I’ve actually been promising an update to my two earlier posts on digital music distribution for waaay too long now, so apologies to all for the horrible delay (April 2009? What the..). Anyway. In case you missed them…

Part 1: ‘Exploring The Digital Music Distribution Jungle’ April 2009
Part 2: ”Digital Music Distribution Round-up Part 2′ April 2009

There were seventeen companies mentioned in Pt.1 and thirteen in Pt.2. Out of them, the only change to report from part one is that Australian based Musicadium has been rolled into Valleyarm.

In part two, WaTunes dropped their bespoke distribution service and changed tack to become a ‘social music store’ and now choose to go thru ReverbNation for distribution services.

The rest, as you were.

Rather than go over the same points here you’ll be much better off catching up with the first two parts. To make things a little more convenient I’m welding the three pieces together as one PDF so you can print and study at leisure.

Some points you may want to take into consideration when choosing a distributor.

Location. Is your distributor of choice in your own country? Possibly a key issue because of currency differences and support concerns. Do they phone support? A physical address?

Read the websites about page to find out names, history and credentials. If they have none, move on. Use Google. A lot.

Always amazes me when some site pops up claiming combined “20+ years industry experience” but giving no actual NAMES. Then you get a PO BOX for a mailing address. Run. In the opposite direction. (more…)

I didn’t get to mention all the digital music distribution outlets that I wanted too in my (part 1) post a few days ago, ‘Exploring The Digital Music Distribution ‘Jungle’’, so I thought I’d update the list in this ‘quick’ additional post. Thanks also to the  feedback and suggestions I got, especially from 101 Distribution and @Charles at 247 Entertainment.

Again I’ll refer to the  major download retailers as the ‘Big 5′ which right now would be iTunes, Amazon MP3, eMusic, Napster and Rhapsody.

Pro Music – Online Music Stores – Not a distribution company but an online worldwide map of legal online digital music retail stores listed by country and maintained by the IFPI and a very good resource for checking out worldwide outlets. The same website maintains  weekly download chart links across mainland Europe and Japan. Right now Lady GaGa seems to be universally topping the charts across Europe with ‘Poker Face’.

EPM Electronic – (Maastricht, Netherlands & London, UK)- European based company with a very comprehensive list of stores they service, including the ‘big 5′ worldwide and a very large selection of niche and independent retailers, including all the major electronic dance music stores across the USA, the whole of Europe, Asia and the Far East. Also cover some of the major mobile platforms like Nokia, Vodaphone and 3 Mobile. MySpace.

Its one of those application deals, where you fill in a short form and upload a music sample. There’s no terms on the website but there’s a demo page for label management.

WaTunes -(Atlanta, Georgia, USA)- One of the newer aggregator/distribution channels around, WaTunes are different from just about all the rest in that there is no sign up fee (at the moment) and the artist gets to keep 100% of sales royalties. They distribute to four of the ‘ big 5′ (excluding Rhapsody), plus Shockhound, Zune, Beats Digital and Masterbeat. I’m not entirely comfortable with the ‘everything is free’ revenue model tbh as it doesn’t exactly stimulate financial stability. CEO Kevin Rivers is  blogging here and tweeting here if you want to fire questions. MySpace.

Vidzone Digital Media -(London, UK) – leading distributor of Independent music via mobile networks internationally. More than 130 distribution partnerships across 40 countries. Have a very informative PDF of digital music FAQs too. A checklist of the basics and more advanced info on need to know stuff like UPCs, Metadata and ISRCs. Aimed at labels rather than individuals.

Digital Pressure -(Hollywood, CA, USA)- Another long standing big player on the digital distribution front and one of the first. Digital Pressure have been around since 1997 and are a subdivision of Peer Music. Seem to work more with labels/catalog and a percentage cut with no upfront fees. MySpace. Twitter.

“Our contracts with content owners are four-year, non-exclusive distribution agreements. These simple contracts empower Digitalpressure to become your exclusive agent for all of the partners within our global distribution network, but allow you to distribute your music outside of our relationship through any other service or site, including your own.” Contact page.

