Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters talked with Mojo in a new interview:
“There was no plan to make an album,” Grohl tells MOJO’s David Fricke. However, he reports that after a year of writing and listening back to the “40 or 50 instrumentals” he had amassed, he found one stretch of eight recordings that were “punchy, fast, energetic” which felt like the seeds of a new Foos’ album. “I said, ‘That’s what we need…’” recalls Grohl.
Lorde has decided to leave Universal Music.
“I adore them, they’re incredible people, and I have had an amazing experience with them,” she said about her time with UMG. “But the truth is that a 12-year-old girl pre-signed and pre-sold her creative output before she knew what it would be like and before she knew what she was signing away.”
Travis Barker talked about his history with shoes, and Vans, with Rolling Stone. The article starts with:
Back in 1992, a kid from Fontana, California, linked up with two other SoCal teenagers and helped form what would become one of punk rock’s best acts: Blink-182.
I get that mistakes happen in this game. But line one? Get it together Rolling Stone.
Geoff Rickly of Thursday talked with Human Pursuits:
We’ve settled into a comfortable spot now—highly influential and beloved by cerebral elements of the fandom—but not the leading band by any populist metric.
That’s probably where we always belonged, but because we were doing something different before everyone else, there was a moment where we were the band to watch—sort of like Turnstile is now. We were selling out 5,000 capacity theatres, right at that point of being as big as you can get without being a household name. It happened a year into Full Collapse being out. That record sold 700 copies the week it was released; it was not a hit. Then all of a sudden, boom, it was. None of us knew how deal with it; there was no PR training.
Part two can be found here:
I’m really proud of Thursday that we waited until the hype died down. When you get back together, you’re playing your biggest shows ever, selling 3,000 tickets in huge rooms. You can do that once or twice on a reunion, but if you become a band again, you have to re-normalise. We waited until we had normalized and until we knew each other a little bit. We wrote a lot of songs that we didn’t release that were, quite frankly, bad.
Dave from Big D & The Kids Table is battling cancer. A GoFundMe has been set up.
Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:
This Taste Profile is key to Spotify’s recommendations, including personalized playlists like Discover Weekly, Made For You recommendations, and the year-end review known as Spotify Wrapped, among other things.
Starting with Premium listeners initially in New Zealand, Spotify will allow users to see all their listening data in one place in the app, including music, podcasts, and audiobooks. Users will then be able to edit this profile and even fine-tune future recommendations by asking for more or less of a certain vibe. After doing so, the app’s home page will reflect a different set of suggestions.
I Am the Avalanche talked with Rock Sound about their upcoming album:
Whether I was procrastinating or not, I wrote the lyrics when it was the exact right time for me to write them. It came after I experienced the most insane amount of loss. At the time, part of me was like, ‘Most of the lyrics aren’t written yet, so I guess the record’s never going to get done.’ It was a sunny day though, so I went to the park by my apartment, and I wrote the first lyrics. It killed me for the next three days. I got it off my chest, and it took so much out of me physically and mentally, but I saw the result. I went into the studio around three days after I wrote that first song. I sang it in the vocal booth, and when I heard it back, I became empowered. I knew that I needed to see it through.
Harry Styles has the number one album in the country this week.
Harry Styles’ fourth solo studio album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally., debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart (dated March 21) with 430,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States in the week ending March 12, according to Luminate
Zach Bryan purchased Jack Kerouac’s original On the Road manuscript for $12.1 million.
Previously owned by Jim Irsay, the iconic 120-foot typed scroll was offered as part of a major Christie’s auction that also included David Gilmour’s “Black Strat” and Jerry Garcia’s “Tiger” guitar. Irsay, the late owner of the Indianapolis Colts, originally purchased the On the Road manuscript in 2001 for $2.43 million, which at the time set a record for a literary work sold at auction.
It’s an annual tradition to have a NCAA bracket challenge over on ESPN. (And the community is a great place during games.)
Make Do and Mend have announced they’ll release their new album On Going later this year.
Over the past year or so, we started to bat around what being creative together again might look like. We began sharing ideas, which led to a collection of new songs that will make up the fourth Make Do and Mend album. We humbly regard it as our best.
We’ll have more to share soon about when and how this new album will find its way to you. For now, we’ll let you know, the album is called On Going.
Walden Green, writing for Pitchfork:
The conversations are between Ben Baker, now head of ticketing for Venue Nation, and Jeff Weinhold, currently a senior director in the ticketing department. Baker and Weinhold joke about overcharging and price-gouging fans—“Robbing them blind, baby,” Baker brags in one exchange pertaining to a Kid Rock show in Tampa Bay—as well as being able to raise prices on ancillary services such as parking seemingly at will. “These people are so stupid,” Baker writes. “I almost feel bad taking advantage of them BAHAHAHAHAHA.”
Apple Music has signed an exclusive partnership with TikTok to bring full-songs to the platform:
Apple Music subscribers will officially be able to play full-length tracks they discover on TikTok without leaving the social app, following the launch of a new integration between the two platforms.
TikTok says that the feature, called ‘Play Full Song,’ is rolling out globally over the coming weeks and is available exclusively to Apple Music subscribers.
When a user discovers a song on TikTok’s For You Page or Sound Detail Page, a button prompts them to open an Apple Music player within the app.
A “term sheet” spelling out details of the pact said Live Nation had agreed to let venues reach deals that would let a certain portion of tickets be sold by entities other than Ticketmaster. It also would let up to 50% of all tickets to be sold through any ticketing marketplace at amphitheaters that Live Nation owns, operates or controls.
The term sheet also called for Ticketmaster to cap its service fees at those amphitheaters at 15% and to divest ownership or control of 13 amphitheaters, including venues in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Syracuse, New York, and Austin, Texas. It said Live Nation will create a $280 million settlement fund to settle claims or pay civil penalties to states.
The Wasserman Agency is rebranding as “The Team.”
The name change is the first concrete move away from the company’s namesake, who last month agreed to sell the agency, which is among the largest sports and music agencies in the business. While the music division was roiled by turmoil as several artists, most notably Chappell Roan and Laufey, left in the wake of the Epstein revelations, sources say things inside the division have calmed down, as executives (nearly all of whom are bound by contracts) and many of the artists (who are not) take a wait-and-see approach while the company’s name change and sale move forward.