Data Analysis Finds Coordinated Attack Against Taylor Swift

Miles Klee, writing for Rolling Stone:

In a white paper examining more than 24,000 posts and 18,000 accounts across 14 digital platforms between Oct. 4 (the day after The Life of a Showgirl came out) and Oct. 18, shared first with Rolling Stone, the firm concluded that just 3.77 percent of accounts drove 28 percent of the conversation around Swift and the album during that period. This cluster of evidently coordinated accounts pushed the most inflammatory Swift content, including conspiracy theories about her supposed Nazi allusions, callouts for her theoretical MAGA ties, and posts that framed her relationship with fiancé Travis Kelce as inherently conservative or “trad,” with all of this framed as leftist critique.

2025 Nostalgia Tours Did Well

Jason Tate 6 months ago

StubHub have released their 2025 live experiences report:

Legacy acts ruled the stage in 2025. Nostalgia tours from Oasis, Green Day, and My Chemical Romance turned memory into momentum, inspiring fans to travel, reconnect, and re-engage with the live music economy.

2026 Prediction: In 2026, expect more “heritage cycle” programming, festivals, and promoters curating lineups around legacy artists and milestone albums.

“Those Were the Best Days of My Life”

Jason Tate 6 months ago

Henry Yates writes about the history of Bryan Adams’ hit “Summer of ’69” for Louder Sound:

Bryan Adams was nine years old in the summer of ’69. He didn’t join his first band (Shock) until ’76. Which doesn’t quite fit the song’s lyrical content, which appears to rue the break-up of a teenage band (‘Jimmy quit and Jody got married’) and the collapse of a love affair (‘I think about you, wonder what went wrong’).
In reality, Adams’s clean-living image has helped disguise one of the most blatant innuendos of modern rock: the ‘69’ in question doesn’t refer to the year 1969, but to the sexual position. Adams has announced as much from the stage, and even appears to sing ‘me and my baby in a 69’ during the song’s outro.

Mariah Carey Grabs Record-Tying 19th Week at No. 1

Jason Tate 6 months ago

Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas is You” has once again topped the charts:

The recurrent tune surges four spots to the Hot 100 summit, tying the record for most weeks at the top alongside Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus. It also marks the seventh consecutive year that “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has hit No. 1. The song previously became Carey’s 19th No. 1 on the Hot 100, the most for any solo artist and only one behind the Beatles as the record-holder.

Netflix Buys Warner Bros. + HBO

Jason Tate 6 months ago

Netflix has won a bidding war to purchase Warner Bros., including HBO.

The cash and stock transaction is valued at $27.75 per WBD share (subject to a collar as detailed below), with a total enterprise value of approximately $82.7 billion (equity value of $72.0 billion). The transaction is expected to close after the previously announced separation of WBD’s Global Networks division, Discovery Global, into a new publicly-traded company, which is now expected to be completed in Q3 2026.

Jack Antonoff, Mustard and Sounwave Reflect on ‘GNX’

Jason Tate 6 months ago

Jack Antonoff talked with Variety about work with Kendrick Lamar in GNX.

Antonoff, for his part, densely laid in bits of guitar and Mellotron to build out the world of “Luther.” “If you really listen to the record, obviously Kendrick and SZA are right there and the beat’s right there and the melody,” he says. “But there’s all this stuff dancing around, like in between them. I wanted to go overboard with the presentation of how special it could be. I ended up sitting alone for a really long time carving out all these little spaces.”
The meticulous nature of “GNX” only intensified as the record sped toward completion. Antonoff recalls working on final mixes as late as four in the morning, just hours before the album’s release. Its impact was instantly tangible — “Luther” held court atop the Billboard Hot 100 for 13 weeks, while “Not Like Us” picked up Grammys for song and record of the year. But for the producers who helped bring “GNX” to life, it signified that taking risks — sonically and creatively — was the only path forward.

‘Mad Men’ Re-Release Fuck Ups

Jason Tate Dec 3, 2025

HBO’s 4K Mad Men re-release has … problems.

For starters, the Mad Men episodes in 4K on HBO Max were listed out of order and mislabeled, which likely made series creator Matthew Weiner an absolute mad man.
But that’s nothing compared to an actual edit-oopsie in the seventh episode of season one. In “Red in the Face” (what the episode is supposed to be titled, but was not on 4K HBO Max), a drunk (they were always drunk) Roger Sterling (John Slattery) vomits up oysters in the office in front of prospective clients. In the initial 4K stream that released on HBO Max, a Mad Men crew member was very visibly operating a barf hose behind Sterling, in full view of the camera. There was even a second staffer in frame supporting the puke-hose tech. That guy would have been a great friend in college.

Todd Vaziri, with a great observation:

The fun thing about this restoration mistake is that now we, the audience, get to see exactly how many digital visual effects were actually used in a show like “Mad Men”, which most would assume did not have any digital effects component. In this shot, not only were the techs and hose removed, but the spot where the pretend puke meets Slattery’s face has some clever digital warping to make it seem like the flow is truly coming from his mouth (as opposed to it appearing through a tube inches from his mouth, on the other side of his face).

