Sum 41 now have the number one song on alternative radio.
This is a significant achievement as it marks the band’s second #1 and first chart-topper in 22 years. It’s also the longest stretch between #1 hits in the Alternative format’s history.
Jason Koebler, writing for 404 Media:
Thursday evening, the Austin, Texas City Council was set to consider and pass a resolution calling on Google to bargain with a union of YouTube Music workers who are based in the city. While one of the workers was speaking to thank the council, Google laid all of the workers off: “To be supported by the city of Austin and also our allies in the labor community gives us the motivation to keep this fight going,” Jack Benedict, a member of the Alphabet Workers Union was saying to the council.
One of his colleagues, Katie Marner, walked up to the pulpit: “Not to interrupt, but they just laid us all off,” she says. “They just laid us all off. Our jobs are ended today. Effective immediately.” A bell rings. “I’m sorry, your time has expired, but we’ll follow up on this,” Austin mayor Kirk Preston Watson says.
Reece Rogers, writing for Wired:
Over a month after the first songs vanished, it remains unclear when Universal and TikTok might reach new deals. “I think one of the risks for the music industry in general is if it turns out that the users on TikTok simply adapt,” says Cirisano, “and start using more unlicensed music. Start using more independent music. Start making more videos without music.” It’s quite frustrating for users to wake up one day and discover that videos with millions of views are now muted, and they might rethink their approach to making content.
Nobuko believes the proliferation of floppy music in Western cultures is linked to strong punk movements with a DIY aesthetic. “Also, the lobit scene seems to be bigger in countries that had bad internet connections, so they would already use lobit encoding to upload or download things online,” he explains. In a similar vein, Hilkmann believes that floppy recordings are an explicitly anti-capitalist niche that exists outside the usual means of publishing music today on Spotify and other streaming services. “A medium, artistically, is only interesting as long as it’s available,” he says. “Now that floppy disks are becoming more and more difficult to get, they’ve become more and more a collector’s item almost, while a few years ago, it was more like almost a trashy medium that you could quickly get your hands on and do fun things with.”
Today at the Hot Pod Summit in Brooklyn, Adobe unveiled Project Music GenAI Control, a platform that can generate audio from text descriptions (e.g. “happy dance,” “sad jazz”) or a reference melody and let users customize the results within the same workflow.
Using Project Music GenAI Control, users can adjust things like tempo, intensity, repeating patterns and structure. Or they can take a track and extend it to an arbitrary length, remixing music or creating an endless loop.
Baby Got Back Talk’s vocalist/bassist G’Ra Asim wrote an essay for the Boston Globe about the importance of keeping alternative music an equitable space:
Black History Month is getting a lot more punk rock. Today sees the release of “Articulate at That Level,” a mixtape featuring musicians of color and/or women artistswho are bona fide philosophers of rock. My band, Baby Got Back Talk, curated this playlist as a cross-section of the gnarliest noise emanating from today’s underground.
But make no mistake — the artists we’ve assembled aren’t tokens we scrounged up just to appease some fussy diversity, equity, and inclusion bureau. They represent the vanguard of alternative music in 2024.
Rodrigo then introduced The Fund 4 Good, a global reproductive rights initiative to support “community-based nonprofits that champion things like girls’ education, support reproductive rights, and prevent gender-based violence.” A portion of proceeds from all “GUTS World Tour” ticket sales will go towards the fund
Vice Media said it would stop publishing content on its flagship website and plans to cut hundreds of jobs, following a failed effort by owner Fortress Investment Group to sell the embattled digital publisher and its brands.
The moves were laid out in an internal memo from Chief Executive Bruce Dixon, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
“It is no longer cost-effective for us to distribute our digital content the way we have done previously,” Dixon told employees in the memo. He said the company could partner with established media companies to distribute its content. “As part of this shift, we will no longer publish content on vice.com.”
Blink-182’s “One More Time” has tied the record the longest running number one song on alternative radio.
Apple has launched a new sports app featuring real-time scores, stats, and more.
Apple Sports incorporates rich team stats, team lineups, play-by-play information, live bettings odd and more, all in one place. The app includes shortcut links so users can easily jump across to watch live games through the Apple TV app, or connected streaming apps.
Needs a widget and live activities, but, I’m very happy this exists.
Sean Mackin of Yellowcard talked golf and violin with Golfweek:
Mackin doesn’t remember the name of the course where he made his first albatross, after all it was in the early 2000s and he was just tagging along with some members of NOFX and Bad Religion while on the Vans Warped Tour in Chicago. He does remember hitting a pretty good push-draw 2 iron about 220 yards uphill to the green on a par 5, though. But after five minutes, the group couldn’t find his ball.
“I go, ‘Oh I’ll just drop’ and Jay Bentley from Bad Religion, like one of my heroes, he’s like, ‘Hey, just check the hole man.’ And it was in the hole,” said Mackin. “They’re hooting and hollering, I didn’t even see it go in. The rest of the day was a blur. To this day, like 20 years later, that whole crew still calls me double eagle or deuce. So that’s pretty awesome.”
Hayley Williams and Paramore have responded to the “blatant racism” after a Republican leader objected to a ceremonial resolution honoring the Grammy winners:
”For those that don’t know, Allison Russell is an incredibly talented musician and songwriter. Her music spans genres with strong ties to the Folk/Americana scenes. You might have seen her on the Grammy stage performing with the great Joni Mitchell. Oh, she is also Black. She’s a brilliant Black woman,” Williams said in a lengthy statement provided to The Tennessean. “The blatant racism of our state leadership is embarrassing and cruel. Myself, as well as Paramore, will continue to encourage young people to show up to vote with equality in mind.
Cassadee Pope talked with Rolling Stone:
Pope didn’t make a conscious choice to depart country music as much as she decided to return to a genre where she felt most at home. But it’s a decision that was validated when some of the genre’s most publicized moments of late involved racism or anti-trans rhetoric (more on that, and the Brittney Aldean “insurrection Barbie” incident later). Deleting those radio-programmer photos, and any need to sacrifice herself for an industry that only awards one chosen white woman a year, at best, was just the catharsis she needed.
Record Store Day 2024 has released their list of this year’s titles.
Tennessee Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, criticized House Republicans on Monday after a Republican leader objected to a ceremonial resolution honoring a Nashville-connected musician for winning a Grammy earlier this month.
Jones brought two resolutions to honor the band Paramore and singer-songwriter Allison Russell, who took home the Best American Roots Performance Grammy Award.
But House Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison, R-Cosby, objected to the Russell resolution, a procedural move that kicked Jones’ resolution off the night’s consent calendar and back to committee, where objected consent items often die.
Well, that’s pretty fucking gross.