Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

Music in the 21st Century

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

A short story about how the music industry has changed (though not all of them have recognized this yet).

Earlier this evening, a Twitter message alerted me to the Ghosts instrumental album that was released by Nine Inch Nails today, completely announced. I had been curious about Trent Reznor’s plans, as he had previously voiced his discontent with (and freedom from) the music industry.

So when I checked out Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts website, I was not disappointed. First of all, there’s the music itself. Ghosts I – IV is an instrumental music collection – a first for NIN. I was able to listen to it right on the website, and based on my initial impression, this is quite possibly the best material that NIN has released in a long time (I wasn’t a big fan of any of their albums after the 1994 release of The Downward Spiral). It certainly sounds like great music to code to, so I’m uploading it to my iPod for tomorrow.

But more important is how the music is being made available. The first 9 tracks (Ghosts I) are available as a free download, in 320kbps mp3s, as well as a 40-page PDF booklet. The full 36 tracks (Ghosts I – IV) can be purchased on the website for the extremely fair price of $5. A 2 CD set will be released for $10 on April 8 for those that prefer physical media. In addition, a deluxe edition and ultra-deluxe limited edition are also available for $75 and $300 respectively for those that have way too much money to spare…

On a slightly sour note, the NIN website appears to have been hammered when I tried to download Ghosts I. But a few tweets later I found out that Ghosts is also available for download on Amazon (for the same price of $5), which suffered from no such issues. :)

What is interesting is that it’s not just the music distribution mechanism that is changing. It is also how music is being discovered and marketed. As far as I am aware, there was no marketing around this release, or even any sort of formal announcement. Instead, music is being discovered virally, by word of mouth, blogs, and even Twitter. Interesting times!

Posted in Media, Music | 2 Comments »

Trent Reznor Sticks it to the Music Industry

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007

Once and for all, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor sticks it to the music industry. Yesterday, he posted the following text on the Nine Inch Nails home page:

Hello everyone. I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate. Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008. Exciting times, indeed.

Whatever you may think of their music (I for one am a big fan of their old stuff, but not so much of anything that was released after the amazing Downward Spiral album), but this is exciting news. I definitely liked Nine Inch Nails better before they went mainstream, but now I’m quite happy they took this route, as they’ll be able to have a much bigger impact on the industry. With acts like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead demonstrating that it is entirely possible to bypass the music industry, I sincerely hope that times are about to change…

I hadn’t bothered to pick up the latest Nine Inch Nails album (Year Zero), but after this I felt compelled to download it from Amazon’s music store.

There’s also some interesting coverage of this (along with tons of comments) on TechCrunch and Gizmodo (not even counting the > 1000 comments on the Nine Inch Nails home page).

Posted in Music | 1 Comment »

amazonmp3

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

Last month I blogged about DRM-free Online Music Stores. Well, today Amazon unveiled their own MP3 music store: amazonmp3

Even though it’s been a while since a new Amazon feature has blown me away, I have to say I am very impressed with amazonmp3! They only offer DRM-free music in MP3 format, generally encoded using 256kbps. The website is laid out well, all songs are previewable, it is fast, and the navigation is well-thought-out and conveniently enables both searching and browsing for music. The catalog is reasonably large (and I assume it will grow over time as they sign up new labels), and among other things I have been able to find a fair selection of obscure European Industrial bands (although amazonmp3 often only seems to have a single album of these bands, not their whole discography). Individual songs generally cost $0.89, although a few songs cost $0.99. Given that all songs are DRM-free, this compares quite favorably to iTunes Music Store’s $1.29 for DRM-free songs. Most albums cost $8.99, a few cost $9.99, and I have been able to find a lot of albums for as little as $6.99, including German imports that would have cost $16 in CD-format on Amazon.com!

The purchase experience is simple and straightforward in usual 1-click Amazon style. amazonmp3 has a nice free downloader app (currently only Mac and Windows, but supposedly a Linux version is being worked on) that makes it very easy to download entire albums. If desired, it even automatically adds the downloaded songs to your iTunes library. The downloader is optional; individual songs can also be manually downloaded from the website.

