From a new study on the risk of hearing loss due to unsafe music exposure:
Unsafe listening practices are highly prevalent worldwide and may place over 1 billion young people at risk of hearing loss. There is an urgent need to prioritise policy focused on safe listening. The World Health Organization provides comprehensive materials to aid in policy development and implementation.
Claire Woodcock, writing at VICE:
Over a dozen public libraries in the U.S. and Canada have begun offering their own music streaming services to patrons, with the goal of boosting artists and local music scenes. The services are region-specific, and offer local artists non-exclusive licenses to make their albums available to the community.
The concept originated in 2014 when Preston Austin and Kelly Hiser helped the Madison Public Library build the Yahara Music Library, an online library hosting music from local artists. By the time they completed their work on Yahara, they were confident they had a software prototype that other interested libraries could customize and deploy.
“That became kind of the inspiration for building MUSICat,” Austin told Motherboard, referring to the software platform he and Hiser created under a startup called Rabble.
A judge Wednesday dismissed on free-speech grounds a lawsuit brought against Phoebe Bridgers by a music producer who alleged the singer-songwriter made false and defamatory statements on social media as part of a vendetta to destroy his reputation.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Curtis A. Kin heard arguments on Bridgers’ dismissal motion on Aug. 11, saying at the time that he was leaning toward tossing plaintiff Chris Nelson’s case. He instead took the issues under submission before ruling Wednesday.
Nelson filed the suit in September 2021, also alleging false light and emotional distress. On Feb. 14, the 28-year-old, Pasadena-born Bridgers’ attorneys brought a motion to dismiss the suit on free-speech grounds, arguing that Nelson was “seeking to chill Ms. Bridgers’ allegations of abusive conduct, which are protected by the First Amendment.”
Steve Boom is the VP of Amazon Music, and he has a great name for the music business. He’s on the show because Amazon just announced that it is upgrading the music service that Prime members get as part of their subscription. Starting today, one of the benefits for Amazon Prime members is that you now get access to the entire Amazon Music catalog, about 100 million songs, to play in shuffle mode. That service used to only contain 2 million songs.
Taylor Swift sold a fuck-ton of records:
Taylor Swift achieves her 11th No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart (dated Nov. 5) as Midnights arrives with the biggest week for any album in nearly seven years. The set launches with 1.578 million equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Oct. 27, according to Luminate.
Nilay Patel, writing at The Verge:
You fucked up real good, kiddo.
Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself, and there is no possible way to grow users and revenue without making a series of enormous compromises that will ultimately destroy your reputation and possibly cause grievous damage to your other companies.
I say this with utter confidence because the problems with Twitter are not engineering problems. They are political problems. Twitter, the company, makes very little interesting technology; the tech stack is not the valuable asset. The asset is the user base: hopelessly addicted politicians, reporters, celebrities, and other people who should know better but keep posting anyway. You! You, Elon Musk, are addicted to Twitter. You’re the asset. You just bought yourself for $44 billion dollars.
Best article on the acquisition I’ve read so far.
A bunch of Angels and Airwaves albums have been re-pressed for a limited run.
After just its first week-and-a-half of availability, Blink-182‘s “Edging” is No. 1 on Billboard‘s Rock & Alternative Airplay chart.
Matty Healy of The 1975 and Phoebe Bridgers interviewed each other:
Matty Healy: Yeah, I remember your first record [Stranger In The Alps] had come out, and before I’d heard it George [Daniel, drummer with The 1975] had been saying to me, ‘Have you heard this ‘Motion Sickness’ song? So I put that album on, and I heard ‘Funeral’ and was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ For me, you only really love a piece of art when it makes you a little bit jealous.
Phoebe Bridgers: Oh my God, completely, dude. Like, I can’t listen to ‘Part of the Band’ and be like ‘I’m so glad he came up with that.’ [Laughs] That’s not the way I feel when I hear that song.
Matty Healy: I think it was the hit rate of the lyrics on that [first] album. And then when it got to Punisher, I realised you’re my favourite lyricist. You know, I’ll say it, because I’m allowed to say this shit because everyone thinks that I’m an insane person: I think we’re the best lyricists. Us and Kendrick, who are coming from a different place.
Blink-182‘s “Edging” marks the highest debut on Billboard‘s Rock & Alternative Airplay chart in over eight years, as the band’s reunion single with Tom DeLonge starts at No. 2.
So Mark and I would talk, but we weren’t really talking about the band. We’re friends before we’re a band. Far beyond what the band is to me is Mark’s health and his friendship. So we just were talking. And over the course of, I don’t remember the exact timeframe, but Mark said that they were talking to Tom and starting to work on things. So it didn’t come as any — it was just as far as the actual information dropping and the schedule of everything was revealed to me when it was to everyone else, but I knew that it was coming. It wasn’t this huge surprise, nor was it a stab in the back. Those guys, we were friends — and this includes Tom. Tom especially has been a friend and a fan of my band for many years. Long before I started playing with Blink, Alkaline Trio was out on tour opening for Blink. And Tom had, if not everything to do with it, a lot to do with that. So we’ve always been buddies. We haven’t talked in recent years.
Bartees Strange performed three songs for CBS Saturday Morning.
Matt Healy talks with Kyle Meredith about The 1975’s Being Funny in a Foreign Language.
Drive-Thru Records has posted up some vintage merch along with The Starting Line’s With Hopes of Starting Over being released on vinyl.