Jeremy Gordon, writing at CJR:

Twenty years ago, a magazine could slot a profile of a smaller band alongside an interview with a popular artist, and hope that it might be read as part of the whole. Now, every article is packaged individually on the internet and measured to the last click, making it very clear when something isn’t being read, incentivizing coverage of artists with proven followings. “It’s a giant shift,” Ken Weinstein says. “It was kind of better when people couldn’t really put an absolute finger on it because art is not that.”

Most music journalists aren’t so craven as to go entirely by the numbers, but they work at businesses. “I could invest ten hours and do a long feature on something that no one has ever heard of, but five people will read it,” Julianne Shepherd, editor-in-chief at Jezebel and former executive editor at The Fader, says. “And then is my boss going to be like, ‘Yo, what the fuck are you doing?’”

I found that this piece hit a little too close to home a few times. Especially when thinking about AbsolutePunk.net and the machine it got sucked up in. However, now that we’re independent, and largely based around a member supported model, I don’t have to care about what gets the most pageviews or clicks. It’s freeing.

Megan Greenwell, writing at Deadspin:

The unstated, fuller version seems to be that he believed he could simply turn up the traffic (and thus turn a profit), as if adjusting a faucet, not by investing in quality journalism but by tricking people into clicking on more pages. While pageviews are no longer seen as a key performance indicator at most digital publications—time spent on the site is increasingly thought to be a more valuable metric—Spanfeller has focused on pageviews above all else. In his first meeting with editorial leaders, he said he expected us to double pageviews. Several weeks later, without acknowledging a change, he mentioned that the expectation is in fact to quadruple them. Four months in, the vision for getting there seems less clear than ever.

I think this article will resonate with anyone that’s ever worked for a large media company at one point or another.

Noah Yoo, writing at Pitchfork:

Suspicious bootlegs and fraudulent uploads are nothing new in digital music, but the problem has infiltrated paid streaming services in unexpected and troubling ways. Artists face the possibility of impersonators uploading fake music to their official profiles, stolen music being uploaded under false monikers, and of course, simple human error resulting in botched uploads. Meanwhile, keen fans have figured out where they can find illegally uploaded, purposefully mistitled songs in user playlists. […]

However, it’s easy for leakers to simply lie and upload infringing music, which may or may not be caught by the distributors’ fraud prevention methods. By abusing the limited oversight in the digital supply chain, it’s possible that leakers can make significant amounts of money off music they have zero rights to.

Marianne Eloise, writing at Vice:

The first time I felt truly old was the first time I read someone comment “I was born in the wrong generation” under a My Chemical Romance video from 2006. For millennials like me, our emo phases are mostly relegated to our teen years, only resurrected in the dizzying glow of a karaoke booth. But back in school, belonging to a group was everything: you were emo to death, or you weren’t.

Now, as genre and culture melt and slam into one another, we’re witnessing a new sort of emo revival. Well, even to call it that would be a bit of a stretch. Rather, today’s teenagers are posting about how much they love Fall Out Boy’s Take This To Your Grave or Taking Back Sunday’s Tell All Your Friends, second-generation 2000s emo albums that came out when they were barely born.

This is today’s entry in the “wanna feel old” box.

Taylor Lorenz, writing for The Atlantic:

If you want to know who the biggest TikTok star is right now, who is in Emma Chamberlain’s squad, or where Baby Ariel grew up, only one website will give you the answers: Famous Birthdays.

Despite its name, the site contains more than just birthdays—it’s more like a constantly updated, highly detailed map of who matters to the teen internet, featuring a mix of biographical information, photos, videos, rankings, and detailed statistics on every social-media star you could think of. And to teenagers, it’s a bible. “They have everything you want to know about everyone who is important,” says Grace, a 14-year-old in St. Louis.

Charles Porch, the head of global creative partnerships at Instagram, says that Famous Birthdays is like the younger generation’s Tiger Beat. “You might know about Famous Birthdays if you’re a parent,” Porch says. “But you definitely know about it if you’re a kid, and you definitely know about it if you’re a creator. Is it adult mainstream yet? No, but that doesn’t matter.” The site has 20 million unique visitors a month—more than a million more than Entertainment Weekly, and four times as many as Teen Vogue.

Well, reading this article gave me my daily “holy shit I’m starting to feel my age” moment.