Hope everyone who has ordered a CD can bear with me a bit, for some reason I've been having an on and off love affair with strep throat for a month now which has been slowing me down on the "doing anything" front. I'll try to have all orders out by this Friday, sorry for any inconvenience and thanks for buying stuff, that is the best.

John Bintz from Coswell Productions wrote in to tell me he used my song Making Me Nervous in a cartoon called Slippie Slide. Thanks a lot John! It's always really neat to see my music along with video.

Eminem's Publisher Sues Apple Over Song:

At issue is an ad for Apple's iTunes pay-per-download music software, in which a 10-year-old sings Eminem's "Lose Yourself." The suit claims the commercial aired on MTV beginning in July 2003 and ran numerous times for at least three months. It also appeared on Apple's Web site.

Seems like another Grey Tuesday-ish issue of artist control. Eminem doesn't want to look like a sellout to his fans, the Beatles probably don't want their music reappropriated. What's the difference?

I'm a big Brian Wilson fan and am really looking forward to the release of SMiLE:

Perhaps the most highly-regarded unreleased record in rock history, the Beach Boys' SMiLE, is reportedly getting its official release 37 years after its creation, in fall 2004. According to a recent report from BBC News Online: "A few months ago Wilson revisited the SMiLE tapes in Capitol Records' vaults and went on to finish the album with his original lyricist, Van Dyke Parks."

Also the Pitchfork article says there are bootlegs floating around out there of the recent live performance Wilson did of the material. Anyone know where I can find it?

As much as I like the rabble-rousing, I just don't get the point that Grey Tuesday is trying to make about copyright. Is the argument that anyone should be able to chop up Beatles and Jay-Z recordings and be allowed to sell 3,000 copies of it without compensating either party? Is this being illegal a huge injustice against consumers and artists that I wasn't aware of?

Don Henley of all people weighs in on the current state of the music industry in his Washington Post article Killing the Music (fake registration required). It's kinda just a big list of complaints, some of which being dopier than others. He brings up things like megacoporations being bad and Wal Mart not stocking a wide variety of music, and that Johnny Cash wouldn't get signed today and so on, which I think are all completely, boringly beside the point. The only things that matter about the future of the recording industry is the Internet and the lowering cost of recording technology.

Rather than whining about Wal Mart and megacorporations and piracy, why not point out that the Internet affords any musician starting out today the ability to be heard by millions of people without even having to put pants on? Wow! Johnny Cash might not get signed if he was starting out today, but he could easily get his own web hosting (I would happily loan him some if he was broke), post MP3s, sell albums, t-shirts, get his albums in CD Baby, get on iTunes and all these other digital download services, get signed to Magnatune, reach fans directly, tour and god only knows what else he could do to make money. And all of this outside the control of the record industry.

The root of the issue most troubling Mr. Henley I believe is that it's getting harder and harder to make millions and millions of dollars off of each album and new artist due to the Internet and the public's diversifying tastes (due to the Internet). That's why the record industry's not signing or developing much new talent, because they only want stuff that they know will definitely knock it out of the box. That's just the way the business is right now, no point getting your feelings all in a tussle about it. Industries don't care about your feelings unless it benefits them.

What irks me most about his article is that I think Don's only looking at the situation from the perspective of recording artists with mansions and regular fat royalty checks rolling in funding their glamorous lifestyles. Sure, they probably have reason to worry, as do the artists hoping to achieve that sort of arrangement for themselves. But new artists in my opinion are in better shape for making a comfortable living off their art than they've been in for a long, long time. And I think that's way more important to the future of music than keeping the rich elders afloat.

Just thought I should let y'all know (because people been buying my shirts) that Cafe Press is having a President's Day $2 off sale on drinkware (cups and junk). So if you go to here or here and buy Brad Sucks cups, enter the coupon code PREZDAY16 in and you get a shiny two dollar discount. Looks like the offer's good until February 23rd.

