Category: Music

  • YouTube starts blocking music videos in the UK over PRS dispute

    From the official blog: PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our licence than before. The costs are simply prohibitive for us – under PRS’s proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback. In addition, PRS is unwilling to tell us what songs are included in…

  • Bugger off and take your Beatles with you

    A slightly inflammatory piece by me on Techradar: why the music industry doesn’t deserve government help. Now, like General Motors, the record companies are hurting – and like General Motors, they want the government to save them. GM wants cash; the record companies want ISPs to act as their policemen, while the Digital Britain report…

  • Techradar Tuesday: don’t be a dumbass

    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…

  • The 4 of Us: come to Scotland, you bastards

    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.

  • Why Digital Britain dropped the “three strikes” policy

    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…

  • No, the government is not forcing rock venues and clubs to install sound limiters

    This online petition is doing the rounds of music forums: It has been brought to attention that the government wish to consider it a legal requirement in the new tax year to introduce laws insisting anyone applying or re-applying for an entertainment license must have a noise control device fitted to the venue. This will…

  • Hallelujah

    Popjustice nails it: 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…

  • HMV: sales are up, but music’s dying

    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…

  • Happy pop music

    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!

  • Music piracy: solved!

    It turns out that the answer to music piracy is simple: a logo! Various download sites have unveiled a new “MP3: 100% Compatible” logo that – according to them – won’t just emphasise the cross-platform nature of MP3s, but will also help in the fight against piracy. I love The Inquirer’s take on it: You…