Category: Music
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Qtrax
So what’s the deal with Qtrax? On Saturday, Channel 4 News carried a report highlighting the launch of a new music service. Qtrax, they reported, had signed deals with the big four record companies and would be launching their free music service on Sunday. Details were a little sketchy, but it was clear that the…
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Summarising Digital Music
More on the music industry will be forthcoming. But today the IFPI which represents the recording industry worldwide has published it’s digital music report. The report runs to 28 pages including front and back covers, a contents page, three full pages of pictures and drawings, and a list of members. But we’re all busy people,…
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Tin-Pan Dead End Alley
“Pandora’s ex-customers in the UK will be wondering why the service they want can’t be catered for by the recording industry. And they are not alone – for what are the millions of illicit peer-to-peer file-sharers, but a huge potential market? Internet users are showing the industry how they want their music in the digital…
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Pandora and Internet Radio Services
If you’re interested in this sort of thing, then you’ll already know that Pandora is shutting down in the UK. The full email sent to Pandora users is on James’ site. As the email explains, the service has been shut down because they were unable to come to an agreement with the music rights organisations…
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Ordinary Song
A good song, with a very good and very “radio” video… Via Why That’s Delightful
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Some More Decent Radio (and TV)
I missed one other programme that I should have mentioned the other day – this Saturday’s Archive Hours is called God, Pirates and Ovaltineys. “Sean Street investigates the history of the cultural battle between the BBC and commercial radio, which predates the pirate music stations of the 1960s by several decades.” That’s got to be…
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US Album Sales Fall
I’m really not sure what to make of the news that US album sales fell by 9.5% in 2007, and down 15% on 2006. Digital sales increased by a whopping 45% but only 10% of them are albums. Basically, as we know, most people only buy the tracks they want and not the whole album.…
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Quality
A recent entry on Boing Boing pointed to an article in Rolling Stone magazine which highlighted the fact that producers mix tracks so that they sound good when they’re ripped to an mp3 player, at the same time, removing the subtleties that a wider dynamic range allows. Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow comments “…it seems to…
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Reselling Concert Tickets
I find this astonishing. Essentially what artists want is a cut of any resale money made from selling on concert tickets. The idea is that when tickets are resold, usually via websites these days, a proportion of the resale value would be passed on to a new body – The Resale Rights Society. I find…
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Interviewing Sigur Rós
I’ve just been watching Verity Sharp interview the members of Sigur Rós for The Culture Show, who have a new concert film – Heima – coming out next month which looks wonderful. And seemingly there’s a Culture Show special specifically about the band coming up in November. The interview was somewhat better than one they…
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In The Air Tonight
You can’t move for Phil Collins at the moment. Geneis has just embarked on a new tour of North America for the first time in something like fifteen years. There’s a new book out about the band. But mostly, there’s that Cadbury’s ad: Over in the States, there’s a new ABC sitcom called Carpoolers which…
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The Colour Purple
Guess where I was last night? I had my camera confiscated at one point, and was very pleased that I slipped the memory card out of it and into the palm of the person next to me, as I was directed to some lockers to hand it in. It was an unnecessary subterfuge since they…