Jason Isbell's Bare-Bones Breakup Tune, and 7 More New Songs
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.
Jason Isbell's new album, 'Foxes in the Snow,' is decisively unadorned: just Isbell singing over his acoustic guitar. It arrives following his divorce from Amanda Shires, who has her own songwriting career and was a member of his band. Over bare-bones fingerpicking in 'Eileen,' Isbell sings about separation, regrets, self-deception and how 'It ended like it always ends / Somebody crying on the phone.' He contends, 'Eileen, you should've seen this coming sooner,' but adds, almost fondly, 'You thought the truth was just a rumor, but that's your way.' It's not about blame — it's about getting through.
The virtuoso string-band supergroup I'm With Her — Sarah Jarosz, Aiofe O'Donovan and Sara Watkins — has reconvened with the intimately ambitious 'Ancient Light.' The verses are in a gently disorienting 7/4; the instruments mix acoustic and electric, juxtaposing fiddle tune and math-rock; the lyrics lean into the metaphysical. As the song begins, Jarosz sings, 'Better get out of the way / Gonna figure out what I wanna say / I been a long time comin',' and it only gets more cosmic from there.
Will Toledo's band Car Seat Headrest has announced its first album since 2020, 'The Scholars,' and it's a full-scale rock opera. The first single, 'Gethsemane,' is an 11-minute suite that ponders faith, morality, creativity, free will and love as the music unfurls with stretches of kraut-rock keyboard minimalism and roaring power chords that echo the Who's 'Tommy.' Toledo sings, 'A series of simple patterns slowly build themselves into another song / I don't know how it happened,' but the structure is ironclad.
Sarah Tudzin — the songwriter and producer behind Illuminati Hotties — cranks up distorted guitars and harnesses quiet-LOUD grunge dynamics in '777,' a song that nearly explodes with joyful anticipation. 'I wanna figure you out,' she declares, but she's already sure that she's won any gamble: 'You're my spade / lucky 777.' All the noise doesn't hide the pop song within.
'I want your head on a stake / I want your head on a platter,' sing the Ophelias, an indie-rock band from Cincinnati, turning 'I' into a peal of vocal harmony. 'Salome' adapts an incident from the Bible into a seething, churning, implacable crescendo of guitars, drums and voices, calmly announcing, 'The knife sways heavy in my hand.'
Yaeji, a New York City musician with Korean roots, and her co-producer E. Wata transmute a hand-clapping game into a mutating electronic beat in 'Pondeggi.' She chant-sings cryptically about the truth versus disinformation: 'Watch where you're going, head distraction / Keep, keep scrolling till you're rolling in passive.' There's a warning under the nonchalant surface.
'You make me erotic like 1990s salsa,' the Argentine songwriter Nathy Peluso exults in 'Erotika,' and she revives the style to prove her point. Piano, percussion and a swaggering horn session help her seduce a partner — and herself.
The electronic composer Lyra Pramuk sets things swirling in 'Vega,' an assemblage of electronic and vocal loops that gets more menacing as it goes. A pulse gathers into a fitful beat; wordless sounds float in stereo; glitches and bleeps slice through. And eventually, Pramuk intones, 'Tell me your name' and 'Tell me your story.' Is this an acquaintanceship or an interrogation?
