Weezer have hit the Billboard Hot 100 chart with their cover of “Africa.” Their version of the Toto classic, in at No. 89, is their highest charting song since “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To” reached No. 81 in 2009.
One of the best parts of our forum community are the bonds people create over introducing someone to a new band, or album, they haven’t heard before. One of the great ways this happens is in the “Chorus Music Club Society” thread. As the brainchild of forum user Bad Frequencies I figured it was best to have him describe it:
The Chorus Music Club Society (CMCS) is a music trade and review club that functions like a book club and is a gateway to get exposed to music you wouldn’t have thought to listen to before and expose others to your favorites. Each session, which runs Monday through the following Monday, you are partnered with someone different. The two of you talk and decide between 1-2 albums to trade with eachother at the beginning of the session that the other hasn’t heard before. Throughout the week, you listen to the albums your partner has given you and when you have a good grasp on it, report back and review it (why you liked/didn’t like it, favorite/least favorite songs, rating, RIYL and so on).
There is no length requirement for the review, they can be as long or short as you like, as long as it expresses your feelings on the album. This allows you to meet people you wouldn’t have met before on the threads, listen to artists you might not have thought to listen to, and share your favorites with others in a sense of community and a sharing of love for music. Many of us have discovered new favorite albums this way! On top of this, we also have added reviews of concerts you have been to as well as release day reviews, which are optional.
It’s very simple to join, simply contact Bad Frequencies or post in the thread saying you want to join or have questions.
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit will release a live album, Live From The Ryman, on October 19th. Pre-orders are now up.
Kanye West has the number one album this week:
The set — which was released on June 1 via G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam Recordings — earned 208,000 equivalent album units in the week ending June 7, according to Nielsen Music, and is the fifth-largest week for an album in 2018. Of Ye’s starting sum, 85,000 were in traditional album sales.
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Mitchel Broussard, writing at MacRumors:
Apple appears to be rolling out a series of updates for Apple Music today, including a small but useful new section called “Coming Soon,” which allows subscribers to check out new albums about to be released over the next few weeks. […] In another addition, Apple is now making it possible to easily see album launch dates on their respective pages on iOS and macOS. In the Editors’ Notes section, following the traditional encouragement to add the pre-release album to your library, there’s a new line that begins “Album expected…” followed by the album’s specific release date.
Some nice updates, but what I really want is one feed/section that simply gives me a chronological listing of newly released albums from people already in my collection. On Friday morning I should be able to look one place and see all the new albums from people Apple Music already knows I like and listen to. I’m cool with a smaller scattering of recommendations for new music I may like under that main list as well, but finding the newly released albums from artists I already love should be easy. Half the time I’ll forget I pre-added an album that’s out today and this kind of reminder would be great. Hell, so many of my friends don’t even know their favorite band released new music over the past five years. This is a solvable problem.
Update: I was just looking around in the new Apple Music, and I don’t know if this is new or not, but if you go to the “For You” section and scroll to the very bottom, there’s a “New Releases” section. Clicking “See All” seems pretty close to what I’m talking about. However, it’s definitely missing things from artists in my collection with new albums. For example, that Lykke Li album released today isn’t in my listing even though all of her albums are in my library.
Hannah Karp, writing for Billboard:
Under the terms of some of the deals, management firms can receive several hundred thousand dollars as an advance fee for agreeing to license a certain number of tracks by their independent acts directly to Spotify. Then, in at least some cases, the managers and acts stand to earn 50 percent of the revenue per stream on those songs on Spotify. That’s slightly less than the 54 percent of revenue the major record labels in the U.S. get per stream, on average, according to Billboard’s calculations, but major-label artists and their managers typically receive only 20 percent to 50 percent of the label’s share, depending on an act’s individual royalty rates, and don’t usually get to own their master recordings.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, the documentary about Fred Rogers, is now out in select cities. The director was recently interviewed for MEL Magazine and shared this great tidbit:
There’s one detail that I really liked that’s not in the film, which is he felt like the shows should be evergreen. As he often said, the outside world of the child changes, but the inside of the child never changes. So he thought his shows should play the same to two-year-olds now or 20 years ago. But as the years would go on, he would find things that had happened in old episodes that didn’t feel current, where maybe he used a pronoun “he” instead of “they” — or he met a woman and presumed that she was a housewife. So he would put on the same clothes and go back and shoot inserts and fix old episodes so that they felt as current as possible, so that he could stand by them 100 percent. I’ve never heard of that happening — it’s kind of amazing.
