9 posts tagged “listen”
Microsoft, please cease all efforts to compete in the portable music player/online music store space. You're embarassing yourselves.
I remember a time, early on in the iPod's domination, when some bigwig or other at Microsoft slagged off the iTunes Store ecosystem, saying it didn't give customers choice. It didn't take them long to release the Zune and the Zune Marketplace, effectively copying the Apple model wholesale... albeit totally ineffectively.
Oh, and by the way, early on the Zune couldn't play files from Microsoft's partners' stores that used their similar but incompatible PlaysForSure DRM. Oopsies! Needless to say, the devices didn't sell well, but that may be because they were only available in the US, and looked like they were fashioned out of Bakelite.
Then when Apple announced that it was trying to get rid of the DRM the record labels had insisted on, Microsoft were caught on the hop and fumbled a response.
And now their latest bullshit. Now they're trying to put the boot to the iPod by saying their Zune Pass allows you to fill your Zune for less than iTunes allows you to fill your iPod:
http://www.zunepass.net/?WT.mc_id=Display-MMN#/videos
Many, many, many things they neglect to mention here.
1. If you cancel your Zune Pass membership, you do not own that music. You get ten songs free every month, and that's that.
2. They suggest that you can only fill an iPod with music from iTunes. I pay just ten bucks more than their Zune Pass and get 100 DRM-free MP3s from eMusic every month. I also buy CDs, with prices as low as $7 a disc - far less than the $1 per song they quote for the iPod.
3. Not all of the songs in their library are even available with the Zune Pass.
4. Song purchases are slightly cheaper with the Zune Marketplace, but you have to buy fucking point cards in blocks of 400 at a time to shop on their store. You can't use a credit card directly.
I'm not an Apple fanboy. I have many criticisms about their devices and software. However, Microsoft are constantly ragging on them while totally glossing over their own more abundant flaws. The Zune HD looks like an attractive piece of hardware, certainly compared to its siblings, but it is far too little, too late.
This is my latest, greatest discovery. Fucking incredible.
And this guy is also pretty great, but more country.
A thread was posted on a message board I visit asking for summer playlists. I am so proud of mine, I thought I would share it. These are the songs you should all be listening to, to be just. like. me.
'Analog Synths' by The Fitness
'Graveyard Girl' by M83
'Throwin' Shapes' by Minus The Bear
'The Magic Position' by Patrick Wolf
'I Will Possess Your Heart' by Death Cab For Cutie
'Crazy For You' by Slowdive
'Antarctica' by The Weepies
'George Michael' by Tapes N' Tapes
'This Is Not A Test' by She & Him
'Guilty' by Assassins
'Supernatural Superserious' by REM
'Electric Feel' by MGMT
'The Rip' by Portishead
'Market Girl' by Headlights
... plus...
'Oh Shoplifter' by The Stills
... because it's great.
You'd think someone who has been involved in online for longer than most of its main users have been alive would be more embracing of the digital distribution of music. Oddly, for as much of a technophile I am, the idea of acquiring my music from the internet makes me retch.
But of course, I am very contrary. I dismiss the "vinyl is better" set as deluded luddites, but I cannot give up physical media because of my fetishist's love of packaging. Ruffling through a well-designed booklet is as important to me as that first listen of a new album.
Anyway, today we were bumming around outside due to the characteristic good weather and happened upon a trendy t-shirt shop. While looking at their designs, a great remix of a Thom Yorke solo song, 'Atoms For Peace', came on the store's sound system. I made a mental note to look it up when I got home.
I did a search and found out it was a remix by Fourtet, with the first link being to a site called eMusic. It turns out, eMusic is a rival service to iTunes. For $10 a month, you get to download 30 songs in unprotected MP3 format and keep them - even if you cancel your membership (there are more expensive plans and booster packs too). Additionally, during the trial period, you could download a further 50 free songs and keep them if you decided it wasn't for you.
Their catalogue is mostly made up of music from independent labels (Thom Yorke released his solo material on XL Recordings) but they have a lot of artists I like or want to listen to, so I've signed up for the trial.
While I don't think I could ever move over to iTunes - with its barely-cheaper-than-CDs pricing, restrictive DRM and their insistance on pushing the rubbish AAC format - I could easily add eMusic to my normal CD consumption for checking out bands I normally wouldn't hear about.