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They Made It Big After a Tragedy — But Are Still Fighting for Royalties
John Slavin was in the green room when he heard some great news that made no sense. An old buddy of his was playing a show in Austin, and the scraggly-bearded Slavin, also a musician, showed up. But all the friend wanted to talk about was Slavin's old indie rock band, Blue Smiley. 'Have you seen your numbers?' the friend asked, referring to Blue Smiley's Spotify streams. More from Rolling Stone Get Ready for Greg Freeman to Be Your Favorite New Indie Rocker Can Dems Save Themselves by Spending $20M on 'Speaking With American Men'? How to Become a Fantasy-Sports Millionaire Slavin said he hadn't. In fact, up until that night in 2022, he'd made it a point to avoid pretty much anything related to his old music project from Philadelphia. So he was shocked when his friend pulled out his phone, pulled up the Spotify app, and showed him that Blue Smiley had, at that point, eclipsed 150,000 monthly listeners. One of the songs had over a million streams. Slavin's first thought was 'What the fuck?' His second was, 'It looks like I have some shit to figure out.' There are many reasons this news surprised him. For one, he and his fellow bandmates never expected to earn success or fans or millions of streams. Playing shows in Philly with people they loved was more than enough. Plus, between 2017 and 2022, Slavin says he only listened to his old band's music 'two or three times,' and only when he was drinking 'and in a hole emotionally.' In October 2017, Blue Smiley's frontman and Slavin's longtime friend Brian Nowell died from a fentanyl overdose. The death shook the Philly music scene and devastated Nowell's friends and bandmates, many of whom struggle to talk about their friend. 'I'm still dealing with it,' says former Blue Smiley bassist Mike Corso, who now lives in Connecticut, not far from where Nowell grew up. 'Up until that time, I really felt like I had a bigger purpose and a fire under me. Doing something that people were relating to; that felt good. After that, his death kind of burnt a fuse in me.' Yet this newfound streaming success was a catalyst for Slavin, Corso, their bandmates, and Brian's father, Ken Nowell. No one was receiving any kind of payment for these streams, and meanwhile, the numbers continued to climb. Slavin dashed off a Facebook message to Ken: 'I'm not sure if you remember me, but I was a very good friend and roommate of Brian's for years,' he wrote, before sharing the good news. 'It's a beautiful thing — the music has organically grown over the years, and there are hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners connecting to your son's lyrics.' Maybe, Slavin reasoned, we should talk about royalties. That message kicked off a three-year odyssey of red tape and 'retraumatizing' that continues to this day. Slavin, Ken, and Co. have fought multiple entities for multiple kinds of royalties, and most recently, they've faced their biggest hurdle yet: A mysterious person going by the name 'Eldde Simon' claimed credit for all of Blue Smiley's songs using the Mechanical Licensing Collective, which distributes a specific kind of royalty from streams. For months, the band assumed this potential fraudster had made off with tens of thousands of their dollars — and claimed ownership of music they'd come to love even more. But this story is about more than potential fraud. It's a story of how loss and music can stretch through the years, shaping the lives of everyone they touch. It's the story of an analog band that couldn't have attained its modern success without the help of an increasingly isolated, algorithm-driven world. And it's the story of a kid named Brian, who wanted to make music with his friends. It's 7 a.m. on a midwinter Saturday in Torrington, Connecticut (population: 35,000). In a couple of hours, families will go ice fishing on a frozen lake surrounded by epic, sky-grazing trees. But for now, Ken Nowell seems to have the world to himself. He's worked as an accountant in Torrington for decades, but this morning, he's poring over a unique set of numbers. His eyes are glued to his work computer, where Blue Smiley plays on a loop every day, Monday through Saturday. Ken knows the precise day the band hit its all-time listener mark, and when the numbers fluctuate, his mood sours, prompting a call from Slavin to try and cheer him up. 'The day Brian passed, I think 83 people listened to Blue Smiley,' he says, combing through his notes. Now, their top song is 'Flower': a one-minute-and-15-second showcase of the band's grunge leanings. It has over 30 million streams, a number that astounds the stoic Ken. But that's not the number he keeps coming back to. 'Usually, right around my son's birthday, 80,000 people will listen on that day,' he says. He calls Blue Smiley's music 'Brian in musical form. He has his upbeat, giddy, reckless style, and then you get the emotional Brian jumping in at various moments.' By his own admission, Ken was something of a helicopter parent. Even though Torrington is a small town, he felt fiercely protective of his son. 