The attorney general for Washington, D.C., sued StubHub on Wednesday, accusing the ticket resale platform of advertising deceptively low prices and then ramping up prices with extra fees.
The practice known as “drip pricing” violates consumer protection laws in the nation’s capital, Attorney General Brian Schwalb said.
“StubHub intentionally hides the true price to boost profits at its customers’ expense,” he said in a statement.
The company said it is disappointed to be targeted, maintaining its practices are consistent with the law and competing companies as well as broader industry norms. “We strongly support federal and state solutions that enhance existing laws to empower consumers, such as requiring all-in pricing uniformly across platforms,” the company said in a statement.
The 1975 Sued by Malaysian Festival
The organizer of Malaysia’s Good Vibes Festival has filed a lawsuit against the 1975 and all its members individually following frontman Matty Healy’s protest against the country’s anti-LGBTQ laws during the event last July. The festival is seeking £1.9 million ($2.4 million) after the band’s antics resulted in the festival being shut down.
In court documents filed by festival organizers Future Sound Asia in the U.K. High Court, they claim that the 1975 and their management team were aware of the numerous prohibitions the band had to abide by in order to perform.
The Oral History of the ‘Garden State’ Soundtrack
Imogen Heap (Frou Frou, “Let Go”): “Let Go” was originally written for a film called Phone Booth. It had a much bigger energy, much bigger drums, very intense. I always loved the song, but it didn’t get into the movie. Then one night in our studio in West London, I brought out my cello. We stripped away all the intensity, and we were just left with the strings and the voice and that amazing bass line. We loved it so much, but through that whole Frou Frou album [Details], nobody really got to know about it until after Garden State.
Braff: There was a Radiohead song at the end, [“Sulk”]. Of course it would have been a huge Hail Mary try, but as I recall, what happened was we found a song that just works better. We didn’t need to make the insane ask of Radiohead.
Major Labels Sue Verizon Over Music Piracy
Abby Jones, writing at Stereogum:
Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group have filed a joint lawsuit against Verizon, alleging the internet service provider of facilitating “massive copyright infringement committed by tens of thousands of its subscribers.”
The suit, filed in filed in Manhattan July 12, claims that Verizon has failed to protect copyrighted material by knowingly providing high-speed internet to a large community of online pirates.
YouTube in Talks With Record Labels Over AI Music Deal
YouTube is in talks with record labels to license their songs for artificial intelligence tools that clone popular artists’ music, hoping to win over a sceptical industry with upfront payments. The Google-owned video site needs labels’ content to legally train AI song generators, as it prepares to launch new tools this year, according to three people familiar with the matter. The company has recently offered lump sums of cash to the major labels — Sony, Warner and Universal — to try to convince more artists to allow their music to be used in training AI software, according to several people briefed on the talks.
Explaining the RIAA’s Lawsuit Against AI Music Startups
Devin Coldewey, writing for TechCrunch:
Like many AI companies, music generation startups Udio and Suno appear to have relied on unauthorized scrapes of copyrighted works in order to train their models. This is by their own and investors’ admission, as well as according to new lawsuits filed against them by music companies. If these suits go before a jury, the trial could be both a damaging exposé and a highly useful precedent for similarly sticky-fingered AI companies facing certain legal peril.
The lawsuits, filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), put us all in the uncomfortable position of rooting for the RIAA, which for decades has been the bogeyman of digital media. I myself have received nastygrams from them! The case is simply that clear.
ComedyCentral.com Removed From Internet
Comedy Central’s website has also been scrubbed from the internet:
For years, the Comedy Central website was home to a large amount of content, including clips from every episode of The Daily Show since 1999, the full run of The Colbert Report, and many more shows. Now, the site simply redirects to Paramount+, with a message explaining that “while episodes of most Comedy Central series are no longer available on this website,” fans can still watch the channel through their TV providers or find “many seasons of Comedy Central shows” on Paramount+.
MTV News Taken Offline
MTV News has been taken offline:
I believe the decision was at least partially motivated by Paramount’s unwillingness to pay for E&O (errors and omissions) insurance and associated licensing costs (such as for Getty Images) in perpetuity. Every piece of content published on a site like MTV comes with a certain amount of risk. Is there a sentence that is inaccurate? Does a negative review contain something that an artist might construe as libelous? Is a photo or video properly licensed? And often times, these issues don’t surface until years after the initial piece of content was published.
The Early November Talk New Album
The Early November talked with Idobi about their new album:
Look at the triple disc as an example, I committed so hard to that theme that I probably took away from allowing myself to be a little bit more generous in creativity because of how strict I had to be to complete the theme like that. I didn’t want that to happen again.
