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Can Quitting Streaming Music Bring You Closer to It?

Jason Tate

Craig Manning recently shared an article from Matt Schimkowitz of the AV Club in the forums discussing how quitting streaming services helped save the author’s relationship with music:

The albums are the same, but on streaming, there’s no friction between acquiring an album and listening to it. Low-effort acquisition led to low-effort consumption, and as soon as I put even the slightest bit of work into it, I found more to love. Reading liner notes, admiring album art, and loading a CD into the $30 burner we bought after canceling all made a bigger impression than replaying the same tired playlists I would turn to when decision paralysis made choice impossible. After all, a smaller collection is more welcoming to the lost art of letting an album grow on you. If I took the time to seek out music, be it at the library, the record store, or on Bandcamp, I would be more likely to connect with it.

As a whole I enjoyed the piece. The underlying idea is a good one: spending more time with music, letting it grow on you, letting it be a part of your life, and not becoming just a passive listener to music are all good ideas. It’s one of the reasons I love spending time with vinyl records. There’s a part of collecting, of the intentionality of the process of buying a record, spending time with it and only it, that really resonates with me. It reminds me of the joy of getting a new album when I was younger and the entire experience.

But I’m not ready to give up my streaming service just yet.

I still like using it for music discovery and it’s still very much how I do the most of my listening. But I still curate my “Apple Music” collection in a similar way as I did my old iPod/iTunes one. Cleaning up metadata. Collecting extra album tracks and b-sides. And being (trying to be) diligent about what I actually add to my collection. I’ve found just trying to be more present with my music has helped. Giving favorite artists the multiple listens they deserve. Spending time with full albums vs playlists or shuffling tracks. This is how I’ve stayed connected with music over the years.

US Administration Threatens Spotify

Jason Tate

Stuart Dredge, writing fro Music Ally:

Spotify has been taking heat in recent months for its decision to accept and run recruitment ads for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

Now, in an unwelcome end-of-year twist for the company, it’s being threatened by the US administration with new “fees or restrictions” on its business. Not because of anything Spotify has done, but because of intensifying tensions between the US and the European Union.

This being 2025 (and this being this US administration) the threat was made in a post on X by the official United States Trade Representative account.

Imogen Heap’s Auracles Signs SoundCloud Partnership Deal

Imogen Heap
Jason Tate

 Dylan Smith, writing for Digital Music News:

The involved companies just recently confirmed their deal in a formal release, after SoundCloud head Eliah Seton and Heap discussed the integration during last month’s Web Summit event. Coinciding with the official disclosure, the November sit down’s audio has become available on SoundCloud.

Billed as a “comprehensive and forward-thinking suite of tools,” Auracles is said to afford artists one-stop control over metadata, stems, press materials, contact info, and a whole lot else via its “sovereign digital ID.”

President Aren’t Industry Plants

President
Jason Tate

President talk about their rapid accession and why they’re not an industry plant.

“When you blow up really quickly, it’s assumed you’re backed by a huge corporate machine,” he tells us. “People find it hard to accept that something can just explode organically. But if something’s getting a lot of attention, you’re gonna draw equal measures of hate as you are love. I’d rather people felt something than nothing at all.”

In fact, Mr President insists that he “couldn’t have planned a harder way to introduce President to the world”.

I can’t see that mask and not hear “I am not a plant” in the Richard Nixon voice/cadence of “I am not a crook.”

Spotify Tests AI-Powered Prompted Playlists

Jason Tate

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:

The new tool allows users to describe what they want to hear in a personalized playlist that reflects the “full arc” of their tastes, according to the company. That means the playlist focuses not only on the songs you like now, but your entire Spotify listening history from day one — something that differentiates the feature from other playlists, the company says.

Report: Impersonators Scam Fans Out of $5.3 Billion in 2025

Billboard
Jason Tate

Billboard:

Hackers impersonating celebrities like Taylor Swift and her team contributed to fleecing fans for $5.3 billion online in 2025, as AI has made online scams more successful, according to a report from social media security company Spikerz. […]

The report found that scammers target Swifties with convincing fake tickets, merch and VIP experiences, while Carpenters’ young fanbase is targeted by clone accounts offering “fake meet-and-greet offers, pre-sale links, and counterfeit merch drops.” Billie Eilish hackers have run fake livestreams or giveaways that mimic her image.

Federal Judge Dismisses MF Doom’s Trademark Suit

Legal
Jason Tate

Digital Music News:

“Temu manufactured and sold a myriad of items that are counterfeit or blatant copies of Plaintiff’s artwork, products, trademarks, and intellectual property,” the suit elaborated, also including multiple screenshots of allegedly infringing MF Doom merch listings.

From there, Temu returned fire in October with a dismissal motion that placed the alleged trademark infringement blame on the shoulders of “independent third-party sellers.”

Evidently, this argument did the trick; Judge Blumenfeld stressed the seller-marketplace distinction when doing away with the MF Doom estate’s direct infringement claim.

In the judge’s view, the plaintiff “cites no authority holding that price control renders an online marketplace a ‘seller’ liable for direct infringement,” while “the presence of Temu’s name on packaging…does not support an inference that Temu is the seller of any product, let alone the products at issue here.”

Spotify Rolling Out Music Videos

Jason Tate

Spotify:

This expansion gives millions more listeners access to a catalog of official music videos, from studio versions to live performances and covers. The initial video catalog is limited for now while the feature is in beta, but stay tuned as availability will grow quickly over the coming months.

Blog: People Use Tools That Help Them

AI
Jason Tate

Matt Birchler, with my favorite line of the week so far:

If a tool makes my job meaningfully better, AI or not, I’m gonna use it, you don’t have to convince me. Maybe some people are resistant to learn anything new, but my impression is that the gains bosses have promised have been too grand and the use cases too broad, so employees get a bad taste in their mouth.

Again, I’ll shout it from the rooftops, if a piece of software is revolutionary and will make workers’ jobs easier, they will use it. If you find you have to keep making the hard sell to your employees, maybe it’s not bringing as much value to them as you think.

Amen.

“Those Were the Best Days of My Life”

Bryan Adams
Jason Tate

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

Billboard
Jason Tate

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.

Blog: Rules for Reading

Jason Tate

Ryan Holiday with some great advice on reading:

These 31 rules by no means make a complete list, but if you implement even a couple of them, I’m comfortable guaranteeing you’ll not only be a better reader for it, but a better person too.

–It is not enough that you read. You have to read well. You have to read the right books. You have to figure out how to process and retain and of course apply what you read. As Epictetus said, “I cannot call somebody ‘hard-working’ knowing only that they read.” He said he needed to know what and how they read. He needed to know that their “efforts aim at improving the mind.” Because then and only then would he call you “hard-working.” Then and only then would he give you the title “reader.”

I didn’t read as many books as I wanted to this year. Other priorities ended up taking up my time. I read more from my RSS feeds than I think ever before but I need to make sure I bring book reading back into my daily routine.

Stephen Egerton on the Descendents’ Enduring Legacy

Descendents
Jason Tate

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

Legal
Jason Tate

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.