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Back in November, we posted that Mike had released the 'Sleepy Track' that he created on Twitch. As it turns out, this was an accidental release and Mike has not announced an official release himself yet of the track. It has really turned into an album of thirty songs of various lengths, designed for when you are going to sleep.

We said, "Created on August 28th, 2020, Mike took a fan suggestion on Twitch to create a long and relaxing "sleepy time" track. Reminiscent of "Ghosts" by Nine Inch Nails, or even Mike's "Minutes to Midnight" website clips, the tracks are fully instrumental and weave in and out of different ambient sounds Mike has created."

It turns out that the project was accidentally released under the name 'Sleep for Students' on AcousticSounds.com and Hoopla on November 20, 2020, but was removed from AcousticSounds.com. As of this post, it is still available on Hoopla for fans to check out.

Since then, he has spoken once recently about the project. On February 18, 2021, he said, "Dude I put the Sleepy Track in the queue. I wanted that shit out before now. I wanted it out already. It didn't happen, it's not my fault. We're going to have to do something else with it. Watch, we're just going to have to put the whole fucking thing up on Zora. It might happen. I know you guys could rip it... and whatever you want to do with it. Should we do that? You guys could just rip that.... it's just an hour of audio. Right? It kind of leaked, it didn't really leak. SoundCloud? Wait a minute, on SoundCloud can you generate income per stream on SoundCloud? Because again, the idea was to put the Sleepy Time Track out where when you listen to it every night, it generates money for the scholarship."

He also spoke in January 2021 and September 2020, talking about how he wanted the money to go to his scholarship and more... read that here. Mike did say that he was probably going to change the name from 'Sleep for Students' to something else as well.

On March 5, 2021 he gave another update, saying: "Sleepy time track is still being discussed. An interesting twist in the story showed up and I'm dealing with that. I can't really tell you about it. I hate that I can't tell you, but I can't.”

What do you think? Will Mike still release the 'Sleepy Track'? 

Got it as that's one of my favorite releases!

Out now 

14 hours ago, RYG4R said:

Just release a proper sophomore album.

It's like 90% that he's making one right now.

The jams could be released under a different name, seems easy enough. There are enough people that enjoy them, he has thousands of Twitch followers daily.

15 hours ago, PurpleFlinstoneVitamins92 said:

The quite big hiatus and almost total silence between THP and OML was basically due to Chester’s problems with addiction and recovery IIRC, I think OML was meant to drop in late 2016 otherwise. 

Yes, that's right. But not due to any problems, LP was/is very close. Mike even visited Chester personally himself during that rehab stint in 2016. The band is so secretive about things going on with them like this that the entire band could have visited Chester at different times in rehab and we would have zero clue unless the band ever said it publicly. And they are quite private people so they likely aren't going to ever get into stuff like that.

I remember Ryan Shuck said 1-3 days after Chester passed that Rob Bourdon had told him some of the most incredibly kind things he's ever had said to him, about his relationship with Chester and how he (Ryan) had helped Chester out in life, etc.

What are some ways he could release them?

- LPU download
- Twitch subscriber download, like make a compilation for them
- Release them to streaming under another name so he still gets paid for them

Today on Twitch, Mike discussed at the end of the chat that he knows fans want another 'Dropped Frames' album. He's previously said that he likes the albums being a trilogy of three releases, so the albums will likely stop there and there won't be a 'Dropped Frames 4'.

However, today he said, "You know, I have to imagine there will be a way to release them and I don't know what that's going to be. My thing was like, the ones that I really really liked, that I made, I put them on the 'Dropped Frames' ones. And I've made some since then that I got like 'I really like that one'. But there's also a lot that I think are fine, they're ok, but I wouldn't want them sitting and taking up space on my Spotify page... almost like just clutter. And I want you guys to have them or have access to. I just haven't figured out the right way to do it."

He added, "Yeah, 'Skrrt Skrrt'? I actually like this one that is playing right now. This one is from like a year ago. I called it 'The Brooklyn Way', that was the name of the track. 'KarmaKon'? Yeah, I know you guys want 'KarmaKon'. As if I don't know!"

Hopefully we will see some more songs released soon! Last year Mike toyed with the idea of releasing songs to his Twitch subscribers, so that could be one way that he does it.

That's really how Lying From You became a single and got a music video, is the fans requested it so much in summer 2004 when BTH wasn't ready yet.

This isn't something you see often - Rick Rubin interviewing Mike Shinoda!

