David Emery OnlineFrom Moby
How’s it going?
The album just came out and it would be #1 euro charts if not for michael jackson re-releases.
So that’s good.
But here’s something funny: the best selling itunes track is ’shot in the back of the head’.
Why is that funny?
Because its the track we’ve been giving away for free for the last 2 months and that we’re still givng away for free.
Odd.
How are you?
Moby
We’ve had many similar experiences – giving away a track can lead to higher sales; for example, at exactly the same time we were giving away The Horrors ‘Sea Within A Sea’ from their website we were seeing great sales of the track on iTunes (and it’s still the second most popular track from the album on there, even though we’re still giving it away).
Visit ➔Girls - Hellhole Ratrace
Such a good song – it sounds ‘classic’ from the very first time you hear it.
Visit ➔Discovery
We’ve just launched this little one-page site for Discovery, the new project by members of Vampire Weekend and Ra Ra Riot. It’s great – I think (unless something else comes along) it’s the sound of the summer for me.
Also, look out for some mildly interesting js-based scaling and layout on the site, keeping everything in check.
Visit ➔Fanfarlo - Reservoir for $1
Widget removed as it was set to auto-play – not cool, guys…
As regular readers will know I’m a fan of Fanfarlo, and their debut album Reservoir is a brilliant piece of work (for the lazy/NME journalist in you: think Arcade Fire meets Beirut. Ish). If you haven’t picked it up already, you now have no excuse – they’re selling it for $1 (with some extra tracks to boot!).
Go now, it will be the best $1 (62p!) you’ve spent all year.
Visit ➔The New Jack Penate Website
At work we’ve just launched the new site for Jack Peñate, which features all kinds of jParallax-based crazy scrolling flowers.
Really happy with the way this one turned out…
Visit ➔The Phenomenal Handclap Band - 15 to 20
Such a lovely little song - think LCD Soundsystem with a dash of early CSS.
The Phenomenal Handclap Band - 15 to 20
Visit ➔SoundCloud’s Terms and Conditions - Are they fair and reasonable ?
Have you read SoundCloud’s Terms and Conditions ? Did you know that by signing up, you grant them (and their successors) the right to do almost anything they like with your music? For free? Forever?
The article goes on to say how they’re sure that SoundCloud aren’t going to do anything nasty with their your content, and I agree but that really misses the point; what happens – and this isn’t too far fetched – if SoundCloud gets bought up by someone who has lesser morals? The T&Cs are quite clear – they could do almost anything they like with your content.
This isn’t a problem unique to SoundCloud either – web darlings Vimeo and ustream.tv both have similar conditions in their T&Cs. This is the really boring side of working on the edge of developing technologies, but in the long run do you really want some little web startup owning your content?
Visit ➔Palm Pre syncs with iTunes on a Mac just like an iPhone
“Plug a Pre into a Mac and it syncs, seamlessly, with Apple’s iTunes,” the financial publication reports. “In fact, the iTunes Store treats the Pre just as it would an iPod or an iPhone with one exception: it can’t handle old copy-protected songs.”
This is smart. Very smart. The Pre is the first credible contender to the iPhone, but the first thing that went through my head was ‘what about my music?’. Don’t forget that half of the success of the iPod is down to iTunes and the ease of use when it comes to device management it brings with it. I would assume though that if the Pre turns out to be a serious threat – personally I think there’s room for the both of them – Apple will make it start not working.
Visit ➔Spotify Music App for Android
If I were Steve Jobs, the video to the right would scare me senseless. It shows a Google Android phone running a Spotify app that appears to succeed in porting the full Spotify experience — still not available to most Americans – to a mobile phone.
On the contrary – I think the reason that we’ve seen this running on an Android based phone is that the iPhone app is embargoed until the WWDC keynote in a week and a half’s time, where it’ll get some stage time. Don’t forget that Apple has been featuring the Last.fm app – which has similar streaming music capabilities – on its TV adverts. A Spotify app is a great addition to the app store.
Visit ➔