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chris_shards/index.html

@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ <h1>Who is Chris Shards?</h1>
       <p>January 6, 2025</p>
       <p>A segment on <a href="https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1013?autostart=false"><u>the January 5, 2025 episode of This Week in Tech</u></a> alerted me to a phenomenon that seems to have triggered a groundswell of interest among journalists and media researchers: the appearance of <a href="https://theweek.com/tech/spotify-fake-bands"><u>fake recording artists</u></a> on online music services like Spotify and Apple Music.</p>
       <p>The discussion reminded me of an artist I discovered a few months ago: <a href="https://music.apple.com/us/artist/chris-shards/1451050410"><u><b>Chris Shards</b></u></a>. Shards is the artist on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqcuWrsbDJU"><u>a track called “Say it Again,”</u></a> which I first heard (and really liked) while watching a YouTube video that used it for background music.<p>Say it Again is a sparse, moody instrumental led by an electric guitar with some reverb and a phase shifter, which gives the whole track a vintage feel, as though it might be some famous artist's deep cut from the 1970s.</p>
-      <p>But Chris Shards is no famous artist. Nor, probably, is he/she/they even a person. I can't even tell if any of the instruments on Say it Again are real, although the guitar part certainly feels real. But a number of today's generative tools can mimic musicianship in convincing ways, and Shards' whole catalog might well be nothing more than that.</p><br clear="all">
+      <p>But Chris Shards is neither famous, nor an artist, nor apparently even a person. I can't tell if any of the instruments on Say it Again are real, although the guitar part certainly feels real. But a number of today's generative tools can mimic musicianship in convincing ways, and Shards' whole catalog might well be nothing more than that.<br clear="all">
       <p>Still, I love the way Say it Again feels. It's evocative, sentimental, and mellow. And I'm not the only one: a raft of compliments appear in the comments of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqcuWrsbDJU"><u>a YouTube video of the song</u></a>, posted by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@EpidemicIndie"><u>a user account called “Epidemic Indie,”</u></a> which seems to be associated with other “artists” of similarly dubious origin. Redditor _bubba_fett <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/blues/comments/z8e76w/help_finding_more_of_this_soundfeel_chris_shards/"><u>started a thread in r/blues, imploring others to help him find artists that sound like Shards</u></a>. He had discovered Shards via <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR4pSWECxXA"><u>a tune called Always With You</u></a>; a slow blues ballad that sounds a little like Stevie Ray Vaughn. A chorus of similarly enamored Redditors soon chimed in: Subject_Register_499 said "i love the guy-huge mystery by design. I'd travel anywhere to here him live." [sic] Odd_Neighborhood3459 said "Chris, if you’re out there: we want more!"</p>
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