In 2017, I bought an old Magnus chord organ off Craigslist for $10. It’s one of my favorite music gear purchases. Electric chord organs let you play full chords with just a press of a button, making them perfect for aspiring singer-songwriters or fooling around at home. But chord organs largely fell out of favor […]
Last year, Sam Altman invited author Dave Eggers to give a talk to around 200 OpenAI staffers. The man has written countless novels, screenplays, pieces of journalism, started McSweeney’s, and founded multiple schools and nonprofits that support writers and the arts more broadly. So one might expect he’d roll into the company’s offices and offer […]
Carter Sherman has been covering sex, gender, and the complex personal and national politics that accompany them for years. She was a senior reporter for Vice and has written for Elle, Ms. magazine, and Los Angeles magazine as well. Along the way, she’s garnered a Scripps Howard Award, a National Press Club Journalism Award, and […]
It’s been a good few weeks for games on rails. Nintendo’s Star Fox remake wisely kept the tightly scripted, action-packed levels from Star Fox 64 largely the same, and they’re still fun to fly through nearly 20 years later. Denshattack!, a new game from Undercoders, similarly features levels packed with carefully orchestrated sequences to great […]
Apple Music is more expensive now. In the US, an individual plan now costs $11.99 per month, a $1 bump up from the previous $10.99 price. A family plan now costs $19.99 per month, up from $16.99, and a student plan costs $6.99 per month, up from $5.99. Apple, in a statement to Music Business […]
Xbox is currently in a “reset” period that includes laying off around 3,200 employees over the next year, involving deep cuts at beloved studios like id Software and Obsidian Entertainment. Now, in an attempt to show that things are still running fine, the company has announced a slate of upcoming projects at Bethesda Game Studios […]
Amazon’s upcoming God Of War show has hit a major snag – it’s now on the hunt for a new Kratos, after an on-set injury put its current lead actor out of commission. Sons of Anarchy star Ryan Hurst was originally cast for the role in January, with Deadline reporting that four episodes of the […]
Get ready for more AI characters in Fortnite. Developer Epic Games is going to let Fortnite creators publish experiences featuring characters with AI-powered voices starting on July 30th, and ahead of that launch, it’s created 36 characters with “consistent voices and personas” that creators can use as NPCs. The characters include Fortnite staples like Agent […]
Netflix says roughly 300 titles on its platform used generative AI, most of which occurred in post-production. The streaming service revealed the news in its second-quarter earnings report released on Thursday, saying it’s “increasingly leveraging these tools to deliver higher quality output more quickly and at a lower cost.” It also provided some examples of […]
CD sales are apparently going up, reportedly thanks to fans realizing they’re an affordable way to support their favorite artists. According to a new report from research firm Luminate, 16.3 million CDs were sold in the first half of 2026 in the US, a 16 percent increase year-over-year. The growth in CD sales was driven […]