” and “Karma.” One of the most prolific songwriter-producers in the industry, last year he produced Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, as well as several tracks on Kendrick Lamar’s GNX and Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet.

Variety Talks With Green Day

Green Day
Jason Tate

Variety talked with Billie Joe of Green Day:

“You have to live life to write songs about your life,” says Armstrong. “I do like to take my time with the lyrics to make sure that they project the way I feel, internalize what’s going on in my own life and what’s going on in the culture. So that’s important. We live in such a crazy world. Now, everything is wide open. So I think it was at a pace of every four years, but now it’s like you put out a song or an EP, an LP, whatever it is, and with streaming there are no rules.”

Vinyl, Me Please In Trouble

Jason Tate

The Denver Post:

“It seems VMP has stopped shipping records entirely and they’re still charging for memberships that promise new releases,” he continued, echoing more than 100 complaints reviewed by The Denver Post across Reddit, social media, YouTube, and VMP’s Discord server. “There has been zero communication and no response from customer support for over a month now.”

Spotify Stock Drops on Latest Earnings Report

Jason Tate

Bloomberg:

Spotify Technology SA shares tumbled on Tuesday after the streaming company gave a muted outlook for profit and subscriber growth in the current quarter. 

The Stockholm-based company forecast gross profit margins of 31.5% in the second quarter, missing analysts’ average estimate for 31.6% according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Spotify sees monthly active users rising to 689 million, less than the 694.4 million analysts expected.

Jack Black’s ‘Minecraft’ Song Shortest Hot 100 Hit Ever

Billboard
Jason Tate

Billboard:

Hit songs are generally quick — Billboard Hot 100 top 10s ran an average of three minutes and 40 seconds in 2024, according to Hit Songs Deconstructed — but no Hot 100 hit has ever been as brief as Jack Black’s “Steve’s Lava Chicken.”

The track — at just 34 seconds in its original form (with a still-swift 1:15 extended mix also released) — breaks the record as the shortest Hot 100 hit ever by run time, dating to the chart’s Aug. 4, 1958, inception. The cut from the soundtrack of A Minecraft Movie debuts at No. 77 on the list dated May 3, 2025.

Code Orange Go on Hiatus

Code Orange
Jason Tate

Code Orange are on hiatus:

Morgan says “Code Orange is on the shelf, and I think it’s there for a good reason, for many reasons. I think you can put two, two and four together, and you’ll probably come to the answer.”

Regarding Landolina’s health issues, he continues: “One [circumstance] that I am happy to speak about is my guitar player, Dominic – he’s one of my best friends in the world – was dealing with a really hard genetic condition that really started damaging his hand, and his neck, and his foot, and that was the primary cause for us to have to cancel our first tour on the record.”

The All-American Rejects Talk New Single

All American Rejects
Jason Tate

Tyson of The All-American Rejects talked a little with Stereogum about their new single:

To be able to walk away from it for a second was — a lot of people are afraid to do it. I mean, I was afraid to do it, but I was so burnt out. There’s a big difference between a crafter and an artist. People that craft put in their 10,000 hours and they excel at their work. I felt like we were turning it into a craft as opposed to an artistry. I know that might sound silly coming from a guy who wrote “Dirty Little Secret,” but I was 22 when I wrote that. I think now being on the other side of 30, I have a perspective that I didn’t have when I was younger. Having this ability to inherently be able to craft a song is something that a lot of people lean on and just keep pumping out and serving the beast and shaking the purse strings for a commerce as an end result.

Warner Music Group Files Lawsuit Against Crumbl Cookies

Legal
Jason Tate

Warner Music Group is suing Crumbl Cookies:

“Defendants have misappropriated at least 159 of the most popular and valuable sound recordings and musical compositions in the market, using those creative works to build [Crumbl’s] brand profile and drive massive sales to Defendants without any compensation to [WMG],” the lawsuit reads.

“The audio track generally runs the full length of the Crumbl Videos and includes the most familiar portion of the sound recording and underlying musical composition, such as the hook or chorus,” WMG claims. The music giant cites examples such as Lil Mosey’s “Blueberry Faygo” played over a video promoting blueberry cheesecake cookies, another promoting yellow sugar cookies to Coldplay’s “Yellow,” and a third promoting Kentucky butter cake to BTS’ “Butter.”

