Thanks to Reivec for sending in this link to Tune Recycler. It's a project by those Downhill Battle rascals. Pepsi's giving away 100 million iTunes songs under Pepsi bottle caps and this is what Tune Recycler's all about:
With the Tune Recycler, you can send us your unwanted iTunes bottlecap codes and we'll use them to support independent music. Easy for you, and good for musicians.
Very cool. (PS: My 100% indie album is on iTunes.)
Since I seem to be on Friendster and Orkut and junk for no reason these days I was reading about some other social networks and the most interesting one I saw was Songbuddy which tries to connect people based on links to music:
SongBuddy is a new way to find music that's already available on the Internet. By finding songs on bands' and labels' sites and sharing the address of those songs with your friends, you can explore music you'll love that you wouldn't hear anywhere else. So sign up, make some friends and list some music. You won't even need to install any software, SongBuddy works with your current media player.
The site runs incredibly slow for me for some reason so I can't check it out much or represent for myself and my music, but I very much dig the idea. I remember watching something on the Discovery channel a while back that claimed there's no evolutionary use for music except for helping build communities.
I post my songs to Somesongs to get rated and my feelings hurt. Now there's Somesongs radio and it's pretty awesome. Plus I think all my music is on there, so that's even extra awesome. Also cool (but with less me content for obvious reasons) is Songfight! radio, the radio for everybody's favorite macho art-fag site Songfight!.
Lots of great indie home-recorders in there for you to check out in handy radio format.
I've been getting weird reactions to my DRM post the other day. Some people are angry that I'm anti-DRM and other people are angry that I'm pro-DRM. Robert Scoble seems to have inexplicably classified my entry as some sort of attack on him, which it is not. I basically just said "GUESS WE'LL SEE WHAT HAPPENS, PROBABLY THINGS WILL BE OK EITHER WAY" which I had no idea counted as a radical opinion these days.
To elaborate:
I'm a big fan of technology and tend to be pretty skeptical about how secure DRM is. I know how hard it is (ie. totally damn impossible) for software manufacturers to keep people from copying actual physical discs that they personally design and manufacture so the idea of someone inventing a secure file format that can't be copied just seems like a joke and a half to me.
As I see it, one of the main points of DRM is to get the current record industry to give up its sweet sweet songs without shitting itself in fear and exploding, taking out all music with it as it goes. I assume Apple and Microsoft are both hustling to try and assure the already very nervous record industry that DRM is secure and viable in the long term, which I also assume just plum isn't true.
I believe that even if DRM becomes commonplace, if it's an inconvenience to consumers then I'm pretty sure circumventing it will become almost just as commonplace and there's not much anyone can do to stop it. But maybe it'll all be flawless and smooth and most people will barely notice it and the record industry can be mostly safe and secure.
My personal theory is that it'll crash and burn, but either way life will still be pretty much the same for indie musicians like me. We're like cockroaches with drinking habits.
Here's a good ranty call to arms by Cory Doctorow regarding Digital Rights Management on digital media. The basic gist is that DRM sucks and people shouldn't be complacent and allow it to creep in. As my album is now on iTunes I guess I can weigh in on the subject. I personally can't imagine why anyone would want a restricted copy of my songs and I can't imagine buying stuff with DRM on it and not busting it wide open just for the security. I wouldn't buy a CD that could only play in one or two CD players so I don't know why I'd buy media that behaves the same way.
That being said, if it turns out that consumers are A-OK with DRM and I once again am just an outsider nerd who's fussy about things most normal people don't care about, then I guess that's okay too. Brad the music buyer will probably continue to resist, but Brad the musician probably can do nothing but benefit from this dumb imposed barrier.
Cory wants DRM dead and I don't blame him. Microsoft and Apple want their brands of DRM to succeed and I don't blame them either. I'm just interested to see what happens. If I had to bet, I'd bet on DRM becoming commonplace but with a huge underground that happily violates it.
I have seen it with my own eyes, Brad Sucks: I Don't Know What I'm Doing is now available on Apple's iTunes service. That's pretty exciting and also totally freaking sweet!
Dirt Bag (Ridin' the Faders) This is a remix of my song Dirt Bag by Victor Stone from his Four Stones release Ridin' The Faders. The instruments are completely replaced with synthy samply neatness. Very cool!
I finally got around to reading this very positive USA Today article on Magnatune, pointed to by Victor and Scott. I've been on Magnatune for just over a month now and I have to say I'm really pleased. I sell about an album a day, which isn't designer clothes money, but it looks like I should be able to afford a couple of pimp cups with my first royalty check, so that's aiight.
