TIDAL Has Unveiled New Membership Options

Jason Tate Dec 7, 2021

TIDAL now offers three membership options for you to choose from: TIDAL Free, TIDAL HiFi, and TIDAL HiFi Plus. With access to the same catalog of over 80 million songs, each membership has its own set of perks to empower your music experience.

And, one of the more interesting portions:

Not only does TIDAL HiFi Plus offer access to innovative listening experiences, but through the Direct Artist Payout program, it also allocates up to 10% of your monthly subscription towards your most-streamed artist. This means that your top-streamed artist of the month can benefit immediately and directly from the success of their work on TIDAL

Colin Farrell to Reprise Penguin Role in ‘The Batman’ Spinoff Series for HBO Max

Jason Tate Dec 7, 2021

Variety:

Colin Farrell has officially signed on to star in and executive produce a series spinoff of “The Batman” in which he would again play The Penguin, Variety has learned exclusively from sources.
Farrell will first portray the villainous character in “The Batman” starring Robert Pattinson, which is due to be released on March 4, 2022. The series would then reportedly delve into The Penguin’s rise to power in the Gotham criminal underworld. Variety first reported the series was in development back in September, though Farrell was not attached at that time.

Spotify Partners With Shopify

Jason Tate Oct 21, 2021

Todd Spangler, writing for Variety:

Spotify on Wednesday announced a new partnership with ecommerce provider Shopify to let artists list merchandise directly on their profiles on the audio-streaming giant’s platform.
Any artist globally can already link to their Shopify store if they have one from their Spotify profile. But now Spotify users will see featured product listings from Shopify on the service; during the initial beta period, Shopify merchandise will only be visible to Spotify listeners in five countries: the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K.
To set up their virtual merch tables, Spotify artists must have a Shopify account. Shopify’s pricing plans range from $29/month for a basic ecommerce package up to $299/month for an “advanced” tier that includes enhanced reporting. Shopify is offering a 90-day free trial to all Spotify artists signing up for the first time.

R. Kelly Found Guilty

Jason Tate Sep 28, 2021

The New York Times:

R. Kelly, the multiplatinum R&B artist whose musical legacy became intertwined with dozens of accusations of sexual abuse, was found guilty on Monday of serving as the ringleader of a decades-long scheme to recruit women and underage girls for sex.
The jury in New York deliberated for about nine hours before convicting the singer of all nine counts against him, including racketeering and eight violations of an anti-sex trafficking law known as the Mann Act.

Jack Antonoff Named Artist in Residence

Jason Tate Sep 10, 2021

Jack Antonoff has been named the artist-in-residence at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music

Antonoff will kick off his residency with a 90 minute, in-depth Q&A conversation on Friday September 10 at 12:00 p.m. ET, moderated by Jason King, Chair of the Clive Davis Institute and PAM (Producers Against Misogyny) founders and Recorded Music students Lily Amiclo and Stella Smyth. PAM is an organization created to address inequities caused by misogyny in music and to offer educational opportunities in production that foreground people who often fall to the margin in this setting.

AEG to Require Proof of Full Vaccination for U.S. Concertgoers and Event Staff

Jason Tate Aug 12, 2021

AEG:

AEG Presents, a global leader in concerts and live events, announced today that it will be requiring proof of vaccination for entry into its owned and operated clubs, theatres, and festivals. The decision comes on the heels of the dramatic surge in Covid-19 cases as the Delta variant spreads throughout the United States. AEG Presents is either an owner or partner in such iconic venues and festivals as New York’s Webster Hall and Brooklyn Steel, The Roxy and El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, The Theatre at Resorts World Las Vegas, Firefly Music Festival, Day N Vegas, The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and Coachella Music & Arts Festival, among others.
The vaccination policy, limited only as required by law, will be in full effect nationwide no later than October 1, 2021. Several venues have already been following local government vaccination mandates, with others anticipated to come in the weeks leading up to October 1. The date was chosen specifically to allow time for any eligible unvaccinated ticketholders and staff to reach fully vaccinated status should they choose to do so. Leading up to October 1, AEG Presents will be implementing a policy of showing proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test taken within 72 hours of show date where permitted.

