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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.

Wife of Weezer Bassist Shot by Police

Weezer
Jason Tate

The wife of Weezer bassist Scott Shriner was shot by police and charged with attempted murder:

After Lauren disregarded multiple commands to drop her weapon, officers fired at her, striking her in the shoulder, TMZ reports. She retreated into her house and remained inside for 30 minutes before eventually surrendering to police. She was subsequently charged with attempted murder.

Mark Hoppus Talks With Vanity Fair

Blink-182
Jason Tate

Mark Hoppus also talked with Vanity Fair:

“I fail a lot and I still get mad at dumb shit, and I still get depressed sometimes, and sometimes I’ll waste a whole day fucking looking at my phone and Instagram when I should be out looking at art and creating and doing fun stuff,” says Hoppus. “But I really, after cancer, have tried to cherish every day, every relationship. It’s made me reevaluate a lot.”

The Guardian Also Talks with Mark

Mark Hoppus
Jason Tate

The Guardian also sat down with content-king Mark Hoppus:

He says he loved their penniless early days more than any other part of their career; in an era when artists talk about the deleterious effect of touring on their mental health, there is something uplifting about the glee with which he describes building an audience by touring grotty clubs in a knackered van, perpetually skint and unwashed. “Totally the most fun,” he says. “I mean, it’s the fucking worst, trying to find the next venue or a fucking shower – the quest for a shower is insane. We would go days with no shower and you’re in the gnarly heat, playing in the middle of the day in 92% humidity in some parking lot in New Jersey. But skateboarding, playing in a band, driving down freeways shooting fireworks at each other – what more could you hope for in your early 20s?

Mark Hoppus Talks With US Weekly

Mark Hoppus
Jason Tate

Mark Hoppus, on a press bonanza for his book that’s out today, was also interviewed for US Weekly:

“The day before I started chemotherapy, Tom texted me a photo of him standing in front of a bunch of women in lingerie. It was for a music video that he was filming for Angels and Airwaves, and he said, ‘Hey, just so you know, I’m still creating art over here with Angels and Airwaves.’ And I replied, ‘Ha ha, that’s great. By the way, I need to tell you I have cancer. I start chemotherapy tomorrow,’ and immediately my phone rang and it was Tom,” he recalled. “It was the first time that I’d really spoken to him in years, but we didn’t even talk about that. He’s like, ‘How are you feeling? What’s going on? First of all, you’re going to get through this. I’m going to help you get through this no matter what.’”

Lucy Dacus & Katie Gavin In Conversation

Jason Tate

Lucy Dacus and Katie Gavin sat down to talk together for Alternative Press.

KATIE GAVIN: I was feeling weird about leaving MUNA for a period of time to do the solo project, but then it was like, “OK, well, when the solo project becomes my main squeeze, and I’m on cycle for that, then MUNA is gonna become the mistress, and it’ll be nice to be tempted to go back to that again.”

LUCY DACUS: The mistress will strengthen your marriage.

Mark Hoppus LA Times Interview

Mark Hoppus
Jason Tate

Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 was interviewed by the LA Times:

Hoppus says, “It was really cathartic to write it all out and try to be fair to everybody in the book. My whole goal with the book was to not demonize anybody. I wanted there to be no villains in the book because, now that we’ve been through everything, I don’t feel that there were villains. I feel like Blink-182 is a blessing.”

He explains, “When my cancer went into remission, and I felt like I had dodged a bullet, I wanted to tell the story of Blink-182 and not necessarily just my story, but the story of the band from somebody in the band. I love Tom and Travis so much, and everyone just wanted to tell our story as it is, up to now: all the highs, all the lows, the brotherhood, the friendships, everything.”

Oral History of ‘High Fidelity’

Jason Tate

This year marks the twenty-fifth year anniversary of High Fidelity. Consequence has put together an oral history about the classic film:

Jack Black: I don’t read books unless I really have to. Then once I got the part, I thought, I better do my research, my due diligence. So I went back to the source, and I thought that the screenplay stayed true to the spirit of the original text. But I was just worried that, at the time, Tenacious D had a full head of steam, and we were getting great crowds and were playing to big houses. And I had, in my mind, a legitimate rock and roll career, separate from film and television, that I wanted to protect. And to do a movie about music, playing sort of a music critic and talking about some of my heroes like Kurt Cobain … just all those elements made me nervous about messing with this thing that was my own little crown jewel of my life and career up to that moment. I was hesitant to fuck with that.