So you look at it from a standpoint of learning from your mistakes and actually putting it into practice. That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to grow and be better. So that was one of the reasons. But I’m really glad that you asked that question and picked up on it. And it was something that I bounced around with for a little while until I learned what this record wants to be, something different than maybe what’s exactly in my head.
Andrew McMahon Talks New Song
Andrew McMahon talks about the new single released today with People:
When I was thinking about it, I was like, “Do I really want to put out a Wilderness track in the middle of Something Corporate tour? This is such a beautiful moment.” And I immediately called Josh, who was the co-founder of Something Corporate. I was like, “I want to send you a song. What would you think about bringing the guys together and doing this as a collaboration?” He was so genuinely enthusiastic about it, and it was almost like a healing moment. Josh and I were, we’ve been best friends forever, but you end a band, you move on, you just don’t know where people stand, and he was so excited. So, I brought it to the other guys and merged this Wilderness-esque production with my original band playing all the instruments. It became this beautiful moment that felt, weirdly for the first time, all of these bands coming full circle and feeling like for once it’s one thing in one place.
And:
The song that’s going to come out next was actually written for the last Wilderness record. Luke, who produced and co-wrote “Death Grip” with me, wrote a few songs on my last album. This song was a part of the sessions that we did together. It was the first time where I was like, “This feels way more like a Something Corporate song than it does a Wilderness song that belongs on this record,” and so I always just had it in my back pocket.
And then when “Death Grip” came up, and the band seemed legit excited about getting back in the studio, I forwarded them this other track, and I was like, “This is just a demo, but if we’re all together, maybe we should try and cut another song,” and everybody raised their hand and was excited. So, we cut both in the same weekend. That song was written during the pandemic. There were lyric changes and things that I had to make to say, “No, let’s put this in the present universe.” But it’s really about just trying to source your happiness in the middle of a difficult moment. It’s called “Happy.”
Sonos Updates Privacy Policy
Chris Welch, writing for The Verge:
As highlighted by repair technician and consumer privacy advocate Louis Rossmann, Sonos has made a significant change to its privacy policy, at least in the United States, with the removal of one key line. The updated policy no longer contains a sentence that previously said, “Sonos does not and will not sell personal information about our customers.” That pledge is still present in other countries, but it’s nowhere to be found in the updated US policy, which went into effect earlier this month.
It has not been a good few months for Sonos.
Scraping the Web Now, Asking for Permission Later
Federico Viticci, writing at MacStories about Apple’s details on their AI model being trained on web content:
As a creator and website owner, I guess that these things will never sit right with me. Why should we accept that certain data sets require a licensing fee but anything that is found “on the open web” can be mindlessly scraped, parsed, and regurgitated by an AI? Web publishers (and especially indie web publishers these days, who cannot afford lawsuits or hiring law firms to strike expensive deals) deserve better.
I agree wholeheartedly. I felt similarly when I looked at the data that trained Google’s AI. I see Chorus and our forum very clearly in their training data. We didn’t agree to that. Our community never agreed to that. Google played a massive role in devaluing small and medium sized websites (and the online ad business) and we’re certainly not going to be the ones getting any publishing deals. None of it sits well with me.
Hawthorne Heights Pick Ten Essential Emo Albums
JT Woodruff of Hawthorne Heights has picked his ten essential 90’s emo albums:
Initial Records ran a festival in Kentucky called Crazy Fest. And one of my friends took me to that for the first time to see all of these bands. And Bleed American had just come out, and I had never heard Jimmy Eat World before that. So Bleed American was my introduction, but his introduction was Clarity. So he’s pissed when he’s listening to Bleed American, and I’m in love, because I’d never heard the intricate beauty of Clarity. So I listened to Bleed American. It’s so incredible — still one of my favorite records. And then I hear Clarity and I’m absolutely blown away.
Ace Breaks Down The Early November Album
Ace Enders breaks down The Early November’s new album track-by-track:
This song flirts with the torture of regret within the mind, which is why there are voices whispering throughout the beginning of it. Picking which one to listen to, be influenced by, not be influenced by, etc. The fantasy of “if I could only do it again.”
That perpetual never-ending gnawing. Eventually coming to a moment of realization within and gaining clarity by being honest with yourself.
Spotify to Launch New Premium Plan
Spotify Technology SA will introduce a new, higher-priced premium plan for its most ardent users later this year, according to a person familiar with the plan. Users will be charged at least $5 more per month for access to better audio and new tools for creating playlists and managing their song libraries, said the person.