I own, I think, one album that got any nominations in this list. (It’s Maroon V’s album, which I really did like a lot.)
Thus, I do not really care about the Grammys, save for the car wreck potential of the telecast.
Rolling Stone : “High School Musical 2″ Soundtrack Sets Record For Worst Best-Seller Ever
The amount of albums HSM2 sold: 2.3 million copies. That figure means the album is poised to walk away with a more dubious honor: the record for lowest number of copies sold by the year’s best-selling album since SoundScan started keeping track of these stats in 1991. The previous Worst-Best mark was 2006’s High School Musical soundtrack, which sold 3.7 million copies, more than a million more than its sequel.
As the article further points out, Shania Twain’s record about a decade ago sold 15 million copies. Remember when The Backstreet Boys would release an album to 1,000,000 sales on its first day?
There’s no bigger phenom amongst the kiddies right now than HSM. If that thing can’t sell better than 4 million copies, there’s trouble brewing.
It’s a CD selling for less than EIGHT BUCKS and they still can’t sell it. Amazing.
This should prove a better fit than a dance album, at least
Exclusive: Jewel Goes Country With New Label
Singer/songwriter Jewel has a new label and a new genre to boot. The artist has signed a multi-album deal with newly launched Nashville-based independent Valory Music Company and will pursue success on the country charts.
This one slipped by me until a recent Barenaked Ladies newsletter pointed it out: a live concert DVD from BNL. And it’s only $11 and change. Due out next month.
In other news: Click on the Amazon MP3 banner at the top of this page. They stock BNL albums, including live concerts. I just downloaded one from their last BNL cruise. Sounds good!
From Rivers Cuomo’s Myspace page:
I’ve compiled a CD of my favorite demos from the years 1992 to 2007 and Geffen Records has agreed to put it out this December, on the eleventh. I hope you enjoy it. I may also be able to put out more demo CDs in the near future.
From Weezer’s home page, June of this year:
Weezer is just polishing up a batch of songs for a recording session that is going to start at the beginning of July. This will be the final recording session for our 6th album which we aim to put out in the first half of 2008. We hope you are all having good times.
Also, Rolling Stone reports that AlbumSix.com points you to Weezer’s site.
The Web:
Nintendo:
Music:
Embrace digital or die, EMI told - Telegraph
The new owner of EMI, Britain’s largest music group, has warned that the industry will not survive if it continues to rely on CD sales alone.
Guy Hands, the financier whose private equity group, Terra Firma, bought EMI in August, told staff in a confidential e-mail last week that the industry had been too slow to embrace the digital revolution.
The big question is whether they’ll DO anything about it, or just talk about it.
Hands suggests moving away from the model of paying large advances – Robbie Williams signed an £80m deal with EMI in 2002 – in exchange for the label’s right to keep the majority of the takings from new releases. Instead, labels could simply subsidise the making of an album or the beginning of a tour in exchange for a share in the profits – or losses.
…is a good start.
The Amazon MP3 music store opened yesterday.It’s a brilliant piece of Beta work, with lots of things going for it. It carries two million songs, or about a third of what iTunes does. But it’s at twice the bit rate and completely DRM free. That means you can burn it, copy it to your other computer, and load it up on iTunes and your iPod. It is MP3 instead of AAC, but I’m pretty sure the 2x bit rate will make up for that. I haven’t tested that myself, yet.
The experience is very smooth. Amazon makes searching around fairly easy. It takes more work than the iTunes Music Store, for sure, but it’s easy enough to handle. On certain artists that it doesn’t have yet, there’s this pleasant message:
Fair enough. Not all artists have that warning — Fastball didn’t when I looked them up — but there’s one simple way to tell when an artist isn’t present in the store: The first dozen songs available for download are karaoke tracks. I wonder if that 2,000,000 number isn’t padded by that.
I tested out downloading with Nellie McKay’s new album, “Obligatory Villagers,” that “dropped” the same day as the music store. Sure enough, Amazon stocked it. With one click, you can order the entire album for $8.91, or individual songs for 99 cents. That’s right — cheaper than iTunes. (We’ll come back to that a little later.)
You download a small unobtrusive program to help automate the download of the files. It looks very Mac-ish to me, and it does the trick. It downloads the files and automatically adds them to your iTunes catalog, complete with cover art. This is impressive work. Saving just that one step from the user is a big plus.
But here’s the thing: While it’s a nice shopping and user experience from Amazon, it shouldn’t be taken as a condemnation for everything Apple is doing wrong. This amazing store is not the result of Amazon hustle, but rather of a music industry wanting to spite Apple. I can’t imagine the RIAA is making more money off cheaper music tracks at Amazon in the long haul. Perhaps Amazon gave them a sweetheart deal to get this thing launched, but the RIAA will be dictating new prices and rights in just a few months. I guarantee it.
