The new Netflix series Stranger Things is one of the best things I’ve watched in quite a while. The binge is strong with this one. It has a great 80’s throwback feel that brings forth memories of Spielberg, Stephen King, and finishes it off with a really great soundtrack (and score). What’s On Netflix has compiled a list of the songs that appear throughout the show and created a Spotify playlist for your listening pleasure.
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Young Guns are a four-piece alternative rock band from Buckinghamshire, England set to release their new album, Echoes, on September 16th. I spoke with the band on this year’s Warped Tour about their new album, playing the tour, and much more.
Music Forum: Classic artist of the week — Paul McCartney.
This week’s notable TV performances include: Jenny Lewis & NAF (7/19; Colbert) and SWMRS (7/18; Corden).
Brand New added “Brother’s Song” into their setlist last night. I’m pretty sure the song’s only been played a handful of times live.
Tigers Jaw are recording their new album with Will Yip.
Good Charlotte performed “Life Can’t Get Much Better” on The Tonight Show.
Drake has reclaimed the top of the Billboard charts this week. Blink-182 has moved down to number three.
Views spent its first nine weeks on the chart at No. 1, then stepped aside a week ago for Blink-182, which opened at No. 1 with California. The latter album slips to No. 3 in its second week with 37,000 units (down 80 percent).
Jim Dalrymple, writing for The Loop, on how Apple Music has started to use fingerprint-based song matching to fix the (annoyingly bad) metadata-based system it was using before:
Apple has been quietly rolling out iTunes Match audio fingerprint to all Apple Music subscribers. Previously Apple was using a less accurate metadata version of iTunes Match on Apple Music, which wouldn’t always match the correct version of a particular song. We’ve all seen the stories of a live version of a song being replaced by a studio version, etc.
I can’t believe this isn’t what the service launched with. The key feature for me has been the combination of my library with a streaming library and every time this fucked up I wanted to randomly delete a line of code from whomever wrote the system so they could feel my pain.
The Devil Wears Prada have released their new video for “Daughter.”
Chris Farren will release Can’t Die on September 2nd. He’s also released his new video for “Say U Want Me.”
Sara Perez, writing for TechCrunch, on Netflix’s new “Flixtape” service that lets you create mixtape/playlists of TV shows and movies:
The new tool lets you create these lists based on a genre or theme of some sort, then share them with friends or family over text message, email or social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
There are a number of ways you can use something like Flixtape. You can make your own mixes of favorite movies or shows, just for reference’s sake, or you could create curated recommendations for friends.
I’ve only got one current obsession I’d put into a flixtape: Stranger Things.
Robert Levine, writing for Billboard, about Apple’s new proposed royalty structure for streaming music services:
Apple’s suggested royalty structure would make accounting simpler and more transparent, but it would also make it more costly to run a free service, since streaming companies would have to pay a minimum rate, rather than a percentage of revenue. The current system arguably benefits Spotify and YouTube, since their free tiers don’t generate much revenue compared to paid services.
Seems win/win for Apple here: They score points with artists, and they make Spotify look bad.
The Juliana Theory’s b-side “Slowly Flying Solo,” which will appear on their upcoming vinyl release of Deadbeat Sweetheartbeat, can be streamed below.