Clandestine Industries has released some new merch.
Clandestine Industries Launches New Line
Amy Shark Talks (Almost) New Found Glory
Amy Shark talked with Mary Varvaris of The Music, and dropped this little tidbit about almost touring in New Found Glory:
Another moment where Shark nearly lost her mind was when she nearly became the touring guitarist for the pop-punk band New Found Glory. Shark has contacts in the pop-punk scene, nabbing blink-182’s Mark Hoppus for her Love Monster track Psycho and developing friendships with other bands. Shark’s come a long way from the days of being a “sweaty little emo”.
The story goes: “I surprisingly talk to a lot of them [pop-punk bands] now. Like, I’ve spoken to Deryck [Whibley] from Sum 41 and I’ve spoken to New Found Glory. I nearly went on tour with New Found Glory, playing in their band,” Shark says. “That’s something I haven’t said out loud! But I had Australian Idol, and that was coming about the same time we were working out if I was going to do Idol or not.
“One of their guitarists [Chad Gilbert, who was receiving intense chemotherapy for a rare cancer called pheochromocytoma in February 2023] is not well, and I’m like, I know so many New Found Glory songs. They’re like, ‘Do you want to come and be in the band?’ And I was like, What a crazy idea, but I kind of like it! So, yeah, I nearly went on tour with them.”
Why is Music Journalism Collapsing?
Ted Gioia, writing on the collapse of music journalism:
Before streaming, everybody in the value chain needed new music. The record stores would go broke if people just listened to the old songs over and over.
And the same was true for record distributors, record labels, radio stations, nightclub owners, and music writers. Everybody needed hot new songs and rising new musicians.
Of course, fans also benefited. Life gets boring if you just listen to the same songs year after year, decade after decade. But there was no risk of that. The music industry worked tirelessly to find exciting new music, and share it with the world.
That business model is now disappearing. The people who run the industry killed it—and now we live with the consequences.
The irony is that exciting new music is still getting released—but almost nobody hears it. The system actively works to hide it.
And occasionally an artist breaks through the industry inertia, and proves that fans still want exciting new music experiences. But here, too, entrenched interests do almost nothing to support this—and much to hinder it.
Music Status via Sleeve 2
Jason Snell detailed a cool little app called Sleeve 2 on SixColors:
What made me instantly buy Sleeve was its extensive capability to customize the currently playing track information. You can choose to show album art at a wide range of sizes (or omit it entirely), with your choice of corner rounding. You can choose display track name, album name, and artist name, and display them in a variety of fonts and weights. There’s customization for text alignment, drop shadows, and pretty much anything else you might want. You can set the track information to float above everything, always say on the Desktop layer, or float above briefly when the track changes, then land back on the desktop.
It also integrates with Last.fm.
Apple Podcasts Adds Transcripts
Apple has announced a new feature adding transcripts to podcasts:
Apple automatically generates transcripts after a new episode is published. Your episode will be available for listening right away, and the transcript will be available shortly afterwards. There will be a short delay while we process your transcript. If portions of your episode change with dynamically inserted audio, Apple Podcasts will not display the segments of the audio that have changed since the original transcription. Music lyrics are also not displayed in the transcripts.
Laura Jane Grace Talks With Rolling Stone
Laura Jane Grace talked with Rolling Stone:
The last few years haven’t been all that hot for Grace, to be honest. Before the pandemic hit in 2020, Against Me! had just signed with Linda Perry as their new manager; though they’d been growing apart for a while, there was talk of making their first new album since 2016. But then lockdown happened, and everything crumbled further. Bandmates were clashing, getting a PPP loan proved difficult, and, she says, management was pressuring the band to do Zoom livestreams, which Grace loathed. All that, combined with the viper pit that is social media, led to her blocking everyone (including her bandmates) and retreating into her loneliness. It didn’t help that she only got her tween child every other month — splitting time with the kid’s mother, Heather Gabel. Three-hour baths became the norm for Grace, as well as week-long acid trips and punishing daily runs. “We didn’t have a fight, but we all stopped talking,” she says of her bandmates. “It’s been this big fucking open wound where all the people in my life disappeared.”
Blink-182’s Untitled Record Gets Special Vinyl Pressing
Interscope have announced Blink-182’s untitled record is the next in their vinyl collective series.
On their most ambitious album of their career (and the one the band called “the album [they’re] most proud of”), the group expands their pop-punk pedigree with a darker, more forward-thinking mix of post-punk, New Wave, post-hardcore and electronic. The band eschewed crude humor in favor of more introspective lyrics and sonic experimentation, while still retaining the driving, ferocious rock that made them superstars. A critically acclaimed hit upon its release, this special edition double LP includes an embossed white on white album cover, gatefold jacket, white on white album sleeves, an original album cover lithograph insert, and for the first time, clear vinyl with a smiley etching on side D. This is growing up.
Max Martin Breaks Record for Most #1 Songs
Max Martin now solely has the most No. 1s among producers in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart.
