Music

In Rainbows

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When I checked my email first thing this morning, I got my download link for In Rainbows. The download was very quick, so it looks like they were prepared for the heavy traffic.

It grabbed me right away with the track “15 Steps”. The album is a lot more upbeat than Radiohead’s other albums. I’ve listened to it twice already and I really like it. Besides the first track, the other standouts for me were “Bodysnatchers”, “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, and “Reckoner”, although all of the tracks are great. This is one album I can listen in its entirety without skipping any tracks.

"In Rainbows" is almost here

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A few days ago I pre-ordered Radiohead’s new album, “In Rainbows”. I paid £4.25 (about $8.60). Today I got the following email:

THANK YOU FOR ORDERING IN RAINBOWS. THIS IS AN UPDATE.

YOUR UNIQUE ACTIVATION CODE(S) WILL BE SENT OUT TOMORROW MORNING (UK TIME). THIS WILL TAKE YOU STRAIGHT TO THE DOWNLOAD AREA.

HERE IS SOME INFORMATION ABOUT THE DOWNLOAD:

THE ALBUM WILL COME AS A 48.4MB ZIP FILE CONTAINING 10 X 160KBPS DRM FREE MP3s.

I’m a bit disappointed that it’s only 160 Kbps when Amazon’s MP3 downloads are 256 Kbps, although I doubt whether the difference will be too noticeable.

Sony kills fair use

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Sony believes that fair use, as it has been understood for several decades, doesn’t exist.

jennifer Pariser, Sony’s head of litigation, says:

When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song. Making a copy of a purchased song is just a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy’.

Long before personal computers, people were making mix tapes or copying their LPs to cassettes so they could listen to them in the car. If Sony has their way, even that would be illegal.

In light of this remark, the proclamations by NBC and others that most content on iPods is stolen makes sense in a perverse way. If you buy a CD or DVD and then rip it and put it on your iPod instead of buying another DRM protected copy, it’s stealing according to their standards.

Pariser’s statement that music labels make no money on touring, radio, or merchandise is especially telling. The artists themselves are still making money that way, cutting out the record labels. So the record companies don’t care whether the artist makes money, only that they themselves make money even though they don’t add any value to the music.

Artists like Radiohead who are distributing their music online are now proving that record companies aren’t necessary and add no value to their product.

It’s time for someone to start standing up for consumers. Supporting bands like Radiohead who create alternate distribution methods will send a loud & clear message to the RIAA & record labels.

R.I.P. Joe Zawinul

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MetaFilter reports that The very great Joe Zawinul has passed at 75 Accordionist, proud Austrian, composer of Mercy, Mercy, In a Silent Way, and Birdland, associate of Miles, McLaughlin, Cannonball, Hancock, and Shorter, arguably the father of world music, Zawinul has left the building.

I really loved Weather Report. During my teenage years I listened to Jazz Fusion almost exclusively, including Weather Report and Return to Forever.

A great man died on this day

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Elvis wasn’t the only musician who died on August 16th. On this day in 1997, one of the world’s greatest singers, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan died in the prime of his career. That was the same month Fela Kuti died, making it one of the saddest months in world music.

Nusrate Fateh Ali Khan sung a style of Sufi religious music called Qawwali and helped bring that kind of music to a wider audience. He had an incredible voice and performed with artists such as Eddie Vedder and Peter Gabriel. Jeff Buckley was also a big fan of his music.

If you haven’t heard his music, listen to mustt mustt, his most popular song, at the WorldBeatPlanet podcast.

Adieu Madilu

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Benn loxo du taccu reports that Bialu Makiese, better known as Madilu System, a member of Franco’s TPOK Jazz since 1980, died suddenly on Aug. 11 in Kinshasa from complications of diabetes. He was 57 years old.

Victory Records horror stories

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Pixelspread posted this story about how the indie label Victory Labels abused their artists and employees.

Almost all of Victory Records major alternative bands including Hawthorne Heights, Atreyu, Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, and Hatebreed, left them due to disputes. The head of Victory Records, Tony Brummel, is a bully who treats his employees, the label’s artists, and everyone else like shit. Worst of all, he never paid the bands their royalties.

When Hawthorne Heights left Victory Records, they issued the following statement:

“Due to recent events we have decided to leave Victory Records. Our departure is anything but amicable. We have decided to leave Victory in part due to the actions of the man who sits at the head of the label, Tony Brummel. Tony Brummel is a man that cares more about his ego and bank account than the bands themselves…â€?

“Tony is a man whose greed knows no bounds. After selling more than 1.2 million copies of The Silence In Black and White and If Only You Were Lonely, we have never seen a single dollar in artist royalties from Victory Records. Tony will claim that we have not “recouped,â€? a term used by those in the music business which means the label has spent more money in advertising than has been made by CD sales. In fact questionable accounting practices are the culprit and we are in fact owed substantial amounts of money much like audits from Taking Back Sunday, Thursday and Atreyu have uncovered. Despite earning more than $10 million, we’ve yet to see a royalty.â€?

Victory Records loved to sabotage other artists by recruiting street teams to visit record stores and move CDs by Victory artists to more visible spots while burying CDs by other artists. When he couldn’t sign a band, such as Acacia Strain, he signed a band that sounded exactly like them, marketed them the same way, and had their street team put their CDs in front of the other artists’s CDs.

Read the full article at http://thetrc.net/victory.html.