07 Monday Jul 2008
Posted in Music
A number of music sites have been reporting on Thom Yorke’s classical dabbling including Filter-Mag.com. Unlike Greenwood’s full orchestral score of There will Be Blood, Thom’s effort is only a contribution of a group of classical remixes. With Thom and Jonny having gone all classical, and the experimentalism of Radiohead what are the chances of a full ‘classical’ Radiohead album?
03 Thursday Jul 2008
Posted in Music, Technology
The BPI (formerly British Phonographic Industry) along with Virgin Media have started getting tough with people they believe are downloading illegally. Virgin Media according to BBC News have sent out 800 letters to people they believe are illegally downloading warning them that they may face being disconnected and possibly legal action. This is probably a step up on the BPI’s RIAA like campaign and probably to help apply pressure with the negotiations with ISPs about dealing with illegal downloading of music (previous blog here). The downloading information has been provided by the BPI to Virgin Media according the BPI’s new page (here) – interesting given that the similar approach by the RIAA is coming under increasing legal questioning in the US.
The chief executive of the BPI told the BBC that the BPI in very bullish terms that if necessary the BPI will take the ISPs to court and win, including ISPs who will not participate in their actions such as Carphone Warehouse. This is also very reminiscent of the RIAA’s early campaign. It seems to me that the BPI have not looked at the way the US litigation for the RIAA is going which has resulted in both counter cases, a lot of embarrassing revelations about how the cases have been built. Not to mention that a number of US record executives and artists have been publicly disagreeing with the RIAA.
Interviews with a few of those affected so far suggests that Virgin Media may stand to lose subscribers as the perceived invasion of digital privacy talks hold, plus the ISP dictating how people can use the service that they’re paying for.
24 Tuesday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
According to the Telegraph, Amazon MP3 is not too far away from arriving in the UK (see article here). It has been suggested that the service will be made available before the last three months of the year. This will certainly put pressure on iTunes current market lead. At the moment there is no word from Amazon.co.uk.
23 Monday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
It would seem that Metallica’s press agency aren’t very with it. In an interesting set of articles on Wired have documented the farce of trying to suppress album views after having invited music journalists to a pre-release listening party. If you invite a journalist to hear a new album, particularly from a group as big as Metallica they’re bound to write about it – it’s their job after all. But it would seem that the US agency assumed that they wouldn’t, and then tried to suppress the articles by demanding the magazines and blogs remove their reviews.
When the band heard about this they weren’t too happy, and have demanded that the situation be rectified, so now reviews are becoming available.
The overview article can be found at Pasture Of Muppets: Inside the Metallica Reviews Scandal | Listening Post from Wired.com and it has links to earlier items as the whole mess unrolled.
20 Friday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
According to the NME (here) Mercury Rev’s next album will be released as a free download in September. The album to be called ‘Snowflake Midnight’ will released on 29th September. In addition to this if you’re registered on Mercury Rev’s mailing list you will get access to an additional companion album called ‘Strange Attractor’.
According to the NME the two albums will showcase the more electronica side of the the bands music.
Mercury Rev’s site – http://www.mercuryrev.com/, their MySpace site – http://www.myspace.com/mercuryrevmusic.
18 Wednesday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
Prince, who is well known for being fairly aggressive with take down notices for anything on the web that is not officially sanctioned by himself. However at the Coachella festival the purple one performed a cover of Radiohead’s Creep. Videos of this performance found their way onto YouTube and other web sites, Prince predictably reacted with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and demanded that the videos be taken down. However Prince does not own the rights to the song they reside with the writers, i.e. Radiohead and as a result he doesn’t have the right to issue the takedown notices. The fun begins as Thom Yorke when told about what had been happening told reporters that he should stop, its their song.
Article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on the subject and CNN’s report here.
18 Wednesday Jun 2008
Posted in Music, Technology
Fergal Sharkey (yes the Fergal Sharkey of the Undertones and singer of Teenage Kicks) has blogged on the Guardian website about recent research to try and identify how the illegal music download issue maybe resolved, The article can be seen ay Illegal downloads – guardian.co.uk.
16 Monday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
The hearya blog has got 5 songs from Matthew Ryan performed in a really stripped down form (guitar and harmonica) featuring tracks from the last couple of albums. Go check it out at – HearYa Live Session 20: Matthew Ryan at HearYa – Indie Music Blog
11 Wednesday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
11 Wednesday Jun 2008
Posted in Music
Jem has finally announced here follow up to 2004’s Finally Woken album. Finally Woken with its Dido-esque styling is probably best known for the albums’ title track and ‘They’ along with the song Madonna recorded ‘Nothing Fails’ which appeared on the American Life album.
The new album ‘Down To Earth’ is to be released in September, with an initial song (Down To Earth) from it appearing on soundtrack to the current Sex In The City film soundtrack.
website – http://www.jem-music.net/
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