The Spotify Premium Individual plan is increasing by $1, from $10.99 to $11.99 per month, according to the company’s updated price listings. The Premium Family plan, which provides access for up to six members a household, is going up by $3, from $16.99 to $19.99 per month.
Andrew Van Dam, writing for The Washington Post:
So, we looked at the data another way, measuring the gap between each person’s birth year and their ideal decade. The consistency of the resulting pattern delighted us: It shows that Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age.
The good old days when America was “great” aren’t the 1950s. They’re whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices. Or when you were 15 and athletes and musicians still played hard and hadn’t sold out.
Michael Kan, writing for PCMag:
On Friday, the ICQ website posted a simple message: “ICQ will stop working from June 26.” It now recommends users migrate to the messaging platforms from VK, the Russian social media company that acquired ICQ from AOL in 2010, but under a different corporate name.
It’s an unceremonious end for a software program that helped kick off instant messaging on PCs in the 1990s. ICQ, which stands for “I Seek You,” was originally developed at an Israeli company called Mirabilis before AOL bought it in 1998 for $407 million.
ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger. Those were the days.
Spotify’s brief attempt at being a hardware company wasn’t all that successful: the company stopped producing its Car Thing dashboard accessory less than a year after it went on sale to the public. And now, two years later, the device is about to be rendered completely inoperable. Customers who bought the Car Thing are receiving emails warning that it will stop working altogether as of December 9th.
Unfortunately for those owners, Spotify isn’t offering any kind of subscription credit or automatic refund for the device — nor is the company open-sourcing it. Rather, it’s just canning the project and telling people to (responsibly) dispose of Car Thing.
The Justice Department and a group of states plan to sue Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, as soon as Thursday, accusing it of illegally maintaining a monopoly in the live entertainment industry, said three people familiar with the matter.
The government plans to argue in a lawsuit that Live Nation shored up its power through Ticketmaster’s exclusive ticketing contracts with concert venues, as well as the company’s dominance over concert tours and other businesses like venue management, said two of the people, who declined to be named because the lawsuit was still private. That helped the company maintain a monopoly, raising prices and fees for consumers, limiting innovation in the ticket industry and hurting competition, the people said.
Apple Music are releasing a list of the “100 Best Albums of All Time.”
Apple Music’s team of experts alongside a select group of artists, including Maren Morris, Pharrell Williams, J Balvin, Charli XCX, Mark Hoppus, Honey Dijon, and Nia Archives, as well as songwriters, producers, and industry professionals.
I wasn’t consulted.
“Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band” will follow the band’s 2023-2024 world tour, featuring footage from band rehearsals and backstage moments, conversations with Springsteen as he develops the setlist and archival clips of the E Street Band. The project is intended to complement Springsteen’s existing body of autobiographical works, which includes the memoir “Born to Run,” the live performance (and documentary) “Springsteen on Broadway,” and the films “Western Stars” and “Letter to You.”
The documentary is directed by Thom Zimny, the longtime Springsteen collaborator behind “Western Stars” and “Springsteen on Broadway,” as well as music docs “The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash” and “Willie Nelson & Family.” Zimny also produces alongside Springsteen, Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau, Adrienne Gerard and Sean Stuart.
The Denver record company Vinyl Me, Please has ousted its top executives and sued them for allegedly funneling company funds to their pricy pet project in RiNo.
Vinyl Me, Please was founded in 2012 and has become a popular record-of-the-month subscription service in the dozen years since, with 20,000 subscribers today, it said. CEO Cameron Schaefer and Chief Financial Officer Adam Block led the company in recent years.
But the company’s board fired them, along with Chief Strategy Officer Rich Kylberg, in March. And on Wednesday, all three were sued by the company they led.
The stated cause for their ouster is a new 14,000-square-foot vinyl record production plant at 4201 N. Brighton Blvd. That plant, which started pressing records this year, has been hyped by national and local media, as well as Schaefer, Block and Kylberg, since 2022.
