Very cool project showing How Music Evolved: Billboard’s Hot 100, 1958 - 2016. As @siracusa says, just pick the decade you were in high school and enjoy!
The streaming music playing field just got a bit smaller… seems that Rdio is shutting down and Pandora is buying up the scraps. Wonder how this will turn out.
The MusicBrainz Blog: Announcing the AcousticBrainz project:
The AcousticBrainz project aims to crowd source acoustic information for all of the music in the world and make it available to the public. The goal of AcousticBrainz is to provide music technology researchers and open source hackers with a massive database of information about music.
Elton John Creates Song Using “Lyrics” On Oven Instruction:
This is how you recognize a master, just in case you were wondering.
Spotify Officially Launches in Canada. Finally.
Spotify has officially announced its launch in Canada, as the music service no longer requires an invite for those wishing to try it. Canada’s launch marks the 58th country that now has the music service.
2 Men With Their Cellos covering one of the greatest rock songs ever.
Things get going around 1:00 in, if you feel the need to fast forward.
Read about the Pono player from Neil Young and think there’s something suspicious about it but don’t have any references to convince your audiophile friends chomping at the bit (pardon the pun) for this? Check out the great collection of reading material on Pono that @marcoarment put together.
Bill Bailey’s message to Metallica is that he’s got them covered (so to speak) if they need him.
Ok, this is cool…. Trent Reznor facetimes w/ dying fan on stage DURING NIN show. Regardless of what you think of Facetime or Nine Inch Nails, that’s a pretty awesome thing to do.
I didn’t know there wasn’t a music video for Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” already, but apparently not. Today they released the “official” and interactive music video. Use your up and down arrow keys (or the buttons in the video) to change the channel as the video plays. You’ll get it after a bit.
This is something that really is a new take. Pretty friggin’ amazing.
Quite possibly the best cover you’ll hear all day: Russian Police Officers Cover “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk.
With a title like Heart plays Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven, makes Robert Plant cry, I couldn’t help but watch this this morning when it passed through my facebook feed. Huge kudos to my buddy Jim for passing it onto me. Amazing version of Stairway.
The Beatles Anomalies List is an OCD-comprehensive list of anomolies from Beatles albums. Things like:
Yesterday 0:19 After the word “believe” there is a squeak, sounds like it’s from a violin string (left channel).
Pretty crazy, but if you want to impress your friends, and you’re Beatles fans, time to start memorizing.
To The Apocalypse In Daddy’s Sidecar - Abney Park Enjoy a fun Music video.
I have a wide and varied taste in music so enjoy
Boil the Frog is a sweet looking mixtape creator:
Boil the Frog lets you create a playlist of songs that gradually takes you from one music style to another. It’s like the proverbial frog in the pot of water. If you heat up the pot slowly enough, the frog will never notice that he’s being made into a stew and jump out of the pot. With a Boil the frog playlist you can do the same, but with music. You can generate a playlist that will take the listener from one style of music to the other, without the listener ever noticing that they are being made into a stew.
Not bad checking out U2 to Johnny Cash.
This might be a repost, but I don’t care. Check out this great mashup of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” and Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters”. Too awesome to be a coincidence. See it below for yourself.
Spotify to Launch in Canada… exciting news! No dates yet, but it’ll be nice to have. The US folks sometimes forget that a lot of the services they take for granted (Hulu, Spotify, etc) are all not available outside of the good ol’ US-of-A.
STOCKHOLM—Spotify is set to launch its popular music-streaming service in Canada, and has further plans to possibly expand into Asia and South America, according to the Anglo-Swedish company’s recently published annual accounts.
Last week Coding Horror started their great bitrate experiment and today Jeff posted Concluding the Great MP3 Bitrate Experiment.
But you guys and gals wouldn’t do that, becuase you aren’t dirty, filthy cheaters, right? Of course not. Let’s go over the actual results. Remember each sample was ranked in a simple web form from 1 to 5, where 1 is worst quality, and 5 is highest quality.
Awesome post from Jeff Atwood over on the Coding Horror blog: The Great MP3 Bitrate Experiment.
