Pitchfork Top 50 Albums of 2009 – With Torrents?
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on December 20, 2009 by admin in Music
Sunday, December 20th, 2009Pitchfork’s annual list of the 50 best albums of the year is out, and we’ve summarized the list with torrent links, Amazon previews, and free downloads. Enjoy some of the best music you’ve never heard!
Christmas came a little early for me this year; I was just complaining recently that Pitchfork’s annual staff picks of the the 50 best albums of the year wouldn’t be out until almost 2010, and lo and behold, they posted the list last week! If you’re not familiar with Pitchfork’s list, check it out; their staff’s wide-ranging tastes and opinionated reviews will expose you to music you may never have heard of, or would have never thought of listening to if you had. As usual, they spread the list over five pages with no summary, so we’ve done the dirty work and summarized the list for you below. Last year we posted the 2008 list with both torrent and Amazon links, and we’ve done the same this year, but have a suggestion: We know some people torrent so they can preview music before buying, and last year that actually made some sense, because it was hard to track down a retail source for so many indy acts. Things are VERY DIFFERENT this year; bands and small labels are getting MUCH better at marketing and distribution, so EVERY act on the list is available on Amazon, and almost all of them with AUDIO PREVIEWS. Which pretty much negates the need to “borrow” the music via torrents. Several of them also have “Amazon Exclusive” releases, with material you won’t get anywhere else. At least legally. So in the interest of the bands making money, and in the interest of US making money (we get a small percentage if you buy through our links), we encourage you to do all the previewing through the handy Amazon links we’ve provided, rather than the torrents. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »
Canada Invades US – With Indie Music
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on September 14, 2009 by admin in Music
Monday, September 14th, 2009While we’ve been busy trembling in fear of terrorists and calling our new president a socialist (is that actually an insult?) Canada has been busy invading our country. With a bunch of awesome indie music.
The New Pornographers’ Myriad Harbour may end up being my favorite video of 2008 |
It’s somehow telling that there’s only one derogatory name for Canadians, and even that one’s pretty friendly sounding. I mean, who could get mad about being called a Canuck? I’ve been marveling for a while at the explosion of indie bands over the past several years, whether from the American scene, the Balkans, Japan, Iceland, or even in the form of surprisingly un-incongruous German Reggae. It’s almost impossible to keep up! And thanks to our kind & sensible friends north of the border, now I have even more to catch up with. I hadn’t noticed until recently how many bands creeping onto my playlist were Canadian: Arcade Fire
So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star Part III
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 11, 2009 by admin in Music
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009Why Your Band Doesn’t Need A Web Site
 We’re still not sure why you’d want to pursue this. |
Two different musicians asked me recently if a couple thousand dollars was a reasonable quote for a basic web site. I said “Absolutely” and then immediately added “but don’t do it”. Interestingly, both were asking for my expertise (I do have a little) but neither were asking me to do the work. Musicians are cheap bastards. I should know, I’m a recovering musician. So why did I tell them not to bother? Because almost everything you would want a web site to do for your band – streaming music, streaming video, user interaction, downloads, etc – is available as a free service elsewhere, with widgets that you can easily embed not only in a very simple site of your own, but in the billions of pages that are the Internet as well. Ask yourself the rather silly (but oft-overlooked) question: Do I want to spend a bunch of money building a destination site of my own and stuggling with SEO to get people to see it, or do I want my music on my site, several other massively trafficked music sites, and thousands of Facebook, Friendfeed, and other Social Networking pages? So the great thing is that whereas this wasn’t really possible even a year ago, there are a slew of sites now that make this absurdly simple. The embedded player from SoundCloud that’s featured below took about five minutes from account setup to embedding to create. For the record, it’s some soundtrackish dreck I did a few years ago for a benefit CD for Kenya-based Amara Conservation. But we’re not showcasing the music, we’re showcasing SoundCloud. They’re just one player in an emerging scene that is sort of like “YouTube” for audio. Below are some of the other key players.
So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star – Part II
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 4, 2009 by admin in Music
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009Well, since your music probably sucks, you might as well plan on getting naked.
 If you play your cards right, you could end up as happily successful as this fellow! |
If you really have an interest in succeeding in pop music, there’s one way to avoid having to do many of the things we’ll suggest in this piece: be an absolutely f***ing brilliant songwriter with solid musicians to play your broadly accessible music. Then some top-notch management will find you, and your only battle after that will be not getting screwed by all the deals you’ll be offered. Since you almost certainly don’t have that particular set of attributes in your possession, ask yourself a few more questions about why you’re seeking to promote your music: Do you want to make a living at it? Are you convinced for some reason the world just needs to be exposed to your genius? Do you think you might have some reasonably marketable music, and wouldn’t mind getting paid for it? Have you been hitting the crack pipe pretty hard again? The fact is that even the established music industry has one of the highest failure rates of almost any business, and you’ll be entering one of the “noisiest” markets on the planet, alas, with a “naked” product. For some interesting thoughts about the new marketplace, check out Digital Music Can’t Be Marketed, which points out that you can’t really package and Read the rest of this entry »
Before the Music Dies
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 8, 2008 by admin in Music
Friday, August 8th, 2008I wonder if Don McClean did the soundtrack?
If you listen to pop music with any regularity and intelligence, you may have noticed an extremely high suck quotient in the major label releases of the past couple of years. This, while the quantity of really high quality indy material has grown almost exponentially and provided the artist with a higher income-making potential while unit prices plummeted. Well, someone else seems to have noticed too, and made a film about it. Perhaps a bit melodramatically titled, Before the Music Dies features interviews and performances with Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Dave Matthews, Branford Marsalis, ?uestlove and a wide variety of others. The film promises to explore the phemomena of “the homogenous corporate product that is spoonfed to consumers and the diverse independent music that finds devoted fans online and at clubs across the country”. The teaser with Erykah Badu, left, is hilarious.