Good Morning,
Suno, valued at $5.4 billion and buried in lawsuits, announced two things. It will start watermarking the songs made on its platform (TechCrunch). And it opened a waitlist to press those songs onto 12-inch records (MusicBusinessWorldwide). The machine built to make music infinite is now selling physical artifacts. Guess it knows where the value is?
The demand side is arriving at the same place from the other direction. Digital cameras, wired headphones and iPods are selling again, largely because they don’t send notifications (BBC). Researchers who asked people why they rewatch the same films found intent rather than habit: viewers knew which emotion they were shopping for and skipped the twenty minutes of scrolling (Silicon Canals) trying to find something new (and chancy). Constraint chosen on purpose.
Meanwhile, Andrew Lloyd Webber marked the closing of Cats: The Jellicle Ball by suggesting Broadway might finally reckon with what it now costs to run a new show (Variety) — an optimistic thing to read into a closing notice.
Meanwhile, everything is turning beige. Since the late 2000s, colorless colors have taken over houses, cars, couches and refrigerators (The Atlantic). The interesting question is why.
And a British radio station accidentally broadcast the death of King Charles. The staffer responsible “panicked and left the premises” (BBC).
All of our stories below.