'When he was little, he was all we had by design. When he was born, and we learned it was a boy, my wife decided that's it. We're done.' Sometimes his protection spilled out into the public. When 10-year-old Brian came home with an assigned reading that Ken thought was inappropriate for kids that age, he raised the issue with the local Board of Education. As Ken recalls it, he was 'unanimously compared to a book burner.' At that point, Brian was already showing signs of interest in music and writing. He went on to form and sing in an eight-person high school ska band called Beat It With a Brick. And when his parents weren't around, he rebelled however he could. Dave Pashley, a childhood friend, remembers running around Torrington with Brian and setting off fireworks atop different buildings. Another time, during a kayaking trip at a nearby lake, Pashley and Brian traveled out to a small island where a house had burned down, leaving only its chimney. They were fascinated by these charred remnants, so they stayed for two hours, only realizing later that Ken was yelling for Brian the whole time, eager to get his son back before nightfall. What sticks out most to Pashley, though, is Brian's obvious musical talent. They played together in Beat It With a Brick, where Brian's natural instincts for creating interesting sounds put him in a different league than everyone else. Then the pair started a 'joke hardcore band for a hot minute,' but it was really only half a joke: Brian wanted to be on stage, so they'd crash Connecticut shows in the hopes that a band would let them on. Usually, they would. 'It was always just super clear to me that Brian just had an ear and also just wanted to be a part of that community,' Pashley says. Pashley stayed in Connecticut for college, but in 2009, Brian went off to Temple University in Philadelphia. That's where he got close with Slavin, a fellow jazz trumpet student who also played bass. Then, a few years later, Brian told Slavin he was making some demos and thinking about starting a band. 'What do you think?' he asked Slavin. Emily Daly lived with Brian around that time, in a part of Philly she calls 'not a great area.' She remembers Brian throwing an extension cord out the window so the drug dealers on their stoop could charge their phones while selling crack. She also remembers her old roommate casually talking about a band he had formed. 'He never talked about it like it was a very serious career path or project or anything,' she says. 'I think it was really just him having fun with his friends.' Even back then, before their millions of streams, Philly embraced Blue Smiley. It helped they played every show they could, and in turn, Brian was a mainstay at local shows across the city. They are now considered one of the seminal 'shoegaze' bands in a city known for its shoegaze music — even if they never used that term. 'Philly was the only place this could have happened,' says Corso, who took over on bass after Slavin moved away. 'There were many bands we would share bills with. Playing shows was like a constant exchange of ideas and understanding of what was happening.' Corso notes that the band already had some momentum by the time he joined, although their popularity was still largely confined to the Philadelphia music scene. They recorded their second of just two albums, called 'return,' in a 'gritty, kind of warehouse space in west Philly' called Sex Dungeon, and Brian rarely told Corso or drummer Matt McGraw what to do. 'I think the organic nature of the rhythm section is important,' Corso says. 'It's human, there's mistakes and imperfections. It's a bit of a jazz mentality, and that's part of what makes it sound good.' Ken called Blue Smiley 'Nirvana meets the Beach Boys,' and his son hated that. Even still, it's impossible to look at the dozens of photos hung on Ken's office walls and not notice Brian mimicking Kurt Cobain: long, unkempt, dirty-blond hair. According to Pashley and Slavin, Nirvana was an obsession for Brian, who was always prone to go 'all in' on his hobbies and causes, be it veganism, Nirvana, or the music of Elliott Smith. He would chase down every morsel of information he could: records, biographies, interviews, all of it. 'We listened to all of the records Elliott Smith released, but then there were all these really cool unreleased tracks, and we talked about how they were different from the others,' Pashley says. 'There was something sort of mysterious about how his time ended, but his music lives on, and that's his legacy.' Now, Pashley says, you could say the same thing about Brian. He was 'straight-edge' for years, friends say. But eventually drugs and alcohol became a regular part of his life. In 2017, the night before he died, Brian had dinner with his parents. He told them about plans for a Blue Smiley tour that would hit several cities throughout the country, then Ken and his wife dropped him off at a party at Drexel University. The next morning, they got a call from the police in Lansdowne, a suburb of Philly. Ken knew what it was. 'If he had just gotten himself hurt, it would've been a call from the hospital,' he says. 'If he had gotten arrested, he probably wouldn't have called us.' He pauses while recounting this story. He leans back in his office chair, and runs a hand through the thin tufts of silver hair on either side of his head. 