One Month

It’s been a little over a month since we launched Chorus.fm and it feels great to be getting into the swing of things a little more. In our first month, we bolted right past 5 million pageviews and we’re now coming up on 150,000 posts in the forum by well over 7,000 members. It’s been a lot of fun watching the roll-out of new Blink-182 with the community and it’s amazing, and kinda hilarious, how fast that thread exploded (7,000 posts, over 200,000 views).

I just want to give a quick plug for our membership program and again extend my dearest thank you to everyone that’s signed up so far. The supporter forum has been my favorite place to hang out recently and all the conversations about life, music, and doing a few “have a beer and live blog about new music” nights this week have been devilishly fun.

Also, I’m currently booking up advertisements for this month, so please get in touch if you have a product or service you’d like to put in front of our engaged and ever-growing audience.

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Drafts Screencast Series

Apps

I’ve been a big fan of the iOS app Drafts for quite a while. Here’s the premise: open the app, get a blank screen to start typing, then after your thought is out — decide where to send it. One of my biggest uses is to type something and then append it to a file in Dropbox to keep a running list (movies to watch, gift ideas for friends and family, etc.). This video series by David Sparks is a great way to learn the ropes: highly recommended.

Funko Shows Off New ‘The Force Awakens’ Collectables

StarWars.com has shared photos of the new The Force Awakens Funko collectables and they’re amazing.

Coming in July and made in Pop!’s already-classic design aesthetic, the lineup includes everyone from Luke Skywalker to maskless Kylo Ren to Rey (with lightsaber!). In addition, several retailer exclusives are coming, featuring special depictions and variations of characters. Look for Rey with X-wing helmet, Poe Dameron with jacket and blaster, and much more. Finally, you can recreate Rey’s fateful meeting with Luke right on your desk.

Apple Music to Get Design Overhaul

Bloomberg is reporting that Apple Music will be getting a pretty big overhaul this year:

Following a management shakeup, the service’s new look is being overseen by content head Robert Kondrk and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. Design chief Jony Ive’s team also has provided input, along with Iovine and Eddy Cue, the senior vice president in charge of Internet services.

9to5Mac has more on what the new look may be, and it’s described as a more “black and white” interface:

The new user-interface ditches the current colorful and translucent look in favor of a simpler design that emphasizes black and white backgrounds and text. For instance, the user interface in the albums view will no longer change in appearance based on the color of a particular album’s art. While the new interface will eschew color in the user-interface, album artwork will become “huge” and a larger part of the interface in order to avoid a dull black and white look, according to people who have seen the updated Apple Music service.

There’s a small aside at the bottom saying that iTunes itself will get a minor update this year with a larger revamp expected next year. My argument has long been that iTunes needs to be separated into different apps. There’s just too much going on. I’m still using, and for the most part enjoying, Apple Music. The ability to combine my library with the Apple Music library remains the killer feature for me, but god damn when the bugs hit they are infuriating. I currently have two versions of “Thrice” in my library even though they’re named the same and I’ve checked all the sorting options and tried renaming them multiple times. I mean what the hell.