"Since forming in 1996, Linkin Park has sold over 100 million records worldwide. Their enormous success mixing genres like hip-hop, metal and anthemic pop was spearheaded by the band’s ultra-talented founder, Mike Shinoda. In this episode Rick Rubin talks to Mike about the albums he produced with Linkin Park that helped redefine the band’s sound. Mike also reminisces about the band’s early inner-personal dynamics. And Mike talks about the community of thousands of followers he's amassed on Twitch who watch him make beats live five days a week."

Check the full interview out here.

Recap:

- Mike explains #ShinodaProduceMe on Twitch to Rick about how the process works and what the artists actually send him.
- Rick and Mike talk about 'A Thousand Suns'. Rick: "A Thousand Suns is my favorite of the things we worked on together. It felt like something new and REALLY good.", "If you had done ATS after Meteora, everyone would have been like, "FUCK these guys!", you had to do Minutes to Midnight first.", "The dream is to make an album that gets either 1 or 5 stars. Polarizing music. And that's what A Thousand Suns is for you guys. I love it."

- Mike tells the story of putting NoBraiN on 'When They Come For Me' and how it came together from the contest for 'The Catalyst'.

- They discuss Mike's first introduction to music; the first album he became obsessed with was 'Licensed to Ill' by Beastie Boys. He tried to ask for the Cypress Hill debut album for Christmas and he didn't get it. So he asked his mom and she said she didn't get it because of the names of the songs being so extreme - 'Pigs', 'How I Could Just Kill A Man', 'Hand On The Pump', 'Hole In The Head', etc, so Mike found a way to get the album the very next day after that conversation. 

- Rick asks Mike how he became a musician after this period of time - did he want to make beats, did he want to rap, etc. Mike explained he was taught piano from an early age but loved rap. He won a songwriting contest his piano teacher did so he told his teacher he wanted to write more like rap songs, so he wanted to write blues & jazz in her class. 

- Mike discussed how he learned how to use gear when songwriting and discussed his little group 'North Coast Killaz'. The idea was to just make his friends laugh.

- Songwriting for early Linkin Park sessions is discussed. Rick asked Mike around 'Minutes To Midnight' if he had ever written a song with just an instrument (like piano) and vocals as the band usually didn't write that way. Mike said actually yeah, some of our biggest songs like 'In The End' and 'Breaking The Habit', but usually no, we don't write that way at all. The band was much more comfortable writing the instrumentals first and then the vocals, but the entire songwriting process changed with Rick and MTM. Mike learned to make songs without having a fully produced instrumental before he wrote vocals.

- Mike talked about writing with Tom Morello. The band didn't end up with much material from the sessions with him but Mike's main takeaway was picking Tom's brain about songwriting and how he used gear - they had some great conversations about writing tracks. Tom explained specifically how he uses gear he's super familiar with to achieve new sounds.

- Mike talks about how he learned how to play guitar. He had a friend that taught him some Led Zeppelin riffs but Mike's main reason for learning guitar was just because Linkin Park needed a second guitar player on stage and the riffs for LP weren't hard to play.

- Rick asks Mike how Linkin Park started. Mike explains Mark and Xero, how they had four real songs on their demo, etc. Cool story about Mike and Mark sending the tape to Immortal Records who had Korn and Incubus, and the label couldn't believe it was just two guys in the band, they were really, really surprised the drums were all sampled, etc. Mike and Mark switched off on instruments like guitar, bass, etc. They told Mike to get a full band together ASAP and play shows, to get in a studio and record, and then come back to talk to the label because they liked the songs. Mike jokes that the guy NOW says Xero never came back to show him more songs, but Mike says "yeah, we actually did send him more demos but he just wasn't interested in us anymore. We would have killed to get on that label so we did send them a lot of demos."

- He talks about his relationship with Mark - they became friends at 12 years old. Mike explains the reason Mark left Xero was because he was going to get a stomach ulcer from playing live - he had panic attacks playing in front of people, he couldn't get up on stage in front of people, he would freak out at the monitor engineer every time they played so he'd piss off the guy in charge of the sound. He was so panicked about playing live. He did understand it was not a good fit for him to be in the band. He loves music a lot and that's what lead him into his music management role now with System of a Down, Alice in Chains, Deftones, etc. 

- Mike tells the story of being introduced to Brad. Brad was the first of the current members of the band to join Xero. He was Mark's next door neighbor... looking out Mark's window, Brad was right next to him. Mike didn't know Brad well in high school because hip hop and metal kids didn't co-mingle. But Mark was in a band with Brad before that. Mark shared metal with Mike, Mike shared hip hop with him. He confirms for the first time that Mark was in The Pricks with Brad, before Relative Degree. Relative Degree overlapped time-wise with Xero because Mark and Mike wrote "on the side" since Mark was already in a band with Brad.

