Chvrches have released a fully interactive 360° studio tour website.
Imogen Heap Launches SupaPass Channel
Imogen Heap has launched a new subscription service on SupaPass. The full press release explaining the service can be found below.
DJ Khaled Has the Number One Album in the Country
DJ Khaled has the number one on the Billboard charts this week, Drake moves to number two, and Twenty One Pilots are at number three.
The set earned 95,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Aug. 4, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 59,000 were in traditional album sales — DJ Khaled’s largest sales week since 2007.
Blink-182 Hires Vegan Instagram Star as Chef
Richard Bowie, writing for VegNews, on how Blink-182 have hired the vegan chef, and Instagram personality, Mary Mattern as their chef on their current tour:
The 30-year-old chef and cookbook author is currently travelling with the group cross-country, creating plant-based recipes—such as cauliflower chowder with biscuit flats, fishless filet sliders, and apple crumb pie—to help fuel members Mark Hoppus, Matt Skiba, and especially the band’s long-time vegan Travis Barker.
The Best v The Favorites
Devin Faraci, writing about the difference between “best” versus “favorite”:
So the next time you see a list of someone’s favorite movies, instead of jumping right to why they’re wrong or asking the perennial irritating asshole question “What, no love for ______?”, try instead to have a conversation about why those films got picked. That’s a great discussion to be had, whether it’s directly with the person making the list or whether it’s you trying to understand an artist’s tastes and how they influence his or her work. And it’s always great for you, as a grown up thinking person, to be able to explain why you like stuff – why things are your favorites – beyond “My dad showed it to me when I was 7.”
Amen.
Gold Medal Stupid
Christine Birkner, writing for AdWeek, about how if you’re a business and you tweet about the Olympics you may get in trouble (emphasis mine):
While individuals, news media and official sponsors are generally free to post about the games and athletes during the Olympics, other businesses and brands are essentially locked out from anything close to a direct discussion.
Summarizing its many brand restrictions, which you can see detailed below, the USOC warns businesses: “Do not create social media posts that are Olympic themed, that feature Olympic trademarks, that contain Games imagery or congratulate Olympic performance unless you are an official sponsor as specified in the Social Media Section.”
Oh come on.
NPR Posts Up Full Julien Baker Set at Newport Folk Festival
NPR has released a live recording of Julien Baker’s performance at the Newport Folk Festival.
At Newport Folk, the 20-year-old Memphian filled the quad inside Fort Adams with plaintive folk songs and electric guitar. Midway through her set, Baker brought out Matthew Gilliam, her bandmate in Forrister, to add touches of atmospheric percussion to “Vessels” and “Brittle Boned.” But for the most part, it was just her ragged-edged voice and ringing Telecaster — and that was enough to win over the audience, who gave her multiple standing ovations. Particularly well received was “Good News,” which, as Baker explained, is about “thinking you ruin everything … and then figuring out that you don’t.”
Spotify Announces “Release Radar”
Spotify has announced the new “release radar” that will give you a personalized weekly playlist of songs from new, and recently released, albums. The Verge goes into more detail:
Discover Weekly focuses on a window of the last six months or so to decipher your taste and make suggestions. Release Radar can’t replicate that approach, because your favorite band may not release an album more than once every two years. Instead it takes stock of your entire listening history, then narrows the range of possible suggestions down to tracks that have been released in the last two to three weeks.
I’m still, mostly, an album-only listener, but I really like this approach to trying to get people to check out new music and tackling the problem of so many people not being aware that new music is out from artists they love. Hell, I follow this stuff for a living and even I would like a personalized page each Friday that shows me all the albums out today from artists already in my collection, and then below that gives me four recommended albums I should check out and what song to start with.
ESPN Is Finally ESPN.com
Joshua Benton, writing for NiemanLab:
It isn’t quite our-long-national-nightmare-is-over level, but one of the significant daily reminders of the early web just disappeared. ESPN’s website, which had been hosted at espn.go.com since 1998, is finally now just at espn.com.
Damn, there goes one of my favorite jokes.
Are Final Clubs Too Exclusive for Harvard?
My first introduction to “final clubs” was in The Social Network; however, Sarah Maslin Nir has a great article in The New York Times about their place at Harvard in 2016:
Today, that description is perpetuated by unwritten codes on who may pass through their doors and who may join. The elaborate courtship of the desirable can begin with an engraved invitation slipped under a dorm room door to “punch” — a selection process that continues with a series of outings and culminates in a black-tie dinner feting the few who make it through.
To many students, the clubs remain potent symbols of privilege, anachronistic and out of place on an increasingly diverse campus.
Facebook Changing Algorithm to Punish Clickbait
Facebook will be tweaking its news algorithm to start ranking stories that are seen as “clickbait” much lower than others. From Facebook’s blog, announcing this change:
We are focusing more effort on this, and are updating News Feed by using a system that identifies phrases that are commonly used in clickbait headlines. First, we categorized tens of thousands of headlines as clickbait by considering two key points: (1) if the headline withholds information required to understand what the content of the article is; and (2) if the headline exaggerates the article to create misleading expectations for the reader. For example, the headline “You’ll Never Believe Who Tripped and Fell on the Red Carpet…” withholds information required to understand the article (What happened? Who Tripped?) The headline “Apples Are Actually Bad For You?!” misleads the reader (apples are only bad for you if you eat too many every day). A team at Facebook reviewed thousands of headlines using these criteria, validating each other’s work to identify a large set of clickbait headlines.
Good.
Modest Mouse’s Issac Brock in Accident
Modest Mouse’s Issac Brock was in an accident in Portland, OR, yesterday. He apparently fell asleep at the wheel. He is ok. From Oregonlive:
Brock told police that he had fallen asleep at the wheel. He was evaluated for signs of intoxication, but there were no signs of him being otherwise impaired so police cited him for careless driving. Simpson reported that the investigation is closed and that there weren’t any serious injuries.
Riot Fest Announce After Shows
Riot Fest have announced their after show parties for the Denver, CO dates. Against Me!, Lagwagon, Thursday, and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes are among the bands that will be playing.
What Have You Been Listening to Over the Past Month?
I recently came across a Last.fm collage generator that lets you put in your Last.fm username and it’ll spit out a graphic of the albums you’ve been listening to over a given period of time. Personally, I like the 5×5 rendition that shows what I’ve been listening to over the past month.
I’m curious — what have you been listening to over the past month? Hit the little quote bubble1 to jump the forums and share your latest obsessions. I’ve been on a huge Tiger Army kick.
Read More “What Have You Been Listening to Over the Past Month?”
Or just let me know on Twitter.↩
Instagram Adds “Stories”
Josh Constine, writing at TechCrunch:
People only post the highlights of their life on Instagram, so today the app adds its own version of “Stories” to poach goofy, off-the-cuff, everyday content from Snapchat. It works exactly like Snapchat Stories, allowing you to post 24-hour ephemeral photo and video slideshows that disappear. But because Instagram Stories appear at the top of the old feed, your followers will inevitably see them without you needing to build a new audience in a different app.
I mean, yeah, it is a clone of Snapchat’s feature, but it is also exactly why I post rarely to Instagram and post stupid things all the time on Snapchat.