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Panic! at the Disco Top Tour Charts

Jason Tate

Billboard reports that Panic! at the Disco has one of the highest grossing tours so far this year:

First-quarter box office counts from the tour, reported by promoter Live Nation, show that 247,447 tickets were sold at arenas in 25 American cities from the beginning of the trek through the end of March, with revenue from those concerts landing at $11.7 million.

The tour continued into April, though, with 11 more performances before the finale. Adding gross estimates from those concerts yet to be reported, the overall box office take was about $17 million when the tour closed. About 350,000 fans saw the Death of a Bachelor Tour during its run.

Matt Healy Talks With The Times

Jason Tate

Matt Healy of The 1975 sat down with The Times:

“Well, that whole ‘I don’t give a shit’ thing has never really gone far with me,” he says. “It’s why indie is my most hated [music] scene — a scene where you pretend you don’t care in order to not get judged on how bad you are as a musician. But times have moved on. I’m a privileged middle-class kid from Macclesfield. I can’t pretend to be what I’m not.”

Mossberg: The Disappearing Computer

Jason Tate

Walt Mossberg has penned the last column of his career for Recode:

But just because you’re not seeing amazing new consumer tech products on Amazon, in the app stores, or at the Apple Store or Best Buy, that doesn’t mean the tech revolution is stuck or stopped. In fact, it’s just pausing to conquer some major new territory. And, if it succeeds, the results could be as big or bigger than the first consumer PCs were in the 1970s, or even the web in the 1990s and smartphones in the first decade of this century.

Thanks for everything Walt!

Martin Johnson Talks About New Music Project

Jason Tate

Martin Johnson spoke with Billboard about his new project The Night Game and the future of Boys Like Girls:

“I was trying to find love for music by making it for other people, and it wasn’t working for me,” he says. “You get older and it becomes about maintenance, maintaining what you’ve made in your life. I had to start almost completely from scratch and write a couple of very left-of-center, sad songs to help me discover what I wanted to say.”

And from New York City Monthly:

I don’t think you need to close one door to start to open another necessarily. It’s not like I’m in two marriages. I’m creating some music, putting it out there, seeing if people like it, playing some tunes. I’m trying to express myself in that way, and it’s like I still have a group of best friends that I played music with for a really long time. The past is fun, though.

You May Not Know Jack Antonoff. But You Probably Love His Music.

Bleachers
Jason Tate

Joe Coscarelli, who has been getting all the great interviews at The New York Times, sat down with Jack Antonoff to talk about the upcoming Bleachers album:

But his aversion wasn’t to stardom, or even the burden of a megahit, which he still openly chases as a go-to producer and songwriter for those on the pop A-list, like Lorde and Taylor Swift. The problem was that Fun. was merely something Mr. Antonoff was a part of, he explained recently at his home studio in Brooklyn; he needed the music he made to be a part of him.

Destroying Internet Freedom

Jason Tate

Nick Heer, writing at Pixel Envy:

The seventy-five-page document (PDF) released today by the FCC represents the clearest view yet of Ajit Pai’s point of view on what ISPs offer, how to regulate providers, and what he sees as the Commission’s role in making sure that the open web continues to thrive. And, in short, it’s a crock of shit.

I anticipate that Karl Bode and Jon Brodkin will explore this proposal — titled “Restoring Internet Freedom”, like a gigantic middle finger to anyone who truly cares about freedom on the internet — on a much deeper level than I can, but I’d like to present a few excerpts for your review.

Snapchat Introduces Custom Stories for Capturing Group Moments With Friends

Snapchat
Jason Tate

Casey Newton, writing for The Verge:

To create a custom Story, tap the new “Create Story” icon in the top-right corner of the Stories screen. Give your Story a name, and then invite the friends you want to participate — no matter where in the world they live. You can also invite all nearby Snapchat users to participate. Snapchat will create a 1-block geofence around your current location; those Stories can only be seen and contributed to by your friends and, if you like, friends of friends.

Mikey Way Talks New Project and the End of My Chemical Romance

My Chemical Romance
Jason Tate

Mikey Way sat down with Billboard:

The band ended, and I was going through a divorce at the same time. I do the most stressful things in clumps. The way I knew how to deal with that, through life, was to self-medicate so that’s what I did. The tail end of My Chem was so dark for me — I was in a fog. Life caught up with me at that point, and I was getting by. I was in the ocean with the water by my lips. I was trying to stay up and I was failing. I had always self-soothed through narcotics from an early age.

Ariana Grande Cancels Tour Through June 5th

Ariana Grande
Jason Tate

Ariana Grande has canceled her tour dates through June 5th. Entertainment Weekly reports:

“Due to the tragic events in Manchester, the Dangerous Woman Tour with Ariana Grande has been suspended until we can further assess the situation and pay our proper respects to those lost,” Grande’s team said in a statement to EW. “The London O2 shows this week have been canceled as well as all shows through June 5 in Switzerland. We ask at this time that we all continue to support the city of Manchester and all those families affected by this cowardice and senseless act of violence. Our way of life has once again been threatened but we will overcome this together.”

1Password Adds Travel Mode

iPhone
Jason Tate

Jacob Kastrenakes, writing for The Verge:

1Password received a handy new feature last week that allows the app to temporarily remove all passwords, credit cards, and other stored data from a user’s devices. The feature is called Travel Mode, and it was created to protect users worried about running into trouble with security agents while traveling.

Increasingly, people are being asked to turn over and unlock their phones at the border, and doing that can expose a huge amount of data. Add in an app like 1Password — a central repository for a ton of private data — and it’s easy to see why someone would be worried about having to hand over their phone.

I can’t believe we need something like this … but we do.