Technology Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Last month Elon Musk called time on what he has been calling "legacy verified users," meaning anyone that wanted a blue check mark on their account would have to subscribe to Twitter Blue and pay $8 a month for the pleasure. The uptake hasn't exactly been overwhelming, with TechCrunch reporting that the relaunched subscription service made just $11M on mobile in its first 3 months.

This past Friday (April 14), the British band Breezer released a “lost” Oasis album they’d created using AI. AISIS’ The Lost Tapes/Vol.1 was, in fact, written by Breezer, but the band is fronted by a digitally programmed Liam Gallagher.

Adam Moskowitz — the attorney in charge of a class action lawsuit brought against FTX promoters including Shaquille O’Neal, Tom Brady, and Larry David — says Taylor Swift was one of only several celebrities who did their due diligence before agreeing to promote the disgraced cryptocurrency exchange. On a new episode of The Scoop, a podcast from the crypto-focused online publication The Block, Moskowitz recalls his surprise at how many hugely popular figures hadn’t checked in with their own lawyers before signing massive contracts with the shady firm.

Universal Music Group has been in correspondence with the major music streaming platforms, including Apple Music and Spotify, to demand that the companies help block the AI programs that are creating new songs based on the music of UMG artists. A report published last week by the Financial Times contains emails and interviews with sources close to UMG.

Donald Glover's multimedia company Gilga has put out an open call for applications in nine different roles. The multimedia company was detailed in a recent GQ profile outlining Glover's vision for a production studio, incubator, restaurant, and beyond.

Management for Bandcamp contacted Topshelf Records on Friday (April 7) and asked them to cease its support for the music platform’s nascent union, Bandcamp United, according to a statement from the record label’s official Twitter account. Topshelf says that the label was “petitioned to cease supporting [Bandcamp United],” a request they declined.

Lil Yachty and Soulja Boy are among a group of famous faces who have been charged with illegally advertising cryptocurrency by the Securities and Exchange Commission. On Wednesday, the SEC filed the charges against the group of eight celebrities, which also includes musicians Ne-Yo and Akon, as well as Jake Paul, Lindsay Lohan, Austin Mahone, and Kendra Lust, with “illegally touting" crypto asset securities Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) "without disclosing that they were compensated for doing so and the amount of their compensation.” Despite not admitting or denying the SEC’s findings, each of the names mentioned by the SEC, except for Soulja Boy and Austin Mahone, has agreed to pay a total of over $400,000 in disgorgement, interest, and penalties to settle the charges.

It's been a tumultuous seven-ish days for internet users of a certain generation. Last Sunday, rumors began to circulate that the legendary mixtape archive DatPiff was gone for good, though the site denied that less than a day later, blaming "technical issues" with its website and app for the user issues.

Spotify is wading into the controversial, often repulsive menage-a-trois of A.I., art, and business with a new listener guide called DJ. Powered by OpenAI and Spotify’s proprietary personalization technology, DJ speaks to Spotify users and offers recommendations based on your listening history as well as commentary between songs.

Kanye West is set to acquire Parler, a conservative social media site notorious for misinformation and conspiracy theories, according to a statement released on Monday (October 17) by the company.

The Security and Exchanges Commission (SEC) has charged Kim Kardashian with "unlawfully touting crypto security." In June 2021, Kardashian shared an Instagram post promoting a crypto security asset created by EtheriumMax called "EMAX Tokens" and did not disclose that she was paid $250,000 for the post.

Riot Games, the parent company behind League of Legends, has brought Lil Nas X on board as president of the popular arena battle video game. It doesn't sound like the responsibilities will involve the nitty gritty of day-to-day management.

After years of complaints and requests, Twitter has begun beta testing an edit button.

The Washington Post.The scheme allegedly took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, when schools were closed for over a year and were struggling to connect students to virtual learning platforms. Prosecutors claim Ward took advantage of the situation to put in orders for technology that never materialized, instead using the money to purchase a $169,000 property in West Virginia, at least nine vehicles — including two Teslas worth $218,000 and a Ford F-450 worth $120,000 — and assorted art and sports memorabilia.

