Latest news with #RainyDay
Metro
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
'AI music curation is harming UK festivals - here's how we can fight back'
The UK is famous for its music festivals. Hundreds of thousands attend festival giant Glastonbury every year while newer events like All Points East have become calendar events in London. But since 2019, 192 music festivals across the UK have disappeared. Last year alone, 60 festivals were cancelled or postponed. What's to blame? For Will Page, the former Chief Economist of Spotify, and Nico Perez, CEO of Mixcloud, it's artificial intelligence. Specifically, AI curation of playlists. If you have Spotify, you've already seen AI at work on a popular music platform. Those 'daily mixes' and the personal DJ are forms of the technology at work, catering to users' every need. But just how far will AI go in the music world – and could it be the death blow to music festivals? At SXSW London, Will and Nico sat down to chat about how AI has reshaped how we discover, personalise and consume music. Ticketing app DICE has put together a list of their 25 grassroots artists you need to see in London over the next six months. With tickets ranging from free to £27.50, these shows will ensure a great night to suit all tastes and budgets. Click HERE to catch the full list. There are a number of reasons why festivals have faced hardship in the past few years. A pandemic, inflation, the cost-of-living, and what Will and Nico call a lack of connection. Will pointed out: 'I'm not seeing any 'sold out' stickers on festival posters in May, like they normally are. 'Our music 'Venn diagrams' are not crossing. When you look at a festival lineup now, to many, it looks like a playlist made for someone else.' In recent years, many festival-goers have opted to buy one-day tickets to see one or two artists they care about – a sharp contrast from festival culture just ten or fifteen years ago. 'No one wants to take a risk on day two or three. We don't take risks anymore when it comes to music,' Will added. How can we fight back against this lack of risk-taking, which is, as Nico and Will point out, threatening festivals? Nico observed: 'I always say, nobody will wait in line for an AI DJ in the rain.' 'We have to remember it's important not to seek those million subscribers, or a large number. There's been such a focus on views and ratings, and in that process, we've lost sight of – are these quality artists?' 'Form small communities. Stay connected with people. Oftentimes, these are focused around local radio stations or local music,' Will said. Personalised playlists using AI offer a wide selection of genres, artists and decades – but they're not foolproof when it comes to expanding one's horizons. A quick look at Metro reporter Sarah Hooper's Spotify, when she asked it to make a 'Rainy Day' AI playlist, offered 50 songs. When she asked for a 'Love Song' mix, the same songs and artists on the 'Rainy Day' playlist were featured – again. With a noticeable lack of new music. Nico explained: 'What you'll often find with these AI recommendations is that there's a lack of serendipity that you lose in the process.' Long gone are the days of spending hours burning CD Mixes of your favourite tunes for a loved one, or personalised cassettes. More Trending AI curation has allowed people to listen to their own echo chamber, Nico says. 'If every single person is listening to their own echo chamber, we don't have any backgrounds or shared experiences in the music world. 'Over the long term, this ends up making us more isolated,' he said. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: King Charles serenaded by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's wedding singers at SXSW London MORE: Fyre Festival launches tropical hotel this summer with $1,500 stays MORE: SXSW: 'The creative eyes of the world will be on London'
Scottish Sun
25-04-2025
- Business
- Scottish Sun
Barclays to make big change to bank accounts in DAYS impacting thousands of customers
Keep scrolling on tips to find the best saving rates DON'T BANK ON IT Barclays to make big change to bank accounts in DAYS impacting thousands of customers BARCLAYS is to make a big change to bank accounts in days impacting thousands of customers. The high street bank is lowering the rate on its Rainy Day Saver account for the second time in four months. Advertisement 1 The bank will make a change to its savings accounts Credit: Getty Customers are currently getting 4.87% interest on their Rainy Day Saver account. The interest was previously set at 5.12%, but this was cut by the bank in February. And now, on May 5, the interest is set to lower again to 4.61%. It comes ahead of the Bank of England's next interest decision on May 8. Advertisement Most economists are predicting that the rate will be cut next month down from its current figure of 4.5%, due to falling inflation. The base rate is used by lenders to determine the interest rates offered to customers on savings and borrowing costs. A base rate cut can mean that mortgage rates are lowered, which is good news for homeowners. But savers can be left with the short end of the stick as the interest rate they earn on their savings can also drop. Advertisement At 4.61% the Barclays Rainy Day saver is still a pretty good option for savers. It offers more than Close Brothers bank, which gives 4.45% on it easy access savings account. Santander's £130 Million Recovery: What You Need to Know But the figure is trumped by Chip bank who offer 4.75% on its easy access account. It is also worth noting that in order to sign up for a Barclays Rainy Day account you must already be a premium account holder or sign up for Blue Rewards, which costs £5 a month. Advertisement Barclays blue rewards comes with a number of perks including free. Apple TV. OTHER BANK CHANGES Virgin Money will lower the interest rate on its M Plus Saver account by 0.25 percentage points on June 16. Currently, customers benefit from an interest rate of 2.5% on savings up to £25,000. For instance, if you have £5,000 in savings, you would earn £125 in interest over the course of a year. Advertisement However, once the rate drops to 2.25%, the same £5,000 savings will generate £112.50 in interest annually - £12.50 less than before. For customers with savings exceeding £25,000, the current rate stands at 2%. Chase also slashed the rate on its standard Saver account from 3.25% to 3%.
