I mean besides the facts that he’s got incredible musical talent I don’t, he can pull off dressing like a fruit while I can’t and he’s a Jehovah’s Witness while I won’t even let them into the house?

Well, he can say things like “the internet is over”, and nobody blinks an eye.  The interview continues without any snickers.

That’s power.

In my opinion, you have two types of people that make a statement like this.  First, you have the person that is out of the loop enough to only be aware of something if it’s in the headlines.  Once it’s dropped to normal usage levels and is no longer talked about by people with nothing better to do than regurgitate the hot topic of the minute, they assume that it doesn’t exist any more.  All of the people that a few years ago said “blogging is dead”, “IRC is dead” or “facesitting is dead” obviously missed a memo. They don’t see it in the headlines any more, and they don’t personally utilize the technology any longer, ergo it’s dead. As we all know, these things still exist, they’re just no longer hyped.  Those that use the hype as their tool to gauge a technology’s usefulness are the type of people to use an on-off switch method of determining the popularity of something.

Then you have the person that says something is dead because they very much wish it were. Prince falls into this group. He wishes the internet is dead, so it’s dead.  You see, Prince sued various sites around the web a few years ago in an effort to keep people from seeing him prance around in purple leotards without paying good money to do so. Like many aging pop icons, he views the internet as the cause of his descent into obscurity. It’s not that he got so batshit crazy for a while that people really didn’t want to think about him, much less listen to him.  It’s the fact that a Youtube video of some drunk coeds had a soundclip of 1999 as the background music that has caused him to lose a mad amount of cash.

In spite of the reason he’s doing it, you have to feel kind of sorry for him.  He’s like your granddad that yells at kids to get off his lawn or that people are driving too fast around him.  Providing he doesn’t sue me for anything, he’ll continue to get nothing but pity from me, as I can totally relate.

Facebook and Twitter are dead.

Man, it seems like these guys have hit the bottom of the barrel.

Hehe, just kidding. Now they want to get paid for the 30 second previews used to sell their music.

Although the purchasing public continue to fund them, the recording industry doesn’t let appreciation get in the way of suing the very same people that line their pockets.  This though, surprised even me and I’m not shocked by much that they do.  Charging people to listen to a thirty second clip so you can sell them an overpriced album?

Fantastic!

Beginning around Halloween, they’re going to release 44 songs, again all will be available for free.  For those that wish to support the band, they will package them in 4 song EP’s, totalling(if my math can be trusted) 11 albums you can buy.

I really hope they consider a boxed set, as Paypal is likely to freeze my account for suspicious behavior if they make me buy each EP separately.

I totally support them and don’t want to be the one to cast derision towards any group that steps away from abusing their fans but I have to admit that I’m more than intrigued to see how they decide to market a 44 song release spanning months.  It’s what I would consider at the very least an eclectic method of music marketing.

I forgot about it until reading Wired’s “Top 5 Audio Atrocities to Throw Down a Sonic Black Hole”, in which Chris Cornell came in at number 1.

I know our tastes are supposed to mature over time, but I’m pretty sure there will never come a time that I can tolerate the music he released on that album. With music by Timbaland and produced backing vocals(see comments) by Justin Timberlake, it’s almost as if he systematically and methodically did everything he could think of to disgust and ostracize his fans.

There’s hope though. I hear we’re going to hear something amazing from him and Lady GaGa.

Werner Music Group is in a pickle.  They want you to start buying their music again but they also think that DRM isn’t quite restrictive enough. Sure, they already tell you what players you can listen to your music on, they tell you how many times you can listen to it and on how many different devices.  They even have the ability to take away those rights at any time with a simple shutting down of a DRM server when they don’t feel like honoring the license agreement any more.

As I’m sure you’d agree, WMG feels that you have too much freedom with your purchased music.  To help curtail the rampant piracy allowed by previous draconian measures, they’ve come up with LaLa.  What is LaLa?  It’s simple. With LaLa, you can pay ten cents per song.  You then get absolutely nothing.

Seriously.  You pay them ten cents and they will allow you to listen to the song from a browser tab on their site.  Much like you listen to a song on M-TV or the radio, only that’s free.  This allows you to pay for that privilege.  You do feel privileged, don’t you?

While Michael Roberts is more diplomatic than I am about the whole affair, he doubts it will fly.

Imagine that.

