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Vice.com Shutting Down

The Wall Street Journal
Jason Tate

Wall Street Journal:

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.”

Apple Releases Sports App

Apps
Jason Tate

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.

Violin, Golf, and Stories From the Road

Yellowcard
Jason Tate

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.”

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Paramore Respond to “Blatant Racism”

Jason Tate

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 Talks Leaving Country for Pop-Punk

Cassadee Pope
Jason Tate

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.

Tennessee Republican Objects to Honoring Allison Russel

Grammys
Jason Tate

The Tennessean:

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.

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Amy Shark Talks (Almost) New Found Glory

Amy Shark
Jason Tate

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?

Jason Tate

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

Apps
Jason Tate

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

Jason Tate

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
Jason Tate

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.” 

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Blink-182’s Untitled Record Gets Special Vinyl Pressing

Blink-182
Jason Tate

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.

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