Fear, Emptiness, Decibel: Guess Which Awesome Magazine is a Curator for Beats Music?

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

You may have noticed via social media that Decibel is one of a select few curators for brand new, state-of-the-art streaming service Beats Music. If you enjoyed the tastemaking acumen that brought you a triple review of Ass to Mouth, Prostitute Disfigurement and Throatplunger in the March print edition, just wait ’til you see what we have in store for the playlists that keep Beats blasting (sorry, nobody’s given us a corporate slogan to interweave into advertorial copy yet).

Anyway, if you’re into streaming music, no bullshit—Beats really is the crème de la crème. It does cost money to sign up, but unlike main competitor Spotify, Beats is considerably more artist-friendly. Bands and labels get paid for being a part of this, and we’re not talking the fractions of pennies they take home from Spotify. Thom Yorke is not exactly a guy you’d dub “extremely extreme,” but last October he famously called Spotify “the last desperate fart of a dying corpse,” which I’m pretty sure is going to be the title of Exhumed’s next contribution to our Flexi Series. To be fair, while artists have greatly differing viewpoints about the efficacy of streaming services at large, Beats does promise to pay every content owner the same (as yet unpublicized) royalty rate.

As for Decibel’s involvement, go here to sign up, and follow us. You can expect multiple playlists every week curated by dB editors and staff writers, not to mention our underground celebrity buddies—there’s an Oderus Urungus playlist up now, and one from Pig Destroyer’s Scott Hull will be posted next week. We’ll be taking the same irreverent-but-kickass approach to our playlists as we do to everything in the magazine, offering everything from “Intro to Funeral Doom” and “The Henry Rollins Workout” to “Mike Patton’s Best Non-Faith No  More Moments” and “Essential 80s Thrash That Isn’t the Big Four.” The library’s pretty vast already for such a nascent venture, but they’re adding more every day. Go check it out—you know you want just the right Mr. Bungle songs to drown out those bitchy Seahawks fans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ttsx5squWg

The March 2014 issue of Decibel also features Behemoth, Arch Enemy, and Alcest, and can be purchased here. But why not just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss an issue?