I was initially skeptical of Magnatune and basically joined because I felt I had nothing to lose, but I'm glad that I did. It's a very relaxing way to sell records compared to my $5 hand-made, burned and mailed model and it has definitely helped get the Brad Sucks music out there to people who might not have found it otherwise.
I'm real excited to see what'll happen as Magnatune grows and whether my obsessive sales stat checking habit is going to get worse before it gets better.
The World's Most Dangerous Geek is an interesting article on Justin Frankel, creator of Winamp and Gnutella. Lots of neat info in there if you're interested in that stuff as I am.
In many ways, Frankel's future encapsulates the debate over the future of the Internet itself. Does it become just a distribution system for corporate product or more of a way to subvert that corporate control? For Frankel, subversion is in the eye of the beholder. "The question is," he says, "do you think people are ultimately good or bad? Do they want to do the right thing, or do they want to do what's good for them and fuck everyone else? I hope it's not the latter."
Virtual vocalist Vocaloid is now available in LEON and LOLA flavors. You can check out some demos here. I've been paying attention to this for a while out of curiosity and I have to say the final demos are a bit of a letdown. Sounds all computery and fake to me. The original Japanese demo I heard long ago struck me as far more impressive. These just sound like maybe a slightly nicer version of generated speech stuff (like this stuff) with probably some nice control. (Also keep in mind that example #2 'Little Bird' is sung by a real singer with Vocaloid backing vocals.)
I of course wouldn't mind playing with it, there's probably neat unnatural stuff to be done with it. But the hype I had been reading was all "OH MY GOSH HUMAN SINGERS ARE GOING TO BE REPLACED!!11" and it's just not even close. Also it's $330 US.
Open source blues tracks, mostly from the 1930s (thanks to J-Walk for the link.) Good for listenin', maybe good for samplin' if you want to be the next Moby.
Interesting interview with Liam Howlett (the guy behind The Prodigy) up on the Propellerheads site. He talks about switching from working with a studio full of gear to a laptop with Reason on it and the creative freedom that brought him.
Mah buddy Scott Andrew posted some demos and has vowed to fight back perfectionism and post a demo a month this year. He's cheating of course by his demos sounding really good as they are.
I've made the pivotal career decision to stay home and play with my new broadband connection rather than go to Songposium. I was kind of interested in going, but I'm even more interested in playing video games online and drinking beer. I truly believe this will be an important weekend for my development as a songwriter nonetheless. Thanks to everyone who offered up their comments on which of my tracks suck the least and also thanks to the crazy guy for his crazy rant from crazy land.
I'm a couple of days late, but apparently Ring Tones Are Bringing in Big Bucks:
The worldwide sale of ring tones, which started as a marketing gimmick for music labels and mobile phone companies, is roughly equivalent to 10 percent of the $32.2 billion global music market.
That's pretty crazy. I wonder if there's a market for original ringtone compositions.
I just got a cell phone a couple of months ago and I just psychologically can't bring myself to spend even a small amount of money on ringtones. And the phone seems to have no facility for importing or creating my own (I was briefly interested in the idea of creating ringtone versions of my own songs), so the whole ringtone phenomenon is kind of dead and bizarre to me.
Oh dear lord I have broadband now and I'm so happy. 150k/s download speeds, there is no emoticon powerful enough to express the joy I am feeling so 8D will have to do.
So I have the opportunity to go to Songposium 2003/04 which is described as "An intensive one-day workshop for songwriters presented by the Songwriters Association of Canada." Sounds intensive! And Canadian! I've been told that a) you can bring one song with four lyric sheets and some Canadian songwriting experts will tell you what stinks about your song and b) the guy who wrote "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", recorded by Pat Benetar will be on the panel. Meaning I could potentially get one of my songs dissed by the guy who wrote "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", recorded by Pat Benetar, which would be quite the notch in the belt. I wonder if he finds it funny when people yell "Fire awaAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAYYYYYY" at him. I bet he does.
So the big question I guess is what song I should take to potentially get dissed. I have until Saturday to decide. Any suggestions?
Almost a year ago I signed up for wireless broadband and finally after so very long of having my faith and hope slowly eroded by delays, they're allegedly coming to install it TOMORROW. I basically am totally excited and am running around in little circles like an ass. I've been on 26.4k dialup for so so long and I will be so very freaking happy to move into the era of broadband awesomeness.
MY 200 BUBBLE MAILERS FINALLY ARRIVED FROM OFFICEMAX. It has been almost exactly one month since my first order for these was placed. Also Canada Post raised shipping to the States by 15 cents. Ouch, my nuts, stop kicking them.