Since ‘Having a Band Website in 2015 Is Pointless,’ Tanlines Just Made Theirs Into Netflix

On Tuesday morning, Brooklyn duo Tanlines unveiled a new official website that looks, a bit confusingly at first, exactly like the Netflix website. And we mean exactly, from the all-caps red font in the upper left-hand corner that read “Tanlines” instead of “Netflix” to the simple, square login face in the upper right-hand corner to categories like “Recently Watched” (which, in this case, clicked away to their forthcoming album, Highlights, out May 19 via True Panther) and “Top Picks for You” (which leads to the YouTube video for its ebullient first single, “Slipping Away”). 

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“Having a band website in 2015 is kind of pointless,” percussionist Jesse Cohen tells Billboard. “If someone wants to know when we’re playing or what we’re doing they can get that information from social media or sites like Songkick, but you still have to have [an official website]. I was thinking about how we could make something relevant to how we actually use the internet, and I was thinking about how much time we spend on the menu page for Netflix trying to figure out what movie to watch.” 

Tanlines’ new site, which takes users to Netflix after clicking one of the film icons on the homepage, was initially conceived by Highlights graphic designer Teddy Blanks; the final version was built out by the in-house web design team at Beggars Group. Cohen adds that the category titles referred to the album itself: “Great Second Acts,” for example, which was populated with “comeback movies” like John Travolta‘s return to the screen in Pulp Fiction, refers to the fact that it’s their second album. “We picked dark comedies and light dramas,” says Cohen, “which are reflective of our style.” 

Though the film descriptions were taken from Netflix, Tanlines vocalist Eric Emm wrote descriptions for the musical items (e.g. for their new single “Invisible Ways,” Emm writes, “Stuck in Pittsburgh with no computer and no sunlight, the band reverted to an old-fashioned approach: writing on guitar and drums”). 

So far, the video streaming behemoth has not contacted the duo about their “Netflix tribute,” Cohen calls it. “Honestly I haven’t thought that much about that aspect of this,” he says. “Half the links point you to sign up for Netflix. I would say that if they do [reach out], it’s a good sign it’s getting our into the world.”