Calum Slingerland, writing at Exclaim:
The 592-page Beastie Boys Book will arrive October 30 through Spiegel & Grau. Authored by Ad-Rock and Mike D, the book will also feature contributions from Amy Poehler, Colson Whitehead, Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson, Luc Sante and more.
Ameer Vann of Brockhampton has responded to allegations of sexual misconduct:
In a series of tweets on May 12, Vann addressed the allegations levied against him. Find those below. “I’ve been in relationships where I’ve fucked up and disrespected my partners. I’ve cheated and been dismissive to my exes,” he wrote. “In response to the claims of emotional and sexual abuse: although my behavior has been selfish, childish, and unkind, I have never criminally harmed anyone or disrespected their boundaries. I have never had relations with a minor or violated anybody’s consent.”
Parker Molloy talked with Geoff Rickly of Thursday about how mental health issues in the arts needs to be talked about more:
“I think mental health is still a source of great shame for most people,” Rickly adds. “Implying that there is anything wrong with their mind is still often considered an insult. For artists, I think there’s a sense that we don’t have much (money, material success) but the one beautiful thing that we get as an artist is a state of mind, a high level of imagination and a lot of time to explore it. If you devalue that, by saying our thinking is sick, it takes away from the one thing we have of any value. Or it can feel that way.”
The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Rick and Morty has been given a 70-episode renewal:
A Rick and Morty renewal was given, but the extent of this new pact is quite unexpected. Should Roiland and Harmon maintain anything close to their current production schedule, this will keep the show on the air for as long as another decade.
Spotify has a “Hate Content & Hateful Conduct Policy” that states:
We don’t censor content because of an artist’s or creator’s behavior, but we want our editorial decisions – what we choose to program – to reflect our values. When an artist or creator does something that is especially harmful or hateful (for example, violence against children and sexual violence), it may affect the ways we work with or support that artist or creator.
As of today they’ve used this policy to remove R. Kelly and XXXTentacion from their playlists. A Spotify spokesperson told Billboard:
We are removing R. Kelly’s music from all Spotify owned and operated playlists and algorithmic recommendations such as Discover Weekly. His music will still be available on the service, but Spotify will not actively promote it.
Good.
Nicole Nguyen, writing at BuzzFeed:
The systems that create fraudulent reviews are a complicated web of subreddits, invite-only Slack channels, private Discord servers, and closed Facebook groups, but the incentives are simple: Being a five-star product is crucial to selling inventory at scale in Amazon’s intensely competitive marketplace — so crucial that merchants are willing to pay thousands of people to review their products positively.
Jacob Kastrenakes, writing at The Verge:
Someday in the not-so-distant future, you might be able to walk into a concert venue without waiting in line for your ticket to be scanned — because instead, the venue will automatically scan and identify your face.
That’s the experience that Live Nation and Ticketmaster suggested they’ll try to develop last week, when announcing an investment in Blink Identity.
All the technology we grew up watching and reading in dystopian movies and novels is basically coming to pass. Should I be worried?
Dave Brooks, writing at Billboard:
Eventbrite is the first event ticketing company to integrate with the social media platform, enabling its event creators to add a “Get Tickets” button to the profile page of their Instagram business account. Fans who click the button will be shown a list of events and the integration makes it simple to purchase tickets without leaving the app.
Currently in preproduction, Bill & Ted Face the Music will see the duo long past their days as time-traveling teenagers and now weighed down by middle age and the responsibilities of family. They’ve written thousands of tunes, but they have yet to write a good one, much less the greatest song ever written. With the fabric of time and space tearing around them, a visitor from the future warns our heroes that only their song can save life as we know it.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing in The Atlantic:
There’s nothing original in this tale and there’s ample evidence, beyond West, that humans were not built to withstand the weight of celebrity. But for black artists who rise to the heights of Jackson and West, the weight is more, because they come from communities in desperate need of champions. Kurt Cobain’s death was a great tragedy for his legions of fans. Tupac’s was a tragedy for an entire people. When brilliant black artists fall down on the stage, they don’t fall down alone. The story of West “drugged out,” as he put it, reduced by the media glare to liposuction, is not merely about how he feels about his body. It was that drugged-out West who appeared in that gaudy lobby, dead-eyed and blonde-haired, and by his very presence endorsed the agenda of Donald Trump.
I highly recommend reading this entire piece.
Jonah Engel Bromwich, writing at The New York Times:
College Music had 794 subscribers in April 2015, a year before Mr. Pritchard and Mr. Laxton started streaming. A month after they began, they had more than 18,440. In April 2016, they had 98,110 subscribers and as of last month, with three active live streams, they have more than triple that amount, with 334,000. They make about $5,000 a month from the streams.
The boys stumbled upon a new strategy, one that, in the past two years, has helped a certain kind of YouTube channel achieve widespread popularity. Hundreds of independently run channels have begun to stream music nonstop, with videos that combine playlists with hundreds of songs and short, looped animations, often taken from anime films without copyright permission.
Gibson guitars have filed for bankruptcy. NPR reports:
The petition, filed on Tuesday, notes that the company currently has up to $500 million in debt and will focus its operations on its musical instruments business, “unburdened by the challenges experienced by [the company’s] separate, primarily non-U.S., consumer electronics business.” That business includes the brands KRK, Cerwin Vega and Stanton, whose lines include studio monitors, headphones and turntables.
Michael Cavna, writing at The Washington Post:
With that in mind, it only seems fitting that “The Simpsons” draws upon both principles to dramatize its act of taking down “Gunsmoke” as the new sheriff of television. On Sunday night, “The Simpsons” will pass the classic midcentury western by airing show No. 636 — the most scripted episodes broadcast by any prime-time series in TV history.
Noah Kulwin, writing at NY Mag:
First, I’ll say there were very few decisions made. I think that the biggest problem that Reddit had and continues to have, and that all of the platforms, Facebook and Twitter, and Discord now continue to have is that they’re not making decisions, is that there is absolutely no active thought going into their problems — problems that are going to exist in coming months or years — and what they can do to combat them.
Anna Gaca, writing at Spin:
Charity organizations often tout close connections to the communities they serve, but in the case of Punk Talks and misconduct allegations, the boundaries feel too unclear. The result is an embarrassing, rumor-fueled fiasco that’s arguably started more anguish than it solved. It’s a story of good intentions gone wrong; of a fledgling institution unprepared for the pressures of public reckoning; and of the pressing need for an uncompromised restorative justice process that can earn long-term trust from its constituents.
