David Emery OnlineThe Horrors - Skying
Love the new album by The Horrors – ‘Endless Blue’ (wait for the guitars to kick in about half way though!) and ‘Moving Further Away’ (wait for the guitars to kick in about half way though!) are particular highlights.
Visit ➔Lil B, SwagSec, and the Gay Hacking Parade
But some of this didn’t add up. ‘Gay hackers target Amy Winehouse’ still seemed too good a headline to be true.
Then I saw that Lil B was releasing his new album today. Apparantly his album ‘I’m Gay’ (named so in support of the LGBT community, though Lil B is himself a heterosexual) had been released without any notice.
Convenient? I later hear through the grapevine that Winehouse and Pritchard share the same PR guy. Would it be too cynical to imagine he has a new client in Lil B? Yes, it would. Until you see that Lil B had a ‘secret’ meeting with Universal staff back in March.
Does this smell even a tiny bit like a marketing campaign? Is it possible that the site owners and label did this purely for press coverage?
Pretty crazy if true. Pretty lousy marketing if it is.
Visit ➔Soulwax's mashup marathon
Realising that getting clearance for all the samples would be a headache, they found a loophole and applied for radio licences, becoming an internet radio company instead. The upside was no tussles with lawyers. The downside was they couldn't charge a bean: the app will be completely free.
The whole thing is pretty nifty, but I particularly like the idea of being able to release mashups and mixtapes as ‘online radio stations’.
Visit ➔The Wheels Of Steel: An Ode To Turntables (in HTML)
I have been interested in the idea of building a turntable-based UI in HTML for years; however, the past presented a number of technical hurdles. Setting dreams of browser-based remixing aside, simply recreating the core design elements of a turntable was practically infeasible until the advent of CSS3. The features most notably missing from browsers involved drawing circles, rotation of elements and low-level control of audio. As of 2011, it's a pleasure to say that these features can be implemented almost entirely using HTML, CSS and JavaScript alone.
Seriously cool.
Visit ➔The Horrors at York Hall
More photos on Flickr.
Kaiser Chiefs ... but under your control
And so to The Future Is Medieval. Without any buildup, fanfare or whatever you want to call the pop equivalent of leaving Red Bull cans scattered around Leeds city centre, the successor to 2008's Off With Their Heads appeared on Kaiser Chiefs' website on Friday. In doing so, it effectively heralds the arrival of the world's first bespoke album. Ten songs from a choice of 20 for £7.50 – no more, no less – but what those songs are, and the order in which they run, is down to you.
An interesting variation of the “In Rainbows” model – I thought we were done with that, to be honest, as it’s a model that’s not actually very good at selling records if you’re not Radiohead…
Visit ➔
Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify
Facebook has partnered with Spotify on a music-streaming service that could be launched in as little as two weeks, sources close to the deal have told Forbes.
The integrated service is currently going through testing, but when launched, Facebook users will see a Spotify icon appear on the left side of their newsfeed, along with the usual icons for photos and events.
Well that would certainly be interesting. Presumably this would tie right into Spotify’s (eventual) US launch as well – I’d be surprised if Facebook would do a major venture with someone without US presence.
This comment by Spotify on the story is hardly much of a denial either.
Visit ➔Bronze
Bronze is a new non-interactive music format in which recorded material is transformed in real time, generating a unique and constantly evolving interpretation of a song on each listen.
The first piece of music available in Bronze will be Flesh Freeze by Gwilym Gold.
Interesting stab at the “music as app” concept – particularly of note as it’s not the traditional ambient electronic instrumental music that you normal get with this sort of thing – it has lyrics and everything.
Visit ➔Amazon Sells Entire New Lady Gaga Album For $0.99
We've seen deep discounting before from Amazon. But today the online retailer is hit new lows by offering a download of the new Lady Gaga album "Born This Way" along with a digital version of the CD booklet today only for just 99 cents
Now, I think there’s a reasonable debate to have over what the correct price of an album should be (and whether something more like £4.99 could work out better as a general price point, as some people have argued previously), but I think we can all agree that this just a little bit too low?
Obviously it’s a piece of marketing for the new Amazon CloudDrive service, but considering that it seems to have crashed due to demand I’d hardly say it was money well spent.
I wonder if all those 99¢ album sales count for SoundScan, and hence whether we’re going to see a crazy-high first week figure for the album in the US next week (which is do doubt going to be high anyway)?
Visit ➔