- The rest of the band - Brad was at UCLA with Dave, Mike was at ArtCenter with Joe, Rob was at a neighboring high school. And then the story of Jeff and Scott finding Chester after they tried out a lot of other singers. It was very obvious Chester was the best fit. The direction of the sound was clear to the band pretty much as soon as they started writing together.

- Mike explains the process behind them finding the Hybrid Theory 20 demos and videos. He loves 'She Couldn't'. Discusses the gear used when making it and loves the line "you are not alone", which turned out to be the identity of the band for the next five or six years - the idea was just there from the beginning. The band were naturally not great friends, but they'd geek out about music because they loved all the creative aspects of music together.

- Chester did not fit in right away with the band. He was messing around with drugs, and Rob was totally straight edge so they didn't know if that'd be an issue for one, but also because his personality was a lot different than the band's. They wanted to get to know him first as a person before they could commit to him. "We were really different, but we were really cool. We really like each other. I think we're fine." Rick says having outliers working together really creates something intense musically. The band was polar opposites in a lot of ways and friction but worked really well together - they drew from a lot of different areas. Brad loved the music by Britney Spears, for example, so they drew from a lot of different areas. He said they had to experiment with their relationships, how Brad and Joe interacted together versus how Brad and Chester interacted together. 

- Mike discusses how the band figured out how to play songs live. Rick says it was the first group he's ever worked with where all of the music was made virtually and not in a traditional band setting (like recording together in one room). So Rick said LP didn't figure out specific parts and instruments for people until they went to rehearse to perform live. Mike thought it was bsolutely crazy that Tom Morello told him Rage Against the Machine would jam in a room for hours together, then they'd assemble it with a producer and Zach would rap over it a month later and there was their album. Mike said his mindset wanted to take a musical piece and change/edit/produce it a million different ways himself... experimenting with it before committing to how it should sound.

- When LP would play a song live, the fans wanted to hear the album version. If the band changed how they played it, the reaction was less from the crowd. At a certain point when everyone had heard the song one way for so long, the band and fans both liked it enough that way that they both enjoyed LP playing it a new way, so LP would add new bridges, etc to songs on stage.

- Mike considers 'Dropped Frames' like kind of mixtape-style releases. He had over 100 songs and wanted to release them in a trilogy. Mike was concerned that maybe some of those instrumental songs had portions that could be parts of bigger songs, but he was fine with releasing them. 

- He loves the song 'Drivers License' by Olivia Rodrigo.

- Rick asks about Hybrid Theory - Mike says the album had five singles but Chester would say that it actually had six. 

Mike spoke to Input Magazine about releasing 'Happy Endings' with his current NFT fascination, and more. Check out the full interview here.

Some highlights:

How did you get into NFTs?

"I’ve been watching NFTs for a while. Linkin Park have like a VC arm, and a few years ago we did a bunch of meetings with different companies about investment and the idea of creating blockchain-related merchandise. And I was like, “I feel like we’re ready for it. But fans aren’t ready for it. Nobody’s going to buy it.” So we just stayed away from it. And it wasn’t until this year when I was like, “Oh, people are ready.” Regular people really are collecting this stuff. And it’s not just a couple of billionaires getting involved."

And since you're kind of a household name, I presume people don't think that you're going to be an “opportunist crooked jerk” about this.

I hope not! I’ve tried music and visual as an NFT. I've tried just visual; I’ve tried GIFs. Those have all performed differently. I’ve yet to do one that’s just the music NFT, like a full track beginning to end, one of one. That’ll be soon. I’ll do that and see how it goes.

So tell me about the sale of the NFTs of “Happy Endings.” What was the price range for those 10?

"I don't quite know right now, but I can guess. So here’s the way it worked: I had already put up a couple things on Zora, and I have this I had this single called “Happy Endings” coming out. It’s basically like a pop single. So we’re all ramped up for this big release. And I said to management, “I want to debut it with an NFT,” and they’re like, “You’re crazy. How in the world are we going to make that happen?” My attitude is like, “I know the timeline’s short, but we can work it out.” And that's what we did.

The highest bid was five Wrapped Ethereum [around $8,000]. The lowest was a couple hundred dollars. And as soon as the initial sales were over, I said, “Surprise, everybody who owns one as of tomorrow is going to get a signed, one-of-10 print of the art. So you have 24 hours if you want to resell it. But whoever owns it at this time tomorrow gets a print.” I kind of expected somebody to go to the person who only spent 200 bucks and be like, “I will give you $15,000 for that NFT that you spent 200 bucks on.” I expected it to change hands. And it didn’t change hands."

