Tag Records first signee Q Da Kid releases his first video On a Mission.
Kid isn’t bad. The music is free you just have to buy a special “Music Pack”. Buy 2 body sprays and a deodorant and get 2 tracks from Q. Is it too easy to say that the music industry stinks?
Honestly, though, what do you guys think? I’ve never used tag and don’t plan on buying any to download 2 tracks for free. Is this just innovative marketing? Sell out commercialism? Inevitable?
Tag Records appears to be all hip hop. Green Label from Mountain Dew is so extreme underground. What kind of music do you think a label run by Colgate toothpaste would have? How about Mop n Glo? Campbell’s soup? Charmin? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
A roundup of recent music issues. Today is a special day.
Whoohoo! Its the fifth anniversary of the RIAA sending out lawsuits to their customers. Hooray for utter failure and extortion! Link
During the Republican National Convention the song “Barracuda” was used after Governor Palin’s speech. Heart sent a cease-and-desist notice to the campaign rejecting their unauthorized use of the song. Link
Been to Muxtape lately? “Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.” Surprised it took that long.
“A federal judge on Wednesday said copyright owners must consider “fair use” of their works before sending takedown notices to online video-sharing sites.” Imagine that, copyright owners have to follow the law. Link
Back again with our semi regular look at various stories around the globe primarily looking at your rights in the digital age. Some of these are old but they’re easy to skip over if you’ve already seen them.
In Venezuela, schools have been created to teach inner city and poor children from rural areas classical music. The program has been so successful, 300,000 children have passed through, a graduate of the program was chosen as the next director of the LA Philharmonic and a number of countries around the world are piloting the program. The program has expanded to 181 schools in the past 20+ years. Link
Learn how to upload mp3s to flickr by hiding them in images. Or you know just upload them to your own website. Link
Disco is surely not dead, and if you’re not up to snuff, check out this Disco Handbook on Scribd. Highly recommended are the pages containing definitions including heavy, deejay, beat, funky, freak and more. Surprisingly holds up well despite its age. Well worth a skim at least.
David Byrne plays a building!!! I’m speechless. Link
The inexact science behind DMCA takedown notices. Did you know printers have received DMCA notices? Link
LastGraph automatically generates graphs based on your Last.fm listening habits. I just ran it at 2AM and I’m in position 73, looks a bit popular. Looks like my graphs will be here, although I haven’t used Last.fm in awhile
You don’t say, a double standard from the music companies? Universal complains about fines that are just to high for a little bit of copyright infringement. Link
Somewhat interesting essay from Rasmus Fleischer, cofounder of the Piracy Bureau and the Pirate Bay. His is the lead essay at the Cato Institute’s online magazine Unbound. Argued well, if a bit long. Link
Avril Lavigne fans have created a site to automatically add extra views to make her video the number one video with over 89 million views. No comment, it’s Avril Lavigne, I can’t believe I actually just typed those words in here. Link
Finally, I saved the best for last. MediaDefender said oops after performing a DDOS on Revision3 swamping their network connections. Read the full details over at Revision3’s blog. This is amazing, a typically hacker/extortionist tool used “accidentally” against a legitimate media site. Congratulations on yet another stupid move.
Ok, so that was alot mate. Next time I’ll try to do this a little more regularly to keep up to date with all of this. Btw, did you find the bonus mp3?
Where will Santogold’s whims take her next? “As a kid, I never stuck to anything,” she says. “I took gymnastics, tap dance, ice-skating, karate, violin … I think I tried to open a beauty salon in my house when I was like 7. But I found something in my journal that I wrote when I was 15 or 16. I was like”—she adopts a self-mocking tone, but a certain embarrassed pride seeps through—“I know there’s music in me, I just haven’t found it yet. Maybe the kind that it is doesn’t even exist yet.”
I feel so honored. I’m really surprised that they are going after mixtape and remix tracks. Also, the Busta Rhymes joint I got directly from Mick Boogie and the B.o.B. song from a promo company. Left hand not knowing what the right is doing.
Hello,
We have received a formal DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice regarding allegedly infringing content hosted on your site. The specific content in question is as follows:
The party making the complaint (Jeremy Banks — International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) — Notices@ifpi.org), claims under penalty of perjury to be or represent the copyright owner of this content. Pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 512(c), we have removed access to the content in question.
