06 Tuesday May 2008
Posted in Music
Following Nine Inch Nails Ghosts album earlier in the year with it would seem that Trent Reznor can’t give away his music quick enough with another free album download, (in MP3, Flac or M4A formats) called The Slip. According to Filter Magazine (here) there will be a CD release of the album later in the year.
02 Friday May 2008
Posted in Music, Technology
Following my recent post (here) about MSN Music discontinuing the ability to move DRM’d music, it would appear that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have the same view that I have and have written to Microsoft outlining what they believe Microsoft must to make good the service discontinuation – see EFF’s statement here.
02 Friday May 2008
As a celebration of the anniversary of the death of gonzo music critic Lester Bangs Glorious Noise have pulled together a set of links to some of his writings Lester Bangs in Creem. Although if you want read a good collection of his writings then I can recommend the book Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung which was compiled by Greil Marcus.
For those who haven’t made a connection as the who Bangs is – perhaps you may remember Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Almost Famous (a fine presentation of Bangs). For a brief bio of Lester Bangs try wikipedia.
29 Tuesday Apr 2008
Posted in Technology
A number of Universities, particularly from the US are starting to video record lectures and posting them on YouTube. The problem is that YouTube is also the home for a lot of personal material with a limited potential viewer-ship, resulting in trying to find some interesting and educational material can be crowded out by a lot of videos of little or no interest. However I came across Ted Talks. The site has a great library of videos talking about a wide spread of subjects from Music Video development through to Open Source Economics and onto String Theory. Each video is accompanied by a brief bio of the presenter, and the videos can be downloaded for example David Pogue (New York Times Tech Columnist) on the Internet Music Wars at the other end of the spectrum is a presentation by the architect Frank Gehry on his work.
Overall a fascinating site and worth having a browse through.
Jeff Skoll talking about his production company trying to make films with a view to produce films that get people to stop and think about issues such as the environment.
28 Monday Apr 2008
Posted in Photography
The New York Times have created a lovely article on one of my favourite photographers – Ansel Adams. The NY Times have a some on Ansel’s famous Yosemite images, with a map showing the locations and some audio explaining the significance of the picture. To see the site go here. Therei is also an article on the New York Times site here.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have been to Yosemite, and you can see some of my photographic efforts here.
Other interesting links:
28 Monday Apr 2008
Posted in Music
It appears that the major record labels have managed to effectively kill off a new start up Sonific who tried to create a business around properly licensing music for podcasting & blogging sites thus creating a more controlled environment revenue rather than the currently Wild West situation that predominates outside of the top tier of blogs not to mention revenue for the record labels. According to Sonific they have wound things up because of the licensing situation with the record labels. Tragic that the record industry again appears to have architected a situation where they may potentially earn some revenue and at least slow the amount of unlicensed music flying around has failed.
Sonific announcement here.
28 Monday Apr 2008
Posted in Music
According to Coldplay ….
We’re very pleased to announce that Coldplay’s new single, ‘Violet Hill’, will be available as a free download exclusively from Coldplay.com for one week starting tomorrow, Tuesday April 29th, at 12.15pm UK time. This is a full week ahead of the single’s conventional paid-for digital release, on Tuesday May 6th.
25 Friday Apr 2008
Posted in Music
All Music are reporting that after Ed Harcourt being dropped by EMI recently has been signed to the US label Dovecote Records with the right to distribute Ed’s last album The Beautiful Lie (a fine one at that). The sad thing is that like many other small American indie labels I’m sure that Ed will start to do well and will continue winning ‘hearts and minds’ with his work, with us UK fans probably having to wait a lot longer for the material.
24 Thursday Apr 2008
Posted in Music
One of the problems of DRM has really come home to roost for MSN Music users. According to Digital Music News, Microsoft have informed users in writing that music purchased through MSN Music will not be transferable after August 31st 2008 to other devices or machines. This means that MSN Music users must continue to keep their existing equipment (and working) to not lose their investment. So if after August you experience a catastrophic failure of your computer then game over, your investment is lost.
My personal view is that given you have paid for the right to have a copy of the music to play that Microsoft in this situation should carry the cost of transferring MSN Music users to their Zune infrastructure which is replacing it, or allow people to re-download the music in a DRM free format.
23 Wednesday Apr 2008
Posted in Music
Horace Andy who has provided vocals for a number of Massive Attack albums has been talking with the NME about song lyrics he has been provided with to record for the new album. The article (here) also suggests that they maybe on the road later in the year as well.
