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Demi Lovato Comes Out As Non-Binary

Demi Lovato
Jason Tate

Consequence:

The 28-year-old pop singer discussed their gender fluidity during an episode of their new podcast 4D with Demi Lovato. “Over the past year and a half I’ve been doing some healing and self-reflective work,” Lovato explained. “And through this work, I’ve had the revelation that I identify as nonbinary.”

Lovato said that changing their pronouns to they/them “best represents the fluidity I feel in my gender expression and allows me to feel most authentic and true to the person I both know I am and still am discovering.”

Moneybagg Yo Tops the Charts

Jason Tate

Moneybagg Yo has the number one album in the country this week:

It’s a quiet week in the top 10 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, as Moneybagg Yo’s A Gangsta’s Pain returns to No. 1 while no albums debut in the top 10 for the first time in two months.

A Gangsta’s Pain rises 2-1 in its third week, after earning 61,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending May 12 (down 12%), according to MRC Data. The album debuted atop the chart dated May 8 with 110,000 units.

Deryck Whibley Reflects on ‘All Killer, No Filler’

Sum 41
Jason Tate

Deryck Whibley of Sum 41 talks with Billboard about All Killer No Filler on its twenty years anniversary:

I’ve always felt somewhat, like, when that record had success — and maybe this is just my personality — but when it got as successful as it did, I had an immediate embarrassment. Almost like you become ashamed of your own success. In some way, I feel like it snuck through and everyone’s going to find out soon that it’s not that good. Like I sort of cheated my way, somehow. That’s kind of what I’ve always felt about that record. I think if I listen to it now as I’m older, maybe I can be a little bit more objective. But for the longest time, I thought it wasn’t a very good record.   

Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

Jason Tate

Apple:

Apple today announced Apple Music is bringing industry-leading sound quality to subscribers with the addition of Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos. Spatial Audio gives artists the opportunity to create immersive audio experiences for their fans with true multidimensional sound and clarity. Apple Music subscribers will also be able to listen to more than 75 million songs in Lossless Audio — the way the artists created them in the studio. These new features will be available for Apple Music subscribers starting next month at no additional cost.

The Untold History of the ‘Take This to Your Grave’ Artwork

Fall Out Boy
Jason Tate

Alex Toor has done a deep dive into the history of designing Fall Out Boy’s Take This to Your Grave artwork:

Fast-forward nearly a year later and I was able to get in touch with Mike Joyce, designer for Take This To Your Grave and founder of Stereotype Design. Mike has generously shared several never-before-seen assets from the making of TTTYG exclusively with The Bad Habits Collection. The following is a complete dissection of these contents, their fascinating history, and the artistic process that guided the way.

TikTok Is Helping Make Pop-Punk a Thing Again

Tik Tok
Jason Tate

Aliya Chaudhry, writing at Consequence:

But there’s another major factor bringing pop-punk back, and it’s causing a lot of change in the music industry. TikTok has been revitalizing hits from the 2000s and 2010s – many of them scene staples like 3OH!3’s “DONTTRUSTME”, Paramore’s “All I Wanted”, and All Time Low’s “Dear Maria, Count Me In”. It’s also bolstered newer songs, like “I Miss Having Sex but at Least I Don’t Want to Die Anymore” by pop-punk-adjacent band Waterparks, who didn’t even release the track as a single (and have subsequently signed to hip-hop label 300 Entertainment). YUNGBLUD, whose work combines elements of pop and punk with other genres, frequently collaborates with Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker, and his song “parents” went viral on TikTok earlier this year.

Next level: When TikTok can get all those pop-punk bands that should have been huge back in the day a viral hit. Come on, let’s see some Lucky Boys Confusion dance move videos.

Facebook Bans Honest Signal Ads on Instagram

Facebook
Jason Tate

Shoshana Wodinsky, writing at Gizmodo:

A series of Instagram ads run by the privacy-positive platform Signal got the messaging app booted from the former’s ad platform, according to a blog post Signal published on Tuesday. The ads were meant to show users the bevy of data that Instagram and its parent company Facebook collects on users, by… targeting those users using Instagram’s own adtech tools. 

The actual idea behind the ad campaign is pretty simple. Because Instagram and Facebook share the same ad platform, any data that gets hoovered up while you’re scrolling your Insta or Facebook feeds gets fed into the same cesspool of data, which can be used to target you on either platform later.

Moneybagg Yo Tops the Charts

Jason Tate

Moneybagg Yo has the number one album in the country this week:

After notching four earlier top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 chart, rapper Moneybagg Yo earns his first No. 1 as his latest effort, A Gangsta’s Pain, debuts atop the tally.

The 22-track set was released on April 23 via CMG/N-Less/Interscope and earned 110,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending April 29, according to MRC Data. Nearly all of that total is powered by streaming activity.

Grammys Drop Anonymous Nominating Committees After Backlash

Grammys
Jason Tate

The New York Times:

The governing body of the Grammy Awards voted on Friday to change its nominating process, eliminating a step that has recently come under fire — the use of anonymous expert committees to decide who makes the final ballot in dozens of categories.

Each year, the Recording Academy convenes music professionals to serve on its nomination review committees for 61 of the Grammys’ 84 categories. They whittle down the initial nomination choices by the academy’s thousands of voters to determine the ballot, and their work is intended to protect the integrity of the awards process.