Brand new project combining Last.FM + YouTube automatically creating your own MTV channel. Up above you can see Crime Mob with “Rock Yo Hips”. Now I’m listening to DMX. In between has been System of a Down and Ikaw(??). Really interesting, although the creator states that it’s only “an experiment, and it will probably stay that way.” I kind of wish there were other sizes besides too small and fullscreen, so I’m going to contact him now. Its the dopeness either way though.
Where we wax poetically on the state of the music industry and point you to new developments.
Jay Z has just signed a 360 deal with Live Nation to the tune of $150 million dollars. The deal is good for 10 years and will fund Roc Nation, Jay’s buissness, man. Still not sure on these 360 deals, does make sense that concert promoters are stepping in. Wonder how long it is before advertising and other ancillary businesses will step in to create similar deals. Link.
ISP Music License. Sign up for the right ISP and download all you want in whatever format you want? Brilliant concept in theory. However, how do profits get distributed equitably? Its widely speculated now that any fees collected now by the RIAA are not going to the artists. Blank media in Canada has had a similar tax since 1997. Link.
Muxtape.com. Create an account. Log in. Upload songs, create a mixtape. Check 5151.Muxtape.com in the near future. Their blog profiles some of their favorites.
UPDATE:
MySpace and 3 of the 4 major lables have a tentative agreement to launch a music store. MySpace Music will be spun off into a separate entity that the labels will each have minority stakes in. The site will offer free ad supported streaming music as well as downloads. Not sure where this leaves the hundreds of thousands of artists that have built up the site to where it is today… Link
Surprisingly, according to reports, Amazon’s digital service has not gained ground like many expected. Meanwhile, Apple is number 1, passing Wal-Mart. Link
Radiohead is keeping the sales figures of their new model of a record release a secret. But there are some leaks and lots of speculation. It is thought that on average only about 40% of those that downloaded it paid anything at all. From there the average, worldwide, is 6 bucks ($8 in US and closer to $4 the rest of the world). (I’m an Amurrican so I can’t give you these figures in Euros.) If they had a million downloads that’s 400,000 people paying 6dollaz giving them 2.4 million. After all costs, they will make just under 2 million dollars for the first million people to download it. They will make about most of that 2.4 million for every million people globally to download it from there on out. And this was really just a savvy way to make money off of the inevitable internet “leak” that puts these albums out months before their physical release. Well done old chaps. (Read that again, they are NOT really reinventing any wheels in the music game they are just savvy enough to make money off the same downloads that you would normally have found on Oink using good ole fashioned guilt and questioning people’s values. I repeat, well done old chaps.)
Speaking of Oink and someone actually re-working the way the wheel rolls, Saul Williams and Trent Reznor paid 7 bucks and $5,080, respectively, for In Rainbows. You can read more about their download ONLY album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! and how they viewed Radiohead’s music label chess victory and what it means for their project here
Interesting post over at Wired claiming that vinyl will be the ultimate killer of the CD. As you may guess, I’m sure Casi would agree. Somewhere along the way I got hooked on vinyl as well. I can’t quite justify buying double albums this way, but singles and I love love old jazz records, not the reissues from recent years, but the old vinyl with the crackling and everything.
Lala, yet another possible threat to the music business. Wired does a writeup of the service and the founder who has conquered multiple other markets and got bored of traveling. To me it seems rather similar to Pandora except that it offers links to buy the music you’re listening to. Can anything save the music industry? Is it worth saving? Do we need major record labels?
Waffleswaffles and jam. Anyone used any of these? What.cd seems to be in the lead. Waffles.fm is still in its infancy. Stmusic and funkytorrents both eclipse these newbies in users and torrents. Whats your favorite? Sorry, no I don’t currently have any invites.
Trent Reznor is producing Saul Williams new album and was an Oink user. I’m not sure whether or not to be scared or to just write this off as boring typical music journalism: “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust!, a mind-boggling fusion of genres — think NIN meets Gnarls Barkley meets Justice”. Read the article here. Pay or not for the album tomorrow here.