Link:
I've said it before, but the recording industry is run by a bunch of backwards cowboys.
The Recording Industry Association Of America are up to their usual tricks, suing Arizona resident Jeffrey Howell for being a dirty, rotten pirate. His crime? Copying his 2,000 CDs to his computer. 2,000 CDs he bought. Legally.
The outcome of this case worries me. As someone who owns a lot of CDs (although not 2,000), I would not have been able to move to the US had I had to bring them all over the ocean with me to listen to them. Being able to copy them all to a hard drive that fit into my minimal luggage was a godsend; and being able to have my entire collection on my iPod is vital to me.
Our good friends at the RIAA are trying to suggest that even that is a horrible violation of copyright law. This baffles me for many reasons, but not least because one of their main four members - Sony BMG - is, as I said in a previous post, a subsidiary of one of the major manufacturers of a variety of devices that allow for the copying and playback of copyrighted music.
I cannot vouch for Jeffrey Howell, but I don't make my music collection available using file sharing software. I share a handful of songs using this blog, but almost always telling people to buy the albums they come from (and my playlist tool features Amazon links for every song for that reason). And they're trying to suggest I and others like me are common criminals.
One forum I visit said the RIAA might as well just subpoena the millions of people who own iPods. I would write to them to recommend this, but they and several of their members make it very difficult to contact them online.
If you're reading this and work for the RIAA, I would love to talk to you - as a fan of recorded music - to explain why your current strategy of vilifying music fans is only going to further the sales decline you're witnessing right now. You can cling desperately to the old world all you want, digital audio is the future and consumers aren't going to re-purchase their music digitally when there is no valid reason for them to do so.
Update: Turns out Howell is being sued for illegal filesharing after all, but the RIAA is still going off on this whole "ripping your CDs is illegal" thing.
To launch version 0.1a of my playlist tool, I present my favourite twenty songs from 2007:
http://www.transatlanticdrawl.com/Playlist.aspx?PlaylistID=1
It's a little ugly and feature-lacking, but you can listen to all twenty songs in full and buy the albums from Amazon.
Show us your passion.
This image represents music in all its wonderful forms.
Without music, I wouldn't exist - on numerous levels. I love listening to music, playing instruments (even if I'm not amazing at it), watching others perform music, talking about music... and I love all the people I've met as an indirect result of music, too.
Enjoy! A small selection of English bands you may or may not like.
I did a stock take of all of the new music I put on my Mac in 2006 that was released last year, these are the albums - with my annual Top Ten position noted nexted to certain albums.
Back To Basics by Christina Aguilera 9
The Lottery by Ambulette
Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not by Arctic Monkeys
You Will Changed Us by Assassins
Corinne Bailey Rae by Corinne Bailey Rae
The Information by Beck
The Life Pursuit by Belle & Sebastian
The Letting Go by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
Civilian by Boy Kill Boy
Idols Of Exile by Jason Collett 8
Gang Of Losers by The Dears
You See Colours by Delays
Death By Sexy by Eagles Of Death Metal
Sun Sun Sun by The Elected 2
At War With The Mystics by The Flaming Lips
Hearts And Unicorns by Giant Drag
Yours To Keep by Albert Hammond Jr 6
Kill Them With Kindness by Headlights 5
Sam's Town by The Killers
Silent Shout by The Knife
Friendly Fire by Sean Lennon
We, The Vehicles by Maritime 1
Amputechture by The Mars Volta
Bring It Back by Mates Of State
Honey From The Tombs by Amy Millan
The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance
Wolves by My Latest Novel
Ys by Joanna Newsom 4
Elan Vital by Pretty Girls Make Graves
The End Of History by Fionn Regan 10
Free To Stay by Smoosh
Begin To Hope by Regina Spektor
Without Feathers by The Stills 7
First Impressions Of Earth by The Strokes
A City By The Light Divided by Thursday
10,000 Days by Tool
Wolfmother by Wolfmother
About Face by The Working Title
Show Your Bones by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The Eraser by Thom Yorke 3
Tired Of Hanging Around by The Zutons
... there were also random songs by DonkeyBoy, Assembly Now, Kissing Cousins, myself, James Dean Bradfield, Gemma Hayes, Lavendar Cocks and even a new rarity from Mansun.
I've uploaded one of the songs I recorded last year for your listening displeasure.
