Gratuitous Girls Aloud references
Last.fm isn’t telling the RIAA that you’ve pirated the new U2 album. But you might be.
Why go to the hassle of trying to get data from websites when the users will hand it to you on a plate?
We’re sure that some of the people listening to the leaked album simply forgot that Last.fm tells other people what you’re listening to, but we’re also sure that a fair number of them were boasting. Look at me! I’ve got something I shouldn’t have! I am cool!
The 4 of Us are playing a bunch of gigs in February to support their forthcoming live album, but they’re only doing Irish dates. Again. Bastardy bastardy bastard.
You can listen to one of the live tracks, Sunlight, here.
Good point from No Rock’n’Roll Fun:
Ed Stourton summarised the position of the Digital Britain report as seeing access to broadband as being on a par with access to power and water: an essential service for the way we live now. It’s impossible to see how you could square a belief that broadband is an essential service with arbitrary removal of that service on the whim of a record company.
The fact of the matter here is that the best ever version of ‘Hallelujah’ was by Jeff Buckley and the worst ever version of ‘Hallelujah’ is Bono’s. Every other version of ‘Hallelujah’ between now and the end of time will sit somewhere between those two recordings.
As for whichever ‘crusades’ are currently running regarding the Buckley version – apparently there’s one in The Sun – we fail to grasp how any of this is a ‘real victory for real music over Simon Cowell’s plastic pop rubbishzzzzzz’ given that none of it would be happening without The X Factor. “Readers! Let’s really teach Simon Cowell a lesson and show him that he’s powerful enough to get Jeff Buckley in the Christmas Top 5 without lifting a single finger.” “Oh and let’s show that The X Factor is manipulative and not about music by making people buy a song not because they like it but as a token of their dislike for something else.” LOGIC FAIL.
Mark Mulligan takes a look at HMV’s latest results:
music’s share of total sales is declining sharply and is strongly outweighed by DVD, which itself is now losing share to games and electronics.
… those responsible for in store CD sales are scared of accelerating cannibalization of their dwindling sales by driving people online. It’s too late for those kinds of concerns.
This week, I am mostly liking Fascination by Alphabeat.
The rest of the album isn’t much cop, but there’s more joy in this one song than most bands cram into a career. Hurrah for pop!
Want a free Eels EP? Of course you do. So click on this link and give them your email address before 28th October.
The 4-LP Deluxe Vinyl Ltd Edition set of Blinking Lights – which this EP is promoting – is a thing of beauty, and I’m sorely tempted to buy it even though I don’t actually have a record player.
Another interesting post at Broadstuff:
…about 40% of the UK ticket market goes through touts (people who buy tickets at face value, typically from organisations that get allocated tickets and then on-sell them). This creates the calculation below, where there is clearly far more money in touting than in actually being a musician.
Thanks to the ever-entertaining No Rock’n’Roll Fun:
Comes Without Music But You Can Pay For Music If You Like. Just Not Too Many Tunes, Eh? Don’t Go Mad Or Anything. Two Songs A Week.
Good: The new Christopher Brookmyre, James Lee Burke and Ian Rankin novels.
Bad: The new Girls Aloud single.