Link - PAGE 229

Monopoly Switches Out Three Game Tokens

Monopoly
Jason Tate

Monopoly will be adding three new game pieces:

The next time you sit down with your family to a nice game of Monopoly — and to determine which of your siblings is secretly a cold-blooded sociopath who would shiv you in your sleep for Park Place — you will no longer have the option of dueling to the death over who gets to be the thimble, the wheelbarrow, or the boot.

Monopoly owner Hasbro have tossed them all aside like so many redundant employees in a gig economy, and are replacing them with the winners of an internet poll: a Tyrannosaurus rex, a penguin, and a rubber ducky.

Monopoly really is one of the worst board games.

Report: Spotify Considers Restricting Biggest Releases to Paid Users

Jason Tate

Jordan Kahn, writing for 9to5Mac:

Spotify is considering a move that would mean some of its biggest new releases will be restricted to paid users, according to a new report from Financial Times. The decision would come as part of a negotiation with record labels that would reduce the amount of royalties Spotify pays for songs and also allow the company to prepare for an initial public offering.

This has always felt inevitable.

Trump Proposes Eliminating the Arts and Humanities Endowments

The New York Times
Jason Tate

New York Times:

A deep fear came to pass for many artists, museums, and cultural organizations nationwide early Thursday morning when President Trump, in his first federal budget plan, proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

President Trump also proposed scrapping the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a key revenue source for PBS and National Public Radio stations, as well as the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Worth remembering.

Jack Antonoff to Live-Score ‘The Breakfast Club’

Bleachers
Jason Tate

Jack Antonoff will be live-scoring a screening of The Breakfast Club in L.A. next month. The L.A. Times has the scoop:

Antonoff’s musical interpretation of 1985’s “The Breakfast Club” is slated for April 1.

“I chose ‘The Breakfast Club’ because I think about that film often when I write,” Antonoff told The Times. “There are certain films and feelings that remind me of where I’m from.”

“I grew up in suburban New Jersey in a similar state of strange boredom as ‘The Breakfast Club.’ I constantly thought about getting out, and that feeling is so present in this film,” he added. “A lot of my world now is looking back at that time period from different vantage points.”

Genius De-Emphasizing Web Annotations

The Verge
Jason Tate

Casey Newton, writing for The Verge:

Genius, which raised $56.9 million on the promise that it would one day annotate the entire internet, has been losing its minds. In January, the company quietly laid off a quarter of its staff, with the bulk of the cuts coming from the engineering department. In a post on the Genius blog at the time, co-founder Tom Lehman told employees that Genius planned to shift its emphasis away from the annotation platform that once attracted top-tier investors in favor of becoming a more video-focused media company.

The 1975 Working on New Music

Jason Tate

NME has pulled some new quotes from Matt Healey of The 1975 from the most recent issue of Q. It looks like the band’s already working on their new album:

Healy revealed his hopes for the record to Q, adding that he’d already penned two tracks for the album that are “as good as anything on the previous album” along with “lots of ambient and classical tracks”.

“If you look at third albums, ‘OK Computer’ or ‘The Queen Is Dead’, that’s what we need to do.” Healy continued: “I want a legacy. I want people to look back and think our records were the most important pop records that a band put out in this decade.”

When the Children Crashed Dad’s BBC Interview: The Family Speaks

The Wall Street Journal
Jason Tate

The Wall Street Journal sat down to interview the family that became internet famous after the children crashed their father’s live BBC interview:

As the interview began, the couple’s 4-year-old daughter Marion jumped up and down at the sight of her father on the screen. Perhaps recognizing his location, a room at the end of the hallway, she wandered off to find him. She was in high spirits after enjoying her birthday party earlier that day at kindergarten, her father says.

The couple’s 8-month-old son, James, followed behind his sister in his baby-walker, as he often does. Ms. Kim continued to concentrate on the screen, filming her husband.

Then, there she was: Marion was in the same room as her father in a bright yellow sweater.

I also loved Ben Thompson’s breakdown of the video on Medium.

InfoWars Is Now Feuding With “Pro-Soros Rockers” Portugal. The Man

Portugal. The Man
Jason Tate

Andy Cush, writing for Spin:

The video for Portugal. The Man’s new single “Feel It Still” features a bar fight, some old guys on motorcycles, a couple getting hot and heavy in the back of a junked car, and a man setting fire to a newspaper labeled “Info Wars.” It’s this last bit, predictably, that has the right-wing conspiracy theorists of America in a tizzy.

I was sorta hoping to never actually post about the giant screaming tomato that is Alex Jones. Alas.

U.S. Customs Officials Issue Travel Advisory After SXSW Artists Denied Entry Into U.S.

SXSW
Jason Tate

David Brooks, writing for Billboard:

At least seven artists hoping to play the annual South by Southwest music festival have been turned away at the U.S. border amid confusion over the type of visa needed to enter the country.

At issue is whether artists can perform at free showcase events like South by Southwest on a B-1 visitor visa, typically issued to tourists who aren’t legally allowed to work during their visit to the U.S. Most artists who enter the country for a tour do so on a performance visa (also known as P-1), but artists performing for free at showcase events like South by Southwest have used B-1 visitor visas in the past to enter the U.S.

The Cranberries – “Linger” (Acoustic)

The Cranberries
Jason Tate

The Cranberries have shared an acoustic version of “Linger” from their upcoming unplugged album, Something Else.

“‘Linger’ was the first song I wrote after joining the Cranberries,” O’Riordan recalls for Rolling Stone. The Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? single was the band’s first major hit. “I was 18, and the youngest member of the band was 16 at the time. We never imagined it’d be such a big hit.”

Pandora Premium

Pandora
Jason Tate

Pandora has announced signups for their new premium service:

To do this, we took advantage of two of our core strengths: our unrivaled understanding of music via the Music Genome Project and the massive amount of data we have from 81 million listeners just like you – things like station adds, thumbs (we have more than 75 billion!), searches and skips.

The result is Pandora Premium: a combination of the Pandora radio you already love, the ability to search and play any track or album and a set of playlist features tailored to your preferences. It’s totally unique to you, easy to use and loaded with amazing features for $9.99 / month.

March Madness Bracket Challenge

Basketball
Jason Tate

March Madness is upon us. I’ve created an ESPN group if you’d like to fill out a bracket (or two). I’ll gift the winner of our group this year a free supporter package for a year as a prize.1

You can find all the times for the games here, and our NCAA Basketball thread is always a great place to be during the games themselves.

  1. If you’re already a supporter I’ll extend your package for free, since I don’t have merch or stickers made yet to give out. I should get on that.↩

Ed Sheeran Tops the Charts

Jason Tate

Ed Sheeran has the number one album in the country this week:

Ed Sheeran’s ÷ (Divide) blasts in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, earning a whopping 451,000 equivalent album units in the week ending March 9, according to Nielsen Music. That’s the largest week for an album in 2017, and the biggest since J. Cole’s 4 Your Eyez Only launched at No. 1 with 492,000 on the Dec. 31, 2016-dated list.