The Sun
25-04-2025
- Business
- The Sun
Barclays to make big change to bank accounts in DAYS impacting thousands of customers
BARCLAYS is to make a big change to bank accounts in days impacting thousands of customers. The high street bank is lowering the rate on its Rainy Day Saver account for the second time in four months. 1 Customers are currently getting 4.87% interest on their Rainy Day Saver account. The interest was previously set at 5.12%, but this was cut by the bank in February. And now, on May 5, the interest is set to lower again to 4.61%. It comes ahead of the Bank of England 's next interest decision on May 8. Most economists are predicting that the rate will be cut next month down from its current figure of 4.5%, due to falling inflation. The base rate is used by lenders to determine the interest rates offered to customers on savings and borrowing costs. A base rate cut can mean that mortgage rates are lowered, which is good news for homeowners. But savers can be left with the short end of the stick as the interest rate they earn on their savings can also drop. At 4.61% the Barclays Rainy Day saver is still a pretty good option for savers. It offers more than Close Brothers bank, which gives 4.45% on it easy access savings account. Santander's £130 Million Recovery: What You Need to Know But the figure is trumped by Chip bank who offer 4.75% on its easy access account. It is also worth noting that in order to sign up for a Barclays Rainy Day account you must already be a premium account holder or sign up for Blue Rewards, which costs £5 a month. Barclays blue rewards comes with a number of perks including free. Apple TV. OTHER BANK CHANGES Virgin Money will lower the interest rate on its M Plus Saver account by 0.25 percentage points on June 16. Currently, customers benefit from an interest rate of 2.5% on savings up to £25,000. For instance, if you have £5,000 in savings, you would earn £125 in interest over the course of a year. However, once the rate drops to 2.25%, the same £5,000 savings will generate £112.50 in interest annually - £12.50 less than before. For customers with savings exceeding £25,000, the current rate stands at 2%. Chase also slashed the rate on its standard Saver account from 3.25% to 3%. FINDING THE BEST SAVINGS RATES WITH your current savings rates in mind, don't waste time looking at individual banking sites to compare rates - it'll take you an eternity. Research price comparison websites such as and MoneySupermarket. These will help you save you time and show you the best rates available. They also let you tailor your searches to an account type that suits you. As a benchmark, you'll want to consider any account that currently pays more interest than the current level of inflation - 2%. It's always wise to have some money stashed inside an easy-access savings account to ensure you have quick access to cash to deal with any emergencies like a boiler repair, for example. If you're saving for a long-term goal, then consider locking some of your savings inside a fixed bond, as these usually come with the highest savings rates.
