Posts Tagged ‘music’
Only older people can afford to go to festivals now
May 17th, 2013 • 10 CommentsRemember when festivals were full of young people with flowers painted on their boobs, indulging in free love? Well, now they’re more likely to be full of tedious over 30s with John Lewis picnic equipment and an endless supply of Dorset Cereal, according to a new survey by MSN.
It’s hardly surprising when you find out that the average cost for a British festival is now a staggering £423.01 – that’s including tickets, transport, camping equipment, bottles of Williams Brothers craft beer, crap straw hats and ukelele maintenance.
As festival goers are older these days, there’s also been an increasing trend towards older headline acts. It seems that when you hit 36 it’s impossible to process new things, so campers are much happier to see established acts from back in the days when they were happy and had an intact hairline. In fact, 43% of the 2000 festival goers polled said they preferred to see acts that had been around a decade or more.
The average age of festival punters who go to T In The Park is 37, with Glastonbury at 36 and Reading and Leeds at a relatively sprightly 35 years and eight months.
So come on, Reef – start rehearsing ‘Place Your Hands’ – you’ve got work to do.
Google Play Music to kill off Spotify?
May 16th, 2013 • 3 Comments
Google have launched a subscription music streaming service in a bid to get one over Apple and potentially kill off Spotify.
The service, clunkily called Google Play Music All Access, has been unveiled at Google I/O, where it was revealed that you’ll be able to do exactly the same thing as you can do with Spotify. Basically, you can ‘listen now’, search for artists and make mixes and the like.
Chris Yerga, Google’s engineering director, said: “This is radio without rules. It’s as ‘leanback’ as you want to, or as interactive as you want to.”
One crucial difference is that there’s no tie to Facebook, which may be something of a godsend for future users.
In the US, All Access will cost $9.99 a month after a 30-day free trial. Those who sign up before 30th June will get a reduced price of $7.99 per month.
Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI, said: “Streaming is the fastest growing part of the £330m digital music sector in Britain… with more than a million paying subscribers already and millions more enjoying free and ad-supported music. The entry of a player with the reach of Google will persuade many more consumers to experience having millions of songs to play instantly on their phone, tablet or PC.”
Are you convinced enough to quit Spotify or Grooveshark?
Sony is STILL negotiating with iRadio
May 10th, 2013 • 5 Comments
Apple’s much anticipated iRadio has hit a Sony-shaped stumbling block – the major label is umming and ahhing over the deal to sign up to the new music streaming service.
Sony reckons that if iRadio is a success on a par with iTunes, then it should be offering them a better deal. At the moment Apple is offering labels a royalty of 8p per 100 songs streamed, plus a share of ad revenue and a guaranteed fixed sum in case it all goes tits up and nobody listens to it. But Sony didn’t get where they are today by piddling around over 8p. So they’ve dug their heels in and are stroking their white cats and playing with their clacking silver desk balls and saying ‘Your move, Mr Apple’ (or whatever successful businesspeople get up to these days).
It’s a bit of a blow for Apple, who have reportedly already signed Warners and and were waiting for Sony to complete the deal. But if they don’t offer the label any more than the going rate (Pandora also pay 8p for 100 tracks) the music giant, – who manages all our ‘favourite’ acts like er… John Legend, Ke$ha and One Direction – ain’t going to budge.
So come on, Apple. If iRadio is going to launch this summer, they’re going to need some Jack Donaghy style negotiation and synergy – FAST.
Government announces plan for new law on dodgy apps
May 9th, 2013 • 4 Comments
There’s going to be a new law against faulty apps, say our beloved government. The Queen, not up to much these days, outlined her principles of a new Consumer Rights Bill in a speech delivered to parliament which allows you to claim compensation for faulty apps, music and movies purchased online.
For gamers, this means that, should you buy a game that keeps crashing or freezing, you’ll be able to get your money back or a replacement.
Same goes for films and music.
Jo Swinson, the consumer minister, said: “Stronger consumer protection and clearer consumer rights will help create a fairer and stronger marketplace.”
“We are fully aware that this area of law over the years has become unnecessarily complicated and too confusing, with many people not sure where to turn if they have a problem.”
Download MP3s from Spotify via hooky app?
May 9th, 2013 • 3 Comments
Google and Spotify aren’t happy with a Chrome extension called Downloadify, which has allowed users to swipe MP3 copies of the songs they stream over Spotify’s web player.
“Simple Chrome Extension to Download all Spotify Songs,”says the Downloadify description. “Spotify made a great html5 player for their service…But they forgot their encription [sic]…Hey, I don’t like encription but love spotify, just pay them for their magnificent content and I am sure they fix it soon.”
