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Archive for music

  • As long as I have my Radio...

    Seems like big changes are going on over at Last.fm. When I read the headline on Mashable I first was pretty scared, since I'm a paying subscriber and thought that Last.fm would kill all of their streaming ... and Spotify is still not available in Austria.

    But then I read the quote and the post on Last.fm's blog again and noticed the term "on-demand track streaming". Puhhh, lucky :-) It's not like this was available to me anyway (remember, I pay for that service). Now I can just hope that they don't get any funny ideas over there in London and also abandon the rest of their streaming services (like the Radio!!!).

    In the meantime, though, I can start feeling less cheated, since people from the US, UK and Germany now no longer get there track-streaming from Last.fm anymore, either ;-) On the other hand, I'm all for integrating other services like The Hype Machine (which I hadn't heard of before) since more services simply mean more great new music to me :-)

    2010/04/13 at 19:21:35

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  • Finally some choice

    The wait is finally over! It only took more than two and a half year but since yesterday Amazon MP3 is now also finally available in Austria :D It naturally still comes with its own little downloader application (which is at least available on Windows, OSX and Linux) but that didn't prevent me from spending 15 EUR with them right away. Currently they have a huge selection of albums for sale - at a price about half of what Apple wants - so I just couldn't resist :-)

    Now I'm just waiting for either Apple or Amazon to give me access to international tracks :-)

    2009/12/05 at 20:25:29

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  • No Glitter Hits for me

    Every time the music industry runs around crying like a little girl about how much pirates (they probably mean those in Somalia) hurt their business (by attacking tourists on expensive yachts and tankers, I guess) I sometimes start to feel sorry for them. But this state of delusion only holds for as long as it takes Last.fm to play Glitter Hits by the Italian band "The Styles".

    I live in Austria, a country -- if you don't mind consulting a map you think you can trust -- pretty damn close to Italy. But for some obscure reason I can't buy the above mentioned song. It's not available in the German Amazon store (which also acts as the one for Austria), not in the Austria iTunes Music Store.

    A couple of weeks ago, I contacted H2OMusic, the label of "The Styles" which seems to be owned by Sony BMG, and asked about this. Did I ever get a response? Not really. I guess the next company to ask would be Sony BMG itself, but it's not like I expect much more a response than what I got from H2OMusic. Making a deal with EA to include the song world-wide in various Burnout games seems to have been possible. Why isn't adding it to iTunes everywhere?

    At least, the song isn't available in the newly opened MP3 store on the German edition of Amazon either ... which I get all the advertising for but can't actually by anything from since I'm not from Germany ...

    I often wonder, if the music industry really wants to sell you anything.

    2009/04/03 at 21:39:22

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  • DRM-fear slowly becoming mainstream?

    At least that's what you should expect after reading this story on gizmodo about one of the biggest retail chains in the USA shutting down their DRM-based online music store (August 2006 - February 2008) since they're since February 2008 trying to be all-DRM-free. I have no idea how their system works, but in the e-mail published on gizmodo it is suggested by the support team that you burn your music to an audio CD. So I guess the music is somehow bound to a local software component and a server key, so you'd have to re-activate your music if you for example re-install your operating system.

    It naturally should be the job of the user first to make sure everything of importance is properly backed up, but in the end most people rely on the service provider to at least act as 2nd tier in the backup-chain. This 2nd level is now dropped. At least they seem to offer a way to get the music out of the DRM-lock, but just think of other services that don't do that. In the end this case should finally shake quite a few people up who previously bought music online without really checking what rights they have on it. Many people always think "Hey, I can get this song online for cheap". Nope, you can get the rights to play it on a single (or 2 or 3) device with a bit of device-lock-in and only very limited ways to use this song for cheap. Congrats.

    I at least hope that more people will finally start to get it and also recognize it in other systems; not only those of the music industry but in all parts of the content industry. In this regard (and only in this since I in general don't enjoy people having problems) I hope that many people have bought DRM'd music from Walmart.

    2008/09/27 at 23:00:30

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  • slotMusic - The best we could hope for?

    Take an old concept, put it onto a new medium ( ... OK, not really new) and think it is a great new idea. This WTF-moment was brought to me by SanDisk in association with this big 4 (SonyBMG, Universal, EMI, and Warner Music) this morning. slotMusic is that "new" idea and it's all about using microSD cards as replacement for the good old CDDAs. Honestly, the idea is in my opinion not completely bad, especially since -- probably thanks to some extra-terrestrial influence -- the music will be stored as 320Kbps MP3s without DRM. As Michael Arrington I'm totally baffled how SanDisk could convince the 4 labels to do that.

    Read more about "slotMusic - The best we could hope for?" ...

    2008/09/22 at 18:42:41

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  • Nine Inch Nails publishing new album online (DRM-free)

    Wow, kudos to Trent Reznor and the rest of the Nine Inch Nails for doing something that you have probably already heard about: They put their new instrumental album (or collection, depending on how you look at it) Ghosts I-IV online, giving you 4 different packages to choose from, depending on what you want (no CDs, CDs, CDs and Blu-Ray disc ...). For details, check out the order options page.

    (Artwork is part of the album.)

    Read more about "Nine Inch Nails publishing new album online (DRM-free)" ...

    2008/03/04 at 19:46:23

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  • No "To Get Down" for me :-/

    A few days ago when I was watching "The Italian Job" (the new one with Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron etc.) I heard a song that I absolutely wanted to have. After some googling I found name and artist ("To Get Down" by Timo Maas) and started looking for an online store where I could get this song.

    Read more about "No "To Get Down" for me :-/" ...

    2007/07/23 at 08:05:37

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  • Last.fm to become MTV 2.0?

    Remember the days when MTV was actually good? I mean when they showed music videos? Yeah, it's been a looooong time. Now Last.fm is on the verge of offering all those people who miss these good old days an extension to their current music recommendation service:

    Last.fm will soon be able to offer its users personalised channels from the largest legal catalogue of music videos on the web. The quality of videos on Last.fm will be significantly higher than that of YouTube, with audio encoded at 128kbps compared to YouTube's 64kbps.

    Last.fm aims eventually to have every music video ever made on the site, from the latest hits to underground obscurities to classics from the past.

    Press release

    Very nice :-) Now I just hope that their service will be a little bit more performant (on the Flash side) than YouTube.

    2007/05/10 at 11:35:03

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  • Thank you EMI!

    There is really not much more I can say about this. While 0.99EUR/USD definitely would have been nice, this deal is still a great first step into the right direction and I really hope, that the other major labels will follow EMI's lead in this.

    Read more about "Thank you EMI!" ...

    2007/04/02 at 14:02:41

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  • Getting Music. Getting Indie

    I guess I've now finally reached a point, where I want to and will try something new for me: Music from majors only if I reeeeally want it. For quite some time now I've become more and more annoyed by how big companies like SonyBMG, Warner and their organizations like the RIAA and the IFPI are treating their customers as well as simple the quality of the stuff that is played on the mainstream radio stations. So now I want to do a little experiment on myself and see how long I can survive by primarily getting music from indie labels.

    Read more about "Getting Music. Getting Indie" ...

    2007/03/16 at 23:41:41

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