Mental Floss is a site we visit every now and then when we’re supposed to be working because they’re always good for a fun quiz or two. We’re talking about quick 10 question quizzes like “Catholic Saint or New Orleans Saint?” and “U.S. Military Operation or Brand of Cat Litter?” But the site has outdone themselves with today’s quiz, titled. “Lifetime Movie or Megadeth Song?”
Given their shared preoccupation with kidnapping, family dysfunction and untimely death, it’s sort of surprising that Lifetime and Megadeth don’t share more fans. Can you tell the difference between the titles of Lifetime movies and Megadeth songs?
Granted, anyone that has even a passing familiarity with Megadeth should have no problems acing this one, but it’s still a fun way to kill a minute or two, especially if you’re stuck working on a national holiday like some people we know. And with titles like “Verdict In Blood” and “Foreclosure of a Dream,” maybe there’s not that much of a difference between the two.
It seems like only yesterday, Metallica were bitching about Napster taking their livelihood while rolling around in piles of money, Scrooge McDuck style. It’s taken them about a decade, but they’ve finally caught on to this whole technology thing. Instead of suing their fans, they’ve launched an iPhone app, Live Metallica, that lets fans stream professionally mixed concerts.
While at any given time, the $0.99 app features the band’s latest concert streaming in its entirety, the app points back to the band’s Live Metallica website. The site has been selling concerts from 1982-present, but now users can buy single tracks. App users can stream samples of tracks, from the site, then buy them if they like what they hear.
It’s pretty innovative, in that for once, paid downloads on a iPhone aren’t coming from the Apple store. There aren’t too many other bands that would be able to do this, both from a popularity standpoint and from an innovation standpoint. As much of a punch line as Metallica were for declaring war on their fans and new technology back in the day, it seems like they’re making up for it with this. And as anyone that’s seen the band on the Death Magnetic tour can attest, they can still bring it live.
Last month, MySpace did the music world a favor and disabled autoplay on their profiles, saving the world from crimes against music being commited by bored 16 year-olds that have Garage Band and an Attack Attack! album. Although it hasn’t even been a month, the number of plays on MySpace has dropped dramatically. Media tracking company Big Champagne found that plays in August dropped 20.7 percent from July.
The company canvassed thousands of top artists on MySpace Music, convering the most heavily-tracked names. In July, it showed 1.436 billion plays. In August, it had dropped to 1.138 billion. This is pretty notable, given than they didn’t disable autoplay until around August 18. The bigger picture is that many visitors to a band’s MySpace page might not actually care much about the music, and if anyone has been using number of plays from a band to judge their influence and popularity, they might have to re-examine that.
There’s nothing creepier/funnier than watching Kurt Cobain sing songs that he wouldn’t be caught dead listening to on Guitar Hero 5, where the deceased Nirvana frontman is an unlockable character. However, Courtney Love doesn’t feel the same way. While it was initially reported that she was an active participant in the creation of her ex-husband’s likeness for the game, that must have been while she was on her meds.
