10 Friday Aug 2007
Posted in Music, Technology
According to engadget Universal is going to follow EMI’s lead and provide a DRM free offering! The only catch is that it wont be available through the biggest online music store – iTunes as Universal continue their childish (particularly as iTunes is currently far larger than any other player in the space)bickering with iTunes.
Engadget storey : Link to Universal to test DRM-free music sales, snubs iTunes
08 Wednesday Aug 2007
Posted in Music, Technology
According to the NME there is a nasty little virus out there in the wild now that will trash any MP3 files that finds (Link to NME article) . Is this the RIAA starting to play below the belt?
06 Monday Aug 2007
Posted in Music
According to this (Link to Virgin Megastores Post US-Based Quarterly Increases — Digital Music News) Digital Music News article Virgin have posted an improvement of 9% for music sales. Given that they can’t have pushed up prices by 9% (if anything the likes of CD-Wow are forcing retail prices down), I can only read that CD sales aren’t all doom and gloom like the RIAA would like to paint.
25 Wednesday Jul 2007
Posted in Music
Many will be going, who, what to the subject of an article on David & David that has been written for Crawdaddy (here). However, you may be more interested if I was to say that one of the David’s (David Baewald) did a lot of work with Sheryl Crow’s debut album and was a member of the Tuesday Night Music Club.
Apart from David & David I’d highly recommend David Baewald’s solo work – particularly Triage.
19 Thursday Jul 2007
Posted in Music
The spoof blog – The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs has a rather scarily accurate picture of the where the record industry is today. It would very funny if it wasn’t for the fact that in the process of messing around as Universal are they’re likely to trash the livelihoods of some of the more niche artists, and because of their ‘loan sharking’ business model it will be the artists that will pick up the tab for it as well in lost sales.
It is interesting that Apple don’t seem to have tried to deal with artists directly yet, for example Paul McCartney who signed to Starbucks earlier in the year, and licensed the physical media sales back to the ‘box shifters’. Is it only a matter of time before Apple take the last step and setup a record label, like Starbucks and other media delivery operations such as Yahoo.
18 Wednesday Jul 2007
Posted in Music
Crawdaddy have got another good article on their site looking how in some ways the music industry has come full circle since the days of punk. But in other ways – so far away such as the rapidly fragmenting music scene and the technological impact upon music tribalism.
See the full article here – Crawdaddy! – Feature Story – Jesse Malin Comes Full Circle.
06 Friday Jul 2007
Posted in Music, Music Reviews
Dragons – another new artist worthy of some attention. Their debut album Here are the Roses is a marvelous blend of pre-stadium rock Simple Minds, early Depeche Mode and Joy Division/New Order. The heart of these similarities come from the way they use synths and guitars, they 
intertwined often providing both rhythm and melody; the keyboard sounds are very synthetic like those used by the Minds and others during the earlier 80s – looking at the kit in the videos on their website it also looks very 80s.
The lyrics are pretty dark in content and delivery, something that David Gahan would be proud of, and enough for Ian Curtis to take note if he was still with us today. Unlike both, the vocal delivery is slightly smoother and sweeter on the ear.
Finally, the drumming, it doesn’t saturate the rest of the performance, they’re even edging towards sparse. But they really down pound – as the producer Hugh Padgham would say – if you stand next a drummer giving it some welly – its bloody loud, and correspondingly that should be the case on record. The drumming certainly isn’t muted – driving the music along brilliantly without dominating.
If you like some rocking, synth based music then go give them a try – or at least have a listen to what they’ve posted on their MySpace site or the clips on their own site.
Websites:
home page : http://www.dragons.cc/
MySpace : http://www.myspace.com/dragons1
04 Wednesday Jul 2007
Posted in Music, Technology
A number of bands including the likes of the Pet Shop Boys, New Young Pony Club and Digitalism have gone completely geek and are performing at a digital festival in the virtual world of Second Life. The festival called Second Fest is sponsored by the Guardian news paper and Intel comes complete with multiple stages and a substantial line up over three days. Given the geek element, it isn’t too surprising that the artists appearing have a general electronica bias.
More information can be found on the Guardian site – http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondfest/.
04 Wednesday Jul 2007
Posted in Music, Technology
According to several sites, the Russian AllOfMP3 website that sold MP3 files for a few cents has shutdown, although whether this has been a result of the legal battles driven by the likes of the RIAA and the IFPI is not clear. However a new site MP3Sparks has popped up which reportedly is essentially the same site. Currently the site appears to be down, but this may well be simply a network glitch or pure server pressure. Looking at aom3.org which is a forum about AllOfMP3 the close coupling suggests this is in fact the same people.
The interesting thing is that the domain change may not hide the activity, but is likely held by new organisations which means that all the legal proceedings will have to be restarted from scratch. If this is anything like the Kazaa maneuverings a few years ago to try setup shell companies to frustrate legal processes then the IFPI are going to have some real headaches.
Articles:
25 Monday Jun 2007
Posted in Music, Music Reviews
Rather than reviewing an obvious release like Ryan Adam’s latest release, I’m continuing with the less known stuff.
Bitter Bitter Weeks latest release Peace Is Burning Like a River have diverged from their more somber sounds in a big way. This is full of bright shiny 60s style guitar work, imagine The Delays swapping their synths for guitars. Brian McTear’s vocals match the mood beautifully with a light and sweet vocal. Even the lyrical content feels more cheerful.
I’ve been listening to this album, both in the car and on my MP3 Player – I have to say it does sound far better when given a chance to breath in an open space than with earphones – even these cracking Sennheisers.
My recommendation is atleast have a listen to the tracks on Bitter Bitter Weeks’ MySpace site. If you’re a Delays fan then don’t waste time – order the album NOW!
Lots of thumbs up from the Monster.
Phil (aka MP3Monster)'s Blog 