47 posts tagged “music”
I already use Emusic, Amazon MP3, and iTunes Plus. While I need another music store like I need a second face, I found one in 7digital.
- Release a great melodic widely-styled hip-hop album that everyone absolutely loves.
- Release a new album that's more consistent but still totally awesome.
- Get mentioned on one of my favorite "stuff" blogs.
- Don't have your album on Emusic. (Being on a major helps.)
- Have your album available on Amazon MP3 Downloads.
Hard method
- Release a totally awesome rock album several years ago.
- Be mentioned often enough over the course of a couple years by people I consider hip that I'm naturally wary of you.
- Have one of my favorite "stuff" blogs say your album is "one of the top 5 albums to come out since Nirvana's Nevermind," which I don't actually read because of (2).
- Have one of your songs be included in a musical sequence in a movie I really liked, which I remember now because it's out on DVD soon.
- Have a song in the hottest hit music video game around, which I start playing.
- Be on the mp3 CD my friend's wife left in the car when he drove me someplace.
- Don't make your album available on Emusic. (Being on a major helps.)
- Be available on a coworker's iTunes share.
- When I'm almost done listening to your album for the twelfth time in two days, have my coworker leave for the day.
- Have your album available on Amazon MP3 Downloads.
- Release an epic hip-hop album I like enough to even get the remix album (albeit on Emusic).
- Release a new album in which you reportedly take "a giant leap forward in song craft, incorporating elements such as pop, reggaeton, and R&B."
- Don't make it available on Emusic.
- Don't make it available on Amazon MP3 Downloads.
- When I look to write this post, even after Amazon started claiming to be selling the CD, have delayed the release of the album by a month.
I was getting around to reading this New Yorker article about one's “Beddian year” that Jason Kottke linked to, and I clicked through to the front page, and then to a post (article?) of Sasha Frere-Jones', Grime Doesn't Pay:
It’s a shame, since the music is thriving in England; both grime and an instrumental offshoot called dubstep have been having a strong year.
And I must say Burial's Untrue (amazon mp3) is a pretty awesome album, worthy of the recent top-billing on Emusic's front door that got me to try and buy it.
Quote:
Manning a market stall this summer, trying to flog old CDs I no longer had any use for, I found that it wasn't just me; nobody had any use for them. There was interest in the DVDs and computer games, but not in the music CDs. And especially not from anyone under 30. ...Look at this artistically, too. There's been a brain drain. No longer will the most talented creative brains of their generation be headhunted by popular music, as might have been the case thirty years ago. My nephew -- who's remarkably similar to a 90s-born me -- wants to make computer games, not pop records.
iTunes has widgets...
but even cooler for some of us is they offer the same data in plain feed form. It's where the widget gets its data, but they give you the url and let you subscribe directly. Maybe there's some cool thing you could do with it with Pipes etc. (I read about the widgets on Infinite Loop.)
Sad. I didn't realize the Emusic refresh date creeps up like it does, so I went to spend all my downloads (I had around 70 left) at the last minute a day or two too late. So I already got a head start on this month, but all I downloaded last month were The Else and Grand National's A Drink and a Quick Decision (not available from Amazon?)
Or maybe I just don't like their gloomy songs.
While I'm talking about music, I got a head start on this month thanks to Chicago Public Radio's Sound Opinions and their 2007 retrospective-so-far episode. I grabbed the new LCD Soundsystem album Sound of Silver (which is only $7 on iTunes Plus, part of the Next Big Thing promotion), as well as Tim Fite's free album Over the Counter Culture. I also got the named El-P, Apples in Stereo, and Besnard Lakes releases, which were not only recommended by the Sound Opinions guys but had been in my save-for-later list for too long already. But I'll have to mention them again next month epdate anyway.