In a Twitter rampage, Love unleashed a ton of invective towards lawyers, Dave Grohl, and Activision, among others, stating that she’s going to sue Activision. Unless you can read crazy, I wouldn’t suggest looking at the whole thing, but here’s a few choice tweets:
we have NOTHING to do with this it was presented to me and oi said “show me a better avataR” TO DRAG MY HEELS., never did i intend on
allowing GUITARHERO for me or for Kurt i am NOT yoko fucking Ono no ofense to her, but i am a different person entirely and this is insaneabout 11 hours ago from web
now theyre just LIQUIDATING kurt and IM THE DEVIL? I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH GUITAR HERO I LOATHE IT AND FIND IT ODIOUS KURT WOULD HAVE TOOabout 12 hours ago from web
FOR THE RECORD I DID NOT APPROVE KURTS AVATAR FOR GUYITARHERO5. i think Kurt would despise this game alone let alone this avatar
yes i allowed malibu to be used on rockband, something in the way on soix geet under discreet usage in moulinrouge and thatsitabout 10 hours ago from web
have fun with your avatars you slimebags, i rant? fuck off i have proof youve simply never bothred to look. so fucking play your videogame.about 11 hours ago from web
and you wonder about Guitar Hero 5 disgusted? welcome to my NIGHTMARE. yeah well sue activision this is disgusting, but theres alot MOREabout 11 hours ago from web
YOU for dismissing me as a LOON, go fucking play guitar hero commit necrophilai KNOW you are raping me and my family
On the one hand, I can understand that she wants her daughter to be taken care of. But even from reading the tweets, it’s apparent that she at least had meetings with Activision. And they wouldn’t put have put Kurt in the game without getting the OK from lawyers. Oh well, whatever, nevermind
While Metal Insider strives to be your go-to place for metal news and industry information, we don’t have the time or patience to sort through every single Twitter that happens from bands, labels and news sites. Now thanks to new site CircleTwitt, you can be caught up with all the latest news that comes out via Twitter. In fact, if you’re one of those metalheads that thinks Twitter is stupid (trust us, there’s a lot of them out there), you don’t even need to have a Twitter account to use the site. However, if you do have an account, and you’re not following us yet, what the hell are you waiting for? There are already more than 150 bands and industry twitterers (or as Stephen Colbert calls them, twatters) on CircleTwitt, with more appearing daily.
MySpace has disabled music from autoplaying on its profiles, most likely to save money on bandwith by efficiently limiting streaming to users who request it. They also claim it will provide more accurate listening data, since the play counts will represent the people who actually wanted to listen the songs. But we’ll be nice and think that they did it to save us from your shitty deathcore band ear-fucking us before we can hit the pause button.
[Via TechCrunch]
Usually around September or so, Apple updates their iPod line, and with it, the iTunes program. While there’s been some chatter about what the next update of the software will be, a German blogger has leaked what are supposedly screen shots of iTunes 9.
While nothing has been confirmed by Apple, who like to play things close to the vest, it appears that the next version will have some sort of integration with Last.FM. The pictures also show the word ”social” under playlists, which suggests that there will also be some sort of link to Twitter and Facebook, perhaps so you can share the music you’re listening to with your friends/followers. While CNET pokes a number of holes in this rumor, both from a Photoshop and business-sense perspective, it’s an intriguing idea, and it wouldn’t hurt iTunes to get more into the social networking world.
The world felt a great loss when Nine Inch Nails’ mastermind Trent Reznor quit the Twitter for good (albeit not cold turkey). Thankfully, many have stepped in his shoes to console the microblogging wold, including “Ternt Reznor,” who is so mystical that that “a one line bio could not possibly contain the greatness that is me” and isn’t as bashful about his buff new body.
[Via Idolator]
We chastised Trent Reznor earlier this month for still using his Twitter account despite proclamations of taking his social networking ball and going home because of all the Web 2.0 meanies.
Well, Trent finally manned up and @trent_reznor is no more. I guess he just needed a few weeks to get around to it. You know, ween himself off. I shed a tear, because we never got our @MetalInsider #FollowFriday.
Today’s
Trent Reznor rant was brought on by a post he made on Twitter…wait, what? Didn’t he quit Twitter like a month ago
in dramatic fashion? Oh savior of online marketing, how can we trust anything you say now? Our world is completely upside down. Hold me.
Mental Floss is a site we visit every now and then when we’re supposed to be working because they’re always good for a fun quiz or two. We’re talking about quick 10 question quizzes like “Catholic Saint or New Orleans Saint?” and “U.S. Military Operation or Brand of Cat Litter?” But the site has outdone themselves with today’s quiz, titled. “Lifetime Movie or Megadeth Song?”
Posted by Bram Teitelman on Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Web 2.Oh-no