He tallies his 24th career leader as a producer on the latest, Jan. 27, 2024-dated Hot 100, as Ariana Grande’s “Yes, And?” blasts in at No. 1. He surpasses the late George Martin – who produced 19 of The Beatles’ record 20 No. 1s – for the most leaders among producers over the chart’s 65-year archives.
Apple Music to Incentivize Spatial Audio Mixes
Benjamin Mayo, writing at 9to5Mac:
Apple will pay up to 10% more per play in royalties for tracks where a spatial version is available. This is starting with January’s payouts. Crucially, Apple Music users do not necessarily have to listen in Spatial Audio for the artist to be rewarded with the bonus payout.
Alkaline Trio Talk With NME
Alkaline Trio sat down to talk about their new album with NME:
After going through the mindset of “it’s not done until we all love it,” the band landed on an album with some familiar noir themes. “Unfortunately, ‘Blood, Hair And Eyeballs’ is a dark record but I don’t think we had a choice,” Andriano explained. “There’s a fairly apocalyptic theme that runs through the record, because it seems like we’re living through the end of time right now.
“Humanity really needs to get its shit together, which means the record is broader than just Matt and I writing about our personal lives. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to pull that off.”
Green Day Talk With The Sun
Green Day talked with The Sun in a new wide ranging interview:
Mike says: “Social media is great for kids but if you’re finding your music via algorithms then that’s just fing lazy. I like to organically find new things. All I can say is just f***ing clear your search history to find new s***.” Tre laughs: “We say this now but as soon as we hang up, we’ll be making a TikTok account.”
Billie Joe adds: “I was told that Brain Stew was a sudden popular thing on TikTok with a lot of hip-hop kids dancing to it. And that’s cool. But I don’t have the patience to use it. It’s just like, eurgh. It’s cool for other people but we’re old- school man.”
That is why you won’t find the passionate and outspoken songwriiter venting on social media.
Billie Joe says: “My opinions are always in my songs. I don’t like to Tweet or Instagram about politics, because you’re contributing to insane people who are just bitching, arguing and taking sides. So I write about it in my songs. It’s funny as on New Year’s Eve, we played American Idiot [on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve show] and we changed ‘redneck agenda’ to MAGA agenda’ [Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan]. Well, I woke up the next morning to people saying, ‘F***ng blah blah I can’t believe he said it’ or ‘it’s so awesome’ which was crazy. And then it’s on Fox News and Elon Musk and Tom Morello are saying things about it. But it threw me as we’d pre-taped the show a month before and I’d forgotten about that lyric change. On actual New Year’s Eve, we were in our cover band, The Coverups, raising money for a chimpanzee sanctuary so I was like, ‘Hey what are you talking about? I was raising money for chimps’.”
Billie Joe Armstrong Breaks Down Some of the Band’s Singles
Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day broke down some of their biggest hits:
There’s a band called 5 Seconds of Summer who wanted me to write a song for them. All of a sudden I was writing the lyrics, and I was like, “Oh my God, there’s no f—ing way I’m giving these guys this song.” There’s all those [lyrics] where it’s the last moment of someone’s life — it’s so intense. It’s just a song [from 2016’s Revolution Radio] about being a survivor.
Alkaline Trio Talk New Album
Alkaline Trio talk with Rock Sound about their upcoming album:
Often leaning into hyperbole whilst holding a mirror to the darkest aspects of humanity, the Chicago punk legends have long charted the world’s descent into brooding chaos, and now – six years since they last released an album – real life has seemingly edged closer to Doomsday than ever before.
From a global pandemic to mass shootings to drug epidemics, there are no shortage of horrors sitting on our doorstep, and thanks to social media – they can often feel impossible to escape. As the planet unravels and we witness the Earth become a breeding ground for a whole host of terror, everything feels uncertain – but one thing’s for sure, it’s the perfect time for new Alkaline Trio music.
With their milestone tenth album, the three-piece are stripping things back to basics. Redefining their morbid sonic identity to serve as an antidote for the swirling confusion that now dominates so many of our lives – they’re back with a dark record for a truly dark time.
Despite Music Industry Growth, Companies Are Tightening
Lucas Shaw, writing for Bloomberg:
Last year was brutal for the media business, as nearly every major entertainment and technology company fired employees. This year is shaping up to be more of the same.
More than a dozen major corporations across technology, finance and media announced major job cuts this past week, including Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Unity Software Inc. Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music company, plans cuts in the first quarter. Animation studio Pixar will let staff go in the second half. All told, media companies have fired more than 70,000 employees since the start of last year, according to Vivek Couto at Media Partners Asia.
EU Regulating Music Streaming Royalties
The EU has proposed sweeping changes within the music streaming industry to promote smaller artists and make sure underpaid performers are being fairly compensated.
A resolution to address concerns regarding inadequate streaming royalties for artists and biased recommendation algorithms was adopted by members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on Wednesday, highlighting that no existing EU rules currently apply to music streaming services, despite being the most popular way to consume audio.