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Sum 41 Talk With Kerrang

Sum 41
Jason Tate

Sum 41 sat down with Kerrang to talk abut their final album:

“It was the music that told me,” Deryck says of the tipping point. “I thought, ‘This is the moment. This is the best idea that Sum 41 has ever had for a record.’ It straddles that line between heavy music and pop-punk that I feel like only we have done over the years. I felt this was the record that I could walk away and hang my hat on. Musically, it’s our evolution, while the title, Heaven :x: Hell, represents our journey. If there’s one record that defines who we are, it’s this one.”

Report: Anti-Flag’s Justin Sane ‘Plans to Flee U.S.’

Anti-Flag
Jason Tate

Rolling Stone:

Anti-Flag’s lead singer Justin Sane is planning to imminently flee the United States amid a sexual assault lawsuit brought against the punk rocker, according to legal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. 

Kristina Sarhadi filed an amended complaint in the Northern District Court of New York on Thursday, alleging that Sane — real name Justin Geever — has “purposefully and unlawfully attempted to avoid service” of her November 2023 sexual assault lawsuit. 

Instead, she claims in her lawsuit and an accompanying statement on Tuesday that Geever recently sold his Pittsburgh home and has “sought to hide his assets by transferring funds overseas to an Irish bank account.” Geever — who allegedly maintains a dual citizenship and has an Irish passport — “plans to flee to Europe within the next few days,” the suit claims. 

And:

But according to Sarhadi, the band has “taken extreme steps to avoid responsibility” and “sought to coax my forgiveness through a Restorative Justice process” only to abandon talks in early 2024. “To date, no member of Anti-Flag has owned up to their actions or apologized for failing their duty to reasonably protect their fans and community,” Sarhadi said in a press release. 

The Delivery Rider Who Took on His Faceless Boss

Jason Tate

Financial Times:

UberCheats was an algorithm-auditing tool. Samii, who was working as a cycle courier for Uber in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the time, had lost trust in the automated system that essentially functioned as his boss. He had become convinced the Uber Eats app was consistently making errors and underpaying him. After weeks of trying and failing to get a human being at Uber to explain, he felt he had no choice but to take matters into his own hands.

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Spotify Adding Music Videos

Jason Tate

Spotify is rolling out music videos as a new beta feature for some artists.

The beta version of music videos on Spotify begins rolling out today with a limited catalog of music videos, including hits from global artists like Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat, and Ice Spice, or local favorites like Aluna and Asake.

New Music Streaming Bill Aims to Increase Streaming Royalties

Pitchfork
Jason Tate

Pitchfork:

U.S. House representatives Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman have introduced to Congress a new bill aiming to boost streaming royalties for artists. The Living Wage for Musicians Act would create a new payment system, the Artist Compensation Royalty Fund, that circumvents record labels and other intermediaries, funneling listeners’ money directly to artists. Tlaib said in a statement, “Streaming has changed the music industry, but it’s leaving countless artists struggling to make ends meet behind. It’s only right that the people who create the music we love get their fair share, so that they can thrive, not just survive.”

The funds would come from two sources: an added subscription fee (proposed as an extra half, with a $4 minimum and $10 maximum) and a 10 percent cut of streamers’ non-subscription revenue, from sources such as ads. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) has long supported the bill, noting that streaming platforms are already planning price hikes, and the proposal ensures extra fees go to the artists themselves.

Dave Grohl Unveils New Signature Model Guitar

Dave Grohl
Jason Tate

Dave Grohl and Epiphone have teamed up for the new DG-335 signature model guitar.

A longtime Gibson user, his previous Gibson signature guitars have remained extraordinarily popular and command premium prices on the used market—when you can find one. Now Epiphone is extremely proud to once again partner with Gibson Custom on the release of the Dave Grohl DG-335. It features the combination of ES-335 and Trini Lopez model features Dave requested and that fans expect, including a semi-hollow ES™ body with bound diamond-shaped sound holes, a one-piece mahogany neck with an elliptical profile, Trini Lopez-style headstock with Grover® Mini Rotomatic® tuners, laurel fretboard, and split diamond inlays. The pickups are Dave’s preferred Gibson USA Burstbucker™ models, with a Burstbucker 2 in the neck and a Burstbucker 3 in the bridge position. They’re wired to CTS® potentiometers, Mallory™ capacitors, and a Switchcraft® 3-way toggle switch and 1/4” output jack.

