Talking about different, Beck’s new album is sheet music. “Singer/songwriter Beck is coming out with a new album in December, but it isn’t being released in MP3, CD or vinyl form. Instead, it will be a book of sheet music in which the buyer can play his or her own version of the 20 new songs. Called Beck Hansen’s Song Reader, an announcement on his website describes it as “an experiment in what an album can be at the end of 2012,” and says that, “Bringing them to life depends on you.”

On August 3, 1987, Def Leppard put out an album that took three years, three producers and an estimated $5 million to complete. Oh, and their drummer lost his arm. Behold, the miraculous story of “Hysteria.” (Billboard)

Billboard gives a breakdown of each track as Def Leppard, ‘Hysteria’ turns 25, when rock ruled the world. Even though pop is on the top of charts today, still, very few records deliver single after single. But Hysteria did, and the band grew in popularity after each single released. Read more here.

Surprisingly two indie bands are expected to land in the top 10 Billboard Album Charts. Passion Pit and The Gaslight Anthem are expected to sell nearly 30,000 copies of their new albums. These hardworking indie bands won’t get the #1 spot though, in fact, the top slot will either go to Nas or Zac Brown Band.

iTunes our favorite destination for buying music will reportedly go over a major overhaul by the end of the year. Apple representatives, according to Bloomberg – whose identities have been kept anonymous – mentioned several problems of the current iTunes that will be fixed in the new version. Together with introducing iPhone 5 and Apple iTV, Apple is going to bring the “largest changes to the world’s biggest music store since its 2003 debut,” the sources said. While iTunes brought in $1.9 billion for Apple only in the last quarter, Spotify remains the largest library of songs of any streaming service with 16 million tracks. Regardless, iTunes remains ahead of Spotify, having made available to users, 28 million songs and 45,000 movies available. Whether iTunes creates a subscription service is in speculation.

As of now, Justin Bieber’s new album is looking to be a bust as the first week numbers are lower than expected. This is what showbiz says:

Justin Bieber’s “Believe” will be the highest first week sales of the year so far when it’s all counted. But it will also be at least 50,000 copies fewer than originally predicted. Right now, “Believe” is looking like it sold 370,000 copies–or less. This is way off the 420,00 copies hoped for. But Bieber’s TV special was a bust. And then his numbers on amazon.com significantly trailed off over the weekend. Amazon is now selling a downloadable version of the album for $4.99– a bad sign, as Madonna herself could tell us. The fact is, Bieber is not moving CDs digitally or physically in big numbers a week after “Believe” was made available. The amount of publicity he’s engendered simply is not resulting in sales, or even airplay. Given that this is particularly fruitful moment for Top 40 and pop–with “Someone I Used to Know,” “Call Me Maybe.” “What Makes You Beautiful,” and “Payphone” all full of good melodies and hooks–Bieber is not a factor. So hold on–because for once, substance may triumph over hype. And that will be a rude awakening. (Showbiz411)