Why Napster, Music’s Original Disruptor, Will Never Die

That’s right, Web 1.0 veterans: Napster is alive. Nearly three decades after the peer-to-peer file-sharing site forever altered the music industry and was subsequently sued into oblivion, Napster — now a legal streaming platform with a modest 1 million …

How Napster sold for $207 million, what it's Nashville plans are

From Bronx Cheers to Flushing Fears: Opening Day Drama, Napster Nostalgia, and a Pop Culture Power Play

Welcome back to the Spotlight, to the Spring and to Major League Baseball. As the season starts anew, I can’t help but think about this time last year when I was celebrating a New York Yankees Opening Day victory thanks in part to a game-ending out at home …

‘Who would hire me?’ The Generation X career meltdown

Talk with people in their late 40s and 50s who once imagined they would be able to achieve great heights – or at least a solid career while flexing their creative muscles – and you are likely to hear about the photographer whose work dried up, the designer …

James McMurtry’s Life on the Road

Getting in the van and hitting the road to make money from music because records no longer sell is nothing new for James McMurtry. “It’s been that way for us for a long time,” McMurtry said in a recent interview. “I never made money off records. I had to …

Mark Zuckerberg wears iconic t-shirt from ‘The Social Network’, reveals he got it in auction

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed during a podcast that he owns a T-shirt that actor Jesse Eisenberg wore in the 2010 drama based on the story of Facebook’s founding, “The Social Network.” Zuckerberg could be seen wearing a blue T-shirt with the words “ …

The Pitch - March 2025

The Pitch newsletter is a monthly update of legal issues and news affecting or related to the music, film and television, fine arts, media, professional athletics, eSports, and gaming industries. The Pitch features a diverse cross-section of published …

Radar Trends to Watch: April 2025

March has been the biggest month that Trends has ever had. In addition to almost daily announcements about AI, a lot has been going on in programming, in security, in operations (which usually doesn’t merit its own topic), and even in quantum computing. It …

Mark Zuckerberg reveals he owns this piece of clothing that Jesse Eisenberg wore in ‘The Social Network’

Mark Zuckerberg clicked save on this piece of clothing. The Meta CEO, 40, revealed that he owns a T-shirt that Jesse Eisenberg wore in the 2010 drama based on the story of Facebook’s founding, “The Social Network.” During an appearance on “The Colin and …

Sick of Musk and Zuckerberg, Gen Z is flocking to Tumblr

Occupy Wall Street, Notorious RBG, cottagecore. These and several other lasting internet trends and IRL movements of the 2010s were born not on Twitter, on Facebook, or in the mainstream media but on Tumblr. You might remember it as the blogging platform …