Feb 24
AndrewLife in Digital Apple, Downloads, iTunes, Music
Apple’s iTunes store will begin selling an iTunes Pass for some artists, beginning with the launch today of Depeche Mode’s new album Sounds of the Universe. The pass program includes the presale version of the album as well as bonus material that will be released over the course of several months. The pass comes with the instant download of the first single Wrong as well as an exclusive bonus track Oh Well.
The cost of the Depeche Mode pass package is almost twice the cost of the standard edition (which also comes with the instant download of Wrong; but Oh Well is not available until the release of the full album on April 21.) Unlike standard presales, iTunes passes are paid for upfront. The entire amount is due when you purchase it, instead of just paying for the tracks that are currently available for download. Also, iTunes does not list and will not guarantee what constitutes “bonus material” for the package only that the cost will “not exceed the fair market value of the individual items” if they were purchased separately (not much of a promise that). That essentially means at least 8 exclusive songs, packaged either as music or videos, will pad the release.
Since deluxe packages are a routine part of iTunes lately, fans will probably buy into the iTunes Pass. For the most part, iTunes’ deluxe packages have delivered quality bonus material, live tracks, remixes and videos so that fans considering an iTunes Pass can justify the extra cost because they would have bought a deluxe edition anyway. The real test will be whether an iTunes Pass offers over and above what a deluxe package would because otherwise, it’s just a way for iTunes to justify charging customers upfront.
Other artists are expected to tie into the iTunes Pass.
Feb 10
AndrewMusic Album Reviews, Music, pop music
I know occasionally I review an album I absolutely hate, but nothing in any of past reviews compares to the instantaneous disdain of Lily Allen’s sophomore release It’s Not Me, It’s You. From the first note, I wanted spray lemon juice in my ear and clean them out with sand paper. (If that doesn’t sound painful enough, I’ll think of something that does). From her twangy, British accent, clipped enunciation and spoken-word style reminiscent of Lisa Loeb, every sonic aspect of this album filled me with unrequited loathing. Opening track Everyone’s At It is saturated in a saccharine-cute arrangement, and then underscored with veiled, vaguely threatening lyrics. That is pretty much the combination for the rest of the album.
Take the New Order rip The Fear with the quippy observation “And I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless ‘cuz everyone knows that’s how you get famous.” She’s so self-satisfied, I just want to push her into a puddle and watch her flop about. When she writes about Chinese food on the track Chinese, I get so angry listening to the track, I actually imagine what it would be like to watch her fall off a bridge into the murky waters of the English Channel (don’t ask me what my drowning-obsession is about today).
Her formula works best on two back-to-back tracks Never Gonna Happen and F**K You. She’s no less self-righteous than anywhere else on the album when she sings “How on earth could I be any more obvious? It never really did and it’s never gonna happen with the two of us” or “Fuck you, fuck you very, very much cos we hate what you do and we hate your whole crew so please don’t stay in touch” but somehow the light influence of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the cutesy repetitive shit doesn’t make me immediately want to dump a hot pan of cooking oil on my head and light myself on fire the way the rest of the album does. Like, I hate these songs too, but it’s more like scalding water in the pan instead of evoo.
BTW, Ms. Allen. It’s definitely you.
Jan 20
AndrewMusic Greatest Hits, Music
A whole album of Mariah Carey ballads? Sounds like heaven, right?
Well sort of. Undeniably, this is another greatest hits set even if it doesn’t say so on the label. (She’s already produced two, #1′s in 1998 and Greatest Hits in 2001). The songs on The Ballads have dominated radio since 1990′s Vision of Love, and been well represented on past hits collections. This time around, there is a new mix of Hero to lead off the set, a duet with Whitney Houston (When you Believe), Boyz II Men (One Sweet Day) and Usher (How Much). Joe and Nas take a crack at a sluggish, kind of boring version of Thank God I Found You. And the rest of the tracks are overfull with the soaring vocal gyrations we know and love from Mariah Carey.
Thank God for the duets (though the U.S. edition is missing the Westlife duet Against All Odds but includes Mariah’s take with Luther Vandross of Endless Love) because without them, this is actually too much ballad. Mariah’s voice dominates the entire disc and without a dance tune or suggestively sexed-up track to interrupt the flow of love songs, it starts to drag quickly. You wouldn’t think so, but after about 5 tracks, this starts to sound more like elevator music than a set of iconic ballads from the foremost queen of them (sorry Whitney, but that’s just how it is).
Possibly the hands-down most attractive track is One Sweet Day, but there’s a lot of love to go around. (But why not include All I Want for Christmas Is You on the U.S. version!) But the downfall of The Ballads is the lack of energy to carry you through 18 tracks. It’s not until you survive to the tail end that you get some more uptempo tunes like Always Be My Baby (heavenly!) and the Spanish-tinged How Much.
It’s not really a hit or miss affair, it really is just ‘hits’ but I can’t help thinking that this effort seems a little lackluster, and is entirely unrepresentative of Mariah’s music career. Individually, all the tracks included here are divine, but taken together, they fall just short of heaven.
