Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has launched a new venture called Wikitribune to help fight fake news:
Wikitribune is a news platform that brings journalists and a community of volunteers together.
We want to make sure that you read fact-based articles that have a real impact in both local and global events. And that stories can be easily verified and improved.
Carly Rae Jepsen sat down with Billboard to talk about the chorus of “Call Me Maybe” and how she feels about the song today:
The next day, Jepsen and Crowe brought the song to Josh Ramsay, the leader of pop-rock group Marianas Trench, who suggested that they turn the song’s pre-chorus into its proper chorus. “He went, ‘That pre-chorus is way hookier than the chorus that you guys have, so let’s repeat it,’” says Jepsen. From there, “Call Me Maybe” — originally more of a folk-leaning track, in the vein of Jepsen’s earlier singer-songwriter work — was re-imagined as a bubblegum pop track by Ramsay, who ended up producing the song. “He got inspired and started adding strings,” remembers Jepsen. “before we knew it, it had this whole new life.”
Billboard recently released a list of the “100 greatest choruses” of the 21st century. Fall Out Boy, Yellowcard, Fun., Jimmy Eat World, and Walk the Moon all feature.
Phoenix will release their new album, Ti Amo, on June 9th. The band sat down with The New York Times to talk about the album:
But the album also hints at a darkness that surrounded the group while it recorded in Paris during a turbulent time, as its hometown absorbed a swell of refugees, underwent a surge in alt-right sentiment and endured terrorist attacks. On the night of the attacks at the Bataclan, a concert hall where Phoenix had played and attended shows, the guitarist Christian Mazzalai was trapped in the studio, where the band was recording after the police shut down Paris.
Unroll.me CEO, Jojo Hedaya, has responded to the controversy arising from revelations in The New York Times that the company does things like sell your “anonymized” receipts to third parties:
Our users are the heart of our company and service. So it was heartbreaking to see that some of our users were upset to learn about how we monetize our free service.
And while we try our best to be open about our business model, recent customer feedback tells me we weren’t explicit enough.
What a load of horse shit.
A lawsuit filed this week in Chicago alleges that Bose headphones “spy” on listeners. Michael Tsai has a good list of links about what this means:
I downloaded the app on android and listened to a few songs on Spotify to find out what information was being sent.
While the app is running, the app sends a HTTPS request every time the track information changes or the volume changes. When the track information changes it sends the artist, album and song name. When you change the volume it sends the new volume level.
Spotify announced today a large group of indie record labels can put releases behind a two week paywall:
Continuing a successful nine-year partnership, the agreement is structured to reflect and promote the value of Merlin’s collective offering of its members’ repertoire, while offering improved marketing and advertising opportunities and enhanced access to data. Merlin member labels can also participate in Spotify’s recently announced flexible release policy.
Ashlee Kieler, writing at Consumerist:
Nostalgia lovers who missed out on scoring one of Nintendo’s mini-Classic console systems before the company discontinued the product last week, could have another chance to walk down memory lane: The gaming company is reportedly planning to follow up on that system’s popularity with a miniature Super Nintendo version. Though, if the report is true, you’ll have to wait until the holidays.
I’d buy one. I still don’t understand why Nintendo discontinued the mini-NES though.
In the year after Prince’s death on April 21, 2016, the Purple One’s catalog of albums and songs have sold a combined 7.7 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen Music, through the week ending April 13. Of that sum, 2.3 million were in traditional album sales, and 5.4 million were from digital song downloads.
The bulk of his album and songs sales occurred in the month after his death: 5.65 million were registered between April 21 and May 19, 2016.
Incredibly, for the full year of 2016, Prince sold more albums than any other artist — even Adele — with 2.23 million copies sold. (Adele sold 2.21 million albums last year.)
Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:
The company announced today that its roughly half-priced version of its Premium service is now available to students who qualify in 33 new countries, in addition to the U.S., U.K., and Germany where student pricing is already offered.
The new countries where student pricing is now available includes: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey.
Bill O’Reilly is out at Fox “News” amidst allegations of sexual harassment.
The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck will be directing the upcoming Captain Marvel movie:
Mississippi Grind directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck will direct Brie Larson in Captain Marvel, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
Guardians of the Galaxy’s Nicole Perlman and Inside Out’s Meg LeFauve wrote the script for the Marvel Studios film, which will be produced by Kevin Feige.
They landed the job after an extensive search. Last summer, Marvel had whittled down its list of contenders to include Niki Caro, Lesli Linka Glatter and Lorene Scafaria for the highly coveted job, which will mark Marvel’s first female-centric tentpole. The studio was making the hiring of a woman a priority for the project.
The Coachella iPhone Bandit, who stole allegedly stole over 100 smartphones, was foiled by the Find My iPhone feature:
“A bunch people activated their ‘find my phone’ and pointed at, ‘Hey, it’s that guy, my phone, my dot, it’s moving with that guy,'” said Indio police Sgt. Dan Marshall.
Pandora Premium is now available to all users, TechCrunch reports:
The service itself is essentially Pandora’s own spin on on-demand music, offering a combination of radio-like listening as well as the ability to search and play any track and build playlists. It costs $9.99 per month, which is in line with other offerings on the market today, including Spotify and Apple Music.
David Pierce, writing for Wired:
Lacy’s smartphone has been his personal studio since he first started making music. Even now, with all the equipment and access he could want, he still feels indelibly connected to something about making songs piece by piece on his phone. He’s also working this way to prove a point: that tools don’t really matter. He’s feeling a tension that’s been in the music industry since the Tascam 424 Portastudio made mobile recording easy in the 80s, and has come up time and again since then. He wants to remind people that the performance, the song, the feeling matter more than the gear you use to record it. If you want to make something, Lacy tells me, grab whatever you have and just make it. If it’s good, people will notice. Maybe even Kendrick Lamar.
Now, a year and a half later, the streaming service is upgrading Fan Insights and rebranding the initiative as Spotify for Artists, complete with new features and controls that allow all artists to not only peek under the hood at their data through the service, but also manage their artist presence within Spotify itself.
Sounds good.
With Spotify for Artists, verified musicians will be able to now manage the way their artist page looks, with photos; pinned songs, albums or playlists that they want to promote atop their profile; and the ability to add and control which playlists appear on their artist page, whether created by themselves or by fans or other artists.
Sounds great.
As with Fan Insights, artists will have access to listeners’ demographic information — age, gender, location — as well as real-time song information, playlist performance and data and the different ways listeners are accessing or discovering their music.
Sounds a tad creepy.