CDs, unlike DVDs or even Blu-Rays, are considered reference quality. That is, the uncompressed digital audio data contained on a CD is a nearly perfect representation of the original studio master, for most reasonable people’s interpretation of “perfect”, at least back in 1980. So if you paid for a CD, you might be worried that ripping it to a compressed digital audio format would result in an inferior listening experience. […]
I’m not sure of the exact back story about Ann Street Soul Stirrers - Sunny, other than what I can read on the reddit thread, but I know that it’s a fantastic bit of music and a well done video.
Well worth the listen, watch, and then you can buy the track for a buck.
Johnny Cash’s 80th Birthday: Rare and Unpublished Photos of the Country Music Icon - LightBox.
Happy birthday Johnny, you’re still one of my favorite singers.
A series of mixes intended for listening while programming to aid concentration and increase productivity (also compatible with other activities).
Bruce Springsteen has announced a new album called Wrecking Ball, available March 6. Good news for fans. You can get a peek at the track over on his facebook page or directly on youtube.
Sorry folks, bit of a busy day for me, and sadly that makes a slow news day here at UFies.org. However if you're on the road you may want to check out the new HTML5 Music Player that Streams in the Background from Grooveshark. Works great on my iPhone, and any html5 compliant browser. Not goe-restricted either, as I can play it in Canada (unlike spotify and it's friends).
Here's a link to a google news search, however if you're quick you can catch the live stream of the announcement.
Short story, a google version of the iTunes Music Store, and (currently) only available in the US (but available now). This all sounds wonderful, but sadly as a Canadian, I won't be able to see or experience it (possibly for a very long time, based on the fact that going to Google.com/music sends me to the user not invited page. *sigh*.
There's the About Google Music page you can get more info on it as well. Still haven't heard anything other than "in the US" from the keynote.
Very cool, title pretty much says it all. Check out the video here: In Your Arms - Kina Grannis and possibly more interesting, the behind the scenes making of video.
So after reading this (and watching the video), you can tell by the title: Foo Fighters Respond To Westboro Baptist Church Protests By Playing Show For Picketers that Foo Fighters should be given as much support as possible.
Also, fuck the god hates fags people.
Delmar shared this on Facebook and as a fan of Firefly I had to pass it on: Mal's Song. Basically a full version of the Firefly theme song with full lyrics and a well edited video to go along with it. To echo Del's comment, dammit, now I must go out and watch all of Firefly again....
Video called Creating A Hit: 8 Hour Challenge. A testimony to the crap that is top 40 music these days.
I hate to say it, but this image pretty much sums up my thoughts on the Announcement by Apple that The Beatles are on iTunes. Don't get me wrong, I am a big Beatles fan, but I think that anyone who is a fan will have had their music ripped or in digital format already, and hasn't been waiting for the last 50 years for Apple to make it available. However, it's nice to finally have that loose end tied up :)
Also nice to see that they have put a couple of the concerts online, it's cool to see the boys from Liverpool play.
Everything Is a Remix is a cool look at how everything is derivative, and there's nothing new anymore (well, maybe not quite that extreme....).
Not sure if you can actually put these in order, but Rolling Stone has tried to rank the top 10 Beatles songs of all time.
HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS is now up and available for download. Yay for free and legal high quality music!
For the men out there... Kirsten Dunst doing I Think I'm Turning Japanese and bringing the hawt (IMHO).
I wasn't expecting that much from Don't Stop The Sandman when the link was first passed over to me from West Coast Geek, but I have to say I was both impressed and blown away.
It's a mashup of Metallica and Journey. Just give it time till the vocals come in. I have to say, I'd get this.
Looks like there's a chance that the infamous JoCo (Jonathan Coulton) might be coming to Vancouver. According to his JoCo in the Future page he lists Vancouver as "Maybe" and "TBA" for more info. Feel free to flood @jonathancoulton with messages of support for a trip to Vancouver.
JoCo, if you don't know, is the mind behind "Still Alive" from the Portal Video game, "Code Monkey", "Re: Your Brains" and many other great comedy geek music hits.