Read More “Dave Grohl Unveils New Signature Model Guitar”

Rising Costs to Tour the United States

Legal
Jason Tate

Anthony Pawelski, writing at AILA:

International artists face another barrier: a U.S. work visa. The O or P visa are commonly used for musicians. They are each limited to specific purposes and not a substitute for a green card. An artist may even have multiple O visas depending on their overall activities in the United States. Both O and P visas can be labor intensive depending on the musical genre, profile of band/artist, nature of the arrangement, and timeline. Like any U.S. visa, there are associated filing fees and attorney fees but, unlike the H-1B work visa, the O or P do not mandate the sponsor/employer pay all legal or government filing fees.

And now, touring is getting even more expensive. On April 1, 2024, the new fee schedule from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will take effect. Applications for most work visas and employment-based green cards will now have higher filing fees and require a new mandatory asylum fee ranging from $300 to $600 (non-profits are exempt). This new fee will be used to fund part of the costs of administering our nation’s asylum program and will be paid each and every time an O or P visa is filed (side note that it is possible that the final fee rule will be challenged in court and all or part of the new fee rule may be enjoined).

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Unionized YouTube Workers Learn Google Laid Them Off

YouTube
Jason Tate

Jason Koebler, writing for 404 Media:

Thursday evening, the Austin, Texas City Council was set to consider and pass a resolution calling on Google to bargain with a union of YouTube Music workers who are based in the city. While one of the workers was speaking to thank the council, Google laid all of the workers off: “To be supported by the city of Austin and also our allies in the labor community gives us the motivation to keep this fight going,” Jack Benedict, a member of the Alphabet Workers Union was saying to the council.

One of his colleagues, Katie Marner, walked up to the pulpit: “Not to interrupt, but they just laid us all off,” she says. “They just laid us all off. Our jobs are ended today. Effective immediately.” A bell rings. “I’m sorry, your time has expired, but we’ll follow up on this,” Austin mayor Kirk Preston Watson says.

Universal Music Still Not Available on TikTok

Technology
Jason Tate

Reece Rogers, writing for Wired:

Over a month after the first songs vanished, it remains unclear when Universal and TikTok might reach new deals. “I think one of the risks for the music industry in general is if it turns out that the users on TikTok simply adapt,” says Cirisano, “and start using more unlicensed music. Start using more independent music. Start making more videos without music.” It’s quite frustrating for users to wake up one day and discover that videos with millions of views are now muted, and they might rethink their approach to making content.

Flop Rock: Inside the Underground Floppy Disk Music Scene

The Verge
Jason Tate

The Verge:

Nobuko believes the proliferation of floppy music in Western cultures is linked to strong punk movements with a DIY aesthetic. “Also, the lobit scene seems to be bigger in countries that had bad internet connections, so they would already use lobit encoding to upload or download things online,” he explains. In a similar vein, Hilkmann believes that floppy recordings are an explicitly anti-capitalist niche that exists outside the usual means of publishing music today on Spotify and other streaming services. “A medium, artistically, is only interesting as long as it’s available,” he says. “Now that floppy disks are becoming more and more difficult to get, they’ve become more and more a collector’s item almost, while a few years ago, it was more like almost a trashy medium that you could quickly get your hands on and do fun things with.”

Adobe Reveals a GenAI Tool for Music

Technology
Jason Tate

TechCrunch:

Today at the Hot Pod Summit in Brooklyn, Adobe unveiled Project Music GenAI Control, a platform that can generate audio from text descriptions (e.g. “happy dance,” “sad jazz”) or a reference melody and let users customize the results within the same workflow.

Using Project Music GenAI Control, users can adjust things like tempo, intensity, repeating patterns and structure. Or they can take a track and extend it to an arbitrary length, remixing music or creating an endless loop.

A video example.

G’Ra Asim Writes for the Boston Globe

Baby Got Backtalk
Jason Tate

Baby Got Back Talk’s vocalist/bassist G’Ra Asim wrote an essay for the Boston Globe about the importance of keeping alternative music an equitable space:

Black History Month is getting a lot more punk rock. Today sees the release of “Articulate at That Level,” a mixtape featuring musicians of color and/or women artistswho are bona fide philosophers of rock. My band, Baby Got Back Talk, curated this playlist as a cross-section of the gnarliest noise emanating from today’s underground.

But make no mistake — the artists we’ve assembled aren’t tokens we scrounged up just to appease some fussy diversity, equity, and inclusion bureau. They represent the vanguard of alternative music in 2024.

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