Penguin Random House will partner with Netflix on a worldwide publishing deal for books based on the critically acclaimed Netflix original series Stranger Things. The first two titles, set for a release this fall, will be a behind-the-scences companion book and a hardcover gift book for young readers.
Those two books will be followed next spring by a Stranger Things prequel novel, written by author Gwenda Bond, about Eleven’s mother and the MKUltra program. Additional titles for both adults and young readers will arrive later in 2019.
Anthony Bourdain has passed away. He was 61. The New York Times reports:
Mr. Bourdain spent two decades in restaurant kitchens, at first shucking oysters and cleaning dishes in a Cape Cod seafood shack and later serving high-end meals in Manhattan, before accepting a friend’s offer to fly him to Mexico if he agreed to write a novel. It was the start of a second act as an author and then a host, redefining the staid genres of food writing and food-tourism shows with an inquisitive but profane bad-boy image that endeared him to fellow chefs, restaurant-goers and travelers.
This one really hurts.
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Few of these comments even mention the fact that the whole reason As I Lay Dying broke up in the first place was because frontman Tim Lambesis committed a crime… which, if you need to be reminded, was TO TRY AND HAVE HIS WIFE MURDERED. He took real, concrete steps to pay a man to kill Meggan Lambesis, and he ultimately failed only as a result of his own ineptitude.
I’d been weighing if I even wanted to post about this reunion and give any publicity to this awfulness, but I wanted to publicly give my support to MetalSucks for taking this stand. Good for them. This is the right thing to do.
Marvel have announced a new collaboration with Vans Shoes, Bustle has the details:
The Vans x Marvel collection arrives Friday, June 8 at Vans retailers globally and it’s a blockbuster collab. It’s “the sequel” to the 2013 partnership between the sneaker and comic book titans — only this time, it’s super-sized. There are over 70 styles across footwear, like slip-ons and sneakers, apparel, like tees, and accessories, like backpacks.
Kris Holt, writing at Engadget:
A hacker has leaked personal information for more than 26 million Ticketfly users after last week’s data breach. That’s according to Troy Hunt, the founder of Have I Been Pwned, which lets you check whether your email address has been included in various data breaches.
The hacker posted several Ticketfly database files to a public server, and Hunt found that they contained 26,151,608 email addresses. Many users’ names, phone numbers and home and billing addresses were also compromised.
Apple’s developer conference, WWDC, was on Monday. Since I was laying in bed trying not to move, I missed the keynote and all the festivities. MacStories has a great run down of the new iOS features:
Apple spent a lot of time this year focusing on performance improvements that make iOS run better on a wide assortment of devices. In iOS 12, even though your iPhone or iPad may not be getting a major Home screen redesign or anything similarly noticeable, one change Apple hopes you will recognize is that your device runs better than ever before.
And the new macOS features:
Apple announced a system-wide Dark Mode, a feature rumored and requested by Mac users for years. During the keynote, Apple showed off Dark Mode with apps like Mail, Messages, Maps, Calendar, and Photos. A developer API will be available so dark mode can be added to third-party apps too.
And Six Colors has a write-up of some of the smaller details that didn’t make the keynote. Once I’m able to move for more than a few minutes at a time, I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts. Looks like some nice performance updates and little additions that should make everyday use better.
Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National are launching an online music platform called PEOPLE in August. The full press release can be found below. One of the many projects on the platform is a new EP from Big Red Machine, the new project from Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner.
Read More “Justin Vernon and the Dessners Launch New Music Platform”
