6 MATTI SCANNELL ae@technewsiit.com TechNews | Tuesday, February26, 2013 Music Required: search for the best musical study buddy Matti Scannell A&E EDITOR Over the course of my college ca, reer, the list of conditional requirements for successful studying has been whittled down to one essential precondition; I need to have music playing: The man to the left of me on the bus may be telling the woman to the right of me how he could tell she was Scorpio from the type of shoes she’s wearing in a doomed attempt to ask her out; but if I have my headphones, I’m in the zone, and the only thing occupying my thoughts is whatever biology content I’ve just reviewed with my flashcards: Now, like many things in life, my music requirement is simple: I don’t have many qualifications on the type of music that needs to be playing, but, in general, it has to be something that I don’t know very well: If it has words, I can’t know them or I will find them distracting and my studying will be less focused: Enter two new apps on my iPhone: Movie Review: SoundCloud and 8tracks: SoundCloud was originally intended to allow musicians to share recordings with each other, but it eventually al lowed for artists to publish and distribute their music: Contrastingly, 8tracks was intended more for listeners than artists Listeners are able to create their own mixes, which must be a minimum of 8 tracks long, and then tag them with genre descriptions, names of artists found on the mix, or a psychologically descriptive term (erg: sad, lonely, should find a therapist): I’ve been an 8tracks user since this past August: I like the way in which it hear, kens back to the age of mix tapes/cd mixes and allows access to sets of music that has already been curated by someone that isn’t me: In some ways, listening to an 8tracks mix is like listen, ing to those “iTunes Essential" mixes; only 8tracks mixes are less pretentious and free: That being said, there are several ca, veats for this review that I feel I need to men, tion A large number of the 8tracks members seem to be either (a) high school girls or (b) people whose musical taste corresponds with that of high school girls: I’m talking about One Direction and Justin Bieber mixes that have the tag “good music" I think that the lack of an ‘I only like those bands in an ironic way’ facade shows the true naivete’ of this kind of 8tracks user Another issue with 8tracks I have is the same as the one I have with other music so, cial networks: you are limited in the number of tracks that you can skip per hour: This problem is remedied by starting another mix, and then you are able skip music again: I’m not married to any one format of listening to music: So when a friend asked if I had a SoundCloud account because he was looking for new music and wanted to check out my liked tracks, I decided to start one: I’m slightly less satisfied with SoundCloud than I expected to be, given that it lacks some of the problems that I listed above: For starters, the lack of mixes and thus the inability to select a cover photo from tumblr or to share your emotions with an In, ternet community seems to dissuade the teen crowd from congregating in this corner of the Internet I think in general the idea is that you are supposed to find artist profiles on Sound, Cloud and then “listen to their stream," but it seems that most users are people like me and my friends; not artists, just 207somethings looking for new music: This brings me to my problem with SoundCloud: specifically, my ability to listen to music while studying There is a search tool on SoundCloud that allows users to search through sounds or people; thus, I can find friends and look at their liked tracks, or I can search for a specific song that I want to listen to, but the format of SoundCloud is such that I can’t just press play once and be done: I can listen to all of the tracks that one particular friend liked, but the tracks are generally dis, similar and thus distracting to my studying Unlike 8tracks in which I select a mix and then start studying, with SoundCloud I need to con tinually return and find a new track to listen to or a new friend’s liked tracks: In summary, I think that Sound, Cloud is useful if you have a particular song stuck in your head, but you can use YouTube for that: I will be sticking with 8tracks for now SoundCloud 1/5 Stars; 8tracks 4/5 stars: ‘Beautiful Creatures' is a ‘Twilight' knockoff, in the South Melanie Decelles TECHNEWS WRITER “Beautiful Creatures" is reverse “Twilight" We meet a young man who has absolutely no distinguishing characteristics to his personality, but he reads a lot, so we can assume he’s deep: He meets our young, super, natural protagonist who reads a lot as well, which implies she’s brilliant They fall in love but are pulled apart due to supernatural rea sons involving a very involved supernatural family Did I forget to mention this all takes place in the South? The accents are thicker than butter: The first time someone speaks, I promise someone in the theater will start to laugh: If you do decide to see this movie though, you will be treated to some of the best insults to ever cross the Mason Dixon line: At one point someone is threatened that his hat will be stolen so that it can be put on a cat: Yeah: The story follows Ethan Wate who is the brilliant underestimulated boy drown, ing in his oppressively small town He is saved however by the arrival of Lena Duchannes, who moves to town to live with her reclusive, local, oddball uncle: Where “Twilight" just heavily implies a life of mediocrity would’ve swallowed Bella Swan up without Edward Cullen to give her the exciting life she def serves, “Beautifiil Creatures" isn’t that subtle: When Ethan Wate is tricked into looking at his own future things turn unreae sonably dark He sees that, despite his plans to get as far away from his town as possible, he never actually manages to leave, and then leads the most depressing version of small, town life possible, ending in his suicide: While some might laud the gender switch on a wonderfully misogynistic tale, that doesn’t seem to be enough to improve the premise of stories like these: A high school romance where one person literally saves the other from depression and an unlived, pure gatoryelike existence will always be a deeply creepy weight to put on a relationship that, if I recall correctly, consists mostly of hormones“ ‘The Motherf"*|