What's weird is seeing a Google ad show up when you search for "brad sucks" on Google.

I'm doing some blogging over at Sellout Central now, which is a new weblog exclusively covering music industry news and opinion. If you're interested in the crazy junk going on in the music industry these days, you might want to check it out and mouth off in the comments. I'm hoping it'll be a more balanced and optimistic look at the changing music business than most of the stuff I read on the web.

I'm not sure how the balance will go between this blog and that one, obviously there's some overlap in content, but we'll see how it goes. Maybe I'll talk about the issues over there but I'll write melodramatic poetry about them over here from now on. "O music industry, why hast thou forsaken me..."

Over at the J-Walk blog, John postulates about the Google Suck Index:

Way back in December, 2002, I invented something I call the Google Suck Index.

This index consists of the number of pages returned for a search query that contains the phrase "xxxx sucks."

The highest ranking results were "Everything Sucks" at 20,000 and "Bush Sucks" at 15,800.

"Brad Sucks" clocks in at 22,000. OWNNNNNNZED.

Scott (who once again is just a plum nice guy) noticed this on NPR's All Songs Considered:

You Play DJ: Got a favorite band nobody's heard of - something you'd love people to know about? Send us an email (allsongs@npr.org) with your favorite unknown artist. Include a CD and song title and a bit about why you love them. We'll compile the best submissions and post them on the Web site.

And Scott says this:

It'd be pretty cool to get some Magnatune artists on this list. I call upon the fearsome distributed power of the Web to push Brad and Williamson into the front ranks. Excelsior!

Thanks for the plug, Scott. I would graciously accept any promoting anyone would like to do on my behalf. I am 100% not too proud to accept it. Feel free to direct link to any of my songs in your emails to NPR as well if you think it'll help your case.

The death of the album is an article by Ken Napzok of Tiny Mix Tapes about how the album is dying. I actually started out assuming that the album was dead with the ol' Brad Sucks here. I mean if I'm posting all my songs as I do them, why bother putting everything into an album? But then I decided to jam an album together and people were all excited about it and had a different impression of me altogether. I was a dude with some songs before and then I was a guy with an album. Also people gave me money for it, which is A-OK.

I'm not really one for music theory, but here's an interesting discussion on Ask Metafilter about key. Particularly good is the post by chrismear that's very in-depth and also has audio examples. I still don't understand key but now I'm pretty sure I thoroughly don't understand it.

Saw The Stills and The Miniatures Saturday night. It was an okay show I guess. The Miniatures had great energy and The Stills were interesting, but nothing really rocked me too much. I found it funny when The Stills' frontman ranted against the American government and said Ottawa was a very cool country's capital, all the while the bassist was violating our no-smoking bylaws.

Webjay is one of those ideas I've been sitting around hoping would happen. It's a tool that helps you listen to and publish web playlists. Here's a Wired article that describes it and gives some back-story. It seems a bit cluttered and difficult to navigate right now, but I think the potential is enormous.

Now I just have to get off my ass and cram my music in there. Crammity cram.

I had been hearing about them for a few days here and there but Scott Andrew's endorsement finally got me to download the Beatallica albums. They're pretty hilarious and fun and well worth checking out. They do a fantastic job of the Metallica/Beatles crossover thing. Great free Internet stuff.

How I stopped buying CDs and started loving music, a pretty down to earth weblog entry about Jeffrey Veen's experiences with downloading music. Here is the end:

Could it be possible that we may not need the labels? That maybe music fans and artists can find their own ways of connecting with each other? And maybe, instead of a few hundred millionaires, we might have thousands and thousands of musicians making a decent living? Could that be possible?

There are a lot of really interesting replies as well, if you're into that sort of thing.

I tried to start a Songfight! suicide pact tonight based on the sales of ex-American Idol William Hung's debut CD Inspiration (ie. too many sales we all die) but nobody was man enough.

1 person recommended So You've Ruined Your Life instead of Inspiration (includes Bonus DVD)

Today I got to wondering what was up with Al Jourgensen, the man behind many of my favorite bands as a teenager such as Ministry, the Revolting Cocks and Lard. I did a search for some interviews and found some fun and interesting stuff. Like this email interview where he replies to everything in all in caps. Some clips:

R: You and Paul (Barker) recorded almost all of the music on the new album without the help of many other guest musicians. Was this a conscious effort, to strip down the music and not muddy it with guest musicians, or was it just something that happened?

A: WE JUST DIDN'T WANT TO SHARE OUR DELI TRAY WITH ANYONE ELSE THIS TIME. DAMN, THOSE BBQ CHICKEN WINGS ARE TASTY.