Few recent crypto-related endeavors have generated as hard and swift a backlash as HitPiece did back in February. The website promised "one-of-one NFTs of all your favorite songs" with dozens of tracks listed without permission from the artists.

Earlier this week, two of YouTube’s most popular and influential radio streams suddenly disappeared. Lofi Girl is the 10 million subscriber-strong YouTube account behind the seminal “lofi beats to study to,” streams which have logged over 668 million views over two years.

Elon Musk could be in the process of pulling out of his $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter, according to a report from the Washington Post. The social media platform accepted Musk's $44 billion bid in April.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is an NFT collective popular with celebrities like Post Malone and Steph Curry who pay in the millions for the rights to some of the ugliest cartoons you've ever seen. They are also regularly stolen.

The iPod is dead, long live the iPod. Apple has announced that the company will no longer produce the foundational portable music device more than 20 years after it first debuted.

Twitter has accepted Elon Musk's $44 billion offer to purchase the social media site and take it private, CNBC reports. Talks between Musk and Twitter stalled for weeks before escalating quickly on Monday with the company agreeing to Musk's price of $54.20 per share just hours later.

Elon Musk's attempt to stage a takeover at Twitter appear to be gathering pace with the New York Times reporting on Sunday that the Tesla CEO has entered negotiations with the board of the social media company. This latest development follows Twitter's decision last week to take the "posion pill" option of diluting its stock in order to make any potential takeover prohibitively expensive.

If you're still watching Netflix on your ex's roommate's account, that access may not last much longer: Netflix is considering cracking down on password sharing, according to a report from the Associated Press. The streaming platform may also add a new, lower-cost subscription tier supported by ads, similar to its rival Hulu's.

Elon Musk has confirmed his interest in becoming the outright owner of Twitter and says he has submitted a bid to purchase the social media company. Musk says he feels he can unlock the "extraordinary potential" of Twitter, which he bought a 9.2% stake in just 10 days ago. Musk, the world's richest man through his business interests in Tesla and SpaceX, used Twitter to share a link to a regulatory filing on Thursday, confirming that he had launched a takeover bid.

Kanye West's new album Donda 2 has been disqualified from the Billboard charts, the publication reports, thanks to rules regarding merchandise bundles. Donda 2 was released on February 25 on Kanye West's Stem Player, a device that isolates songs into different musical elements.

If Donda represented Kanye West leaving conventional albums in the dust, Donda 2 was him stomping on their remains in his rubber boots. West shook the music industry when he revealed that Donda 2 would only be released on his Stem Player, a proprietary device capable of isolating different musical elements of songs uploaded into it, available on his website for $200.

The digital assets known as NFTs have exploded over the past year, with their growth inviting increasingly polarized responses from artists and fans alike. Tyler, The Creator revealed himself as one of the increasing number of NFT skeptics during a talk for the Converse All Star Series published on Wednesday.

Bandcamp has been acquired by Epic Games, the publisher behind the megahit online game Fortnite. Ethan Diamond, Bandcamp's co-founder and CEO, revealed the acquisition in a statement published on Wednesday, March 2.

Snoop Dogg announced plans to turn Death Row Records into a non-fungible token (NFT) label in a Clubhouse call on Tuesday, less than a week after taking ownership of the label. "We will be putting out artists through the metaverse and through a whole ‘nother chain of music,” he said, according to audio from the call posted to Youtube. “Just like when we broke the industry when we were the first independent to be major, I want to be the first major in the metaverse.” The rapper and entrepreneur, who performed alongside Death Row co-founder Dr.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has moved to condemn comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan after another week of controversy. Over the weekend video clips of Rogan repeatedly using racial slurs, and laughing when white guests did the same, went viral.

HitPiece, a website accused of offering NFTs of songs, came under scrutiny on Tuesday after musicians accused it of minting the NFTs without their permission. NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are digital certificates of ownership that are stored in a database called the blockchain.