Not so much a hack as tilting the bottle to look under the cap, but still pretty noteworthy: How to never lose Pepsi's iTunes giveaway. Just saw it demonstrated on The Screen Savers and it seems pretty awesome. Once again wishing iTunes worked in Canada so I could go buy a bunch of Pepsi and buy all my own songs for free, thereby assuring me uh... something.

I'm looking for some help with the organization of samples. I don't know what form this help should come in. My goal isn't to be able to print out a big list (so I'm not sure if software would help), but to more easily browse my samples from inside whatever program I'm using. Maybe what I really want is example categories / directory structures from folk who use samples more than I do. I bought a DVD burner a few weeks ago and since then I've been copying everything off old CD-Rs in the hopes of making a sample library I can intuitively use but so far it's just a big heap of junk and when I'm working on a song I just don't want to go in there because it's hell.

Anyhow, just curious if there's anybody out there who's already come up with solutions for this. Thanks!

I am officially endorsing Dan James as President of the Internet:

Dan and the cool guys at silverorange were in town a few weeks ago and bought me a hamburger and a beer, so basically I will support them in any of their attempts to gain power, no matter how heinous their rule may become.

Here's the article in CiN weekly about Outside the Inbox and me. Pretty sweet.

Understood By Your DadGenre: Rock Time: 2:29 Date: 02/10/04

I've been having a rough time deciding on my next song so I've decided to force myself to release something. Here's a rock song I've been a-fussin and a-feudin with. I think the mix is a bit of a mess, but I'll worry about that later.

I totally forgot to mention I was the featured artist on the Spewgrass website last week. There'll be a brief 5-question interview with me up there maybe tomorrow or something.

Requiem for the Record Store is a Washington Post article talking about the death of the record store and the various reasons behind it. I liked this comment on the major labels' resistance to allowing consumers to only buy the songs they want:

"Can you imagine if there was tremendous consumer demand for an 18-ounce Pepsi and we told Pepsi about this demand?" Singmaster says. "How long do you think it'd be before Pepsi started selling an 18-ounce Pepsi to anyone, anywhere? The record industry has created all these barriers, and those barriers have alienated consumers."

While wandering around trying out free VST plugins I came across ioplong's collection of totally cute VST plugins. First of all the interfaces all look like they were designed at IKEA and they have names like flotser, flitchSplifter and Splonki.

Outside the Inbox is apparently going to be in the February 11th "We Love" feature of CiN Weekly magazine in Cincinnati.

Article describing Magnatune by John Buckman on LinuxJournal.com (via Scott, whose links I so consistently rob.) I think I've suggested it before, but John should really send out mailing lists or keep a blog or something showing all his musicians (and other people) what a great job he's doing of pimping Magnatune. I keep finding out about Magnatune press from other people and I'm all "Hey, I'm on that! What the-"

Wow, thanks to Susie for writing in to tell me I have a real nice write-up on Everything2. I'm touched someone took the time to document my dumb self.

Dropping Out Of School (Hinc Algeber Mix) This remix of my song Dropping Out Of School is by HeuristicsInc. It starts off pretty crazy and turns into a slower rockier noisier version of the original track around 1:44, which I really like a lot.

Scott pointed out this Pepsi iTunes ad and it got an honest to god out-loud laugh out of me. The bouncy music combined with shots of gloomy, innocent looking kids with the words "INCRIMINATED", "ACCUSED", "BUSTED" and "CHARGED" in front of them was just priceless. Like this kid:

That shot there, in my mind, is the emotional equivalent of putting a cute little puppy up on the screen and writing "KICKED" beside it. Also: how great is it that we incriminate our eight year olds over downloading music his parents probably insist isn't real music. I'm just free-associating here now, I'm afraid.

I think Coke should sponsor Kazaa and we could have hilarious commercial wars. Let's settle this whole file sharing dispute as the Lord intended: IN THE COLA ARENA. (Which is the one right before the battery arena.)