Apologies to the three of you.
January 23rd, 2012 | Music“I will update my blog more often. I will update my blog more often. I will update my blog more often…”
Apologies. Been slacking in the blogging department. This is at least partially due to a current flurry of music-based activity and therefore a rapidly shrinking attention span where other things are concerned. Watch this space, new tunes on the way.
Music and economics.
December 23rd, 2011 | MusicSo my girlfriend asks me to pick up some Christmas-type songs for the long drive on Christmas Eve, I pop onto iTunes (looking for Fairytale of New York, obviously, because somehow I lost my copy a long time ago) and find that the first five Pogues albums are available as a bundle for fifteen English pounds sterling.
Hang on – I thought – fifteen quid? How is that possible?
Instant purchase. As a way of counteracting the discography torrents for back-catalogue artists, that type of deal is incredibly good thinking on iTunes’ part. I went looking for one song, which would have cost me somewhere in the range of £0.79-£0.99, and instead I ended up spending 15 times that amount, and get a nice stash of new-to-me music. Everybody wins in that situation, plus it’s opened my eyes to the idea that there might be more of these collections for other artists, feeding back into the cycle.
Music has a hard time of it at the moment, mostly I think due to public perception of the value of it. I don’t think the problems with DRM in the past did the industry any favours whatsoever, but how can three-minute pop songs compete with a game getting millions of minutes of playtime worldwide every day, available for £0.10 less?
But £15? For damn close to 70 songs? And good ones at that? Count me in.
Technology hates me
December 6th, 2011 | Bits and bobsToday my work computer (a terribly powerful late-2009 iMac) died on me four times. My Tweetbot app on my iPhone is refusing to render web pages correctly, and freezes when I try to open them in Safari. I discovered firsthand today just how much of an absolute bitch Apple’s FairPlay DRM system is.
Maybe the cold is killing them. I don’t know. It’s never normally this difficult, normally technology and I get on just fine.
I’ve got a couple of painting ideas in my head that need to come out soon. I’ll post them here when they’re done.
Metadata: data about data
December 4th, 2011 | Bits and bobsI find it interesting that there haven’t been many mainstream experiments with the embeddable metadata included in MP3′s, beyond such concepts as DRM anyway. The last two Nine Inch Nails albums (Ghosts I-IV and The Slip) experimented with different artwork on each track, rather than just one cover for the album, and BPM information and time signatures, but I can’t think of any others off the top of my head that really use the space there very well.
Reznor’s experimental side led to the alternate reality game around his album Year Zero, which was fascinating not only for the concept but for the consistency and depth of its execution, and I think that could be taken further. That was 2007 after all, the CD hadn’t completely died (and even then he did some really interesting shit with heat-sensitive ink on the medium itself, pushing its artistic capabilities even further).
I’m thinking hyperlinks in metadata, QR codes in embedded artwork, linking to a site with background information on the composition/creator, stem files for remixing, a forum where listeners can share their experience of the file, whatever. Hyperlinks everywhere, data within data about data.
We’re still stuck on this radio mentality of music being a passive experience. Music is sound, but MP3′s are data, and there’s a lot more that you can do with data than merely move air around.
That will be the determining factor in the sale-vs-streaming debate, I think. Can you turn the data into an experience further than just the music?
Good Morning
December 3rd, 2011 | MusicTrent Reznor and Atticus Ross have released a 6 track sampler to their epic-sounding soundtrack for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, managing to break half the internet while everyone tried to give them money.
Their store’s back online now though, so I downloaded the sampler last night and have been listening all morning. I loved the Social Network’s score, it was one of my musical highlights last year even before I saw the movie, so I had high hopes for this one.
So far it’s good, it feels like a collision between Ghosts I-IV and the softer Fragile era Nine Inch Nails material, with that gloriously creepy electro/acoustic aesthetic that ran through TSN’s score. It sounds more grown-up than anything Trent has done in ages.
Plus, the iTunes preorder comes with a fucking marvellous cover of Led Zep’s Immigrant Song, sung by Karen O. If that doesn’t get your blood pumping then you’re already dead.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo | Store.
Animated comic remixes
December 2nd, 2011 | Around the webI love this kind of thing.
Iron Man Gets the Shakes and Other Superheroic Animated GIFs | Underwire | Wired.com.
Fighting off the Cold
December 1st, 2011 | Bits and bobs
Using this to test the mobile WordPress app, as much as anything.
Fennesz / Sakamoto – Cendre
December 1st, 2011 | MusicPicked up the MP3 release of Cendre from Boomkat yesterday, and I suggest that you do too if you have functioning ears.
Aside from the excellent selection of music available there, it’s run by people who obviously love what they do, which shows in their writing and the sheer love put into the day-to-day running of the site. Their new releases newsletter is a little joy. Occasionally they come at me with some beautiful vinyl-only release and I gnash my teeth for a few seconds because I don’t own a record player and don’t have the space for one, but that’s a small price to pay for it all, really.
Read full review of Cendre – FENNESZ SAKAMOTO on Boomkat.com ©
If nothing else it’s nice to be outside of the iTunes/Amazon spectrum and dig a little deeper. I know there are more stores (Bleep and the like, and of course Bandcamp, which I find myself trawling through on a regular basis, getting into a clicktrance that can last for hours), but Boomkat consistently provides me with good stuff. Generally speaking, if it’s on there at all it’s worth checking out at least.
Go forth.
