September 08, 2003
Warren Zevon dies
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I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook's Going to get himself a big dish of beef chow mein Werewolves of LondonIf you hear him howling around your kitchen door
Better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again
Werewolves of LondonHe's the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair
Better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim
I'd like to meet his tailor
Werewolves of LondonWell, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen
Doing the Werewolves of London
I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the Queen
Doing the Werewolves of LondonI saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's
His hair was perfect
Werewolves of London
Draw blood
August 25, 2003
Mildly impressed by eMusic
I just signed up for EMusic. Unlike the iTunes Music Store, which costs 99 cents per download, this service offers a $10/month all-you-can-eat subscription buffet -- with MP3s that have no copy restrictions, as far as I can tell. They're offering 50 free downloads to new subscribers.
I'm mildly impressed so far. But it's still a far cry from the universal jukebox (a la Napster) that this space requires. My searches for artist after artist come up empty, thanks to the music labels' refusal to sign on. They did have lots of Poncho Sanchez, Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk. But:
No Dave Alvin, Blasters or the Knitters. No the Cure, Robert Miles, Louise Goffin or Sergio Mendes. I tried Ben Folds and eMusic suggested Beck instead. No Morcheeba (would I like to try Air?). No Barenaked Ladies (how about the Goo Goo Dolls?). No Lucinda Williams (maybe Tom Waits?). No Dido (how about Moby instead?).
The record labels need to get their digital distribution act together.
Joe said:
I use eMusic a ton... but I have really strange tastes that tend to the more independent labels... it is a veritable utopia for the likes of me. Hopefully services will be able to make everyone happy... eventually...
the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow said:
the best thing EMusic is good for is mining undiscovered gems, i.e. music you are not familer with. once you find something you like, if you post message on their message board, other users will chime in with "for more like this, see this".
if you want to be spoon fed from the majors and what you know from the radio station play lists, emusic then is not likely for you.
if you want to discover music from indedpendent lables you don't know about then emusic is for you. but the operatate word is "dig" and "discover".
if you spend the time there on your own or interacting with emusic's active message board community in The Process you'll be Richly Rewarded.
i have,
geoff
August 20, 2003
Buyers aren't flocking to BuyMusic
Steve Crandall takes an early look at BuyMusic.com's entry into the music downloading business. It isn't pretty.
Don'tBuyMusic.com is back
Don'tBuyMusic.com, a site that parodies BuyMusic.com, is back online, hours after Wired News carried a story today reporting that it had pulled the plug.
Downloads, EPs, singles conspiring to kill the album format
MTV.com: "The days of releasing an album with 17 or 18 cuts are over," said Charles Goldstuck, president and CEO of the RCA Music Group, home to the Strokes, Christina Aguilera and Foo Fighters. Thanks to Jenny for this pointer, too.
anthony said:
Great. That's the first step, I guess. Now all the music industry has to figure out is what the next step is. Here's a hint... it should be affordable, hassle-free, and portable.
July 30, 2003
Industry needs to grow online music
The San Jose Merc's Dawn C. Chmielewski reports from the Plug.IN digital music conference in New York: Industry key to growth of online music, exec says.
July 29, 2003
RIAA picks a political veteran as new CEO
Katie Dean of Wired News has the story on the music recording industry's selection of a new CEO: Mitch Bainwol, former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, will take the reins in September.
July 23, 2003
A new look for Pho
The Pho list, which discusses the intersection of art and commerce, has redesigned its home page and begun to list weblogs kept by its members.
New Music Download Service Launches
PC owners got a new Internet music download site Tuesday, one boasting the cheapest per-song rates but carrying many of the restrictions that have stymied rival music services. ...Different songs on BuyMusic have different restrictions for how often they may be burned onto CDs or copied to other PCs or portable music devices. They can all be burned onto CDs at least once. ...
July 21, 2003
Play Your Tunes Away From Home
Katie Dean in Wired News looks at Muse.Net, which lets you access your digital music collection from any computer.
July 20, 2003
Can albums survive the Net?
Jon Pareles in the Sunday NY Times: Can music albums survive the Internet?
July 10, 2003
Webcasters threaten to sue RIAA
From Wednesday's CNET News.com: Webcasters threaten to sue RIAA.