As you can tell, I am quite excited about this new service, and I think I’ll make this my standard mechanism for acquiring music from now on (assuming it is available in their catalog). I will still check out some of the other music stores I previously wrote about, as sites with an affordable subscription model might be more economical for regular downloads, but in the mean time I’m glad I now have a convenient way to buy DRM-free music on Amazon.

Posted in Music | 1 Comment »

DRM-free Online Music Stores

Friday, August 24th, 2007

Techcrunch posted a nice article on finding DRM-dree music online. I have long been frustrated with the state of online music sales. While I love iTunes, I have never used the iTunes Music Store because I refuse to buy any DRM-crippled songs. The fact that Apple recently made EMI’s catalog available without DRM is a step in the right direction, but unfortunately most of the music I listen to is on smaller labels. I really want to support the artists I like and would much prefer buying their music over downloading it illegally or buying a CD (only to rip it into iTunes and put it into a box in the garage). But I’m sorry, I’m just not going to buy any music with DRM.

So I was happy to see that a bunch of new options for buying DRM free songs are springing up. Many years ago when they first launched, I bought some music from eMusic (but mainly because this was at the height of the dot-com boom and at the time they were giving away crazy expensive things for free with any music purchase, such as a nice set of Logitech speakers and a Creative MP3 player). Since then they have switched to a subscription model, but I haven’t checked them out lately. From what I hear, their catalog is quite large, particularly with music from smaller labels. Unfortunately it seems to be impossible to view their catalog without signing up for a subscription, which is rather annoying. Still, I might give them another try.

Another site I found via the Techcrunch article is Audio Lunchbox. They seem to have quite a large collection, and I was happy to recognize many small Industrial / Electronic artists that I was familiar with. Their prices are comparable to iTunes ($9.99 per album), but all the songs are DRM-free MP3s (encoded with 192kbps VBR, which is adequate for my purposes). Their website allows individual songs to be previewed, but unfortunately the interface is clunky (for example you cannot jump to a particular song by clicking on it; instead, you have to click “forward” until you get to it) and you can only listen to the first 30 seconds of each song. Why not offer the whole song for preview, but in lower audio quality? It is usually difficult to judge a song by its beginning. Still, these minor issues aside, Audio Lunchbox looks very promising and I will keep this in mind. I would prefer slightly lower pricing ($5-$7 seems reasonable for an entire album), given that I can buy a CD for $13 at Amazon, but at least it is DRM-free.

One thing I was very surprised reading is that two of the music stores (WalMart and gBox) are apparently only compatible with Windows. How somebody can try to build a business on the web and be so ignorant of other platforms is beyond my comprehension…

Posted in Music, Websites | 4 Comments »

Project Pitchfork / Downloadable Music

Saturday, August 27th, 2005

I just noticed that one of my favorite Industrial bands, Project Pitchfork, is offering a downloadable version of their latest album “Kaskade” for sale, in addition to the usual CD edition. Apparently the downloaded version consists of high quality 192kbps MP3 files without DRM or anything. A PDF version of the cover is included as well.

At $9.99, the price is reasonable (the current price for the CD at Amazon is $15.98), but I’d like to see this drop closer to $5. Still, this is definitely a step in the right direction and I wish more bands would go this route. Downloadable music on iTunes or similar sites is not an option for me, as I refuse to pay for DRM-crippled music.

(On the down side, the Project Pitchfork homepage uses menus that don’t work in Firefox… You’ll have to use IE to use these. The Shop itself, which is hosted by MusicDock, works fine in Firefox.)

Posted in Music | No Comments »

VNV Nation and Coder23

Saturday, January 8th, 2005

I saw VNV Nation in San Francisco yesterday, and I have to say that it was a great show – especially considering that apart from the live vocals and a little bit of live drumming, which was more for show than for actual percussion, there was no live music to speak of. Still, the two band members vere very charismatic, and particularly the singer put on a great show and really managed to engage the crowd. In fact, he seemed more like a stand up comedian than a singer. Humour is rare enough in the electro / industrial scene, so this was very refreshing.

The other act was Coder23, a Live DJ side project from two of the Front 242 guys. I am still not sure exactly what they did on their two Apple laptops, but the result wasn’t too bad, if a little too close to Techno for my taste. Certainly entertaining, and the two definitely looked like they were enjoying themselves.

Posted in Music | 1 Comment »