The xx covered Drake and Rihanna’s “Too Good” for BBC’s Live Lounge.
The xx Cover “Too Good”
Nintendo Switch Now Available for Pre-Order
Nintendo’s new console, Switch, is now available for pre-order.
Pandora Lays Off 7% of US Workforce
Pandora will be laying off seven percent of its US workforce:
Westergren went on to say that the company is “prioritizing the highest value opportunities and deprioritizing others” without elaborating further about the areas affected by the cuts. A spokesperson declined to share more details on the subject. Ticketfly, the company’s online ticketing service, will not be affected by the layoffs.
Angels and Airwaves on Vinyl
Angels and Airwaves have posted up a bunch of vinyl for sale.
“Weird Al” Yankovic to Release Career-Spanning ‘Squeeze Box’
“Weird Al” Yankovic will be releasing a career spanning box set on November 24th.
Legacy Recordings, home to definitive releases by the world’s foremost recording artists including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Presley, Pink Floyd and Miles Davis, proudly presents Squeeze Box: The Complete Works of “Weird Al” Yankovic, a career-spanning box set of all fourteen of Al’s studio albums, remastered for CD and 150-gram vinyl, and lavishly housed in an exact replica of the artist’s signature accordion.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross Score Ken Burns’s ‘Vietnam War’
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross will be scoring Ken Burns’s Vietnam War.
“The Vietnam War,” which premieres in September on PBS, will ultimately feature more than two cumulative hours of original music from Mr. Reznor and Mr. Ross, along with reworked bits from Nine Inch Nails songs and their scores for “The Social Network” and “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble also contributed music to the documentary, while era-defining hits from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and more will be used as well.
The Inside Story of BitTorrent’s Bizarre Collapse
Jessi Hempel, writing for Backchannel:
But from the start, BitTorrent had a branding problem — pirates used it to share movies illegally, making it the Napster of entertainment. Because the protocol was open-source, BitTorrent (the company) couldn’t stop the pirates. For 12 years, BitTorrent’s investors, executives and founders attempted to figure out many money-making strategies, including both enterprise software and entertainment businesses, while convincing us all that, sure, people might use the BitTorrent protocol to conduct illegal activity, but BitTorrent was just a tool — a really great tool you can use for really great things!
Jimmy Eat World Perform on Conan
Jimmy Eat World performed “Get Right” and “Integrity Blues” on Conan.
Queens of the Stone Age to Release New Album This Year
Mastodon’s Troy Sanders let it slip to Rolling Stone that Queens of the Stone Age will be releasing a new album this year:
Otherwise, we wouldn’t dedicate the first week of 2017 to working on this band. For example, Queens of the Stone Age, Mastodon and At the Drive-In have all been recording, and we all have new records coming out this year. We’ve all been extremely busy writing and recording, and we’re about to get super busy touring the world. So I believe we’re all fulfilled to a certain degree with all we have going on.
Cool Kickstarter: Indie Microblogging
Manton Reece has started a new Kickstarter for a book and service dedicated to a new platform for microblogs:
Do you remember how the web used to work? How the web was supposed to work?
In the earlier days of the web, we always published to our own web site. If you weren’t happy with your web host, or they went out of business, you could move your files and your domain name, and nothing would break.
Today, most writing instead goes into a small number of centralized social networking sites, where you can’t move your content, advertisements and fake news are everywhere, and if one of these sites fails, your content disappears from the internet. Too many sites have gone away and taken our posts and photos with them.
Amen. This is something I’ve thought about a lot, and it’s one of the reasons I continue to run Chorus (and our forums) on domains I own powered mostly by software I can easy move to other servers if I need to.
Vagrant 20 Phase IV: Alkaline Trio
A trio of new Alkaline Trio reissues on vinyl are now up for order.
The Weeknd Again Tops the Charts
The Weeknd has returned to the top of the Billboard charts:
The Moana film soundtrack rises from No. 6 to No. 2 with 64,000 units (up 21 percent) and 44,000 in traditional album sales (up 37 percent — it is the best selling album of the week). It’s the only title in the top 10 to post a gain in either total units or sales, so, for the most part, albums with a small decline in units will rise up the list. That is typical for the first tracking week after the holiday shopping season and Christmas — when the chart adjusts to normal non-holiday business.
New Lucky Boys Confusion in April
It looks like Lucky Boys Confusion will release Stormchasers on April 15th.
The ‘Keepin’ it 1600′ Guys Launch Crooked Media
The hosts of the popular podcast, Keepin’ it 1600, have left The Ringer and started their own media company, “Crooked Media.” Today they’ve launched their new podcast Pod Save America. The Daily Beast has more:
Just before Christmas, former Obama administration staffers Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor recorded what would become the final episode of their popular 2016 campaign podcast Keepin’ It 1600 for Bill Simmons’ The Ringer network. Today, they are back with a new podcast—Pod Save America—and this time it is under the banner of their new company, the pointedly titled Crooked Media.
Nielsen Has Released Their 2016 Music Year-End Report
Music consumption is at an all-time high. Overall volume is up 3% over 2016, fueled by a 76% increase in on-demand audio streams, enough to offset declines in sales and return a positive year for the business. Nearly 650 solo artists, groups and collaborators appeared on the Top 200 Song Consumption chart in 2016, representing over 1,200 different songs.
You have to use the blue download button to read the full thing, but a brief recap can be found on their press release page:
The biggest song of the year in terms of total activity (sales + audio streaming equivalents) was Drake’s “One Dance,” followed by “Closer” by Chainsmokers (feat. Halsey) and “Work” by Rihanna (feat. Drake). Topping the Digital Songs Sales charts this year were “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” by Justin Timberlake, “Closer” by The Chainsmokers (feat. Halsey) and “My House” by Flo Rida.