'I wouldn't wish that on anyone,' he says. It's difficult to explain why Blue Smiley became popular years after playing their final show or releasing any music. But the people interviewed for this story float several theories. First, the band was unknowingly ahead of its time by making all of their songs under three minutes, perfect for easy streaming and short attention spans. There's also the morbid curiosity about Brian's death. However, many fans are still unaware of the band's backstory. Just as you can go on YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit and find people describing Brian as 'an icon,' 'a genius,' 'a legend,' you can find plenty of people with no clue about Brian's death, wondering when Blue Smiley will make more music. There's also a shoegaze revival happening, thanks in part to TikTok. Aided by algorithms, young fans are discovering music from the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s, some of which never attained a mass audience until now. But the truth behind Blue Smiley's seemingly random success may be simple: They're good. 'I think they had a really cool sound,' says Bissie Loux, a Philly-based digital artist who knew many members of the band. 'When there's death, that just draws a ton of attention to a project because it makes it more special, but they're just a really good band. I think it ultimately came down to that.' Still, the world is full of great bands who never attain this kind of following, let alone spawn acts who call themselves 'a Blue Smiley worship band' (as the buzzy Philadelphia band They Are Gutting a Body of Water, often known as TAGABOW, does). Molly Moltzen, an Austin-based writer and friend of Slavin's, spent roughly a decade managing bands in Boston, a job she now compares to being 'a glorified babysitter.' When Slavin told her about Blue Smiley's streaming numbers, she made sure to remind him, again and again, how lucky he is. 'You're really the exception,' she told him. 'It almost never works out this way.' Slavin knows he's lucky, but once he, Ken, and Corso started hunting for their royalties, they realized they were in for an uphill battle. Music royalties are maddeningly convoluted, and artists and music attorneys interviewed for this story admitted that even they struggle to understand the finer details. For Blue Smiley, the search boiled down to recording royalties, performance royalties, and something called mechanical licensing royalties, which are paid to writers based on the number of streams on Spotify and other services. Here's where it starts to get difficult. Whenever a Blue Smiley fan or new listener used Spotify to stream the band's music, both performance royalties and mechanical licensing royalties were being accumulated. However, in the U.S., only the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) can pay the latter type of royalty when they're accrued through streamers like Spotify, and the MLC didn't exist when Blue Smiley was a band. Blue Smiley relied on cassette tapes (which they mostly gave away for free) and Bandcamp to publish their music, making them, as Slavin jokingly says, 'independent to a fault.' That said, Brian had also uploaded their music to Spotify via a British distribution service called RouteNote. Ken remembers his son getting $40 or so a month while he was alive. ('Just enough for a tank of gas every now and then,' he says.) Since Brian's PayPal account was eventually deactivated due to inactivity, RouteNote had no way of paying the thousands of dollars Blue Smiley started accruing as streams accumulated. So, for the first of many times, the band presented their frontman's death certificate to access money that eventually came in fits and starts. 'They took several months to get caught up with us, only depositing about six months' worth at a time, then four months, then two months as the monthly payments got larger,' recalls Ken. (RouteNote did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) Though Slavin hated the red tape and the cold formality of submitting his friend's death certificate — a step he says 'retraumatized' him — seeing that certificate also brought him some small measure of clarity. 'To be totally honest, for years, I was really mad at Brian for dying,' he says. 'That was a lot of what my grief felt like, and so it was really hard for me to approach the music or even the conversation with a lot of people.' Old Philly friends would tell him 'Blue Smiley was the best,' and inside, he'd think, 'Well, it's fucking bullshit. It's worthless now.' Then, when he saw the certificate, it confirmed Brian's death was an accidental overdose. The anger melted away, eventually giving way to a dogged passion for getting the music in front of more listeners. The band formed an LLC, signed up with a record label for the first time, and released some merch and vinyl. As they saw it, the final hurdle was the MLC — and they thought it'd be an easy one. One day, during a lull in his nine-to-five job last year, Slavin created an MLC account and tried to register Blue Smiley's songs. He discovered that someone else had already done so, back in 2021. It wasn't their publisher or anyone else affiliated with the band. Apparently, it was an impostor. This isn't the first time a bad actor has used the MLC to claim work that's not their own. Stephen Carlisle, a copyright attorney, told Rolling Stone someone claimed credit for music belonging to his client, who, like Brian, had passed away. In Carlisle's case, when the impostor was called out, they 'rolled over' and relinquished the claim right away. For Blue Smiley, it was much more complex. The band engaged in a monthslong dispute with Simon, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Rolling Stone. It wasn't until February of this year that the MLC shared in writing that Simon hadn't, in fact, collected any royalties. (The MLC told Rolling Stone it had already flagged irregularities and suspended the royalties before Blue Smiley reached out, though the band says they were never made aware of that action.) That hasn't stopped Simon from claiming credit for other artists' music. Via the MLC's database, Simon has claimed credit for 33 other tracks by multiple artists, including a song by the Orlando-based artist Suissidee. 