I think the lesson Apple needs to learn is one of variable pricing. It’s already there on album prices and for DRM-free music. Now it’s time for Apple to go all the way and differentiate the prices on catalog albums from current songs. It’s not confusing for the consumer to look at the price they’re going to pay before they download something. Apple needs to get over that hang up of theirs. Maybe then they can curry some of that recording industry favor back. Because right now, they need it. This set up at Amazon is a true threat to iTunes. The shopping experience is not that much lesser. The price is right. The interoperability is right. For as long as the RIAA lets Amazon continue on this path, I’ll be shopping as much at Amazon as possible.
But I don’t believe it’ll last forever. Eventually, the bloom will fade and the RIAA will get greedy and start stabbing this cash cow in the back, too. And someone new will fall for the same old charade. I’d just hate to lose the iTunes Store in the process.
The only big strike Amazon has going against it is in the selection of music available. It’s a good chunk of music, but I still had a hard time finding a lot of the music that’s already in my collection, or that I’d be interested in. On the other hand, Dee Cartsensen’s complete catalog is in there, and I’m missing a couple of those albums. . .
Go buy stuff on Amazon. (Click on one of the Amazon banners adorning this blog to get there, of course.) It’s a great deal, an easy deal, and a well-deserved one. For as long as it lasts, we might as well enjoy it.
SoundExchange Entrenches Position as IREA Faces Music
A federal bill that would reset music royalties at a more affordable rate for thousands of internet radio stations is losing steam in the House of Representatives, raising new fears for the future of webcasting.
First-time webcasting fees proposed by recording industry royalty-administration group SoundExchange took effect last month, setting off a wave of protests and last-minute negotiations aimed at reducing the hit for smaller webcasters and capping rates for sites that support hundreds of customized stations.
Negotiations are ongoing, but chances of broad legislative relief in the form of the Internet Radio Equality Act, or IREA, are fading fast, according to several people familiar with the effort. Rather, Congress appears resolved to let SoundExchange and the various strata of webcasters negotiate individual settlements.
This is the album that I interrupt my incessant podcast listening for.
I might be one of the few They Might Be Giants fans who didn’t think the last few albums sucked. I think the problem that TMBG has faced in recent years is a certain dilution of brand. They’ve put out live albums, kids’ albums, and podcasts, all while composing music for TV shows, commercials, and movies. They’re not just the two guys who’d come out with an esoteric album of oddball influences every year or two. They’ve even made a couple of songs that sounded like stabs at reaching mainstream radio program directors, but those didn’t go anywhere. That’s just what they sounded like.
The albums have sounded more like anthologies than complete records. That’s not all together new, mind you, but it did seem more pronounced recently. On top of that, the quality of those songs was much more variable. At the This is the album that I interrupt my incessant podcast listening for.
I might be one of the few They Might Be Giants fans who didn’t think the last few albums sucked. I think the problem that TMBG has faced in recent years is a certain dilution of brand. They’ve put out live albums, kids’ albums, and podcasts, all while composing music for TV shows, commercials, and movies. They’re not just the two guys who’d come out with an esoteric album of oddball influences every year or two. They’ve even made a couple of songs that sounded like stabs at reaching mainstream radio program directors, but those didn’t go anywhere. That’s just what they sounded like.
The albums have sounded more like anthologies than complete records. That’s not all together new, mind you, but it did seem more pronounced recently. On top of that, the quality of those songs was much more variable. At the very least, even the hardcore TMBG listener isn’t going to be a fan of all of those styles. So TMBG painted themselves into a corner where they almost couldn’t win.
Their last album, THE SPINE, had a few great songs in there: “Experimental Film,” “Au Contraire,” and, uhm, that’s all I can pick out from the song title list at the moment. Before that was MINK CAR, which had more good songs like “Bangs,” “Cyclops Rock,” “Man, It’s So Loud In Here” (the catchiest of the bunch), “Hovering Sombrero,” “Yeh Yeh” (a cover that made a commercial), “Drink!”, and “Finished With Lies.” The problem, again, was that the large number of songs (17 on that record) made even half the album being less-than-stellar sound bad.
TMBG’s latest album, THE ELSE, isn’t perfection. I’ve seen it called their best album since APOLLO 18, which is one of my favorites. I don’t think I’d necessarily agree with that, either, but it’s the best album of new material in a number of years, for sure. There’s only 13 tracks on this album, and no filler. There’s a variety of sounds on here, from the Fountains Of Wayne-esque “Careful What You Pack,” to, well, I couldn’t tell you. I’m not that good a musicologist. Most of the rest of the album sounds TMBG-ish to me. And I mean that in the best possible way.