Oct 20
AndrewMusic AC/DC, Album, cd, Music, Review, wal-mart
Anthems may be their gift (or strategy) but AC/DC’s first studio album in 8 years leads off with the rather lackluster track Rock N’ Roll Train. A sign of the times or just poor sequencing?
Turns out it doesn’t matter. Black Ice is uninspired AC/DC rock. From vocals to riffs, their signature sound permeates every song and that seems like it should be a good thing. The problem is that song after song seem kind of muted, from the “Hey Hey Heys” of Skies on Fire to strange pronunciation of Decibel (pronounced “deci-bell” which would be distracting if the track was even remotely listenable.) More to the point, anthems usually inspire sing-a-long kind of choruses, which are virtually missing here. Can you just see a crowd shouting “Big Jack, Big Jack, He said that he’s the only one who got a full sack”? If you can, you’re a better man than I.
Towards the end, it starts to feel like one is listening to the same song on repeat over and over again. Spoilin’ for a Fight sounds a lot like the title track. Not a solitary track stands out over another, and since AC/DC is eschewing typical promotional channels like digital singles, it’s hard to even know which song they want us to listen to. And the ballads are just turds.
Black Ice is only on sale at Wal-Mart, and the company has promised to create a mini-store concept to promote the album, complete with the band’s past catalog, t-shirts and other AC/DC-branded stuff. It will be a mild footnote if the band can rest on its reputation to sell Black Ice only at Wal-Mart, without any digital presence to speak of, as Garth Brooks did successfully. In this day and age, it’s one thing to eschew the Best Buys and Targets of the world, but it’s foolhardy to cut out amazon.com and iTunes. Especially when your music just plain ole sucks.
Sep 22
AndrewMusic Bridge School, Concert, Music, Neil Young
Death Cab for Cutie, Jack Johnson, Cat Power and Wilco will join Neil Young on both nights of the 2008 Bridge School Benefit on October 25 and 26. The annual event raises money and awareness for the Bridge School, an organization that works with children with physical and speech impairments. The event was started in 1986 by Young, who recruits an A-list of performers every year to play in an acoustic setting.
Norah Jones and ZZ Top will also perform on the event’s first night, and Josh Grobin and Smashing Pumpkins are slated for the event’s second night.
Jun 26
AndrewBusiness, Life in Digital Digital Music, Indie Bands, mp3, Music, Unsigned Artists
The digital revolution is washing away the distinction between mainstream music and indie bands. Sure, we will always have mega-artists the likes of Madonna and The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney, but now we are seeing the rising of the indie class. In part, record labels are embracing the indie class, particularly labels that are one or two degrees of separation from the major labels. But the real surge carrying the indie class towards the mainstream is the spawn of digital music.
Indie bands are gaining wide exposure to new listeners by focusing their efforts on digital music. Spreading the word is as simple as converting your music to mp3 and letting fans share and share alike. Create a MySpace page and they will come. Indie bands are profiling themselves on MySpace and YouTube, cheaply, and even mega-artists are eyeing the bandwagon and jumping on for the ride.
The internet long ago birthed a dedicated creative space for every artist, but cheap and plentiful domains now mean everyone gets their own website and a band would be crazy not to put something out there in webspace. But it was when streaming previews gave way to downloadable full-length tracks that the shift was marked. For most indie artists, the CD itself was never a significant source of income, so giving away the music for free doesn’t skew the equation of financial success far from what it used to be. In fact, digital sales still do not make up 25% of the industry’s revenue, so in every sense, an independent artist has little to lose by offering at least some of their music for free.
But the underclass, the unsigned artists, are benefiting from the popular appeal of digital music as well. Companies are reaching out to help them. One such company, DiscRevolt, manufactures prepaid download cards for bands to distribute or sell to their fans. The cards’ artwork is customized by each band and loaded with 15 credits that can be redeemed on DiscRevolt’s website. The band then posts live and studio mp3 tracks to their profile page on www.discrevolt.com/ and fans can then “purchase” the tracks using the credits.
A band buys the cards in bulk for as little as $.25 per card, and if they choose to sell them to fans, they keep any profit. The only charge to the band is the cost of manufacturing the cards.
This system, and there are a number of companies offering some variation on it, allows bands to cheaply distribute their music and possibly profit from studio recordings without the support of a record label. The sheer prevalence of cost effective promotional opportunities for unsigned bands has elevated them to instant indie status, and the indie bands are inching their way into the mainstream as record labels embrace a new digital business model that indeed has room for indie music.
The development of the digital music industry has meant that bands are no longer stifled by lack of exposure, or limited in their options of distributing their music. Determined artists have relatively cheap outlets for self-promotion on the internet from message boards to touring blogs. More clearly now, the distinctions separating the indie class from mainstream music are fading, and the best music out there will get its chance to be heard by everyone, however we classify it.
RSS