'They had no part in working on that song,' Suissidee tells Rolling Stone. 'It was just me and my friend.' Simon has also claimed credit for many songs by the artist Nuvfr, who told Rolling Stone, 'I don't know who Eldde Simon is.' This apparent imposter isn't the first person to try to game the music industry. Last year, the U.S. Justice Department indicted a North Carolina man named Michael Smith for using AI to create hundreds of thousands of songs, then employing bots to stream the songs billions of times. This scheme netted Smith over $10 million in royalties before he was caught. While these stories underscore how the music industry is ripe for fraud, experts say the bigger issue is the extreme level of difficulty facing indie musicians. Without lawyers, managers or in-depth technical knowledge, indie artists must navigate labyrinthine processes to claim their music and hope they can get some money in a timely fashion. 'In our case, the choice is either pay a lot out of pocket to collect an undetermined amount, or give someone who has nothing to do with the music partial ownership over a percentage of our music,' Slavin says. 'To me, this is the crux of the problem. The goal is to keep full ownership for the integrity of the work and memory of Brian and not bankrupt ourselves in the process.' Jeff Price, a music industry veteran who has worked with Metallica, Bob Dylan, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and many others, put a finer point on it. 'The whole system is set up to require an intense knowledge of copyright law in the United States, along with technical capabilities and an ungodly amount of persistence with constant auditing,' he says. Price argues that the issue facing Blue Smiley and an untold number of other musicians dates back to before the creation of the MLC, when Spotify 'flipped the business model' by launching its platform without licenses in place for every song. At the time, songs were streamed without the proper mechanical licenses, which was especially harmful for independent artists. Then the same law that led to the formation of the MLC gave Spotify and other services a blanket license to stream music. As Price puts it, this method is akin to starting a streaming service that's home to every movie in the world, then only paying Disney if they ask for their money. He's had clients with much larger followings than Blue Smiley who wait months, even years, to receive the money they're owed. Other experts and attorneys defend the MLC, citing the hundreds of educational webinars they've offered to reach artists, as well as the fact that royalties — and the music business at large — were set up to benefit the biggest players long before the MLC came around. In fact, the MLC is trying to stand up for artists, they say. One example: The MLC recently sued Spotify, alleging that the streaming service is attempting to reduce mechanical royalty payments by using 'premium' plans to bundle audiobooks and music. When the lawsuit was announced, MLC CEO Kris Ahrend noted that the MLC, 'is the only entity with the statutory mandate to collect and distribute blanket license royalties and take legal action to enforce royalty payment obligations.' In late January, a judge ruled in favor of Spotify. To Slavin, it's clear indie or self-published musicians are simply not valued within the current ecosystem. 'It feels like they want you to have a publisher that you have to pay your own money to,' he says. 'They really don't want you to be fully independent, even though there's all these claims that they do.' Corso, meanwhile, doesn't want people to read this and think he and his friends are about to get a windfall. (It's not 'quit-your-job money,' Slavin says.) Rather, he sees this as an opportunity to reclaim a bit of their friend's legacy. Brian wouldn't have cared about the money, Corso points out. But he wouldn't have wanted someone else to be credited for him and his friends' work, and he'd want more people to discover what they did together. 'I feel antiquated,' says the 37-year-old Corso. 'I feel past the expiration date in many ways. I'm not connected to this anymore, you know? This is the past. When we were a band, we were just a small-time band. I don't understand the modern era.' For him, the music can sometimes feel like a relic from a lost era: a time when Philly was both vibrant and affordable. Rent was well under $1,000; you could make a living as an artist. Royalties didn't matter, because gigs were enough. Now he's living in Connecticut, not far from Torrington. He's started playing more classical guitar, and he finds himself 'playing around with Brian's style: 'His right-hand picking was relentless, and he had a unique vocabulary of chords in the left hand.' 'I'm trying to sort it out,' Corso adds. 