Cold Years talked with Kerrang! about their new album:
“I think Against Me! were the last punk band who got a million-dollar deal,” he ponders. “If you look at how major labels invest in bands, a lot of the time the money’s in pop music or hip-hop or viral sensations off TikTok. The days of punk bands getting deals like that are gone. We all work normal jobs because we want to do this – I want to be able to pay my bills so I can go on tour assured that I have a wage to come home to. Brexit’s killed it for Europe and we have a lot of upfront costs now, so it’s not a viable living anymore unless you’re doing it 365 days a year, because record sales aren’t what they used to be. So it’s a hard life, but it’s also an amazing life, because I get to experience things not a lot of other people experience. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
The Starting Line talked with Variety about the Taylor Swift shoutout:
“You know, it’s been sort of a point of conversation of, how much do you lean into something like this?” Vasoli admits, a little cagey even with himself about how much to be seen as taking advantage of it. “Because something like this is not something you really plan for in your music career,. The reverberations have been very big and we’re just sort of trying to accept it with gratitude at this point, sitting back and just seeing what happens from it.”
Although the singer says those two concert dates “are it for now, there’s gonna be more that’s coming down the pike and more that’s getting booked. The vast majority of the band has day jobs that keep them obligated to stay home a little bit, more than some of the other bands. So we don’t hit the road for too long on a regular basis, but we’re trying to get into a rhythm where we can do more of it.”
“There’s been an uptick in us playing together, and a really great interpersonal dynamic between the band members recently that has been very creative and inspirational, playing together recently. So we’ve been into a creative process writing new music since last year. We’re just collecting everything and figuring out the best way to get that out there. But we’re generating music and have been for a bit of time. With us trying to get back into a more usual pace with the band, after all this time, it’s nice that we’re getting a little bit of light on us at this moment, especially given that we’re engaging more than ever since like 2007, when we kind of let our foot off the gas.”
Adam from Fenix TX has posted an update on GoFundMe:
Read More “Update from Adam of Fenix TX”Everyone always asks what can they do to help or what do I need and I always say the same thing: “I’m fine just keep praying for me and my family.” Well, now I need all the help I can get as I begin a new fight. I’m unable to work and provide for my family at this time and seeing my family having to take on the extra stress breaks my heart. I must travel to the east coast for a brand new treatment and I pray that this will be the one that finally helps me, because if not, I’m pretty much out of options.
Paramore are featured/interviewed in the latest issue of the Brooklyn Vegan digital magazine.
“We’ve always thought there’s not really any limitation,” she continues. “We can keep doing this as long as we want or we can put it to bed and go away. We’ve always tried to have that mindset about it–that this is a passion, we try to not treat it like a job–but I think the cool thing about now is that it really is, there are no deadlines on the table, there’s no anything really in front of us other than like, open sky, and it feels exciting. It’s overwhelming and also inspiring at the same time.”
The audio streaming company is developing tools that would allow subscribers to speed up, mash up and otherwise edit songs from their favorite artists, according to people familiar with the discussions. It is a bet on the future of music consumption that Spotify hopes will deepen user engagement and appeal to young users, while generating new revenue for artists.
Kinda hate this.
Rachel Zegler (Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story) and Kit Connor (Netflix’s “Heartstopper”) will star in a new Broadway musical version of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” a reimagining with the modern political environment in mind that will premiere this fall.
Directed by Tony winner Sam Gold, the production — stylized as “Romeo + Juliet” — will feature music by multiple-Grammy-winning songwriter and producer Jack Antonoff. Tony winner Sonya Tayeh is writing the movement.
Geoff Rickly of Thursday talked with Vulture about their musical return:
In 2019, we started writing and it was really contentious. We were tossing demos back and forth, and nothing was happening. We let them sit for a while. With the last one, everyone was like, “This one has an amazing chorus. How can you not like that?” And I was like, “I just feel like it’s too much the same thing over and over again.” Stu Richardson, who plays bass for us on tour and is an amazing producer, was like, “That’s an easy fix.” Stu slowed down the beginning, took out the drums, and added some keyboards and then I sang a totally different thing over it, and it was like, “Oh! Suddenly I love this song!”
The funny thing is, I don’t know what will come next from us, but now that the Band-Aid is off, it feels a lot easier to write together. Since we got back together eight years ago, this is the biggest the band’s been. Every night we’re going out and the audience makeup is tilting toward younger fans instead of people that have been with us the whole time.