You might remember that very recently, Microsoft announced that it would be shutting down the DRM servers for the now defunct MSN Music and any music purchased through that service would no longer be able to be moved to other computers(or reactivated if you upgraded your current computer). This meant that all the customers that bought music through the MSN Music service got the shaft. Big time. That’s what you get for renting music.

Fresh on the heels of that announcement, Microsoft began heavily advertising the music collection you could rent via “Zune Pass”. For less than the price of a CD per month (if you purchase cd’s for the ridiculous MSRP), then you can borrow millions of songs, from thousands of artists. You don’t actually get to do what you’d like to with the music, you just rent it. Kind of like satellite radio, I guess only with the added benefit of typical MS bloatware and the hassle of dealing with DRM approved players and such.

Initially, Zune’s giant-killing feature was going to be the ability for the Zune to “share” data with other nearby Zunes. The problem is, people aren’t willing to buy the player in numbers large enough for the suckers owners to find others that made the same mistake in the immediate vicinity, so the ads that touted that feature were quietly swept under the carpet.

So, the whole “Zune social network” thing didn’t fly and instead, they’ve begun pushing a music service shortly after shafting all of their customers that bought into their last music service. They’re hoping of course that you don’t notice. If you did happen to notice, Rob Bennett of Microsoft wants you to know that they wanted you to have DRM free music. It was the labels that didn’t want you to have it. As Rob so smoothly put it:

“We want to make it easy and as painless for our customers as possible. We really feel, in the long term, what’s best for people who want to buy music from Microsoft is to move to Zune.”

They’re doing everything they do for you, the consumer. No need to thank them.

The tears in your eyes are thanks enough.

Well, hi there pot! it’s me, kettle!

That’s right folks.  Sony/BMG got busted for installing pirated software on their servers.  The same company that installed rootkits on user’s computers, not to stop pirating, but to stop legitimate copying of owned music are a bunch of thieves themselves.

I guess it takes one to know one.

What’s he referencing? One of those dastardly, crooked cap wearing, pants-drooping music thieves with thousands of downloads under their belt, I bet.

Almost.

He is referencing a case the RIAA had to drop against one Tanya Andersen, a 45 year old single mother, subsisting on disability. They sent the dogs after her for sharing thousands of files. They continued their pursuit when their own expert found her computer to be free of any proof of pirating media. They continued after the RIAA itself found out the nick they attributed to her actually belonged to another person that was bragging online about stealing music. Only after Anderson’s attorney found this information did they offer to drop the suit… providing she agreed not to file a counter claim.

Reading the information in released documents, you come to realize how despicable the RIAA actually is and to what depths it will stoop. The RIAA however, sees it a little differently. Mr. Gabriel states that they didn’t drop the suit because they couldn’t prove their case. The nick they falsely attributed to Ms. Anderson? He states that the user name might have been inspired by Kylee, since she admitted she liked Dragon Ball Z, a Japanese anime TV series that has a character with a similar name.

And how did he intend to prove that she actually downloaded the music that they accused her of stealing? He stated that Andersen admitted that she knew or listened to some of the artists whose songs were offered for download.

“We could have pursued the case until the end of time.”

This man would like you to buy some of his client’s music.

You’ll remember that Metallica was one of the main proponents in the initial lawsuits that brought down Napster. Now, they’d like you to know that it was never about downloading music.  They just, you know…. didn’t want you to do it then.  Now it’s ok of course, because Trent Reznor made an assload of cash doing it.

What really happened is this:  Metallica got caught hugging an antiquated music distribution system.  When the fear of sales dropping touched their wallets, they lashed out.  Over the years, they’ve held their stance, because nobody else broke the mold.  Now that bands like Radiohead, Trent Reznor and others have proven that you can sell a lot of music this way, they’re willing to try it.  Oh, and hey, let’s just forget about that whole “attack our fans” phase we went through.

Hey, who am I to judge?  I’ll download their new album…. If they offer it for free.

Hey, I’m no pirate.

Oh, and everyone that legally purchased music from the now defunct MSN Music, who has decided to shut down the DRM servers, thus locking you into the same 5 computers for the life of your music. Upgrade your OS or change computers, and kiss your music goodbye.

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t feel an iota of pity for those that bought into this payment scheme for music they can never own.

I just like this story because any time DRM fails, an angel gets his wings.