Jason Tate Dec 3, 2025

YouTube is joining the “end of year stats” game and have announced a new “Recap” feature.

Recap will be available starting today for YouTube users in North America, and roll out to the rest of the world this week. Your Recap can be found right on the homepage, or under the “You” tab, accessible on mobile devices and desktop.
YouTube Recap uniquely highlights interests, deep dives, and moments you explored this year, based on your watch history. You’ll get a set of up to 12 different cards that spotlight your top channels, interests, and even the evolution of your viewing habits, or which personality type you fall into based on the videos you loved to watch!

iHeartRadio Bans AI Music

Jason Tate Dec 3, 2025

Billboard:

iHeartRadio’s chief programming officer and president, Tom Poleman, sent a letter to staff on Friday (Nov. 21), obtained by Billboard, pledging that the company doesn’t and won’t “use AI-generated personalities” or “play AI music that features synthetic vocalists pretending to be human,” among other promises.
The pledge marks the beginning of iHeart’s new “Guaranteed Human” program, which will also see the company publish only “Guaranteed Human” podcasts, according to Poleman’s letter.

Hayley Williams Talks With Clash Music

Jason Tate Nov 27, 2025

Hayley Williams was recently interviewed by Clash Music:

It was a conscious attempt to slow the internet down a little, to make the conversation around art – her craft – a little more nuanced. “I just wanted to say: hold on a minute,” she shrugs. “Can’t we pay attention to a song or an album or a film or a show? That was the point, to create a conversation that forced engagement between people.”
While she happily describes herself as an iPhone addict, Hayley also harbours a certain fondness for the 2005 era of messageboards and MSN groups. “I don’t know, there’s something really nice about that old internet that we had, and how everything did kind of feel like it was contained, or more tactile,” she says. “I feel nostalgic for that time, but so much of my career has been anti-nostalgia. This is a nice mixture of all the worlds that I love.”

Stephen Egerton on the Descendents’ Enduring Legacy

Jason Tate Nov 26, 2025

Stephen Egerton of the Descendents talked with the local Tulsa paper:

Somewhere in the mid-90s, All — which is the same band as the Descendents but with a different singer — were playing a little festival in Phoenix, as I recall, and these two young guys come running up to me and they’re just really hyper. They said, “Wow, you guys are our favorite band. We started a band just because of you guys.” I thought they were really funny guys. I watched their set, and they were very charismatic. So, I hit it off with Tom (DeLonge) and Mark (Hoppus) immediately.

StubHub Hit With Class Action Lawsuit

Jason Tate Nov 26, 2025

Ashley King, writing for Digital Music News:

A shareholder class action lawsuit has been filed against StubHub following its post-IPO stock price plunge. The lawsuit alleges the company made materially false or misleading statements, failing to disclose “material adverse information” regarding its business and cash flow.
The complaint, filed in New York federal court on Monday, is one of at least three lawsuits stemming from StubHub’s lackluster quarterly earnings report. It was filed by investors who bought into StubHub’s $758 million initial public offering (IPO) in September. At least four other law firms have announced that they’ve opened their own investigations into StubHub’s numbers.

Meet Me @ the Altar Talk With Rock Sound

Jason Tate Nov 26, 2025

Meet Me @ the Altar talked with Rock Sound about their new EP:

I feel like it was a long time coming, weirdly enough. We were always going to come back to this sound, because this is where our hearts are. We love this genre and being a heavy band, and we definitely missed it when we strayed from it. We don’t regret moving away from it when we did, but playing heavier music is more in line with what we love. Just seeing everything change in front of us, we were like, ‘Okay, we already know what we have to do. Let’s just do it.’ I don’t even think a conversation needed to be had. It was just like, ‘Yeah, this is what we’re doing, and we’re going to do it.’ And we did.

Reports: Spotify to Raise Prices Next Year

Jason Tate Nov 25, 2025

TechCrunch:

Spotify is planning to raise subscription prices in the U.S. in the first quarter of next year, according to a new report from the Financial Times. The move will mark the streaming service’s first price rise in the US since July 2024. The company recently raised prices in several other countries, including the U.K., Switzerland, and Australia.
A Spotify subscription currently costs $11.99 a month in the U.S. When the service first launched in the country 14 years ago, it cost $9.99 per month.
The report says JPMorgan analysts have estimated that a $1-per-month price increase in the U.S. could increase Spotify’s annual revenue by about $500 million.

To pay artists more, right?

Matt Pryor Talks With Spin

Jason Tate Nov 25, 2025

Matt Pryor sat down with Spin to talk about his recent album:

One of the ways he stimulated that creative energy was via a daily writing practice, scribing 1,000 words every morning “just to see if I could do it,” he shared. Initially, some of those essays wound up on his popular Substack and social media. “I found myself writing about the six months from the end of the Four Minute Mile tour, which ended at the Union Transfer in Philadelphia, to going into the hospital and then getting out and into recovery groups.” As he started working on his new album, Pryor said he decided to stick with that theme. “I wanted to write all these stories down because I thought I might subconsciously try to forget the bad times.”