🐭OG Mickey Mouse Loses, Make AI Music,and Zulily is Dead,

Mickey Mouse horror movie coming soon

David Nichols

Jan 01, 2024

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

It’s 2024 (how is it 2024 already??)

I hope you had a wonderful New Year’s Eve with your friends and family.

AND a Merry Christmas!

This year, we did NOT let my son eat any crab dip.

Last year, he ate some crab dip and threw up at around exactly midnight. It was bad.

Anyway, we’re starting our diet today - we did it for a few weeks in October, but with the Holidays it was simply impossible.

So many things have been happening!

Apple with their latest watch banned . . . The NYT with their lawsuit against OpenAI.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about the whole debacle there. On the one hand, le internet. le data. Free the data. Let it be used. On the other hand - copyright.

Oh - let’s not forget all the Blogger blogs that are gonna die thanks to Google’s stupid deletion of old accounts.

We've been watching the Gen V show - I’m impressed at how well it ties into The Boys. At first glance, I thought “The Boys but Riverdale” but it’s pretty good!

Let’s dive in, shall we?

🐭Mickey Mouse Loses

We’re going to get some really fun parody movies/books/games within the next few years.

2024 is the year that 1928 media/books/music lost copyright protection in the United States.

Most notably, this includes the Steamboat Willie versions of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

But ONLY those versions. Touch any other Mickey elements from any other copyrighted versions and you can expect a swift response from Disney.

Jennifer Jenkins from the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain was kind enough to include the following graphic in her article “Mickey, Disney, and the Public Domain: a 95-year Love Triangle.”

So - if Steamboat Mickey wants to fight zombies - you can do that - but he better not have red pants or yellow shoes.

AND - a HUGE disclaimer that this is in no way associated with Disney.

It’s a really fascinating discussion - check out her article to learn more!

I think we’ll get to see some really unhinged stuff - like the Mouse video game.

There’s a few more cool pieces of media coming out too.

Tigger will be public domain - so you better believe we’ll be seeing Tigger in the second Winnie the Pooh horror movie.

Peter Pan - which is great because I really want an adaption to portray him as a deranged serial killer. (Where do you THINK THE OTHER LOST BOYS WENT?)

Check these out, and more in this article by Duke at the link!

Public Domain Day

🎶Make AI Music

Suno AI is a new platform for making prompt-generated AI music.

Why not give it a shot and see how many years we have left before Spotify gets wrecked with AI music?

Within the . . . hmmm . . . next 2 years I think.

Here’s an example of what I got for the following prompt.

“A memphis phonk song with horror/creepy vibes.”

Phonk sample one - https://app.suno.ai/song/3fce09d7-d9ec-4373-ab17-a8d6683283b4

The voices sounded weird - so I tried this one.

“A memphis phonk song with horror/creepy vibes, with extremely muffled voices.” (a lot of modern phonk has trended this way).

Phonk Sample 2 - https://app.suno.ai/song/13b52f85-cd20-476d-ad2d-f282ae17a701

I decided to try a different direction - what about Vaporwave?

”A Vaporwave song that sounds like it belongs in an old dead mall, complete with a Citypop vibe.”

Got some bizarre lyrics - https://app.suno.ai/song/bf048d4e-a185-4e04-a01d-04d6721b9e57

ok, what about no voices?

WHAT IS THIS INSANITY - https://app.suno.ai/song/cf4377cf-1a84-42fb-a97c-9ca2bd2121af

Ok. Let’s try the custom mode now.

I generated lyrics for a City Pop song with chatgpt (hehehe), and popped them in, along with the genres “Dance City Pop, Vaporwave, Slush Wave”

Not bad! - https://app.suno.ai/song/2d6b864f-f1c2-4ce8-a8db-f0f86f5e7a1c

What about a country song? with some generic “I miss the farm” lyrics courtesy of Chatgpt?

Also . . . Not bad - https://app.suno.ai/song/033db443-cfc7-4d6d-b51c-75749603f3d6

Last but not least, what about some synthwave?

“A Synthwave song from the 80's, with no voices”

It gave me voices - but not bad - https://app.suno.ai/song/bf928555-3bce-4bda-aaf1-dc300f98c368

After playing around with Suno for a while - I’m pretty surprised at how far AI music generation has come along. You could easily pay for a monthly tier, and crank out a lot of background music or such for YouTube videos.

Until there are more custom features like upscaling or making 10 variations - I don’t particularly see it as a threat to normal music . . . yet.

Then again - I’m not an AI music prompt master - so I’m sure people are making really insane stuff with Suno already.

Check out Suno at the link!

Suno - Make AI Music

😐Zulily Is Dead

Remember the old days when Zulily was a popular site?

Even in 2019 - there were articles about Zulily’s success.

The flash sales were fun - I got a pair of Toms boots back in 2018 for like $30.

That’s what made Zulily special - you always thought - oooh what’s gonna be on sale.

I got into browsing Zulily for a while - but my wife was the one who bought stuff. I think I unsubscribed from their email list in 2019.

Now Zulily is gone as of December, so dead it has a Smile direct style one-pager website.

Just like Smile Direct - I imagine there were 1000’s of people who still shopped Zulily who hit the main page and said WHATTT.

It appears that Zulily died (from a social media perspective) on December 6.

I saw a comment on TikTok that indicated that everyone got laid off on December 7.

(Whoever managed Twitter stopped posting on November 25)

TikTok (Not doing so well based on views)

Instagram - a ton of lament on their last post and updates from ex exployees.

Based on comments, it looks like a lot of orders got lost in the last few weeks.

Facebook was the last platform standing - with the last post on December 15. They had their normal posts until the 6th, then a few ALL SALES FINAL POSTS.

(the December 8 post looks like it was prescheduled).

Funny enough, it looks like they pulled their IOS app, but not their Google Play app - you can download it still, and nothing works! LOL

Perhaps my favorite find related to Zulily was this liquidation sale where someone won 700 LBS of clothing for $1,000.

Pretty epic.

I’ll leave you with these two Facebook comments that summarize the ongoing discussions about Zulily. There was a sizable core market for Zulily left, as shown by the hundreds of comments on the last few posts.

Many were about missing items, and many lamented its end.