Category: Music

  • Woo-hoo for Yahoo!

    According to Paidcontent.org, Yahoo! is experimenting with DRM-free digital downloads. There’s only one so far – a pricey Jessica Simpson MP3 – but it’s part of a general anti-DRM attitude at the firm. Paidcontent makes an interesting point: On the survey Yahoo Music is doing, one of the questions in the survey: “Would you consider…

  • Little thoughts

    …none of which justifies an entire blog post: * I traded in a bunch of 360 games at the weekend: PDZ (because it sucks), Ghost Recon (because it’s too difficult) and Far Cry: Predator (because I’ve already played it on Xbox and can’t be bothered with the new mission). Result? Nearly sixty quid, which I…

  • Microsoft’s bright iDea

    The rumour-mongers are convinced that Microsoft is going to attack the iPod head-on later this year, and MacDailyNews reckons that the firm has an interesting gimmick for potential switchers: if you go the Microsoft route, Microsoft’s software will scan your copy of iTunes for any tracks you’ve bought from Apple and then let you download…

  • Must we throw this pop at our kids?

    From last night’s Evening Times: NEW boy band US5 have launched a tour of UK schools starting in Scotland. The band played their debut single Maria at Mearns Castle High School and Mearns Primary. Today it was the turn of Renfrew High and Cleveden Secondary to hear the quintet.  OK, maybe I’m getting grumpy as…

  • Live review: Eels, Glasgow ABC

    [photopress:sj3640.jpg,thumb,alignleft]I hate gigs. Unless you’re down the very front, the much-vaunted atmosphere of a hot, sweaty club is massively overrated in my experience: instead, you spend the whole night putting up with people who don’t really understand the concept of live music, and who make ten trips to the bar despite the obstacle of a…

  • Fake Plastic Trios

    There’s a nice wee article in today’s Guardian about Hope Against Hope, a band on Myspace that was offered a gig by Alan “I signed Oasis, me” McGee: The difference is that Hope Against Hope are a scam, a spoof indie band “with no talent whatsoever” invented by Q magazine in order to prove that…

  • The ten most tech-savvy rock stars

    According to Business Week, they are: Franz Ferdinand, because Sony released a Franz MP3 player Neil Young, because his album appeared online a week before release Bono, because Motorola makes a RED version of the SLVR phone Chuck D, because he saw the way the MP3 wind was blowing U2, for lending their name to…

  • Ripping CDs to iPods is illegal, says BPI boss. No it isn’t, says BPI boss.

    Q: Do you believe people who are buying CDs legally and copying that music to an iPod should be punished – as they are, in fact, breaking the law? A: Consumers don’t have the right to copy CDs in the UK and never have… BPI boss Peter Jamieson speaks to BBC online, January 2006. On…

  • That Girls Aloud live review I promised

    It isn’t easy being 33 – or at least, it isn’t when you love Girls Aloud. I don’t mean “love” in an ironic, aren’t-I-amusing kind of way; I mean “love” because Girls Aloud make music that makes me want to dance like a chicken. I mean “love” as in, “I love the album so much…

  • If it’s too loud, you’re too right

    Stylus Magazine has published a superb feature about music, which answers the question: why does so much modern music sound crap? It’s all about loudness, apparently: not volume, but compression that’s designed to make tracks sound as loud as possible. That’s why Keane are twice as loud as Nirvana, which is wrong on so many…