Notes"While over the years there has been no shortage of Beatles merchandise, some of it crass, the decision to release the game on the same date as the new CDs is, as well as an irresistible marketing tactic, a signal that the game is meant to be an authentic part of the band’s canon (as is McCartney’s decision to show footage from the game during his current American tour). The Beatles are positioning themselves to once again play a significant role in the evolution of popular music — this time by embracing interactivity. "Unfurl
Notes"New York alt-rock legends Sonic Youth are about to out their stamp on New York's newest cultural institution: Gossip Girl. The band has agreed to appear on the show's fifth episode this season to perform an acoustic rendition of their 80's classic "Star Power." Text that, GG."Unfurl
Notes"Think about it. A key hallmark in this culture is the kind of soda that grocery stores sell to people who can't afford Coke or Pepsi. These guys, and their fans, are barely above the safety stage of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Forget love. Love is a fantasy. For a lot of these people, food and shelter without a psychopathic parent beating the shit out of you or neglecting you entirely is itself a pipe dream."Unfurl
Notes"It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette."Unfurl
Notes"Coming Soon - Use our tools to author playable tracks. Upload and submit your tracks for review by the Rock Band Creators community. Approved tracks become available in the Rock Band Store and on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace*, and you get a cut of every purchase."Unfurl
Notes"Back when Guitar Hero World Tour was announced, we found out that one of the features would be a music creation studio. Harmonix and MTV Games were asked about including a similar feature and responded that they were interested, but wouldn't release it till they could do it correctly. Looks like that time is approaching as Billboard has word that they will be releasing "Rock Band Network" which will allow users to create, upload, and even sell their own songs. When's it coming? Apparently later this year."Unfurl
Notes"GoatTracker is a cross-platform tracker written by Lasse Öörni, producing SID chiptune music for the Commodore 64, and released with source code under the GPL. It is notable for being possibly the only SID chiptune-composer NOT native to the C64, as many alternative composers (including JCH, and CyberTracker) only execute on the C64 or inside C64 emulators. Many SID tunes are available in various formats on the Internet, especially through the High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC). GoatTracker is capable of directly exporting to the .sid (PSID/RSID) file format in addition to standard C64 PRG files."Unfurl
Notes"Songs have always been shareable and shared. People, young and old, share songs with each other – by singing or playing them - in a variety of ways and settings, through a variety of technologies and media or other manner of accompaniment (as well as a capella). Songs as recordings are not fundamentally different in this respect. Since the advent of recorded media, people have shared songs in this form as well: played for each other in private and public settings, on personally distributed mixes (mixed tapes / CDs), and, in the age of mp3s, as files sent via email, IM (instant message), torrent, third-party hosting site, or any manner of online sites and services. "Unfurl
Notes"the reality is that nowadays, one can choose between a game costing £40 that will last weeks, or a £10 CD with two great tracks and eight dud ones. I think a lot of people are choosing the game - and downloading the two tracks. That's real discretion in spending. It's hurting the music industry, sure. But let's not cloud the argument with false claims about downloads."Unfurl
Notes"This 2-disc CD and DVD (PAL) collection features all Thomas Dolby’s singles and videos. It is released in the UK on May 18th 2009 and is available worldwide as an import."Unfurl
Notes"In one of RIAA’s high profile cases the Free Software Foundation backed defendant Joel Tenenbaum, much to the dislike of the music industry lobby. John Sullivan, Operations Manager at the FSF explains in a guest post why they think these cases impact not just music, but also free software and its technology."Unfurl
Notes"M4 Part II is the final song in the game, played after the final scenes. It begins the credit roll. The song is performed by the Canadian band, Faunts, and is featured on the soundtrack. "Unfurl
Notes"Reformation 01 is VNV Nation's first ever Boxset and is packed with material that any fan of the band will want to have. This deluxe hardcover embossed box contains 2 full length CDs, a DVD, and a 32 page booklet. CD-1 has 12 live tracks, the band's first-ever live CD release, CD-2 has 13 tracks of unreleased material and remixes, while the DVD has 8 live video clips from their last 2 world tours. The Boxset is limited to 9000 copies in North America (NTSC Format DVD) and 9000 copies in Europe (PAL Format DVD). "Unfurl
Notes"Fallen rap stars MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice are to team up for a concert in Utah. The 90s stars will perform a one-night-only joint show, called Hammer Pants and Ice, at the McKay Events Center in Orem on February 27."Unfurl
Notes"Here's an easy way to see if a song uses the Sensitive Female Chord Progression: Just sing Joan Osborne's lyric's: 'What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us?' over the suspect four chords."Unfurl
NotesI was seriously worried this video would crash the visual centers of my brain. "NORMAL QUALITY LOOKS LIKE BUNK. clink on "WATCH IN HD" to WATCH IN HD!!! HD stands for "HOLY DATAMOSH," which is what G-D bestowed upon us in the form of a MASSIVE COMPUTER GLITCH that eats up INDIE MUSIC VIDEOS and turns them into INTERNET GOLD."Unfurl
