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Possible New Lagwagon Album Next Year

Lagwagon
Jason Tate

Joey Cape of Lagwagon talked with Modern Vinyl about the possibility of a new album next year:

Hopefully we’ll make a record sometime early next year. We’re all excited about it, because we took so long to make our last record, collectively, as a unified identity that you are as a band, which I think is fine. I think we’ve kind of figured out that we’re really in a different place than we were. I feel like the last record was our most successful endeavor. It didn’t really sell, because it’s hard to sell records now. That doesn’t really matter anyway when you make music. I think if you’re a band like us, you really care about doing something that everybody’s happy with. It makes us want to continue doing it. I’m really excited about doing more music because that’s kind of where it’s at; that’s the thing.

Pardon Edward Snowden

The New York Times
Jason Tate

The New York Times:

From George Washington onward, the pardon power has enabled American presidents to further the national interest. Whistle-blowers can perform a vital role in protecting human rights, and those who disclose rights violations that are shielded by an official cloak of secrecy are among the most important of all. As Mr. Snowden put it, if “people reporting wrongdoing of the most serious nature have to basically stand up and light themselves on fire, we are very quickly going to find ourselves out of volunteers the very moment when society needs them the most.”

In his biography on Twitter, Mr. Snowden says: “I used to work for the government. Now I work for the public.” That should not be something that gets you locked up for a lifetime or compels you to live in exile. The president has an opportunity to correct that injustice. It’s time to pardon Mr. Snowden and bring him home, not to face the music but to work for the security and privacy of us all.

I agree.

Jay Z: ‘The War on Drugs Is an Epic Fail’

Jay Z
Jason Tate

Jay Z wrote and narrated a video for The New York Times that looks at the war on drugs here in the United States. The film can be watched below.

This short film, narrated by Jay Z (Shawn Carter) and featuring the artwork of Molly Crabapple, is part history lesson about the war on drugs and part vision statement. As Ms. Crabapple’s haunting images flash by, the film takes us from the Nixon administration and the Rockefeller drug laws — the draconian 1973 statutes enacted in New York that exploded the state’s prison population and ushered in a period of similar sentencing schemes for other states — through the extraordinary growth in our nation’s prison population to the emerging aboveground marijuana market of today. We learn how African-Americans can make up around 13 percent of the United States population — yet 31 percent of those arrested for drug law violations, even though they use and sell drugs at the same rate as whites.

Read More “Jay Z: ‘The War on Drugs Is an Epic Fail’”

Apple Not Looking to Buy Tidal

Jason Tate

Jimmy Iovine, head of of Apple Music, told Buzzfeed that the company is not interested in buying Tidal.

“We’re really running our own race,” Jimmy Iovine, who heads Apple Music, told BuzzFeed News in an interview. “We’re not looking to acquire any streaming services.”

Pandora Launches Pandora Plus

Pandora
Jason Tate

Pandora has launched Pandora Plus. Here’s Micah Singleton, at The Verge:

As expected, Pandora has launched Pandora Plus, a rebranded and improved version of its $5-a-month Pandora One offering. It also has enhanced its free, ad-supported service, which the majority of its users take advantage of. The release of the updated services marks the beginning of a new era for Pandora, as the company will end 2016 with three tiers of service and an on-demand service to compete against Spotify and Apple Music.

I clicked over to Pandora to check it out, but since they are still relying on Adobe Flash for their website, that’s a non-starter.

Spotify Passes 40 Million Subscribers

Jason Tate

Peter Kafka, writing for Recode, on Spotify passing 40 million subscribers:

Spotify, which is heading toward an IPO, has 40 million paid subscribers, the company announced today. But Spotify’s chief revenue officer, Jeff Levick, is leaving the company, sources confirmed.

Levick joined Spotify five years ago, when the company was just starting to build out an advertising business; he had previously been at AOL and Google.

iOS 10 Message Apps and Sticker Packs Roundup

iPhone
Jason Tate

One of the best features of iOS 10 is the new iMessage app. MacStories has a really good round up of some of the best apps and sticker packs that have been released:

Over recent weeks, Federico and I have tested dozens of iMessage apps and sticker packs, exchanged hundreds of stickers, made interactive to-do lists, played games, edited photos, and much, much more. Some of the things we’ve tried are highlighted in Federico’s iOS 10 review to illustrate particular aspects of the Messages app, but we’ve seen so many interesting apps and stickers, we wanted to share them with readers in one place.

I’m all about that Mario pack.

Tidal Posts Huge Loss in 2015

The Wall Street Journal
Jason Tate

The Wall Street Journal:

In the year rap mogul Jay Z took control of Tidal, the music-streaming service more than doubled its losses, burning cash at a rapid rate and testing the depth of its owner’s pockets.

Aspiro AB, the Swedish holding company that Jay Z and a group of other musicians bought in early 2015, recorded a net loss of 239 million Swedish kronor ($28 million) last year, according to a legal filing. That compared with a net loss of 88.9 million Swedish kronor in 2014.

I don’t think that’s good.

American Football Discuss Their New Album

American Football
Jason Tate

Drowned in Sound sat down to talk with American Football about their new album:

We knew it wouldn’t define us; it’s not a crazy flash-in-the-pan thing. We knew it would only be worth it if we were all excited about writing new material, and as Mike mentioned, it was more fun than anything, so it was exciting to start writing new music tonight and put more thought into recording properly this time. The first album we just practiced and practiced until we had perfected a sound and then hit record. After one headline show in a basement, we were done with it, as we all moved away from college.

‘Myst’ Creator Interviewed by The A.V. Club

Videogames
Jason Tate

The A.V. Club interviewed the creator of one of my favorite computer games growing up, Myst, and the entire thing is good, but I loved this quote:

AVC: If you could go back 23, 24 years, and tell yourself one thing while you were making Myst, what would it be?

RM: Oh my gosh. Okay, honestly—this is some deep stuff—but I’m older now, and a lot of what happened with Myst, I now realize a lot of it, a majority of it, had to do with luck. And I think that’s how the world works. I think a lot of people work very hard, and they don’t get lucky. I think I would have told myself, “Don’t confuse luck with any sort of elevated view of yourself. You were in the right place at the right time and did a lot of hard work, but a lot of people do hard work. It worked for you, be grateful, and don’t think too much of yourself.”

Twitter’s New, Longer Tweets Are Coming September 19th

Twitter
Jason Tate

The Verge:

Twitter is about to make a big change to the way that tweets work, The Verge can independently confirm. Beginning September 19th, the company will cut down on exactly which types of content count toward the platform’s 140-character limit. Media attachments (images, GIFs, videos, polls, etc.) and quoted tweets will no longer reduce the count. The extra room for text will give users more flexibility in composing their messages.

I’m ready for this.