The indie rock icon, Steely Dan hater, and prolific shitposter died of a heart attack. Among the records he engineered were Nirvana’s In Utero and Pixies’ Surfer Rosa. Here’s Albini on the recording industry in 1993, and a more recent feature on his growth since then.
While pleading with US lawmakers to protect artists like herself from the threat of generative AI, Twigs revealed that she created an AI version of her likeness.
“In the past year I have developed my own deepfake version of myself, that is not only trained in my personality but also can use my exact tone of voice to speak many languages.”
She plans to use the AI FKA Twigs to help promote her work globally.
“Even with my upcoming album I can explain in depth what it is about creatively. It also allows me to spend more time making art.”
The hearing was related to the bipartisan No Fakes Act bill currently being considered.
Grimes manager DAOuda made a lengthy post on X to clear the air about the technical mishap that occurred during Grimes’ Coachella set last weekend. It apparently boils down to a last-minute update and a computer swap.
YouTube’s livestream from the music festival is available once again, as it will be through 2026 at least. This year it includes NFL-style multiview in YouTube’s TV apps so you can keep an eye on more than one broadcast.
The schedule is available here, and hopefully, this weekend, everyone will know how to use their equipment properly.
Not only is the first song called “Fortnight” (ignore the typo), but the lyrics from “So High School” reference both GTA and the beloved LucasArts adventure game Full Throttle. Curiously it’s not capitalized, but Swift does seem to be teasing a sequel.
It’s not just us Swifties who have been waiting impatiently for April 19th — The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) release day. It appears Mark Zuckerberg had a carefully worded pun locked and loaded for today, which also marks the pop superstar’s debut on Threads.
“No journalist is going to catch Swift in her sweatpants backstage and write about it.” I loved this profile of Tree Paine, perhaps the most influential celebrity publicist in the game.
You know, in case that sort of thing is relevant to you.
[Create Digital Music]
The new deal adds protections around using digital voice replicas, reports Reuters.
The terms “artist,” “singer,” and “royalty artist,” under this agreement only include humans. In this agreement, clear and conspicuous consent, along with minimum compensation requirements and specific details of intended use, are required prior to the release of a sound recording that uses a digital replication of an artist’s voice.
AI voice cloning improvements mean we’ll probably see more agreements ensuring performers are informed about how copies of their voices are used.
Akira Toriyama’s Sand Land manga, published in 2000, is getting both an anime and video game adaptation. The anime is out now on Hulu and Disney Plus while the video game launches on April 26th. Bandai Namco just released a new trailer for the game making use of another popular piece of sand related media and it is exactly what you think it is. They saw the opportunity and went for it.
Yesterday, a hidden message started showing up in the lyrics of songs in five curated Apple Music playlists of Swift’s music, giving Swifties a code to decipher ahead of her upcoming album, “The Department of Tortured Poets.”
According to USA Today, Apple will add random capital letters to a song per day, spelling out a word and, by April 18th, a “secret” message.
Because you can find just about any kind of content on the web, there’s a TikTok channel that’s almost entirely devoted to wax phonograph cylinders and the devices that play them.
One process for printing music on them, shown here by phonograph repair person Wyatt Markus, involves playing music into a metal cone. That transfers the sound waves through a cutting stylus that etches them into the wax.
Big Sean shouted out the blog era of music during an NPR Tiny Desk appearance this week, which is a reminder of so many outlets from that time that have disappeared or changed drastically.
That includes Pitchfork (even if Big Sean’s best review there was probably for a track that wasn’t on any of his albums), which was folded into GQ after a round of layoffs early this year, and was profiled more recently here by Liz Lopatto.
Instead of sharing a Tidal-specific song link with friends, now you can let them choose the service they want to open it with — whether it’s Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music. Tidal is rolling out universal links today, and you can see how it looks in the screenshot below.
Pitchfork exploded as the music industry changed, then was cut down to size by another wave of technological change. Was that it?
The artist pulled his catalog in early 2022 over its then-exclusive Joe Rogan deal, which Young said had resulted in Spotify spreading vaccine misinformation. Now, with the exclusivity deal over, Rogan’s podcast is also available on Apple and Amazon, and Young can’t keep his music off all of them.
He’s still not happy about Spotify’s lack of high-res audio quality, though.
[Neil Young Archives]