R: What is the most important thing you've learned by working in the music industry?

A: DON'T DRINK WINE WITHOUT A CORK!!!!!!!!!

R: In what ways would you say Ministry has grown and changed since its beginning?

A: WE STARTED OUT BOYS, AND BECAME MARINES

There's a more serious one over on KNAC.com:

KNAC.COM: Do you think rock and roll is even dangerous anymore? Can it be? JOURGENSEN: I see people getting sick of it. Like I said, I was proud to be an American that day in San Fransisco. In Chicago and places like that where people stick up for themselves, I see a relevant punk rock movement coming on.

KNAC.COM: A real one? JOURGENSEN: Yeah, I?m talking about a movement that will utilize the Internet, and instead of garage bands, you will have Internet bands. When people realize that the Internet is not just a home shopping club, I think there will be a lot more people doing things for themselves.

I've been kinda out of the loop for a while because the Internet has been filled with lies, so here is some possibly totally old news: Metafilter had the best discussion on the anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide, in that it seems to cover every possible reaction pretty neatly. What's interesting to me is how most people who are vocal one way or another about the subject tend to be reacting more to his style and image more than the actual music.

Bob Dylan appears in a television commercial for Victoria's Secret. Various people are shocked and upset about this, feeling he has betrayed his public image. I read an interview with Dylan in a book called Songwriters on Songwriting a month or two ago and he was a total weirdo space cadet and I don't seem to be able to take anything he does seriously.

Prince signs with Sony. Selling out twice is the new selling out once.

Paul Anka swearing at his band. "Don't make a fucking maniac out of me!" is my new slogan and if I ever have a band, I will say it to them often.

Some random emails from the weekend have gone missing. You may want to re-send. Did the interview chat thing on halfliferadio.com last week. It was fun and also interesting.

Got my MPD-16 drum pad thing on Friday and it didn't come with a USB cable. I will be exchanging it later this week for a unit that actually comes with all its parts.

My dog of the last 10+ years (named Penny) was put down today due to cancer and general sufferin'. It is a drag but it is also okay.

Here's a Slate article on Why pop songwriting's not what it used to be via Songfight.net. It's basically a big jab at Jessica Simpson's new song sucking (I haven't heard it, so I don't know), but the article has a lot of interesting chronology of the changes the singer/songwriter label has gone through. I think I noticed the blurring of the singer/songwriter lines first with Avril Lavigne a while ago. I was reading about The Matrix, the production company that wrote her debut hits yet they were still billing Avril as having written her own songs.

Really I'm not sure if it makes too much of a difference. It kinda makes it less impressive to be a singer/songwriter these days I guess as even 16 year old girls from Napanee can do it and sell millions. But worrying about whether entertainment is legit or not always seems like kind of a waste of energy to me. Everyone acts terrified of getting tricked, but then they really enjoy it when it works and they don't notice it happening.

I jumped the gun about posting it a week or two ago, but the Flak magazine interview with me is now actually online. There is a longer director's cut of the interview available here. Who knows what crazy junk I'll have said in the past! I'm also supposed to be doing an interview on Half Life Radio of all places on Wednesday evening.

This study claims that music sharing isn't negatively effecting CD sales. Here's a big clip for those of you too lazy to read the article:

For the study, released Monday, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was "statistically indistinguishable from zero," they wrote.

"We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales," the study's authors wrote. "While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing."

Unlikely that this is the final word on the subject, but still interesting.

After a year or two of wanting to get some sort of rhythm input device, I just ordered one of these suckers:

It's an MPD-16 and it's very hip-hop. If all goes according to plan I may have it by the weekend.

I should also mention that if any of you musicians are in the market for a Yamaha DD55 (the drum thing I was thinking about buying before I decided on the MPD16), there are tons of them on eBay. They seem to retail for about $200-$220 US and most auctions are going for $100-$120. Just so you know.

I was told today that my album I Don't Know What I'm Doing is an Editor's Pick on Netmusic.com and my track Sick as a Dog is in their top 10. That's pretty sweet. Direct link to the album is here if you wanna buy something. Songs seem to be 89 cents, not sure what format the downloads are.

Magnatune and I got some props on the Creative Commons blog. That's pretty boss. (Boss is a word I am trying to bring back into popular usage.) After a lot of initial difficulty I think I'm finally starting to get my head around what the purpose of the Creative Commons is and how it can benefit artists and business-folk. I have an idea for a Creative Commons-heavy Brad Sucks project but I'm still asking around to see if it's possible.