July 08, 2003
Making a Sonic PurČe From Pop Snippets
NY Times: How to Make a Sonic PurČe From Pop Snippets. Matthew Mirapaul, an online friend and freelancer, looks at a new interactive program that retrieves Internet song files, slices off audio snippets and blends them into sonic collages.
June 19, 2003
Will iTunes lead to less creativity?
Salon: ITunes -- The I Doesn't Stand for Innovation. In which the author argues that as songs are increasingly sold one by one online, the musical creativity and risk-taking associated with the album format will decline.
By the way, Wired News keeps saying "registration required" for Salon articles. Wrong. Subscription required.
June 18, 2003
iPod Muzak isn't same old song
Wired News: Apple's iPod is changing the market for canned music in business establishments. Entrepreneurs are using the device to play cutting-edge electronica where they once might have turned to bland elevator fare.
In other Wired News news, Tony Long has a dead-on commentary about why QuesTec, the tool designed to give baseball a uniform strike zone, is a bad idea -- bad for umpires and, ultimately, bad for the game.
June 14, 2003
Look to the iPod, music labels
Jimmy Guterman's latest Media Notes in Business 2.0: Digital Music's Windows Desktop. iTunes distribution deals are nice, but they're nothing compared with iPod bundling arrangements.
June 12, 2003
Digital Music Hits the Road
From today's NY Times Circuits section: Digital Music Hits the Road. Excerpt:
Even the smallest flash-memory MP3 players can hold an hour or two of music, and hard-drive-based players like the Archos Jukebox or the Apple iPod can hold thousands of songs. A couple of roadworthy playlists could save me the frustration (and bad habit) of fiddling with the radio or fishing around for the right Talking Heads album while driving. I thought it would be great to hook up my portable MP3 jukebox player to a car stereo on my next long trip.Looking for options, I found plenty. There are all kinds of devices, including cassette adapters that connect the MP3 player to (and allow it to play through) the car's tape deck, and new CD players that can spin a disc with several hours of MP3's as you drive along. ...
June 08, 2003
Mourning the death of radio
NY Times: Driving Down the Highway, Mourning the Death of American Radio. Excerpt:
Corporate radio's treatment of the Dixie Chicks argues against those who wish to remove all remaining federal limits on corporate ownership ó not just of radio, but of television as well. The dangers posed by concentrated ownership go beyond news and censorship issues, to the heart of popular culture itself. By standardizing music and voices around the country, radio is slowly killing off local musical cultures, along with the diverse bodies of music that enriched the national popular culture.
May 27, 2003
Record labels not into digital distribution
Wired News: Industry watchers say the decision by Sony and UMG to sell their service Pressplay to Roxio indicates that the major labels are turning away from distributing music online. By letting someone else "own the highway," they can still reap some of the profits.
May 16, 2003
Why the RIAA loves tech
RIAA chief Hilary Rosen has a piece in Business 2.0: Why the Recording Industry Loves Tech. Forget what you've heard -- the RIAA believes technology holds the key to music's future. All you have to do is give that future a chance.
May 05, 2003
Clear Channel sells concert CDs on the spot
NY Times: Clear Channel Communications, the radio broadcasting and concert promotion giant, plans to introduce a venture today that will sell live recordings on compact disc within five minutes of a show's conclusion. The venture, Instant Live, will enable a band's still-sweating fans to leave with a musical souvenir instead of say, a pricey T-shirt or a glossy program.
May 02, 2003
Buzz over iTunes Store
Wired News: Apple's new online music store is a home run with customers: Opening-day downloads rival six months' worth of legal downloads from all the competing services. But it's still in its early days with holes in its catalog and limitations on song sharing.
May 01, 2003
99 cents a song: too high?
Wired News: Apple CEO Steve Jobs made headlines this week when he unveiled a sleek music download service that charges users 99 cents a song. But some experts say that's just not cheap enough to lure away users from free peer-to-peer file-trading networks.
True, but to many people, even 50 cents a song may be too high if they can get them for free. 99 cents for a song with no strings attached, which you can keep forever, is a bargain. I plan to climb aboard the iTunes Music Store bandwagon later today.