I’d go so far as to say the last album on the track, “The Mesopotamians,” is the best TMBG song in a decade. It’s got eveything I love from TMBG. There are obscure references, witty word play, a catchy hook, and a melody that zags when you expect it zig in one or two spots. If I only have time to listen to one song, that’s the one I got.
The song just before that, “Feign Amnesia,” is right up there. It’s another classic TMBG tune, offering suggestions of the most extreme and bizarre sort to get through an otherwise not-abnormal situation. And, again, it’s catchy. It does sound a little like a previous TMBG song, but I haven’t picked out which one that is, yet. I haven’t had the time to listen to the back catalog.
“The Shadow Government” would have been huge a decade ago when X-FILES was in its prime. The driving drum beat and rock guitars make this so memorable. You’ll find yourself humming the chorus at the oddest times, perhaps when you’re being followed. . .
Other songs are enjoyable and blend into the ebb and flow of the album pretty well. But it’s those three that I had to spotlight as being particular five-star-ratings-on-iTunes favorites. If you’re a wayward TMBG fan, I invite you to come home again. THE ELSE might just be the album for you.
Net radio negotiations hit snag over DRM | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
Now a new spat appears to be brewing between the Digital Media Association (DiMA), a lobby group representing large Webcasters like Pandora, Yahoo, RealNetworks and AOL, and SoundExchange, the group that collects and lobbied for the new payments on behalf of musicians and record labels.
The issue? Whether Webcasters should be required to cloak their streams in technologies designed to prevent “streamripping” as part of an agreement to cap the administrative fees they owe to SoundExchange.
I don’t use any net radio web sites, but I do enjoy watching the music industry forming a circular firing squad on this issue.
In the last year, a number of big CD releases have fallen completely flat for me. I’m not sure if this is because I’m over 30 now and my musical tastes are set so I should just stop buying new stuff, even from old favorites. Or maybe it has something to do with once-fun artists just putting out crappy music.
The biggest example I can give of this from recent memory is Jewel. After that poor dance album, she reset herself back to her folksy roots and released GOODBYE ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Strike one - the world doesn’t need more references to Lewis Carroll’s writings, folks. We get it — it’s public domain. You want to use it. STOP.
I listened to the album again recently, and found myself skipping to the next track about halfway through each. Why? They stink, musically. Jewel has embraced this “poet goddess” side of herself to such an extent that she’s forgotten to stuff the catchy melodies around the words that she works so hard to cram around a spare note or five that inelegantly sit at the end of otherwise complete measures. She tries SO hard to highlight the words that she’s forgotten to make something we’d like to listen to as anything other than a Spoken Word piece.
Aside from the lead track on the album, “Again and Again,” there’s just nothing memorable to be had here. (”Drive To You” almost gets there, but I think that’s just because it’s one of the rare tracks on the album that actually has a beat.) It’s a mess of tedious notes spread out over a baker’s dozen tracks. I know she can sing. I know she can write a catchy melody. But this is just a boring mess. You won’t find much in here to hum to after you eject the CD.
I’m not entirely tired of music, though. While I spend most of my car time listening to podcasts, there’s been one CD in the last month that I just can’t stop playing between podcasts. It’s catchy, it’s addictive, and it’s a return to form for –
– well, we’ll get to that album soon.
I kinda like the first single. It’s catchy and as man-hating as all her hits from the last album. . .
Celebrity News - Kelly Clarkson cancels summer tour
According to Pollstar, Kelly Clarkson has called off her summer tour while, “the singer and her team re-evaluate her show’s size and scope.” Translation: disappointing ticket sales. Kelly Clarkson had initially planned a 36-date arena tour, but recent ticket sales figures have put the kibosh on her summer tour. Along with less-than-stellar ticket sales for her concert series, Kelly Clarkson’s new single, “Never Again”, has been greeted by mixed reactions and sluggish sales.
Variety.com - CBS plans ‘Big Brother’ spinoff
“Big Brother: After Dark” will feature a live, unedited feed from the “Big Brother” house. Skein will run three hours nightly from midnight until 3 a.m. ET/PT on ShoToo, Showtime’s widely available companion net.Because there are so many cameras in the house capturing multiple storylines, an online producer will decide which cameras auds will see. Profanity and nudity will be allowed, but the feed will be interrupted if houseguests say anything slanderous or that violates music copyrights.
The funniest thing about this is that language and nudity isn’t a problem, but heaven forbid one of the houseguests starts singing a song! The RIAA would jump all over that. It’s pathetic, isn’t it?
Augie De Blieck Jr. doesn't know when to shut up, which makes him the perfect blogger. That, and he reads a lot of other blogs. You can e-mail him, if you really wanted to.