NotesI thought "muzak" was a generic term - never realized there was an actual company! "Muzak, the company that put pop, string-filled arrangements of rock songs in your elevator, filed bankruptcy papers Tuesday after it missed a $105 million payment to creditors."Unfurl
Notes"If you haven't been listening to pop radio in the past few months, you've missed the rise of two seemingly opposing trends. In a medium in which mediocre singing has never been a bar to entry, a lot of pop vocals suddenly sound great. Better than great: note- and pitch-perfect, as if there's been an unspoken tightening of standards at record labels or an evolutionary leap in the development of vocal cords. At the other extreme are a few hip-hop singers who also hit their notes but with a precision so exaggerated that on first listen, their songs sound comically artificial, like a chorus of '50s robots singing Motown."Unfurl
Notes"Leave it to Apple (AAPL) to turn the lifting of restrictions into a profit center. If users convert every one of the 9 billion songs purchased from the iTunes Store over the past six years, a rich new revenue stream will flow toward Cupertino. Techcrunch’s Erick Schonfeld calls it Apple’s “$1.8 billion music tax.”"Unfurl
NotesAw, crap. Just when I was starting to timeshift the show as a private podcast... "Darren Revell's shoegaze/dreampop show "Big Sonic Heaven" was axed, though Darren continues as the evening jock."FeedUnfurl
Notes"The Frotzophone is an interface for making music with interactive fiction. The topography simulated in the game is used to generate sound, as is the player's path through the game. A Frotzophone "performance" looks just like playing a text adventure; but in addition to playing a game, you're also playing music."Unfurl
Notes"All those companies (cough Amazon cough Apple cough) that say they're only doing DRM for now, until they can convince the stupid entertainment execs to ditch it, heed this lesson: you will spend the rest of your corporate life paying for this mistake, maintaining infrastructure whose sole purpose is to lock your customers into a technology restriction that no one really believes in. Welcome to the infinite cost of doing business with Hollywood. "Unfurl
Notes"The source of a spoken sample used in the song "B-Boys Makin' with the Freak Freak" has been a topic of discussion in the Beastie Boys fan community since the release of Ill Communication, the album on which the song appears, in 1994. Uncredited on the album, the sample -- referred to as "the mashed potatoes sample" by fans -- has been a mystery. Fans have wondered and argued about who the comedian that says, "Shit, if this is gonna be that kind of party, I'm gonna stick my dick in the mashed potatoes" is."FeedUnfurl
Notes"Much like the big-name artists he once so expertly spoofed, Yankovic now inspires not just imitators but also competitors. He'll soon commence work on his 13th studio album, which will have to compete against his own singsongy progeny—the amateur satirists who can devise, record, and edit their own parodies in days, if not hours. To make matters more complicated, whereas Yankovic could once mine such inexhaustible icons as Jackson and Nirvana for laughs, he now has to contend with the likes of Jessica Simpson or Kevin Federline—celebrities who are more or less already self-parodies. Being a music satirist in 2008 is a bit like being a political cartoonist after the Harding administration: too many easy targets, too few sacred idols."Unfurl
Notes"This is extremely exciting for me. One of the hardest things I've had to deal with in my career is keeping my material topical even though I only release albums every 3 or 4 years. Now, with the advent and popularity of digital distribution, I don't have to wait around while my songs get old and dated – I can get them out on the Internet almost immediately. It kind of boggles my mind – I thought of the idea for this new song a week ago, and next week it's getting released! "FeedUnfurl
Notes"Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th. "Unfurl
Notes"Samantha is a 16-year-old Rush fan from Summerville, Georgia who was diagnosed with cancer back in August of 2007. 3 months into her treatment she was approached by the Make-A-Wish Foundation and asked how they could help to make her wish come true. The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a nonprofit organization that grants wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions. They've granted wishes to 1000s of children since their inception in 1980 and are run entirely on donations. Samantha's wish was to meet her favorite band - Rush. This marked the first time Rush had ever been approached for a Make-A-Wish request. Here is Samantha's amazing story in her own words. "Unfurl
Notes"As I'd mentioned in last week's Happy Birthday Neil post, Hamilton, Ontario is the birthplace of our favorite drummer Neil Elwood Peart. Apparently Hamilton rock radio station Y108 has started a petition to have a stretch of Red Hill Expressway in Hamilton renamed to Neil Peart Way."Unfurl
NotesI've had this song from the Mercenaries 2 commercial stuck in my head for a week or so now. I suppose it could be worse, but I'm not sure how.Unfurl
NotesLooks like this can add cover art among other things. "eyeD3 is a Python module and program for processing ID3 tags. Information about mp3 files (i.e bit rate, sample frequency, play time, etc.) is also provided. The formats supported are ID3 v1.0/v1.1 and v2.3/v2.4"Unfurl
Notes"If you could ask the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame about a Rush candidacy, what would you ask? Tell us below and we'll sift through the queries and lob the best three at Cleveland and see what comes up."Unfurl
Notes"This paper describes our approach for editing PSID files. PSID is a sound format that allows the original Commodore 64 synthesizer music to be played on modern computers and thus conserves a music subculture of the eighties."Unfurl
Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music | Music | guardian.co.uk
Beck - Loser - SoundManager 2 Demo: Play MP3 links on a page, "page as playlist" style