April 29, 2003
More on Apple's music store
Jon Fortt has an overview in the San Jose Merc of Apple's launch of an online music store. Excerpt:
``These services treat you like a criminal,'' [Steve] Jobs said of his competition, the existing subscription online music services. ``We think subscriptions are the wrong path,'' he said, and predicted that people prefer to buy, not rent, music.Rob Reid, founder and chairman of San Francisco rival Listen.com, disagreed. He said that although Listen.com's Rhapsody service has offered CD burning for six months, 87 percent of users prefer to listen to music on their computers under Rhapsody's $9.95 monthly subscription.
It'll be fascinating to see who's right.
April 28, 2003
The iTunes Music Store
Here's more on Apple's new iTunes Music Store.
The DRM issues are interesting here. The page says:
In a nutshell, you can play your music on up to three computers, enjoy unlimited synching with your iPods, burn unlimited CDs of individual songs, and burn unchanged playlists up to 10 times each.
And this:
One of the first things youíll notice about the music is the stunning sound quality. In fact the sound was so good that audiophiles who beta tested the iTunes Music Store were astonished to learn they were listening to 128 kbps sound files. The secret? Itís the new AAC format, which combines sound quality that rivals CDs with smaller files sizes (compared to MP3s). So not only do the songs take up less space on your hard disk, they can be downloaded faster, too.
I'll be interested in hearing users' reactions after they've used the new service. I'll try downloading iTunes4 in the next day or so and give it a whirl. Can't tell if these downloaded songs will work only in an iPod or if they'll work with MP3 players as well, which seems unlikely given the new format.
Later: Joi Ito shares his iTunes Music Store buying experience and the DRM factor.
Market for DVD singles expanding
NY Times: Music labels -- not the movie studios -- are pushing a new market for DVD singles.
DVD singles ó digital videodiscs that typically include two music videos along with extra features ó represent a market that is just beginning to be charted by the music business. Some record labels ó in an industry suffering a two-year sales slump ó hope that the new format can become the modern-day successor to the vinyl 45 single. Retailers, however, are unsure whether to place them in video or audio departments, in part because there is no standard packaging.
April 27, 2003
Apple's pay music service
NY Times: Apple Computer plans on Monday to introduce a digital music service, according to industry analysts. It is a move that thrusts the company into the middle of a contentious and technologically challenging area of digital commerce.
April 22, 2003
Can Apple corner the music market?
Wired News: Can Apple corner the music market? The rumored online service would sell Mac users songs from top record labels and integrate seamlessly with iPod players and iTunes software, insiders say. Record execs swoon over another feature: The service -- expected to be unveiled next week -- would pay royalties to troubled music biz.
April 21, 2003
Listen.com to Become Part of Real
InternetNews.com: RealNetworks makes its move in the online music scene with a $36 million cash and stock acquisition of Listen.com.
April 04, 2003
March 28, 2003
Website offers new view of music
BBC News: A website that acts as your personal music adviser has been set up by a student at Britain's University of Southampton.
February 24, 2003
Grammys: The Norah Express
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I discovered her last summer and immediately fell in love with her incredible, silky-voiced stylings. Thought she only appealed to the over-30 set, though, so I was surprised to see the Norah Jones tsumani sweep through this evening's Grammys. (Though, by the look of the crowd, was there anybody there under 30?) Now, if they'd only cut out the flabby, just-lying-there 90-minute mid-section, they might have had a decent show. But it was worth staying up to see Bruce, Elvis, Little Stevie and Dave Grohl let it rip on the Clash's London Calling. Damn, that was something. As was the Simon-Garfunkel reunion. Maybe I'll post the segments online some day, cease-and-desist letters notwithstanding.
As for Eminem, I still don't get it.
February 21, 2003
Bloggers' albums of the year
Blogcritics.org -- "a sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, and technology" (gotta like that description; you can see the contributors in the left hand nav) -- has named its Albums of the Year in advance of the Grammys' dreary affair Sunday night. Blogcritics' top 10 albums picks:
1) Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco
2) Come Away With Me by Norah Jones
3) Sea Change by Beck
4) Turn on the Bright Lights by Interpol
5) The Rising by Bruce Springsteen (more here, here)
6) A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay
7) When I Was Cruel by Elvis Costello
8) () by Sigur Ros
9) Once More, with Feeling - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
10) Murray Street by Sonic Youth
Not a bad list. Actually, damn good. More of their music award choices, as well as some interviews, here.
