Lil Wayne has the number one album in the country this week:
Funeral is the fifth leader for Lil Wayne, and it enters with 139,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Feb. 6, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. The album was released on Jan. 31 via Young Money/Republic Records and follows Lil Wayne’s chart-topping Tha Carter V, which was released in 2018.
Dustin Kensrue of Thrice has started the Carry the Fire Podcast.
The show aims to dig deep into those big questions through the lens of the good, the true, and the beautiful. While these days it may feel like our disagreements and divisions threaten any hope of building a broad and beloved community, could it be possible that we all share some innate common belief in the value of these three transcendentals? By exploring our differences through this common ground, I believe our individual worldviews can be enriched by our interactions, becoming more good, true, and beautiful every day. To this end, we will be speaking with people like you, from a wide variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and professions. Whether the conversation is with a musician or author, a scientist or philosopher, we will together glimpse the world anew through their unique perspectives.
The show also has a Patreon.
Netflix has finally made autoplay of previews an option. About-fucking-time.
Spotify has acquired The Ringer.
Spotify has purchased The Ringer, Bill Simmons’ sports and culture site, the companies announced today (February 5). The move follows the streaming service’s expansion into podcasts. (The Ringer has 30 podcasts.) The Ringer, which was previously in partnership with Vox Media, also has a video network, film production division, and book imprint, as The New York Times notes.
Simmons, the former ESPN commentator who founded The Ringer in 2016, said in a statement: “Spotify has the unique ability to truly supercharge both content and creator talent across genres. We spent the last few years building a world-class sports and pop culture multimedia digital company and believe Spotify can take us to another level. We couldn’t be more excited to unlock Spotify’s power of scale and discovery, introduce The Ringer to a new global audience, and build the world’s flagship sports audio network.”
I know I’m probably not like most casual podcast listeners, but the moment any of this content goes behind any kind of Spotify exclusive wall, I’m out on the shows. Neil Cybart’s take on why Spotify spent the money here feels right to me. The economics of streaming music isn’t great and they’re betting on sports radio/talk and podcasts.
Ryan Key and Adam Russell from Story of the Year have started a new Star Wars podcast called Thank the Maker. It’s available now on all podcast platforms.
Roddy Ricch has the number one album in the country:
Roddy Ricch’s Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for a third nonconsecutive week, while Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? vaults back into the top three after Eilish’s big night at the Grammy Awards.
Marco Arment has released a version of his Overcast podcast player with “Voice Boost 2,” if you are interested in the nerdy audio side of this, he’s written up a blog post explaining it:
This is about to get nerdier, but bear with me. (Yes, nerdier than ITU broadcast-loudness standards.)
Given a loudness measurement for the incoming audio, quieter podcasts need to be amplified to reach the target. But perceived loudness isn’t the peak of the incoming audio stream — it’s more of an average. Quiet-sounding audio can still have brief moments of loud peaks.
When increasing the volume of digital audio, the biggest challenge is not “clipping” during the peaks — not having any part of the signal pass above the volume ceiling of 0 dB. (It’s a negative scale. This is also why the LUFS value above, which is closely related to the decibel scale used here, is negative.)
Three Kevin Devine songs have been released on streaming services, one is new.
Hawthorne Heights are once again offering their annual Valentines Day package.
Circa Survive’s Blue Sky Noise is getting a vinyl reissue.
Billie Joe Armstrong, talking to Rolling Stone about “Minority:”
After “Time of Your Life,” I started getting into playing more acoustic guitar, and I really wanted to have more for Warning. And there was also a lot of kind of bad pop punk that was starting to happen, and I wanted to go against that genre. This felt like the next step. I had been getting into listening to more of the Kinks and the Who, who found a lot of power in an acoustic song, and used the guitar almost like a drum. “Pinball Wizard” is so percussive. I wrote this right before the election between George Bush and Al Gore. I started feeling the political wheels starting to turn toward conservatism a little bit. I think that song is sort of about declaring that you’re stepping out of the line, you’re not part of the sheep, and trying to find your own individualism. It felt like we were diving into something that was more conceptual for sure.
I’d like to go back and rerecord that album. It was right when Pro Tools started happening. I want to go back and just do everything more live, because I think “Minority” live is a lot better than it came out on the album. But that’s just one of those things that you think about too much.
Warning is still my favorite Green Day album.
Eve 6 are heading out on a Horrorscope 20-year anniversary tour with Alien Ant Farm.
Frances Quinlan’s new album, Likewise, is streaming over at NPR.
Eminem has the number one album in the country this week:
Eminem notches his historic 10th No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart with his latest release, Music to Be Murdered By. The set debuts atop the tally with 279,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Jan. 23, according to Nielsen Music.
The Grammy awards were last night. You can find the list of winners here and all the performances below.