What do you ascribe that to?

"I think the people who bought them were legit fans."

Mike did an interview with Kevan Kenney from Radio.com on February 25th and we're here to recap it for you! Check out the full 25 minute video here.
 

- Mike listens to new music by jumping on streaming platforms and checking out new releases, but also follows playlists of artists that typically have around 5,000 followers~ who are releasing new music. 

- He's talked to Brevin Kim about collaborating; he found them on Pigeons & Planes which he follows. Jacob, the founder of P&P is really involved with Brevin Kim but didn't want to really bother Mike about them but Mike wanted to talk to them.

- When a new collaborator/artist is a super big fan of LP, it's an uncomfortable situation for Mike. He's had sessions where the artists can't get over who he is and it's weird. Sometimes the artists are able to get over it, but sometimes they can't.

- He has been in a phase of "research and development." The entire afternoon after he streams on Twitch is composed of writing new songs (for himself, or with someone else). "I've got a couple of other things I'm not really ready to talk about yet."

- "The idea of just going out there with one song and knowing that if this song does well, if the fans like it, I've got other songs that I can start to mold into an album. I've got other things and ideas that I can develop to follow it up with. And I'm ready to go regardless. It's a matter of keeping your tools sharp. I'm in here every day, everything is always sharp."

- Mike says he is like a "creative director" of the Hybrid Theory 20 remix project. The label is who pitched the idea to him but he wasn't big on the project until artists like 100 gecs started getting tossed around. He thought at first that just remixing more Hybrid Theory songs was not interesting since the band had already done Reanimation. "We are not treading familiar territory at all by doing a 100 gecs remix." He said, "We have a few things. It's not fully formed yet, but there is some other stuff coming together." And finally about 'Crawling' remix: "In terms of the energy of the song, we'll try to go small. Delicate and introverted. I imagine it with a female singer. We've never really done that, so we'll see what happens."

- "The support on 'Happy Endings' has been spectacular. I had written it with a couple of friends, one of them Upsahl. It wasn't like we made it and said, "Let's put this out!" We made it and it just sat on a hard drive. A little while later a couple of other people had heard it and they were like, "Yo, what is that song? It's so good." And I was like, "Oh! I forgot about that song." And then it ended up being other people who were like, "Put out this song." Originally Iann was not on it, it was Sam and Pete." Upsahl was introduced to Mike by Sam and Pete since they had been writing with Upsahl already. Someone else had already mentioned Upsahl to Mike around that time so he was very interested in getting a collaboration going.

13 hours ago, BladedChild said:

Yeah obviously they would have to agree with it 

Its a whole thing, its just sad these files and stuff are just sitting somewhere untouched, like whats the harm in at least selling them?

You could apply that same question to every single unreleased track/demo/remix in LP's catalog. The band wants to be in control of what's out there and they don't want every single thing out, they want this amount of demos, etc.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/928046533?t=0h16m10s
 

"I was on a Zoom with UPSAHL, and Sam, and Pete again. We're writing some more stuff and we'll see how that goes."

You have to get the band on board with an idea like that. Why would LP want to release them now if they skipped them intentionally for HT20?

1 million streams for Happy Endings on Spotify already.

Solo album incoming, most likely.

Hey everyone, we are looking for some help from people who have collected live audio & video over the years. In 2006, Fort Minor performed 4 songs for MTV Overdrive. For years, the videos worked, downloads were shared on LPTimes, etc as you can see by their news posts. In fact, the videos worked until even around the 'One More Light' era. For whatever reason, we never got around to trying to upload the videos until later.

We started a thread in November 2019 about this, trying to get it solved in 2020, but we've had no luck. The issue at hand is that the video files are looking for the DRM on the MTV server, which is no longer there. Maybe there is a way to crack the DRM on the videos to get them to play, so we can upload them to YouTube for everyone.

Or maybe you are someone that downloaded the files in 2006 and they still play on your computer. If that is you, or you have any ideas how to get the videos to play... let us know! 

To date, we have had no luck on these four files. So we're turning to you guys!

Here is the audio rip of the videos that we have, which we just uploaded to YouTube:

.WMV video download (DRM locked)

Thanks in advance for any help!

5 hours ago, Coizu said:

Because those contests always high quality results, lol. Does someone remember a single remix that was the result of one of those contests?

This is the only one I loved.

Otherwise, let Mike remix the stuff.

4 hours ago, YRQRM0 said:

Like I said in the other thread, I don't expect serious purpose-driven work from Mike for a while. I feel like he's just kinda explored a lot of ground and now is just having fun. I'll still enjoy the music for what it is, and hopefully a project full of passion and experimentation is still in the future. 