Google have given the boot to the extension, which isn’t surprising as the Web Store agreement says that Google won’t ”engage in any activity with the Web Store, including the development or publication of Products or other materials, that…infringes on the intellectual property rights of others [or] enables the unauthorized download of streaming content or media.”
Of course, those in the know will be able to still access the app, Web Store or not. Spotify are looking into the matter, but it is bad timing for them as they’re currently in the middle of renewing their licensing agreements with the major record labels.
Spotify are trying to get better financial terms from the labels, but with this oversight, their bargaining chips may be fewer than first expected.
Twitter to launch music service (with songs no longer than 140 characters etc)
April 15th, 2013 • 2 Comments
It has been a rumour for a while, and now, everyone’s dreams are to come true! Twitter are launching a music service. Go to music.twitter.com and you’ll see a ‘coming soon’ message and an invitation for you to sign in.
Then, apparently, you’ll be offered “the best new music in the world right now”.
Twitter say: “There’s no question that Twitter and music go well together. Artists turn to Twitter first to connect with fans, and people share and discover new songs and albums every day. We can’t wait to share what we’ve been working on at Twitter.”
Want to know more? Tough: “We wish we could say but we’re not yet ready to talk about it. You’ll hear more from us when we are.”
What we do know is that you’ll be able to watch videos from Vevo and rifle through SoundCloud links. We also know that toothy American TV behemoth Ryan Seacrest has been mucking around with this new service, tweeting that he was ”playing with @twitter’s new music app (yes it’s real!)… there’s a serious dance party happening at idol right now”.
Will Twitter be able to challenge Spotify with this new service? In short – probably now.
‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ enters the charts…
April 9th, 2013 • 10 CommentsStand-up comic and huge Bitterwallet fan, Justin Moorhouse, noticed that for absolutely no reason at all, ‘Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ has entered the British pop charts.
Absolutely nothing to do with Thatcher dying at all.
Spotify removes five-track limit
March 19th, 2013 • 4 CommentsSpotify has done a sensible thing and removed the five-track limit from its service for non-paying users in the UK.
“The tracks that you couldn’t listen to before will once again be available for your listening pleasure,” Spotify said today.
It isn’t all good news regarding greyed-out music though. Spotify still have a time limit on their service at 10 hours, which means after you’ve listened to 10 hours worth of music, you’ll have to cough-up for a subscription or wait.
Or use Grooveshark.
This is slightly unfair as over in America, Australia and New Zealand, there’s no caps for non-subscribers at all.
This news comes on the back of Spotify’s announcement of the beta webbrowser player, which means you can stream Spotify without downloading the app (although it doesn’t work on Firefox as yet).
Love for sale – musicians buy online fans
March 18th, 2013 • 1 CommentIn the tedious race for online popularity that dominates the music industry, upcoming artists are so desperate for attention that it’s now common practice to buy youtube views and Facebook likes.
It’s only £30 to pretend that 10,000 people like your obscure band called The Bellends, and you can even buy semi-literate comments to complete the deception and get record companies to sign you up to a hot deal.
Twitter says it’s against their rules to buy followers, while a Facebook spokesperson told the BBC that ‘likes’ that are computer generated will probably be instantly deleted from their system anyway. Youtube will also terminate your account if they suspect you of buying views.
But that hasn’t stopped artists using social networking to generate thousands of fake online fans for their music, even though IRL they’d probably be playing to a fire extinguisher at the Dog and Bucket.
It’s a real shame musicians have to sink so low. I remember when all you had to do was grow your hair and write ‘Smoke On The Water’ and you’d get a private jet and a plastercast of your knob. Good times.
Twitter to launch music service
March 14th, 2013 • 3 CommentsWant to hear the new song by the Grunting Pooflaps? Or find out more about that great new singer Lorem Ipsum Qwertyuiop?
In BREAKING NEWS, Twitter is about to launch their own branded music discovery app, using the technology they acquired from We Are Hunted last year.
Called Twitter Music, it may be released by the end of the month and offers you a personalized selection of music based on accounts you follow on Twitter (DEAR GOD). Songs are then streamed through SoundCloud.
It’s also an attempt to bring in more young folks, based on the idea that musicians are the most followed celebs on Twitter. Twitter will suggest artists for you to listen to based on your activity, and will recommend new artists.
It’s a great way for new bands to get their music out there – providing you follow the right people. However, if you follow a bunch of eejits, you could find Twitter suggesting that you listen to The Wurzels (I mean, Mumford and Sons). And that would be bad. Still, it’s another great way to weed out the c***s.