Forbes
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Gustave Caillebotte's Unusual, Radical Impressionist Men On Tour
'Paris Street, Rainy Day,' 1877 Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848-1894). Oil on canvas, 83 9/16 x 108 3/4 in (212.2 x 276.2 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection, 1964.336. Art Resource, NY EX.2025.2.79 Degas' ballet dancers. Renoir's voluptuous nudes. Mary Cassatt and Berthé Morisot's mothers with children. Monet's portraits of his first wife Camille; Renoir's and Manet's portraits of Camille. French Impressionism was flush with paintings of women. Then there was Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894). Caillebotte occupied a central position within the Impressionist group. His family wealth allowed him to become an essential financial backer to numerous Impressionist painters and amass one of the finest collections of their work. When Caillebotte died, his bequest of artwork to the French state eventually formed the backbone of Paris' Musée d'Orsay's unrivaled collection of Impressionist paintings. Renoir was the executor of his estate. Caillebotte was a damn good painter too, and he painted men. He painted men to such an unusual degree when compared to his contemporaries that three of the greatest art museums in the world–the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Orsay–have teamed up to explore why this was through an exhibition, 'Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men.' On view are a stupefying assemblage of paintings among the most celebrated from the Impressionist movement and Modernism more broadly. Seeing them together like this without a time machine set for 1880s Paris, almost surely never again. Two are particularly noteworthy for filling art history textbooks: Floor Scrapers (1875) from the Orsay and the Art Institute's Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877). Paintings that turn ordinary people into art nerds. 'Floor Scrapers,' 1875, Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848-1894). Oil on canvas, 40 3/16 x 57 1/16 in (102 x 145 cm). Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Gift of the heirs of Caillebotte through his executor Auguste Renoir, 1894. Musée d'Orsay. dist Grand Palais RMN / Patrice Schmidt EX.2025.2.32 Answering the million-dollar question of why Caillebotte painted more men more prominently than any other Impressionist by a wide margin begins with biography. The artist came from a family of brothers, went to all male schools, served in the all-male French military, and trained as an artist in an all-male studio. He was a member of numerous amateur associations like the Paris Sailing Club that were exclusively male. He was a committed bachelor his entire life. All the other French Impressionist men lived in a similarly male dominated society, so that's only part of the answer. Caillebotte's reality was unique from his peers due to his wealth. His father accumulated a self-made fortune and then died along with Caillebotte's mother and a brother in quick succession in the 1870s, leaving the artist money to share with one other brother before turning 30. Flush with cash, Caillebotte didn't need to create for the market. He could paint whatever he wanted, even subjects not favored by collectors. Subjects like men. And not men of the aristocracy. 'Caillebotte had a lot of cross class affinity,' Getty curator Scott Allan told 'He's interested in working guys. He's comfortable around working guys; often, they're his employees, but you get this sense that Caillebotte was happier hanging out with the gardener, or the sailors he employed, or the guys at the shipyard that were building the boats he designed, than he was making the rounds in high society in Paris.' Such was the case with Floor Scrapers. 'This was not a subject you saw on the walls of the (Paris) Salon. There are plenty of pictures touching on themes of labor, but it's always peasant labor out in the countryside; (Caillebotte) modernizes it and urbanizes it,' Allan said. 'It was a provocative choice to have these working-class guys stripped to the waist in a fancy bourgeois apartment.' The painting was made six years after the Paris Commune, a brutally suppressed working class uprising. 'There's a lot of anxiety among the property classes about potential further violent uprisings–there's a big wealth gap,' Allan explained. 'Caillebotte was being politically provocative too in his choice of some of these male subjects; he wanted to push the limits.' Caillebotte's interest in painting men is also tied up in his country's history immediately predating the 1871 Paris Commune. 'After France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian war (1870–1871), there's a heightened concern about the state of French manhood, virility,' Allan said. The Franco-Prussian war was a humiliating, demoralizing affair for the French, ending the nation's power over continental Europe. 'So, there's this new cultural emphasis on virility and that comes across in Caillebotte's art,' Allan continued. 'He's invested in certain notions of masculinity in complicated and nuanced ways. His depictions of modern sportsmen, bathers, soldiers all key into this broader concern around issues of virility.' Caillebotte's career also coincides with the beginning of France's Third Republic (1870–1940). 'There's this rejuvenation of these Republican values: liberty, equality, fraternity,' Allan said. 'A new reemphasis on this idea of fraternity–of democratic male citizenship–is important in the cultural background. This idea of fraternity is a good overarching framework for this exhibition because it works on the family level, but also more broadly on the social, cultural, political level. It is a concept that runs through the exhibition in a lot of ways.' 