'I still have a shred of hope.' Ken agrees with his son's former bandmates that Brian wouldn't have cared all that much about the money. But he's glad they're pursuing the royalties, and once they finally get paid (which they hope happens soon, now that the dispute is resolved), Ken says they'll be donating some of the money to arts nonprofits in Philly and New Haven, as well as homelessness outreach organizations (another passionate cause of Brian's). Ken explains all of this while cycling through Spotify numbers in his office, though he eventually moves over to one of many Reddit threads discussing Blue Smiley. Someone commented, 'Who?'; Ken downvotes the comment. 'This guy says 'Awesome sauce,'' he says, pointing out another comment. He upvotes that one, along with another that begins, 'One of my favorite bands of all time.' Then he keeps scrolling, while Blue Smiley plays in the background. Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
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12 hours ago
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Global streamers fight CRTC's rule requiring them to fund Canadian content
OTTAWA — Some of the world's biggest streaming companies will argue in court on Monday that they shouldn't have to make CRTC-ordered financial contributions to Canadian content and news. The companies are fighting an order from the federal broadcast regulator that says they must pay five per cent of their annual Canadian revenues to funds devoted to producing Canadian content, including local TV news. The case, which consolidates several appeals by streamers, will be heard by the Federal Court of Appeal in Toronto. Apple, Amazon and Spotify are fighting the CRTC's 2024 order. Motion Picture Association-Canada, which represents such companies as Netflix and Paramount, is challenging a section of the CRTC's order requiring them to contribute to local news. In December, the court put a pause on the payments — estimated to be at least $1.25 million annually per company. Amazon, Apple and Spotify had argued that if they made the payments and then won the appeal and overturned the CRTC order, they wouldn't be able to recover the money. In court documents, the streamers put forward a long list of arguments on why they shouldn't have to pay, including technical points regarding the CRTC's powers under the Broadcasting Act. Spotify argued that the contribution requirement amounts to a tax, which the CRTC doesn't have the authority to impose. The music streamer also took issue with the CRTC requiring the payments without first deciding how it will define Canadian content. Amazon argued the federal cabinet specified the CRTC's requirements have to be "equitable." It said the contribution requirement is "inequitable because it applies only to foreign online undertakings and only to such undertakings with more than $25 million in annual Canadian broadcasting revenues." Apple also said the regulator "acted prematurely" and argued the CRTC didn't consider whether the order was "equitable." It pointed out Apple is required to contribute five per cent, while radio stations must only pay 0.5 per cent — and streamers don't have the same access to the funds into which they pay. The CRTC imposes different rules on Canadian content contributions from traditional media players. It requires large English-language broadcasters to contribute 30 per cent of revenues to Canadian programming. Motion Picture Association—Canada is only challenging one aspect of the CRTC's order — the part requiring companies to contribute 1.5 per cent of revenues to a fund for local news on independent TV stations. It said in court documents that none of the streamers "has any connection to news production" and argued the CRTC doesn't have the authority to require them to fund news. "What the CRTC did, erroneously, is purport to justify the … contribution simply on the basis that local news is important and local news operations provided by independent television stations are short of money," it said. "That is a reason why news should be funded by someone, but is devoid of any analysis, legal or factual, as to why it is equitable for foreign online undertakings to fund Canadian news production." In its response, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters said the CRTC has wide authority under the Broadcasting Act. It argued streamers have contributed to the funding crisis facing local news. "While the industry was once dominated by traditional television and radio services, those services are now in decline, as Canadians increasingly turn to online streaming services," the broadcasters said. "For decades, traditional broadcasting undertakings have supported the production of Canadian content through a complex array of CRTC-directed measures … By contrast, online undertakings have not been required to provide any financial support to the Canadian broadcasting system, despite operating here for well over a decade." A submission from the federal government in defence of the CRTC argued the regulator was within its rights to order the payments. "The orders challenged in these proceedings … are a valid exercise of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's regulatory powers. These orders seek to remedy the inequity that has resulted from the ascendance of online streaming giants like the Appellants," the office of the attorney general said. "Online undertakings have greatly profited from their access to Canadian audiences, without any corresponding obligation