Spotify launch new web player
March 8th, 2013 • 1 CommentSpotify have launched their new player that you can use in your browser without downloading the app. The heralded this new thingummy with an email that read: “”Now you don’t need to download Spotify! Try our new web player on your computer – now available as a beta version at play.spotify.com. The web player will be a real bonus because there’s no app to download. So whether you’re at the office, or round at a friend’s house, simply log in to your account and hit play.”
If you’re a member, this pretty much kills off the need to use things like GrooveShark and the like.
Giving it a whirl, it works very well with my playlists all there and working in exactly the same manner the app does (I tried it in Chrome).
Thus far, there’s no additional apps and social sidebar, which isn’t much of an issue yet. They’ll invariably be added when it launches fully at a later date.
With Apple and YouTube rumoured to be launching music players, it seems that Spotify has been given a kick in the pants in a bid to stay ahead of the game. If you’re already a Spotify member, this is a really good addition to the service which is incredibly hard to be cynical about.
Amazon offer free download with CD purchases
January 11th, 2013 • 5 Comments
Vinyl buyers have been enjoying a free-download voucher with new releases for a while, but now it looks like it’ll be the norm as Amazon has launched a service that gives consumers a free digital version of CDs bought from them.
AutoRip, which is only available in the US currently, will keep a digital copy of CDs in a customer’s cloud storage account, then, you’ll be able to access the music via Amazon’s Cloud Player on the web or via the app.
About time someone did this really.
The catalogue isn’t complete however, and the albums this applies to so far are those that have been most popular with Amazon customers in the last 15 years (‘Dark Side of the Moon’, ‘Thriller’, ’21′ and so on). That should grow in time and, get this, any customer who has bought a CD from Amazon since ’98 will be eligible to get a free MP3 copy of it.
“When we picked those 50,000 titles we focused on having a substantial majority of our physical CD sales covered,” said Steve Boom, head of digital music at Amazon in a statement.
This is obviously a challenge to Apple’s cloud system, so we’ll see how this develops.
Did you know that ripping CDs is illegal?
December 21st, 2012 • 15 Comments
Stupid law time, and the government are trying to work out a way of fixing a problem that people constantly flout. Essentially, every time you rip a CD and put it onto your MP3 player, you’re breaking the law.
Copying any kind of copyrighted digital media from one place to another is massively illegal.
And so, the government are getting it sorted with a new “modern, robust and flexible copyright framework” to address the problem.
This change will come along with some other more substantial things, such as allowing schools to record TV shows for “private study” and generally allowing more use of copyrighted material if it’s sufficiently acknowledged.
Of course, this means squat to everyone in Britain. Presumably the government feel incredibly modern and clever about their tackling this problem. While they’re at it, if they could sort out DRM, that’d be really great. As for stopping illegal downloads?
Fat chance.
[Gizmodo]
Primark set to start selling CDs – not good news for HMV
October 2nd, 2012 • 6 Comments
A CD, yesterday
In a move that could be very significant to the future fortunes of HMV, Primark has announced that it is going to start selling CDs in some of its stores, following an agreement with the mighty Universal Music Group.
Although the move is going to be a trial at first, it’s not hard to imagine shoppers picking up CDs by Universal artists like Jay-Z, Lady Gaga and Rihanna as they’re buying their cost-effective clothing. As Primark have said, ‘fashion and music have always been synonymous’. They’re not wrong – we’ve still got a cupboard filled with snoods that we bought when Nik Kershaw was in the charts in the 1980s.
Primark and Universal will be hoping that the deal will boost the sales figures of CDs and vinyl, which were 43.6 million between January and June of this year, down from 50.3 million in the same period in 2011. Troubled HMV will not be so keen on it. Maybe they should start flogging cheap snoods….
Beck releases new album as sheet music, which is pointless
August 9th, 2012 • 13 Comments
Beck hasn’t been as busy as he once was, so news of a new release from him is pretty exiting for fans of his, right? WRONG. The berk has gone and announced that he’s releasing his newest work as sheet music.
SHEET MUSIC.
The new album will be released as individual pieces of sheet music under the title of Beck Hansen’s Song Reader, coming in at 108 pages which is just brilliant if you can’t read or play music.
The idea, of course, is that fans will be able to play the songs themselves and ‘bring them to life’, which is stupid because not all of us sound as good as Beck when we sing.
A statement from Beck’s representatives says: “Beck’s latest album comes in an almost-forgotten for… complete with full-color, heyday-of-home-play-inspired art for each song and a lavishly produced hardcover carrying case (and, when necessary, ukulele notation), the Song Reader is an experiment in what an album can be at the end of 2012.”
You can presume that this is some kind of vague commentary about music piracy too, so the best thing to do is photocopy the shit out of this latest indulgent horsepiss.
