IPOD envy
*editors note: This post got a little long winded. Whatever you do, read the last paragraph and listen to the three tracks at the end
I have just found out that the wonderful magazine Wired is going to have a cd with its next publication. For your average audiophile the track list may only raise half an eyebrow. However a read of the fine print should raise the other half or may even leave you with a deer stuck in headlights appearance.
The tracks are being released under a ‘creative commons licence’ which means – copy, distribute, share as you like…
What the?
No longer should you blush when you mention you have been listening to the latest track (even though the album isn’t released here for another couple of weeks). No longer do you need to perform the sneaky backhand manoeuvre when exchanging mix cd’s, the artists are embracing your passion for their music and your frugal penny pinching. Kinda…
There have been howls for a while now about how the advent of mp3 and filesharing on the internet have sounded the death nell for commercial music but for all their posturing and prosecuting there are many who are adapting. Greenday recently released blank cd packs of recordable cds, each branded with a different one of the Greenday albums, the implication being that: if you are going to copy our music anyway, why not give us a little revenue by buying our cd art. Good idea.
Artists are also releasing their live recordings into the public domain. The practice up to this point has been to release poor recordings. That way you get an idea of what the songs are like but if you want to really enjoy them you will need to go to a concert or buy their album (or get it some other way…). More recently this idea has been turned on its head. Some artists are releasing recordings of their gigs taken directly from the sound desk. While mp3 is a reasonable format for recording sound, a true audiophile with a flash stereo (or a decent set of headphones) will realise that mp3 loses a little something of the original recording. It is for this reason that new sound formats have popped up. SHN and
FLAC are both excellent and you don’t really know how good a live recording can be until you hear it recorded straight from the sound desk into one of these formats. The files are between 3 – 5 times bigger than you would expect an mp3 to be and they require special plugin’s to play. A good starting point for finding these recordings is the live area of the Internet Archive. There is a huge amount of Grateful dead recordings available and a lot of unknown acts. I find the Tenacious D recordings entertaining but I know they are not everyone’s cup of tea.
Now if you have suffered through my awkward ramblings upto this point you are in for a treat. While not strictly as legally legitimate as the recordings in the next Wired magazine, the following mashups are well worth a listen. A Mashup is when two or more songs are remixed together and this is phonic poetry has a two main rules. There should be some sort of link between the samples used and the final mix should give you a strikingly different perspective on the original recordings (rather than just a remix where they speed the song up a bit and add a stronger beat)
About six months ago the now (in)famous DJ Danger Mouse mixed the Beatles ‘White’ album with Jay Z’s ‘Black’ album – the result was the ‘Grey’ album which was furiously downloaded from the internet and created quite a stir. The stir was both because the grey album was quite excellent and because while Jay Z had released an A Capella and instrumental version of his album specifically so it could be used for this sort of thing, the official licensee of the Beatles album had given no permission for their use at all. I would ‘imagine’ all Michael Jackson could say was ‘Bugger’. Heh.
Mashup’s are ‘so hot right now’ and of course with every man and his dog trying to create the next Grey album there is a lot of chaff out there. Here are my three picks for a great introduction to mashups.
Crowded house vs. Snoop Dog – ‘Return of the Weather’
Blur vs. Electric Six – ‘Gay House’
Faithless vs. Eurythmics – ‘Sweet Insomnia’
I have just found out that the wonderful magazine Wired is going to have a cd with its next publication. For your average audiophile the track list may only raise half an eyebrow. However a read of the fine print should raise the other half or may even leave you with a deer stuck in headlights appearance.
The tracks are being released under a ‘creative commons licence’ which means – copy, distribute, share as you like…
What the?
No longer should you blush when you mention you have been listening to the latest track (even though the album isn’t released here for another couple of weeks). No longer do you need to perform the sneaky backhand manoeuvre when exchanging mix cd’s, the artists are embracing your passion for their music and your frugal penny pinching. Kinda…
There have been howls for a while now about how the advent of mp3 and filesharing on the internet have sounded the death nell for commercial music but for all their posturing and prosecuting there are many who are adapting. Greenday recently released blank cd packs of recordable cds, each branded with a different one of the Greenday albums, the implication being that: if you are going to copy our music anyway, why not give us a little revenue by buying our cd art. Good idea.
Artists are also releasing their live recordings into the public domain. The practice up to this point has been to release poor recordings. That way you get an idea of what the songs are like but if you want to really enjoy them you will need to go to a concert or buy their album (or get it some other way…). More recently this idea has been turned on its head. Some artists are releasing recordings of their gigs taken directly from the sound desk. While mp3 is a reasonable format for recording sound, a true audiophile with a flash stereo (or a decent set of headphones) will realise that mp3 loses a little something of the original recording. It is for this reason that new sound formats have popped up. SHN and
FLAC are both excellent and you don’t really know how good a live recording can be until you hear it recorded straight from the sound desk into one of these formats. The files are between 3 – 5 times bigger than you would expect an mp3 to be and they require special plugin’s to play. A good starting point for finding these recordings is the live area of the Internet Archive. There is a huge amount of Grateful dead recordings available and a lot of unknown acts. I find the Tenacious D recordings entertaining but I know they are not everyone’s cup of tea.
Now if you have suffered through my awkward ramblings upto this point you are in for a treat. While not strictly as legally legitimate as the recordings in the next Wired magazine, the following mashups are well worth a listen. A Mashup is when two or more songs are remixed together and this is phonic poetry has a two main rules. There should be some sort of link between the samples used and the final mix should give you a strikingly different perspective on the original recordings (rather than just a remix where they speed the song up a bit and add a stronger beat)
About six months ago the now (in)famous DJ Danger Mouse mixed the Beatles ‘White’ album with Jay Z’s ‘Black’ album – the result was the ‘Grey’ album which was furiously downloaded from the internet and created quite a stir. The stir was both because the grey album was quite excellent and because while Jay Z had released an A Capella and instrumental version of his album specifically so it could be used for this sort of thing, the official licensee of the Beatles album had given no permission for their use at all. I would ‘imagine’ all Michael Jackson could say was ‘Bugger’. Heh.
Mashup’s are ‘so hot right now’ and of course with every man and his dog trying to create the next Grey album there is a lot of chaff out there. Here are my three picks for a great introduction to mashups.
Crowded house vs. Snoop Dog – ‘Return of the Weather’
Blur vs. Electric Six – ‘Gay House’
Faithless vs. Eurythmics – ‘Sweet Insomnia’