Billie Eilish Tops the Charts

Jason Tate Aug 9, 2021

Billie Eilish has the number one album in the country this week:

Billie Eilish earns her second No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart, as her latest release, Happier Than Ever, debuts atop the list with 238,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Aug. 5, according to MRC Data. Happier launches with the fifth-largest week of 2021 by equivalent album units earned.

Conor Oberst and Waxahatchee Talk Songwriting Tips

Jason Tate Aug 2, 2021

Conor Oberst and Waxahatchee trade songwriting tips in a new interview over at Consequence:

Crutchfield: That’s pretty much exactly how I do it. It takes me so long to write lyrics, so I collect all of these vocal melodies and just sort of have them in my back pocket. When I finally sit down to write words, it’s like the most painful and torturous process, and it takes so long.
Oberst: Not to butter your bread, but your melodies are always so incredible. And then to have that with the amazing lyrics and your voice is insane. Total package over there. I feel like the lyric writing is the easiest thing for me. Do you ever write something that you’re stoked about, and then you realize that it’s already a song?

Tumblr Introduces Paid Subscription Tool to Woo Younger Bloggers

Jason Tate Jul 24, 2021

Katie Deighton, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Microblogging stalwart Tumblr on Wednesday began a test letting some users charge their followers a monthly fee in exchange for access to exclusive content.
The blogging site, which Verizon Communications Inc. sold to WordPress.com owner Automattic Inc. in 2019 for far less than the $1.1 billion it paid for it, said it hopes to make the option to charge for posts widely available this fall.
The feature, called Post+, offers content creators a choice of three monthly prices to charge their followers—$3.99, $5.99 or $9.99—with Tumblr taking a 5% cut of subscription fees. Users can continue to post free content as well if they want.

Tumblr is still around?

Study Projects a Surge in Coastal Flooding

Jason Tate Jul 14, 2021

NASA:

In the mid-2030s, every U.S. coast will experience rapidly increasing high-tide floods, when a lunar cycle will amplify rising sea levels caused by climate change.
High-tide floods – also called nuisance floods or sunny day floods – are already a familiar problem in many cities on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported a total of more than 600 such floods in 2019. Starting in the mid-2030s, however, the alignment of rising sea levels with a lunar cycle will cause coastal cities all around the U.S. to begin a decade of dramatic increases in flood numbers, according to the first study that takes into account all known oceanic and astronomical causes for floods.
Led by the members of the NASA Sea Level Change Science Team from the University of Hawaii, the new study shows that high tides will exceed known flooding thresholds around the country more often. What’s more, the floods will sometimes occur in clusters lasting a month or longer, depending on the positions of the Moon, Earth, and the Sun. When the Moon and Earth line up in specific ways with each other and the Sun, the resulting gravitational pull and the ocean’s corresponding response may leave city dwellers coping with floods every day or two.

Well, that sure sucks.

Taylor Swift Breaks Modern-Era Record for Biggest Vinyl Album Sales Week

Jason Tate Jun 1, 2021

Billboard:

In just three days, Taylor Swift’s Evermore has set the record for the biggest sales week for a vinyl album in the U.S. since MRC Data began tracking sales in 1991.
The vinyl edition of Evermore, released on May 28, sold over 40,000 copies in the U.S. through May 30, according to initial reports to MRC Data. That beats the record for an entire single-week of vinyl sales, held by the debut frame of vinyl devotee Jack White’s Lazaretto, when it launched with 40,000 copies in the week ending June 15, 2014. (MRC Data began electronically tracking music sales in 1991, when the company was known as SoundScan.) It’s presumed that Evermore’s vinyl sales sum will grow by the end of the tracking week on Thursday, June 3.

Demi Lovato Comes Out As Non-Binary

Jason Tate May 19, 2021

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.”

TikTok Is Helping Make Pop-Punk a Thing Again

Jason Tate May 5, 2021

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

Jason Tate May 5, 2021

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.

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

Jason Tate Apr 29, 2021

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.