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Make Your Own Website

Jason Tate

Gita Jackson, writing on Aftermath:

Unfortunately, this is what all of the internet is right now: social media, owned by large corporations that make changes to them to limit or suppress your speech, in order to make themselves more attractive to advertisers or just pursue their owners’ ends. Even the best Twitter alternatives, like Bluesky, aren’t immune to any of this—the more you centralize onto one single website, the more power that website has over you and what you post there. More than just moving to another website, we need more websites.

I didn’t realize how important that was until I started my own website, and I didn’t even learn it from helping to run the damn thing. When I meet people at events, they tell me that they’ve set Aftermath as their homepage. People tell me they love interacting with other people in the comments. They tell me it’s one on a small list of websites, not social media, that they check in on every day. People, it seems, actually like going to a website, and they like that we made one.

This entire article speaks to me.

I’ve recently seen similar sentiments from others, like Louis Manta:

In the last 15 years, many people (myself included) were drawn to third-party solutions for presenting ourselves. For our résumés, LinkedIn. For portfolios, Behance and Dribbble. For blogging, Tumblr, Medium, and Substack. Instead of forums, Discord and Slack. But despite each of these advertising some amount of autonomy, in reality you have very little.

By centralizing not just your content, but yourself, on these sites, you rob yourself the opportunity to be more authentically you. In addition, a peer or competitor might appear next to you. It may not be great for you to have your competitor one click away from your own profile.

As I’ve pulled (way) back from social media over the past few years, I’ve found having a place for my writing, that I control, own, and can present how I want even more appealing.

Some Users Disappointed with Spotify Wrapped

Jason Tate

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:

Chief among the complaints are that Spotify prioritized the inclusion of an AI podcast for Wrapped over the other, clever and creative data stories that it typically offers — like those that identify your music personality, match you to a town that shares your musical tastes, describe your “audio aura,” or turn your listening history into a game you can share with friends, among other things. Others are upset over the lack of more detailed stats and the exclusion of information they’ve come to expect, like top music genres and top podcasts. Spotify declined to clarify how they decided which features to include.

Pete Wentz Interviewed by Anti-Matter

Pete Wentz
Jason Tate

Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy talked with Anti-Matter:

This is something me and Patrick [Stump] and the band have talked about on a bigger level, but for me, specifically, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. The Breakfast Club was my high school; it was literally the high school I went to. Every one of those movies took place in that town. Also, I am mixed race. My mom’s parents are from Jamaica and my dad’s white, and they were super liberal and we were in a pretty conservative area. So I think I just didn’t really know where I fit in. I kind of didn’t really feel like I fit in anywhere.

Sky Ferreria Variety Interview

Sky Ferreira
Jason Tate

Sky Ferreira talked with Variety about her upcoming song and going independent:

They waited until the 10-year anniversary of Night Time, My Time to drop me via an automated message that got forwarded to me. And it was a weekend! After months of not hearing back from them! It was pretty—I’m still trying to figure out the words I can use to talk about it that won’t get me in trouble. But I also don’t really care about getting in trouble, because what else can they really do to me at this point? My relationship with them was obviously a bit fraught, and it’s never been very simple to explain. But to let me know I’ve been dropped from the label in such an impersonal way was clearly so personal.

It was their way of saying: “You can have fans write ‘Free Sky’ in the clouds with an airplane, but we still own you.” They kept me from putting out new music for 10 years as a way of making me look like I’m incapable of it, like it was my fault that I don’t technically own anything I record. I was already dreading the 10-year anniversary of my album because it’s sad. I should be able to celebrate something like that because as long as this album has been around, people still care about it. I’m able to do a song for an A24 film after all this time because that album clearly meant something to people, and I am proud of that. But it shouldn’t have to remind me of another year of being trapped in a mess that I didn’t create. They want me to look responsible by dragging it out and blocking me from releasing music even after already being blocked from so many other opportunities because of them.

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Lauren Mayberry Profiled in New York Times

Chvrches
Jason Tate

Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches has a new profile in the New York Times:

“I had an overly romantic notion of being in a band, this kind of ‘Goonies’ mentality,” Mayberry said, referring to her role since 2011 as frontwoman for the Glaswegian synth-pop trio Chvrches. “I was very conscious of not wanting to be perceived as disloyal.”

Despite her hesitation to step out on her own, “If the only reason you’re not doing something is because of how it might make other people feel,” she continued, “you’re going to people-please yourself to death.”

Dan Campbell Talks with Anti-Matter

Jason Tate

Dan Campbell of The Wonder Years is interviewed in the latest issue of Anti-Matter.

After The Upsides, people were talking to me after shows and they’d ask, “How did you cure your depression?” And I would be like, “I am deeply depressed right now. Right now. Things are bad for me at this exact moment” [laughs]. That’s where that line in “Local Man [Ruins Everything]” comes from: “I’m not a self-help book / I’m just a fucked-up kid.” It’s to say I don’t have the answers. All I can tell you is that you need to try. I can give you some techniques I’ve used, I could tell you that I am not a professional and you could maybe seek some therapy, but I don’t have this magic bullet for it. It’s just going to be about effort and consistency and accepting that there will be low days.