'Fraternity' not in the American sense of college guys getting drunk and acting a fool; 'fraternity' in the sense of brotherhood. Values, interests, and objectives for the nation shared by men. A bond. 'Boating Party,' about 1877-78. Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848-1894). Oil on canvas, 35 1/4 x 45 15/16 in (89.5 x 116.7 cm). Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Painting listed "national treasure" by the French Republic, acquired with the exclusive patronage of LVMH, major patron of the Musée d'Orsay, 2022. Grand Palais RMN (Musée d'Orsay) / Franck Raux EX.2025.2.35 Caillebotte's wealth and the artistic freedom it provided him was also paired with great ambition and a radical streak. 'He's in this very competitive avant-garde milieu. Degas is doing his milliners and laundresses and ballet dancers. Renoir is doing these pretty Parisiennes–these major figure painters that he is friends with and rivals with, and modern masculinity is relatively untapped iconographic terrain,' Allan said. '(Painting men is) a way for Caillebotte to differentiate himself and broaden the horizons of painting modern life.' Caillebotte routinely, provocatively, intentionally substituted men into paintings where women had previously been. Men playing the piano. Men rowing boats. 'He unsettles the gender expectation of painting. He does it time and again. One obvious example, his notorious, naked man toweling off after a bath (1884's Man at His Bath),' Allan said. 'This is something you did not see, especially in large scale painting at the time–totally unheard of. There are plenty of nude bathers, but it's always women. In Caillebotte's immediate circle in the 1880s, Degas is doing one nude female bather after another, and they're incredibly radical from an artistic point of view, but kind of conventional in this focus on the female nude.' As a response, Caillebotte applied the male gaze to men. Again, directly from the artist's lived experience. He would have seen naked men bathing while serving in the army and then the reserves. He would have seen floor scrappers working on his properties. Paris Street, Rainy Day, that was the path he walked through Paris daily. 'He's an iconographic innovator. He's highly original in his selection of subjects and I think he wanted to be seen as extremely original and modern and bold in his choices,' Allan said. 'Part of his strategy is a gendered strategy. He's really aware of what the artists in the circle are doing.' 'Man at His Bath,' 1884, Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848-1894). Oil on canvas 57 x 45 in (144.8 x 114.3 cm). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Museum purchase with funds by exchange from an anonymous gift, Bequest of William A. Coolidge, Juliana Cheney Edwards Collection, and from the Charles H. Bayley Picture and Painting Fund, Mary S. and Edward J. Holmes Fund, Fanny P. Mason Fund in memory of Alice Thevin, Arthur Gordon Tompkins Fund, Gift of Mrs. Samuel Parkman Oliver—Eliza R. Oliver Fund, Sophie F. Friedman Fund, Robert M. Rosenberg Family Fund, and funds donated in honor of George T. M. Shackelford, Chair, Art of Europe, and Arthur K. Solomon Curator of Modern Art, 1996–2011. © 2025 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston EX. 2025.2.80 Was Caillebotte gay? Is that the reason he painted so many men? 'It's a hard question to resolve,' Allan admitted. 'His paintings certainly make room for a homoerotic gaze, people bring that to the paintings for sure. It's a valid response, but in the show, (we're) trying to avoid reducing the art to the question of the artist's sexuality. We really want to emphasize the issue of gender expression and how it intersects with painting and Caillebotte's interest in modern masculinity.' No contemporary correspondence or accounts from the artist or associates indicates Caillebotte was gay. He did have a prominent, long-term relationship of an uncertain nature with a woman. Viewers get into trouble reading 19th century paintings from a 21st century perspective, especially when it comes to sexuality. 'Relations between men were very different in the 19th century,' Allan said. 'If you read correspondence between men in the 19th century, sometimes it can seem weirdly intimate in a way that that is very different from today.' Man at His Bath feels homoerotic in 2025. Maybe. Maybe it was contemporary commentary on new hygiene practices promoted within the French army Caillebotte observed. Maybe it was deliberately provocative. Maybe it was a response to Degas. The exhibition goes out of its way not to bog down over the 'is he/isn't he' question of Caillebotte's sexuality. 'You get into these terrible conversations where the people who don't want a queer reading of Caillebotte will be like, 'Well, look, he did a female nude too, and that's an even bigger and more important painting.' Then the people who want to advance a queer reading of Caillebotte will be like, 'Don't straight-wash Caillebotte,' Allan said. 'I don't want to reduce the art to the question of the artist's sexuality. That's so reductive. The nude is a major genre of painting with a long tradition, and first and foremost, we have to understand how Caillebotte is intervening in a genre of painting and doing interesting new things that mess with our expectations, maybe unsettle our position as viewers. That's part of the radical charge of his art. To simply say, 'Oh, he was gay, and that's why he painted this,' it's so much more interesting and complicated than that.' 'Painting Men' can be seen for free at the Getty Center in Los Angeles through May 25, 2025, before heading off to the Art Institute of Chicago from June 29 to October 5, 2025.