to make meaningful contributions supporting Canadian programming and creators — an obligation that has long been imposed on traditional domestic broadcasters." The government said that if the streamers get their way, that would preserve "an inequitable circumstance in which domestic broadcasters — operating in an industry under economic strain — shoulder a disproportionate regulatory burden." "This result would be plainly out of step with the policy aims of Parliament" and cabinet, it added. The court hearing comes as trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada have cast a shadow over the CRTC's attempts to regulate online streamers. The regulator launched a suite of proceedings and hearings as part of its implementation of the Online Streaming Act, legislation that in 2023 updated the Broadcasting Act to set up the CRTC to regulate streaming companies. In January, as U.S. President Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term, groups representing U.S. businesses and big tech companies warned the CRTC that its efforts to modernize Canadian content rules could worsen trade relations and lead to retaliation. Then, as the CRTC launched its hearing on modernizing the definition of Canadian content in May, Netflix, Paramount and Apple cancelled their individual appearances. While the companies didn't provide a reason, the move came shortly after Trump threatened to impose a tariff of up to 100 per cent on movies made outside the United States. Foreign streamers have long pointed to their existing spending in Canada in response to calls to bring them into the regulated system. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 8, 2025. Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
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Spotify Takes Flight on United Airlines: Here's What You Get
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. has taken flight on United Airlines–but its 1.0 appearance on the seatback screens of United's planes is more like a Little Free Library with wings than a jukebox in the sky. The Chicago-based carrier that it's bringing the to the on-demand entertainment displays aboard 680-plus aircraft. On Friday, I gave it some extended listening and viewing on a United flight from San Jose to Houston. On the seatback screen of that Boeing 737 Max 9, a 'Spotify' category replaced the 'Audio' option on the home-screen menu. That offered selections of podcasts, what United's press release calls 'specially curated versions of Spotify's most popular playlists,' and audiobooks–all, United explained, cached locally for now instead of relying on . The selection was deepest in podcasts, with 31 available for a listen. Somebody at Spotify or United must be a fan of , because the studio had 18 of those slots. Instead of that, I listened to a Wall Street Journal recap of . I counted 15 playlists, and they proved to be more of a throwback listening experience than the for each suggested. The tunes in such playlists as 'Good Vibes,' 'Jazz Classics,' 'Sunny Day,' and decade-specific mixtapes from the 1960s to the 2010s played on a loop, with no option to jump to a particular song or see which one was playing–an experience not that different from the inflight soundtrack options of two decades ago. The audiobooks category had 13 titles, many of which would require more than one flight to listen to. , the 2023 deep dive into by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman, would have run 633 minutes, so I had to content myself with hearing one chapter. That part will become more useful next year, when United plans to add a feature that will allow passengers with Spotify's app on their devices to log into their accounts within the seatback screen. That should make it easier to resume and pause listening to Spotify's longer-form content. The video podcasts that , however, lurked under the home-screen menu's 'TV' heading. The 13 video podcasts available included a handful of Joe Rogan's episodes, but not any of the more notorious or guests of Spotify's ; other video hosts include Amy Poehler and Trevor Noah. The United aircraft with Spotify onboard include international-service planes with Polaris business-class cabins (which also feature screens throughout economy) as well as an increasing number of narrowbody planes that have received that include screens at every seat for . A database maintained by aviation enthusiasts shows that the airline has brought those 'United Next' interiors to . United's announcement also notes that streaming to your own devices via is an option on United's small but growing set of –27 aircraft Thursday, . But on Friday, The Points Guy, a travel-news site, that United had turned off Starlink on those planes to fix a radio-interference glitch. When that returns (which TPG's Zach Griff quoted United as saying will be "soon"), that will be your best inflight connectivity for streaming United's longtime theme music, George Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue.' To my surprise and dismay, that Jazz Age classic isn't in any of the prefab playlists. If the airline feels inspired to create one based solely on , it has options: A search of Spotify Friday found dozens of versions of that work, the most interesting being a bluegrass adaptation titled 'Rhapsody in Blue(grass).' Editors' note: We revised this post extensively after giving the service an audition in the sky.