Nice list of Amazon.com Free MP3 Songs (including lots of Christmas music).
Ever wanted to check out one of the funky new iTunes LP albums from Apple but not want to pay for it (you cheap bastards!)? Well, now you can get not only a free iTunes LP formatted album, but also 20 tracks of Christmas music in their iTunes Holiday Sampler (itunes link). I'm not a big Christmas Music fan, but hey, free music!
After watching the Weezer Snuggie Infomercial Promo For New Album is it wrong that I think this might be a good xmas gift for my non-heat-retaining wife? I don't really even care about weezer's music....
Great video posted by my buddy @jimshaggy of Barney Bentall Live at Tractorgrease. Tractorgrease (@tractorgrease) is a multimedia studio in Chilliwack, BC, that hosts artists, records, etc. Great song and a nice video!
Gizmodo has the goods on how to Rip Your Music Like a Pro and go beyond clicking "import" in iTunes/WMP.
If you were looking at the calendar this morning and thinking "I just know there's something happening today," and when you got into work still couldn't remember? Well, it's the Zune HD release day! Also Microsoft has released new Zune software. Optimized for Windows 7, a smart DJ mix feature similar to the iTunes Genius, mini mode, and more.
Awesome song from a sci-fi songs blog all about Cylon #6, the gorgeous Tricia Helfer.
Referenced in this week's MacBreak Weekly is a 1975 live performance of "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen. Awesome and chilling, I gotta get me an MP3 of that.
Top 10 Tricks for Making Your Playlists Rock from lifehacker.
OK, this is pretty freakin' awesome. Check out the “Coder Girl” Rap:
Love the 'sudo make me a sandwich' reference too :)
Some cool videos of Battlestar Galactica Composer Bear McCreary Scoring Capcom's Dark Void.
NIN|JA 2009 is a place where you can get a free sampler pack of music from NiN, Jane's Addiction and Street Sweeper (who I've never heard of). Like the last couple of NiN projects, this is free, DRM free music from MP3 to FLAC to uncompressed WAV files. Pretty awesome, great to see that they "get it".
U2's latest single's video: U2 - Get On Your Boots. I'm not sure about the song to be honest, video is definitely interesting though!
Article on Qtrax from ZDNet. Qtrax is a new music download service... "free and legal" music downloads. Sounds like the real story isn't quite as rosy. Google for Qtrax news and I'm sure you'll find lots of other info on it. Doesn't sound like it'll replace my bittorrent music acquisition system any time soon....
Very funny song about the PS3... "how you killed your brand". Lets just say it wasn't done by fans :) (I'm going to guess the XBox team had a hand in it, but that's just a theory)
So what does anyone think of these Five Zune TV Spots? They are a bit reminiscent of the XBox 360 water balloon fight ads, all ending with "Find your audience".
Personally they are a miss for me. I honestly zone out because there's no focus or anything to draw me in or make me watch all the way to the money shot. Most of the commercials really have nothing to do with the player or any advantages it has. The first three basically are random shots of people socializing in a park, with some of them listening to generic looking mp3 players as a complete aside (to my eyes). The features that the Zune has that set it apart (large screen for video, wifi, landscape mode, comes in black, xbox integration, "social networking", etc) aren't mentioned, or highlighted. In fact, in watching the five spots, other than it's use for listening to music, I saw only one quick reference to watching videos (I think, it was a quick shot of someone turning it sideways, perhaps a reference to the landscape video mode) and perhaps a reference to the filesharing abilities by showing two zunes sitting beside each other.
The videos are very... "amateur looking". Not as if they weren't done professionally of course, but that stylized look. Definately focusing on the social aspects rather than the technology itself (maybe on purpose?).
Compare this to the iPod ads. They are a lot simpler, concentrating on the hardware itself and the enjoyment of music, or at least that's how I interpret it. Following the Apple simplistic style I particularily think that this U2 Video iPod ad is well done. A simple music video, and it just pulls out to show it's playing on an iPod, saying a lot.
