interesting

The awesome blog Dangerous Minds recently discovered my new favorite Facebook page, Poorly Drawn Album Covers. It’s exactly what it sounds like: The page’s owner poorly draws iconic album covers (in what looks like MS Paint) and then posts them to the timeline. These are way too much fun. Check out some exquisite examples below—I […]

When you reach 33 years or older, you will stop discovering new music, according to a new online study. New research, based on U.S. Spotify users, concludes that 33 is the average age when people stop listening to new music. “While teens’ music taste is dominated by incredibly popular music,” the study says, “this proportion […]

Ultimate Guitar recently dug up this old chart that shows what each artist made for performing at the legendary Woodstock festival (Woodstock Music & Art Fair) in August of 1969. You can check out the full list—including the earnings of Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Joe Cocker, Janis Joplin and more—below. Seem a little low? Here […]

According to CBC, University Of Virginia PhD student Ryan Maguire created the project The Ghost In The MP3 to demonstrate the sounds lost when music is compressed to the file format. Using Suzanne Vega’s 1987 single “Tom Diner“—the first song ever compressed to MP3—Maguire created the song “moDernisT,” which is made from the leftover sounds […]

Kye Smith (who’s known for his videos drumming through Blink-182, Green Day and NOFX’s discographies) has posted a video where he plays through Foo Fighters’ entire catalog. Smith starts with 1995’s self-titled and goes all the way through 2014’s Sonic Highways—covering all the favorites along the way—in just five minutes. Check it out below, and let us know […]

Forbes has put together a list of the most expensive tours to see in 2015. For their article, the ticket prices are based on demand from the secondary market—sites like StubHub and TicketsNow—which becomes your only option when these high-demand tours (inevitably) sell out, crashing websites in the process. Fleetwood Mac topped the list with […]

As CD sales and digital downloads continue to decline, vinyl remains one of the bright spots in the music industry—up 52 percent in 2014, according to Nielsen. Vinyl sales are likely to keep growing in 2015 (some of the pressing plants literally can’t keep up), so it only make sense that new services will spring […]

Using the Metal Archives (with a database of thousands of metal bands), Reddit user darinhq has compiled a list for Data Is Beautiful of the most common metal band names. As you can probably guess, bands with names like Carnage, Desecration, Genocide and Overload make the cut. Nemesis is the most common, with 36 bands […]

You may remember a story about data analyst Matt Daniels, who discovered which rapper has the largest vocabulary. Now, Consequence Of Sound found stats guy Brian Chesley, who uses Daniels’ concept but applies it to the genre of rock To be clear, Chesley’s data is not up to the standards of Daniels’, who examined over […]

The Dangerous Minds blog recently compiled these videos where clever people use music to create visual art.  The process: “Robotic” arms holding pens are attached to the record player, and the rotations are used to create geometric shapes made from curves. According to the Verge, “Because the arms change position while still rotating around a […]

“All of the experiments in this video are real,” the text at the begging of the video reads. The sound frequencies from different speakers impacting with elements like fire, water and sand makes for a gorgeous music video. Water spirals, metal particles jump and flames dance in this science experiment-like video for Nigel Stanford’s “Cymatics.” […]

Things haven’t been looking too bright for the music industry lately: Digital downloads are dropping, CDs are archaic and streaming services like Spotify aren’t paying artists enough. While the internet has lowered the barriers of entry for bands, it hasn’t helped them earn a significant stake in the financial rewards. The distribution of wealth among […]

According to Norway’s the Local, scientists at a the University of Oslo have developed a new software that will change the music you’re listening to based on your mood and movement. “Put more simply, your phone, with special unique sensors built into it, can detect how you are moving, determine from your movements your mood, […]

The Atlantic recently ran an interesting article looking at the increasing tensions in the artist-audience relationship. In the piece, author Elizabeth Flock addresses the changing dynamic of needy musicians and disrespectful fans, especially in the live setting. “Rock music has always embraced—and even represented—rebellion, rowdiness, and a robust disdain for social decorum,” she writes about […]

A recent study published by Stanford University looks at why cliques thrive in some schools more than others. Some schools are fiercely segregated by age, class, ethnic background, fashion choices—and others are not. What educational environment would, say, make the goth and the jock more likely to be friends and not segregated into cliques? The […]

During their set at Fun Fun Fun Fest Saturday night, Modest Mouse played the song “Space Travel Is Boring,” which is a pretty funny coincidence. During the song, a blazing meteor streaked across the dark sky and made the audience collectively gasp. Check out video of the awesome spectacle below, and let us know your thoughts. […]

The Dangerous Minds blog recently dug up these awesome microscopic images of a vinyl record and stylus. The photograph below shows the stylus needle at 1000x magnification, interacting with the etched grooves in the vinyl. Chances are, you know how a record player works, but seeing it this close up is very cool. Check it […]

Superfi have put together this great, detailed infographic—”The Rise Of Digital Vs. The Vinyl Revival”—that shows the growth of vinyl sales in the U.S. and other interesting trends in music sales—like the growth of digital downloads and streaming services. Check it out below, and let us know your thoughts.

Music can have all sorts of strange/interesting effects on the human brain. One of the more interesting effects is that sad music can actually make you feel better. Free University of Berlin Researchers Liila Taruffi and Stefan Koelsch surveyed 722 people from all over the world on the subject of sad songs. The survey “investigates the rewarding […]

NASA launched the Voyager 1 space probe in 1977 to explore the boundaries of our solar system. Aside from beaming back key data on the solar system, the handy little ship was even able to record actual sounds for us from space.  It’s been traveling now for over 37 years. In the event the craft […]