I’d Buy That for $20 a Month
James Devaney/WireImage
This week, Jay Z debuted Tidal, a streaming music service whose makers say it offers better sound quality and something called a “curated editorial” experience. Which, we guess, means people are picking music for you. You know, kinda like the radio. That whole package will cost you $20 a month, twice what Spotify charges. We asked the Grantland staff what other services they’d pay $20 a month for.
Rembert Browne
- The “FourFiveSeconds” Grammy performance on loop
- All of the G.O.O.D. Friday tracks
- A Fader, Vibe, and Jet covers slideshow
- All of the Rap City freestyles and BET cyphers (high-fidelity, of course)
- The full This Recording archive
- Every issue of Eastbay
- Every Sampras-Agassi match, plus the Sampras throw-up set vs. Corretja
- Something that sent me notifications whenever someone posted clothing on eBay tagged “chaka khan”
- Every crossover television show episode, as well as The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones
- A good instructional video for how to tie a bow tie — one that doesn’t include that annoying sleight-of-hand fifth step
- Every Rock N’ Jock game (baseball and basketball)
- Pandora, but for picking out two Broadway shows a month that I should enjoy, based on my mood
Wesley Morris
- An alert for real croissants within a thousand feet of where I am
- Help for Emma Stone to make 12 movies a year
- Help for Lupita Nyong’o to make even one
- A blog that just did hot takes on Beats headphones
- Archived issues of Star Hits and Right On!
- Something that makes every time I see the video for “Love Will Never Do (Without You)” the first time
- Let’sRaiseMoneyToBuyAdamantiumForJuanMartínDelPotro.com
Shea Serrano
- A service that sends alerts to my phone every time one of my favorite parts of a movie was coming on TV
- A thing that anytime someone tweeted me about J. Cole they’d get a DM that was a video of a person making fart noises for 60 seconds
- A subscription to a website that is just a slideshow of photos of Tim Duncan doing ordinary things like riding a bicycle or holding a butter knife
- A program that allows me to paste the link to a fight clip someone made in Vine and it’d show me the full video of that fight
- A program that allows me to paste the link to a fight clip someone made in Vine and it’d show me the full video of that fight (I really want this)
Ryan O’Hanlon
- The ability to stream “a historical drama in which Nelson Mandela lifts weights on the beach while he watches a cruise ship sink a couple of miles offshore” on my phone
- A daily newsletter version of the Guardian’s “Said & Done” column
- A digital copy of the April 2015 issue of Shooting Gazette
- A subscription to a Joe Biden/Paul Pogba fan-fiction zine
- A bot that locates anyone who owns these cleats in a size 10 and finds me his or her home address, Social Security number, relevant negotiating weaknesses, deepest insecurities, darkest secrets, etc.
Dave Schilling
- A sequel to the world’s greatest movie (Dredd), which only I can watch
- On-demand life advice from Cookie Lyon from Empire
- Unlimited daps from Kobe Bryant (or Derek Fisher, if Kobe’s not available)
- The jet pack from Thunderball … for my commute to work
- Access to the entire back catalogue of National Lampoon before 1980
Holly Anderson
- A bot that automatically unfollows, blocks, and reports for spam any user in my Twitter timeline threatening to unfollow a celebrity with more than 100K followers over some imagined offense
- A bot/script that auto-responds to every “follow so I can DM” request with this
- High-quality streaming access to every episode of Sports Night with all the laugh tracks taken out
- All of Steve Martin’s unreleased banjo tracks
Sean Fennessey
- Spotify/endless music delivery system
- Netflix/endless movie delivery system
- Digitized tablet versions of Wizard/Spy/Entertainment Weekly/Sports Illustrated, circa 1993-97
- A weekly variety pack of pretzels, mixing flavors, styles, and brands
- A strap-on electroshock unit that disallows Twitter usage
Mark Lisanti
- Jeremy Piven’s Instagram feed soundtracked with lossless streaming audio recordings of his joyful amateur drumming
- Exclusive insider access to premium features on Vin Diesel’s Facebook page
- An all-guitar-solo playlist service curated by a rotating lineup of editors including Steve Vai, Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen, Eric Johnson, Slash, and the ghost of Jimi Hendrix
- An all–Billy Corgan–talking-shit-about-prominent-musicians-of-the-’90s channel
- Something where Kanye emails me pictures of dope sofas like four or five times a month
Dan Fierman
- Selective, advanced AI pre-outrage auto-Twitter mute
- Shane Black email insult punch-up generator
- Five daily style tips from Dwyane Wade’s stylist (Note: Not from Wade himself. His stylist.)
- Val Kilmer’s version of Goop, whatever that would be (besides glorious, obviously)
- Vintage 1999–2001 Pedro Martinez clips on infinite loop
Katie Baker
- A monthly members-only Google Hangout with Martha Stewart and her chowchow Genghis Khan
- Complete searchable Mike and the Mad Dog archives (would pay an additional $5 if they threw in streams of old Mike Breen spots on Imus in the Morning)
- Up-to-the-minute, high-definition photographic alerts of the best cloud formations around the world
- A 12-step program to wean me off an overreliance on exclamation points in emails
-
Recipe blogs without commenters who were out of cinnamon so used cumin instead and concluded that this recipe SUCKS!
Chris Ryan
- Digitally remastered streaming of hip-hop mixtapes from 1998-2008
- Turner Classic Movies on demand
- Access to a site that broadcasts full episodes of Yo! MTV Raps and 120 Minutes
- A stream of NFL football games that have no commercials and instead show shots of the fans or sidelines during stoppages in play
Filed Under: Lists, Tidal, Jay Z, streaming music, Things On the Internet, National Lampoon, Tim Duncan, Shea Serrano, Ryan O'Hanlon, Dave Schilling, Wesley Morris, Holly Anderson, Sean Fennessey, Mark Lisanti, Dan Fierman, Katie Baker, Chris Ryan
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