No Fakes Act Reintroduced in Congress

The Recording Academy’s Grammys on the Hill Advocacy Day culminated on Wednesday with a press conference on Capitol Hill with Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Reps. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) and Maria Salazar (R-Fl.) to announce the reintroduction of the “NO FAKES” Act, standing for “Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe.” The bipartisan, bicameral bill is intended to advance creators’ rights by protecting their voices and likenesses from the unauthorized creation and use of digital replicas. Also at the press conference were stakeholders from the Human Artistry Campaign – where the Academy is a founding member – along with Google, MPA, RIAA, SAG-AFTRA, and YouTube.

Blog: Text-Wrap: Pretty

Jason Tate 2 days ago

Webkit.org:

Often, as a web designer or developer, you are creating a template to be filled with different versions of content. There is no “hand tweaking” typography on the web, especially when the layout is fluid, reflowing to fit different shapes and sizes of screens. So what can we do now to better express the expectations of quality from traditional typography, while still relying on the mechanization brought by today’s computers?
One solution is text-wrap:pretty. It’s intended to bring a new level of polish to type on the web by leveraging paragraph-based algorithms to solve long-standing problems.

This looks really good. I’m excited to play around with this when I can find some spare time.

Mark Hoppus LA Times Interview

Jason Tate 4 days ago 2 comments

Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 was interviewed by the LA Times:

Hoppus says, “It was really cathartic to write it all out and try to be fair to everybody in the book. My whole goal with the book was to not demonize anybody. I wanted there to be no villains in the book because, now that we’ve been through everything, I don’t feel that there were villains. I feel like Blink-182 is a blessing.”
He explains, “When my cancer went into remission, and I felt like I had dodged a bullet, I wanted to tell the story of Blink-182 and not necessarily just my story, but the story of the band from somebody in the band. I love Tom and Travis so much, and everyone just wanted to tell our story as it is, up to now: all the highs, all the lows, the brotherhood, the friendships, everything.”

Oral History of ‘High Fidelity’

Jason Tate 4 days ago 1 comment

This year marks the twenty-fifth year anniversary of High Fidelity. Consequence has put together an oral history about the classic film:

Jack Black: I don’t read books unless I really have to. Then once I got the part, I thought, I better do my research, my due diligence. So I went back to the source, and I thought that the screenplay stayed true to the spirit of the original text. But I was just worried that, at the time, Tenacious D had a full head of steam, and we were getting great crowds and were playing to big houses. And I had, in my mind, a legitimate rock and roll career, separate from film and television, that I wanted to protect. And to do a movie about music, playing sort of a music critic and talking about some of my heroes like Kurt Cobain … just all those elements made me nervous about messing with this thing that was my own little crown jewel of my life and career up to that moment. I was hesitant to fuck with that.

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50 Years of Microsoft

Jason Tate 6 days ago 1 comment

Bill Gates, writing on the 50th anniversary of Microsoft:

The story of how Microsoft came to be begins with, of all things, a magazine. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured an Altair 8800 on the cover. The Altair 8800, created by a small electronics company called MITS, was a groundbreaking personal computer kit that promised to bring computing power to hobbyists. When Paul and I saw that cover, we knew two things: the PC revolution was imminent, and we wanted to get in on the ground floor.
At the time, personal computers were practically non-existent. Paul and I knew that creating software that let people program the Altair could revolutionize the way people interacted with these machines. So, we reached out to Ed Roberts, the founder of MITS, and told him we had a version of the programming language BASIC for the chip that the Altair 8800 ran on.
There was just one problem: We didn’t.
It was time to get to work.

I’ve heard this story many times before, but to read it again, and see the source code at the bottom of the page, is pretty wild.

TikTok Launches Artist Platform

Jason Tate 6 days ago 0 comments

Stuart Dredge, writing for Music Ally:

They include detailed breakdowns of how music is performing; data on what content fans are engaging with; promotional tools for music on TikTok; and the ability to set up EP and album campaigns driving pre-saves on Apple Music and Spotify.
A website is already live with login links for artists. It also explains that artists can invite their teams to have access to their analytics in TikTok for Artists too. Label teams can access artist analytics through their separate MediaMatch accounts in TikTok’s back-end.

StubHub IPO on Pause Amid Market Turmoil

Jason Tate 6 days ago 0 comments

Alex Weprin, writing at The Hollywood Reporter:

The tariff-driven market turmoil is delaying one of the entertainment world’s most closely-watched IPOs.
The online ticketing giant StubHub has put its planned IPO on pause, a source says, just a few weeks after first filing to go public. The company is said to be waiting for the markets to quiet down and clarity to resume, at which point it would be ready to resume its IPO planning.

Spotify Launches AI Ad Tools

Jason Tate 6 days ago

Digital Music News:

These machine-made spots, which Spotify demonstrated in a brief video, are currently live for advertisers in the States and Canada via the Ads Manager. Rounding out the multifaceted announcements’ key takeaways, Spotify debuted bolstered measurement tools designed to help connect adverts with specific users.

