ACL Fest's 2014 lineup includes headliners Eminem, Pearl Jam, Skrillex and Beck.
Photo by Jon Shapley
Austin City Limits Music Festival returns to Zilker Park in October for its 13th incarnation. Festival programmers ended the ever-popular headliner guessing game early Tuesday morning with the release of the full 2014 lineup.
Headlining the two-weekend festival (taking place October 3-5 and 10-12) is Eminem — his only 2014 performance in the Southwest. Pearl Jam, Outkast, Skrillex and Beck take top billing spots, alongside Foster The People, The Replacements, Lana Del Rey and Zedd. Lorde joins for a special Weekend Two performance.
Additional noteworthy bands joining the ACL lineup this year include festival favorites Major Lazer, The Avett Brothers, Spoon, The Head and the Heart, Belle & Sebastian, CHVRCHES and St. Vincent.
As is tradition with the Austin-born festival, local bands pepper each weekend's lineup. Austin performers include Asleep at the Wheel (a festival staple), Saints of Valory, Black Pistol Fire, Blue Bear, Wood & Wire, Emily Wolfe, The NIGHTOWLS, Dawn and Hawkes, Mike and the Moon Pies, Sphynx, Penny & Sparrow, Riders Against the Storm, Hard Proof and Arum Rae.
Three-day passes for Weekend One and Weekend Two go on sale Tuesday at 10 am for $225 each. VIP, Platinum Passes and travel packages are also available. If you're ready to start prepping now, you can dive into all things ACL on iHeartRadio's new station devoted to the fest.
To help ensure his career is “alright, alright, alright” in the AI era, Oscar-winning movie star Matthew McConaughey has trademarked two of his greatest assets: his face and voice.
Last year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued eight trademarks designed to prevent AI users from mimicking McConaughey’s likeness or voice without authorization. Applications for the trademarks, known as “motion marks” and “sound marks,” include:
A 7-second video of him seated near a fireplace and Christmas tree in his living room.
A 7-second video of him standing on a porch
A brief audio clip of him saying, “Just keep livin’, right?” J.K. Livin Brands, which owns McConaughey’s Just Keep Livin apparel business, controls the trademarks.
A brief audio clip of him uttering his iconic “Alright, alright, alright” catchphrase from the 1993 cult classic film Dazed and Confused.
“My team and I want to know that when my voice or likeness is ever used, it’s because I approved and signed off on it,” McConaughey, a Uvalde native and longtime Austin resident, told The Wall Street Journal. “We want to create a clear perimeter around ownership with consent and attribution the norm in an AI world.”
As AI continues to infiltrate the entertainment business, McConaughey and other Hollywood A-listers are pursuing trademarks to stop AI-driven misuse of their faces and voices. However, everyday actors with limited resources may be unable to afford going through the trademark process and defending a trademark violation.
“Some actors fear a possible future in which studios will pressure them to sign away their likeness,” Scientific American reported in 2023, “and their digital double will take work away from them.”
The Wall Street Journal notes that various actors and singers have grappled with AI-created fake videos, audio, and images on the internet, including Tom Hanks and Taylor Swift. A study released in 2024 by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers predicted AI-generated content could cause music creators to lose 24 percent of their revenue by 2028, and could lead to screenwriters and directors losing 15-20 percent of their revenue.
The threat of AI stealing work from actors became a sticking point in 2023 negotiations between entertainment studios and striking members of SAG-AFTRA, a labor union representing performers, recording artists, and broadcasters.
Kevin Yorn, founder and managing partner of Southern California law firm Yorn Levine, which handled the trademark applications for McConaughey, says that while the actor and his attorneys support the evolution of AI, legal boundaries must be put in place.
“Protecting individual voice, image, and intellectual property is essential to building a future that works for everyone,” Yorn says in a statement provided to CultureMap. “Along with Matthew, we are forward-looking, engaged in the possibilities of AI, and thoughtful about how everyone’s creative identity is represented and protected.”