Of course, I have a feeling most of the Zune marketing has been the grassroots kind that's over at ZuneInsider.
Anyway, I'm interested to hear what others think about the Zune marketing so far.
The boys over at Songbirdsnest have released Songbird 0.2 onto the world. This is not the 0.02 release from last month.... nope, we dropped a whole zero! Songbird is a Firefox based music player/library/everything. From their page:
"It’s like taking iTunes, ripping out the music store, and replacing it with the rest of the internet."
Some would of course argue that the iTunes store is the best part of iTunes, and taking it out would be like saying "it's like a car, but you take out the engine and put in the whole rainforest!" (ok, so coming up with analogies on the fly isn't one of my strong suits :) Hit their screencast for a nice explanation of what's going on.
Speaking of the iTunes store, if the GNOME Music player Banshee has a plugin to allow you to access the iTunes music store, I'm sure that can be plugged into this app.
One thing that I'd like to know is can I sync podcasts to an iPod (or other music player) with it? I presume something like that will show up before release though, this is version 0.2 only of course. As far as the idea it's pretty cool, scraping for media, etc etc. Anyone using this yet?
Sometimes the most simple mashups are the best. Who'da'thunk that a simple meshing of David Bowie and a video of the Shuttle Launch would be so cool? Here's Discovery Oddity (David Bowie Meets the Discovery Launch).
In my case I started with typing in "Blue Rodeo" as the band, it played "Bad Timing" as the example tune, and then from there played "I'm Over You" by Keith Whitley. Not exactly the same genre, but the same "sound". From there it went to "You Woke Up My Neighborhood" by Billy Bragg, who I've never heard of, but again, had the same sound.
I'm not sure if they use a similar system to audioscrobber for their data or what (it says it's part of the Music Genome Project). Seems to work well though.
Personally I still like both songs, so there :P
MusicBrainz is a tool that allows you to identify and tag mp3 and ogg files based on a generated ID, not relying on existing ID3 tags. So all that music you have that has tags that aren't necissarily accurate, pop them into the mb-tagger and let it go and figure out the correct tags for them, then let it save them into a nice directory structure for you.
She isn�t turning to the internet as a backup vehicle, but as the vehicle to promote herself and sell her music. Where, I should add, she could easily earn just as much in revenue by selling a quarter (or even less) of the units she moved while under a commercial contract. The profit margin is that much better, if you have the know-how, the technology, and the drive.Apparently she is also the first successful recording artist to deliberatly leave. Good for her, I've been a huge fan ever since Iambe introduced me to "Tiger Lily" ages ago.
A kind soul on ARS this morning noted that the RIAA site had been hacked yet again.
hehehehehe
The ad, titled "A Big Fat Thanks to Record Execs," reads, "Because of you, millions of kids will stop wasting time listening to new music and seeking out new bands. ...
My uncle doesn't agree that if you reduced the cost of CDs, you'd reduce the piracy. I say maybe yes, maybe no. You might not reduce the piracy, but you'd turn more profit from CDs I think. Right now I'm working for myself, doing the contract programming gig... money is tight. The decision on whether to buy (for example) the new Elvis CD (the 30 #1 hits one) would be a lot easier if the price wasn't over $20 (Canadian). See, if it cost, $3.00, or even $6, that's almost pocket change, and combined with what you can find in the couch, it's affordable. But with CD prices what they are, going in and buying more than two or three CDs is going to be a major purchase. When I filled in my collection of U2 CDs a while back I paid over $100 before I walked out of the store!
Anyway, I think that the opportunity to have consumers do impulse purchases would dramatically go up if CD costs went down. Then it would be worth it to them to just grab a CD instead of downloading from Kazaa or whatever. Of course, this leaves out the issue of buying a 12 track CD with two songs on it you want to hear, and the rest "filler" :)
Erhmm... anyway, Tom's got some good stuff to say about this, how he won't charge over $65 for a ticket to a concert (when he's being told he could charge $150), radio, and lots of other stuff. Kudos to Tig for pointing it all out.
Good question.