Nintendo Delays Switch 2 Preorders

Jason Tate 6 days ago 0 comments

The Verge:

Nintendo is pushing back preorders for the Switch 2 due to concerns about Donald Trump’s newly announced tariffs. According to a statement sent to The Verge by Eddie Garcia on behalf of Nintendo, it says preorders will no longer begin on April 9th:

Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.

I, just, dunno man.

Blog: The Ordinary Sacred

Jason Tate 1 week ago

Joan Westenberg, with a great essay:

In the months, years since the pandemic’s peak, I’ve been unable to reconcile the cognitive dissonance. Seeing the inauthenticity and performance of modern happiness has made it impossible to achieve happiness through the same means. There’s a falseness to it all, a sense of how fragile the facade actually is.
After the collapse, after the burnout, after the creeping dread that none of the things I’d been told to care about were making me feel human, I started noticing what actually felt good. Not “aspirational” good. Not “productive” good. Just good. A grilled cheese sandwich eaten in the sun. A day without notifications. Saying no and not explaining. I didn’t see it as a philosophy. I just knew I felt less fake. Less hollow. Less like I was performing a version of myself I couldn’t stand anymore. Over time, I started tracing a pattern. What if I stopped managing my life like a brand? What if I let it be messy, private, low-stakes? What if that was enough?

Blog: The Magic We Once Had With Browsing the Web Is Dwindling

Jason Tate 1 week ago

Paul Stamatiou:

Before we had AI answer engines, and before we had search engines we just had lists of links with web directories like aliweb, Yahoo! Directory and dmoz. You’d tediously wade through these directories to find and absorb content you were interested in, or just to explore and tinker. Everything online was created by people and you were getting a glimpse into their world with each site.
The web grew. We gained search engines, blogs, feed readers, social media and more. While there were new ways of creating content and new ways of consuming, when you really needed something you’d still turn to a search engine and click around until you found what you needed.
This led to inevitable moments of delightful and serendipitous discovery. There was real joy in discovering another unique voice online, someone whose articles and interests were right up your alley. Their style of writing lended itself to being devoured in one sitting, while you scan their site to see how you can bookmark or subscribe to keep tabs on their latest works.
It wasn’t just about stumbling upon a random personal blog that was a fun occasion. It was finding communities you didn’t know existed.

This entire piece nails so many things I’ve been feeling over the past couple of years.

MusicHarbor Brings Music News to App

Jason Tate 2 weeks ago 3 comments

MacStories details the release of the latest version of MusicHarbor:

My favorite new section of MusicHarbor is News, which pulls articles about the artists you follow from a dozen sources. It’s an excellent set of publications that includes chorus.fm, NPR Music, Pitchfork, and others. If there are any feeds among those listed that you don’t like, though, you can turn individual publications off, so they won’t appear in the app.
If you follow a lot of artists like I do, you’ll appreciate that you can also search for artists by name or using keywords found in the headlines of articles. The app includes a row of profile pictures of the artists you follow for whom the app has found news, which is a nice visual shortcut to those stories, too.

Hey, that’s us. Cool feature.

I launch MusicHarbor every Friday morning to make sure I haven’t missed any new releases from artists I follow.

The Greatest Two-Hit Wonders

Jason Tate 2 weeks ago

Chris Dalla Riva did a deep dive on the greatest two-hit wonders of all time:

But if one hit is a miracle, then two hits is a near impossibility. Two-hit artists sit in a weird space, though. Pop stars a remembered because they are very famous. One-hit wonders are remembered for the opposite. Their un-memorableness makes them great answers to bar trivia questions. Two-hit wonders are stuck in the middle. Some might be able to parlay those two hits into careers, but others are lost in a musical no man’s land, too many hits for trivia, not enough to be legends. Still, there’s got to be a greatest two-hit wonder.

Napster Finds New Owners in $200M Acquisition

Jason Tate 2 weeks ago

The Hollywood Reporter:

Napster, the brand that ushered in an era of rampant music piracy before later being reborn as a subscription music streaming platform, has been sold for $207 million.
Tech company Infinite Reality announced Tuesday morning that it bought Napster in the nine-figure deal, hoping to further transform Napster from merely a streaming service into a more social-first music platform where fans can more directly engage with music and artists.

Good luck.

Lossless Audio and Ultra‑Low Latency Audio Come to AirPods Max

Jason Tate 2 weeks ago

Apple:

Next month, a new software update will bring lossless audio and ultra-low latency audio to AirPods Max, delivering the ultimate listening experience and even greater performance for music production. With the included USB-C cable, users can enjoy the highest-quality audio across music, movies, and games, while music creators can experience significant enhancements to songwriting, beat making, production, and mixing.