The committees began in 1989, but in recent years they have come under intense criticism from artists, music executives and even Grammy insiders as examples of an unaccountable system rife with conflicts of interest and mysterious agendas.

Ted Lasso Believes

Jason Tate

I loved this essay on Ted Lasso from Catherynne M. Valente:

Ted Lasso is like if Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, Coach Taylor, Leslie Knope, and David Tennant’s Doctor all got together and had a big strange baby. It is a completely formulaic premise that turns around and refuses to follow the formula. It’s wholesome without being boring, kind without being trite, smart without being pedantic, so loving it’ll take your breath away, and gut-bustingly funny. Scripts so tight and hilarious that even one guy just saying his name and the paper he works for is not only a meme but makes you smile each and every time.

Do you know how fucking hard that is to pull off?

It is so much easier to be funny while being cynical. Everyone knows life sucks, it’s easy to get them onside by accessing that universal experience. To sneer and punch down and stand back from the world wrapped up in a sense of coolness that comes at the expense of everyone else and call that edgy. It is so much harder to stay funny while you’re being kind. In a show for adults. For cynical adults who are having a thoroughly rubbish time of it — and that was everyone in 2020. It’s nearly impossible, honestly. Even Parks and Rec constantly shit down Jerry’s neck. The Good Place was full of demons to balance out the philosophy with that kind of humor.

Ted Lasso is just a guy. It’s not the afterlife, it’s not in space, it’s not in a medieval morality play, it’s not even something as high-concept as the fantasy life of JD in Scrubs. He’s just a guy, who has problems, not insignificant ones, but also maybe the secret of life, moving through a traditional comedy plot — in fact, the actual plot of Major League — and handling it like comedy characters never do because it’s easier to do a madcap plot when everyone is being stupid and not communicating and running on the rails of their particular archetypal tropes.

John Mayer Nearing Deal to Host ‘Later’ Talk Show on Paramount Plus

John Mayer
Jason Tate

Variety:

Sources tell Variety that “Later With John Mayer” has been pitched to prospective broadcast partners as a series featuring performance segments as well as interviews with musicians, artists and other cultural figures in a setting designed to look like an after-hours club for musicians.

The series would run as a weekly offering on Paramount Plus, ViacomCBS’ streaming platform which was relaunched March 4. The plan is to have specials derived from the show’s performance segments air periodically on CBS as well. There is also talk of tie-ins with the Grammy Awards, which are aired on CBS.

iOS 14.5 Releases

Apple
Jason Tate

iOS 14.5 has been released and MacStories has a good overview:

Apple today released version 14.5 of iOS and iPadOS, a substantial update to the operating system for iPhone and iPad that debuted in September and introduced features such as Home Screen widgets, multi-column app layouts on iPad, compact UI, a redesigned Music app, and more.

Version 14.5 is the biggest – or, at the very least, most interesting – update to iOS and iPadOS we’ve seen in the 14.0 release cycle to date. That’s not to say previous iterations of iOS and iPadOS 14 were low on new features and refinements – it’s quite the opposite, in fact. Perhaps the pandemic and Apple’s work-from-home setup played a role in the company spreading new iOS functionalities across multiple releases throughout 2020 and the first half of 2021, but, regardless of the underlying reason, iOS and iPadOS 14 have evolved considerably since their public launch six months ago.

Watch unlock for the phone has been 👌.

Andy Hull Reviews Every Manchester Orchestra Album

Jason Tate

Uproxx:

I’ll never forget being in the office at Columbia, and playing them the record, and the radio team just having these blank stares on their faces. They had no idea what to do. I was like, “I have a pretty good idea: I think this song ‘Pensacola’ is really catchy.” And, they were like, “No, no, no, it can’t be that, there’s no real chorus to it. We should do ‘Simple Math’ and then also the next week release ‘April Fool,’ so that nobody knows what the single is.”

Streaming Music Payouts

Jason Tate

This breakdown from Nick Heer about music streaming payouts touched on a point I think about often:

I get millions of songs for my $10 per month. In about the same timeframe in 2009, I also added Burial’s “Untrue” to my library. I have played the thirteen songs on that album 684 times in total, leading to an estimated payout of $6.84. My CD copy of that album probably cost $15, of which William Bevan probably earned just a few pennies. Apple Music obviously has not existed since 2009 but, if it had, I cannot work out how much less artists would have made if I had streamed all of my music instead of buying physical copies.

Somehow, we are still paying just $10 per month for music in an era where streaming must be paired with live performance to have any hope of generating an income for an artist, all the while fighting the paradox of streaming music, and artists are still getting screwed in the middle of all of it. There would not be a music industry without music, but the industry gets all of the money while musicians still have to fight for scraps.

Apple Music Editorial Content Is Coming to Apple News

Jason Tate

John Voorhees, writing for Mac Stories:

The integration of Apple Music and News, which Apple said nothing about during its event on April 20th, is clearly just getting going, so there’s not a lot to see yet. However, it’s also the sort of integration that has the potential to differentiate Music from competitors like Spotify and give users a much-needed reason to visit News. This is a feature we may learn more about next week when iOS and iPadOS 14.5 are released to the public, and that we’ll be keeping a close eye on and as we learn more about Apple’s plans for the fall during WWDC.