Fake AI Albums Flooding Spotify

Jason Tate

Elizabeth Lopatto, writing at The Verge:

To understand how this works, you need a sense of the mechanics. Streaming platforms like Spotify don’t work like your Facebook page — Mena and other artists aren’t logging in and adding albums to their accounts directly. Instead, they go through a distributor that handles licensing, metadata, and royalty payments. Distributors send songs and metadata in bulk to the streaming services. The metadata part is important; it includes things such as the song title and artist name but also other information, such as the songwriter, record label, and so on. This is crucial for artists (and others) to get paid. 

But this whole process effectively works on the honor system.

And:

“It was super weird,” says Marcos Mena, Standards’ lead songwriter and guitarist. “I thought, ‘Oh, this is something Spotify will take care of.’” After all, Standards has a verified artist page. But when a fake album was posted on September 26th, it didn’t budge. Mena emailed Spotify to tell them there’d been a mistake. The streamer responded two weeks later, on October 8th: “It looks like the content is mapped correctly to the artist’s page. If you require further assistance, please contact your music provider. Please do not reply to this message.” As of November 8th, the fake Standards album was still right there under the band’s verified, blue-checked name. It was finally removed by November 11th.

Cool, I definitely don’t see this continuing to be a massive problem.

All Time Low Drop Libel Lawsuit; Say Probe Found “Smear Campaign”

All Time Low
Jason Tate

Rolling Stone have published an update on the All Time Low legal case. It’s behind a paywall, but some of the reporting has been shared:

According to a new statement from the band’s lawyer, a lengthy probe involving subpoenas and court orders determined that Doe 2 was actually multiple people who “spun an elaborate, fabricated story posing as a fan who incredibly and falsely claimed to have traveled with the band for more than 10 years.”

“There is no such person and no such incidents occurred. Rather, an investigation revealed that Doe 2 was an orchestrated smear campaign by multiple individuals posing as a fake fan. The investigations identified individuals behind the anonymous post who went to great lengths to hide their identities,” lawyer Michael B. Garfinkel of Venable LLP said Friday in the statement to Rolling Stone. “All Time Low has chosen to handle the matter privately and protect the identities of those behind Doe 2, instead of pursuing further litigation at this time.”

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Nintendo Release New Music App

Nintendo
Jason Tate

Nintendo has released a new music app. MacStories has a rundown:

The iPhone-only app is an exclusive perk for Nintendo Online members. Once you sign into your account, you’re greeted with a deep catalog of classic Nintendo music. You’ll find old favorites from the biggest titles, but there are also many, many more obscure songs. A prime example is the Globe: Daytime Forecast song from the Wii Forecast Channel. It turns out it’s an excellent tune for writing.

Lily Allen Earns More Money From Feet Pics That Spotify

Money
Jason Tate

Lilly Allen revealed that she makes more money per year posting pictures of her feet on OnlyFans than she does from Spotify streaming royalties:

{T]he 39-year-old singer-songwriter said on X Friday (Oct. 25) that her side business has been more lucrative than the streams she earns on one of the world’s biggest music platforms. “imagine being and artist and having nearly 8 million monthly listeners on spotify but earning more money from having 1000 people subscribe to pictures of your feet,” she wrote.

Allen’s remark came in response to someone who’d negatively commented on a post advertising her OnlyFans account. “Imagine being one of the biggest pop stars/musicians in Europe and then being reduced to this,” the fan wrote, to which the “Smile” singer added: “don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

Tom DeLonge Inducted into High School Hall of Fame

Box Car Racer
Jason Tate

Tom DeLonge is being inducted into the Poway High School hall of fame.

Poway High School’s Titan Hall of Fame will honor four successful graduates on Saturday, including the founder of the pop-punk band Blink-182.

The event is an opportunity to celebrate former Poway High students that are joining 35 past honorees whose plaques are displayed at the Titan Museum and Hall of Fame on the campus. To qualify, contenders should have graduated from Poway High at least 10 years ago and attended the school for at least two years.

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Forums Are Alive and a Treasure Trove of Information

Technology
Jason Tate

Chris Pearson, writing at Aftermath, highlights what many of you probably already know: forums are alive and awesome.

When I want information, like the real stuff, I go to forums. Over the years, forums did not really get smaller, so much as the rest of the internet just got bigger. Reddit, Discord and Facebook groups have filled a lot of that space, but there is just certain information that requires the dedication of adults who have specifically signed up to be in one kind of community. This blog is a salute to those forums that are either worth participating in or at least looking at in bewilderment.

Some great picks here. I, obviously, have an affinity for these kinds of smaller yet vibrant communities.

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