Archive for Music
Rock Abuse, Part 1,703
August 9th, 2008 • Life, Music
Transpires that a UK Top 40 hit was the launch of a gum ad campaign. Says the Beeb:
But in studying the words of all the hits, I failed to spot the significance of the chorus to Brown’s number. “Double your pleasure/double your fun”, he sings - a line I should have twigged was from the Doublemint gum jingle used since 1960.Now Wrigley’s have come clean. In a press release they reveal how the song is an extended version of a new jingle for their product.
“The summer release of Brown’s smash hit, Forever, which featured the unmistakable Doublemint gum jingle lyrics, kicked-off the creative partnership between Brown and Doublemint gum”, the company announced.
“Wrigley consulted with Translation Advertising (NY) to conceptualize and identify the artists behind the jingle remakes.”
‘Conceptualize and indentify’? Reassuring to someone is still holding the flame of face-melting rock rebellion aloft.
Prince plans to end YouTube’s reign
September 12th, 2007 • Internet, Music, Video
Tags: publishing, Video, YouTube
The artist formerly known as Good is gearing up for an attack on YouTube, according to Reuters. He is less than chuffed at the distribution of his tunes through the video portal, and shrugs off arguments that YT is merely the product of its audience:
“YouTube … are clearly able (to) filter porn and pedophile material but appear to choose not to filter out the unauthorized music and film content which is core to their business success,” a statement released on his behalf said. [From Prince to sue YouTube, eBay over music use - Yahoo! News]
File-sharing’s bad boy is back in town
August 17th, 2007 • Music, Social, Video
It goes up, it goes down. Earlier this week, one of the web’s original file-sharing baddies, LimeWire, announced that it was going legit - tracks would be for sale, and deals were being struck with labels left, right and centre.
But for every white hat, there has to be a black. One of the other P2P originals, Supernova, has been chased from the scene by the copyright lobby. Everyone assumed that it had gone forever. Wrong. It’s back - the all-new Supernova.org launched today, with support from the people behind Bittorent giant The Pirate Bay.
Has Supernova cleaned up its act? Doubtful, judging by a two-second delve into its main channels. And when one of your first forum posts is a 600-word instructional guide entitled How to lie to people: achieving anonymity through disinformation and data poisoning, you begin to build a picture of the intended audience.
Students turn to crowds to create the new iTunes
August 16th, 2007 • Music, Social
Social music sharing is nothing new (stand up and take a bow, Last.FM and Pandora), but there’s a new twist from a bunch of University of Florida students.
Grooveshark allows its users to upload and share their music files, for which the site pays both the artists and the uploaders. The result could be fascinating - a mash of iTunes and Last.FM, with a model in which everyone seems to win, with half of Grooveshark’s profits (after payments to publishers, artists etc) going to file sharers.
Of course, there’s money coming in the other end: users of the service will pay around $0.99 a track, with every file available in 192kb or 128kb MP3 and compatible with your iPod or any Windows-powered player.
Speaking to Read/Write Web, Grooveshark’s Josh Bonnain said: “Paying artists is one of the most complicated parts of Grooveshark. The process oftentimes involves sifting through huge amounts of untagged or mislabeled content that show up as a result of all the discrepancies in many MP3 files that are floating around out there, but we make it our job to dig through every track that is downloaded in Grooveshark and determine the appropriate rights holders.”
I’ve grabbed an alpha invite, and everything appears to be in order. Once you’ve installed the Sharkbyte client, you can listen to tunes through the website’s player. I’ve encountered easier sites to navigate, but there’s enough there today to make the trip worthwhile.
Musicovery: lose hours just playing
August 15th, 2007 • Best sites, Internet, Music
Just stumbled across this, and lost the next 30 minutes. I suspect it’s not that new (I seem to remember a develop buddy mentioning it a while back), but what the hell - it’s shockingly addictive.
LimeWire: the latest P2P demon to go legit
August 9th, 2007 • Internet, Music, Video
And so they fall, one by one. LimeWire is still one of the most popular P2P apps, and I’d guess that not everyone uses it to download unsigned acts from Idaho.
But today LimeWire has announced its intention to go commercial. You can expect the opening ceremony for the LimeWire music store any day soon, and it will be retailing MP3 files to paying all-comers. The company has already signed deals with IRIS Distribution and Nettwerk Productions, and is smiling broadly at any other music distributors looking to get on board.
The store will be a website at first, with links to it from within the file-sharing program. The LimeWire move follows the commercial launch earlier this year of the latest version of the popular Azureus P2P app, renamed Vuze and billed as ‘Hi-Def Theatre’. The new application offers a fairly mind-bending array of videos from major networks to hire or buy.
Lime Wire to Enter Music Download Market With New Digital Store and Inks Deals With Music Companies
Music video site, Coverflow style
August 5th, 2007 • Best sites, Internet, Music
Justin.tv - Live video, event streaming, and lifecasting
Well, somebody had to do it. Not satisfied with the very flicky Coverflow starring in iTunes, someone has lovingly borrowed the interface for their music video site. Dead pretty, too - even if, truth be told, it’s not the most instinctively way to skip through the latest releases.
Music industry nemesis returns from the grave
August 3rd, 2007 • Music, Social, Video
I was involved in a short-lived music magazine called Rip & Burn. As we prepared for launch, we did the sensible thing, and asked groups of music downloaders what they thought of the concept behind the mag (a guide to the best new legal MP3 music).
In one of the sessions, a fairly vocal 25 year old said it would never work. ‘You only need one site,’ he stated firmly. ‘Supernova. To be honest, I really don’t need much else in my life except for that site.’
And now, it looks like Supernova is back. Today, one of the world’s largest torrent sites, The Pirate Bay, announced that Supernova is to be relaunched. Cut to the scene of the thousand music industry executives threatening to jump.
‘Sloncek,’ the former owner of Suprnova, will remain active in the new site through the forums that will be hosted on a separate domain. He has donated the domain to the project, however he has attached several conditions to its use: The new Suprnova needs to retain the old design and feel, although the new owners can upgrade it. Additionally, the site needs to be public and not private.
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