Plot twist - what if the serious, purpose-driven work is with LP right now? No matter when they release an album - 2021, 2022, 2023, etc... it's going to be something they've all 5 heavily invested in and put an incredible amount of work into because it's the first album without Chester. If they do decide to release their music they've been making, it's likely going to be something really great... like it could be ATS-level great. Albums like LT, THP, and OML haven't had a full-band investment like MTM and ATS had. We might really see something tremendous come from LP on the next album. Maybe his solo stuff is what's more laid back, care free, etc. LP has been writing for a while so maybe this is the result of what happens when LP is hunkered down on something and Mike is also at the same time doing a million things - Twitch streaming daily, ShinodaProduceMe, all these collabs with other artists, solo songs, Dropped Frames, etc.

Following January's remix of 'One Step Closer' by 100 Gecs, Mike has confirmed in his interview with The Needle Drop that more remixes of Hybrid Theory songs are on the way.

Talking to The Needle Drop, Mike explained that he was having conversations with Warner, who brought the idea up to him to have artists do Reanimation-style remixes to continue the celebration of Hybrid Theory 20 this year. Mike liked the idea but wanted artists who were super creative and not artists who would just make some generic pop remixes of the album's songs.

Along with 100 Gecs, Mike mentioned that he'd been having conversations about umru, Kero Kero Bonito, and Blood Orange. He added that some of the remixes worked out while others didn't, so we will have to see what Linkin Park ends up releasing.

In addition, Mike seems to have been working on a 'Papercut' remix himself, judging by the folders on his Twitch stream. Thanks to the keen-eyed PeppePark for that one. Hopefully we get that remix too!

Stay tuned for more information, as it's we are slowly approaching two months since the 'One Step Closer' remix... hopefully more are coming shortly.

Is it really titled Dave Sbeat or is it a typo by LP and it's Dave's Beat?

Remember everything Mike usually says about music is pretty calculated. When he said "which of these 3 ideas do you like better?", he was already making Open Door and mashing them up, lol. He knew he was going to release a demo (& song). So if he's saying this now, he's probably already got the album under way and the label knows. Or when he was doing the Post Traumatic EP, he said if fans liked the music he'd make more, or something to that extent. Well then he says months later he had like 6+ songs he wanted to release on January 1, 2018 for everyone... so, he isn't fooling us, ha. He probably already has the album somewhat structured and is getting it ready. But the lack of enthusiasm about it is noted... he's definitely been down on himself (in this case, meaning he's down on RELEASING music) lately. 

That's more cringy than anything we have ever done on LPLive lmao. My goodness. 

Is a new Mike Shinoda album now in the works?

Following his comments on Twitch on February 18 about a new album, Mike once again on the 22nd mentioned a new album in response to fan questions.
 

He said, "You're asking, "If we promote the hell out of #HappyEndings and get it working, then do we get an album?" The answer is probably... I think that's the equation. The equation is - if the song works, then I make more songs. Ok? I've got some stuff and I'm still writing more stuff. Here's the deal then. You guys spread the word and promote the shit out of #HappyEndings, get it to people, get it happening and get it to people who don't listen to me... if people start streaming the song, then we can go."

Essentially... if 'Happy Endings' does well, Mike is interested in releasing an album.

This was a follow up to last week when he explained, "I'm not working on a new album, no, but I have music. Does that make sense? I make stuff all the time, I've made some things. And if the song were to do well, I could very easily see organizing some of the things I've been making and putting it out as an album. It sounds like you guys want more rapping. What do you guys want? What kind of album should I make if I did that? More rapping? A lot of people said more rapping. I don't like "making something like a thing", but, I could make a bunch of new songs with the Fort Minor drum pieces and things like that. I don't really WANT to do that but it's a possibility. But I've got stuff, I could do it."

Mike also mentioned in his interview with The Needle Drop that someone who works with his music publishing influenced him to finish and release 'Happy Endings'.

It sounds like Mike is in the right mindset to start putting together his new songs to potentially form an album. What do you think?

Mike just talked about specific artists they asked to do remixes in the interview a few days ago - he said some of it worked and some didn't but there are more remixes on the way.

They didn't spend much time rehearsing for the 2014 world tour as evidenced by the amount of new songs they played. LP probably realized they didn't play many new songs on the LT and THP world tours, so they started rehearsing for the OML tour in February 2017, quite a few months before the tour actually even started. Then we see what happened, they debuted almost the entire album right away. Pretty great. OML tour sets were very good.