Etsy Sells Reverb After Six Years

Money
Jason Tate

Etsy has sold Reverb:

Today, I’m excited to share that two new investors—Creator Partners and Servco—have entered an agreement to purchase Reverb from Etsy. Once the deal closes, we’ll be a privately-held, independently operated company backed by two investors who bring a passion for the musical instrument industry as well as a community-first approach and a deep desire to help transform creative industries for the better.

AI Generated Music Is Hard for Humans to Detect

AI
Jason Tate

Deezer reports that around 18% of new tracks uploaded to their platform are AI generated:

“AI generated content continues to flood streaming platforms like Deezer, and we see no sign of it slowing down,” said Aurelien Herault, Chief Innovation Officer, Deezer. “Generative AI has the potential to positively impact music creation and consumption, but we need to approach the development with responsibility and care in order to safeguard the rights and revenues of artists and songwriters, while maintaining transparency for the fans. Thanks to our cutting-edge tool we are already removing fully AI generated content from the algorithmic recommendations.”

Meanwhile, a new study says humans aren’t great at detecting AI generated music:

“The average score was 46%,” O’Donnell reveals. “And for a few genres, especially instrumental ones, listeners were wrong more often than not.” O’Donnell says when he watched people take the test, he noticed that qualities they confidently flagged as AI compositions—fake-sounding instruments, weird lyrics—were not always right.

“Predictably, people did worse in genres they were less familiar with; some did okay on country or soul, but many stood no chance against jazz, classical piano, or pop. Beaty, the creativity researcher scored 66%, while Brandt, the composer, scored 50%.” With just a few text prompts, O’Donnell created music that humans couldn’t pick out of a line-up as AI generated. “A few could have been easily played at a party without raising objections, and I found two I genuinely loved, even as a lifelong musicians and generally picky music person,” he shares.

Spotify Back Up After Outage

Jason Tate

Spotify is back online after a widespread outage.

The outage seemed to have begun around 6:20 AM ET, with outage reports appearing to peak after 9:30 AM ET, with around 48,000 people reporting issues. Spotify said it was “back up and functioning normally” by 11:45 AM ET. In the early afternoon, around 1,500 outage reports remained. Users across the US and parts of Europe appear to have been affected.

While Spotify did not specify what might have caused the outage, the company was quick to stamp out rumors that a security hack was to blame. The Stockholm-based streamer says reports of that nature are “completely inaccurate.”

Blink-182 About to Work on New Music

Blink-182
Jason Tate

Mark Hoppus recently talked with People, and when asked if Blink-182 were writing new music said:

Not yet, but we are about to. [I] literally found out by Tom doing an interview with our friend Toby Morse from H2O, saying that we were going to start demoing songs this summer. So I was like, “Oh, okay. Cool. Guess I’m writing a new album this summer. Great. Can’t wait.”

Mark Hoppus on All Things Considered

Mark Hoppus
Jason Tate

Mark Hoppus is on the latest episode of NPR’s All Things Considered.

You know, coming out of the mid- to late-’90s, pop was really big, you know, boy bands, NSYNC. And I think people were ready for a little more edge and a little more fun. So Blink-182 came around, and I think it was just being there at the right moment when people were ready to laugh. And I think that “What’s My Age Again?” really broke through what was being played on the radio because it was catchy. It has a lot of energy. It had a funny video.

Mark Hoppus Shares Where “Dammit” Got Its Title

Mark Hoppus
Jason Tate

Mark Hoppus revealed at book tour stop at the Paramount in Brooklyn, New York that the title for “Dammit” came from an episode of Beavis and Butthead:

”Dammit, Dammit, Son of a Bitch. Dammit. Dammit. Son of a Bitch,” Beavis bemoaned as they watch the clip. Butt-Head responds, “If those were the words, that’d be cool.” Beavis then shares that he was thinking of writing a song with that title. But in real life, it appears that Blink-182 beat them to the punch.

No Fakes Act Reintroduced in Congress

Jason Tate

Variety:

The Recording Academy’s Grammys on the Hill Advocacy Day culminated on Wednesday with a press conference on Capitol Hill with Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Reps. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) and Maria Salazar (R-Fl.) to announce the reintroduction of the “NO FAKES” Act, standing for “Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe.” The bipartisan, bicameral bill is intended to advance creators’ rights by protecting their voices and likenesses from the unauthorized creation and use of digital replicas. Also at the press conference were stakeholders from the Human Artistry Campaign – where the Academy is a founding member – along with Google, MPA, RIAA, SAG-AFTRA, and YouTube.