Ingrooves -(San Francisco, CA, USA) - Long standing distributor who also specialize in licensing music. Main site was down at time of writing. Another aggregator working with a percentage  share. MySpace.

Zebralution -(Berlin/London/LA)- One of the longer standing independent digital music distributors headed up in Berlin, Germany with multiple regional offices worldwide. Huge network of retailers worldwide including the ‘big 5′, genre specific retailers and mobile music outlets. Warners acquired a significant stake in the company in 2007.  There’s an application process for labels here.  MySpace.

The CAN -(Australia) – Oz based Chaos Artist Network supply all major digital retailers globally (iTunes etc) and traditional retailers throughout Australia (JB Hi Fi, Sanity, Big W, Leading Edge etc). Distribute physical product, CDs and DVDs as well as servicing digital retailers. Part of the Stomp entertainment group. MySpace.

EarBuzz.com -(New Jersey, USA)- Two programs offered here, the earBuzz set-up, which costs $25 sign-up and $2 a month for you to sell Cds and downloads on the earBuzz website. An additional $39 enters you into the WWX program which gets you into the ‘big 5′ retailers, ringtone store Myxer, We7 and LaLa. There’s same day payout for sales onsite and 100% royalty share. MySpace.

DashGo -(Santa Monica, CA,USA) – A slightly different selling point from Dashgo. They distribute music via the usual ‘big 5′ retailers and also offer placement on social music outlets including LastFM, iMeem, Blast My Music, iLike and YouTube which includes analytics breakdown. Also provide “full-service digital sales and marketing solutions, promoting your content to digital retailers, securing positioning with social sites, and soliciting coverage on influencer blogs and discovery sites.” Also offer the Audioswop service with YouTube. Twitter.

Kontor New Media -(Hamburg, Germany)- Worldwide digital content distribution of music, video, ringtones and audio books. Include the ‘big 5′ and a bunch of dance music outlets, Zune, Nokia, FNAC, 7 Digital and mobile music retailers. Contact. MySpace.

Consolidated Independent – (London, UK)- Not a service for individual artists. CI only works with labels or distributors with more than 200 tracks in their catalog. Fees start from £150 a month. Cover just about every retailer on the planet it seems and promise to get labels into ones that aren’t already on their list.

FineTunes-(Hamburg, Germany)- Not to be confused with Finetune. Finetunes distribute across all the major digital retailers as well as providing software solutions for labels, download stores and artists websites. Twitter. MySpace.

Was going to add Wild Palms but their website seems to be in disaray right know, so we’ll see later.

Related Resources

Digital Distribution For Unsigned Artists (PDF) (Chaos.com)
WaTunes Sells Your Music On iTunes And Amazon Free Of Charge (Techcrunch.com)
Get Music Online-Online Music Stores (Pro-Music.org)
DashGo Connects Musicians and Labels to Social Media (Mashable.com)
IFPI Digital Music Report 2009 (32pg. PDF) (IFPI)
The Digital Top 40 FAQ PDF (VidZone Digital Media)
Independent Distribution Solution:Getting Records from Concept To Consumer (Narip.com) (MP3 audio files with PDF and Excel Spreadsheet documents in a zip file.$59.99)
Music and Metadata (XML.com)
Digital Distribution (BeMuso.com)
Should I Do Something About Metadata? (NewMusicStrategies.com)

I’ve touched on music distribution issues here before with Tunecore, Bit Torrent and even good old analogue vinyl but thought I’d dig around a bit deeper as there seems to be new distribution services springing up on a regular basis these days. Be they aggregator or ‘widget’ type tools. Ill be covering digital music aggregators here first and covering website widgets later in the week.

The Music Void – Denzyl Feigelson on MUZU

Things To Consider When Choosing Digital Music Distribution

With the Internet its easy to research background on companies these days. Thats what Google is for. Do it. Search around the distributors website. Look for the names of people running the company. Put a shout out on Twitter or music  forums if you need user feedback on any service.

What is the distributors background, how long has the company been around?  What is the revenue model ? Upfront yearly admin fee (like Tunecore) or a percentage of sales (CD Baby take 9%).

Which digital retailers do  the aggregators distribute too? Also, check the distributors  list of bands, artists and labels that are using their services. Always a good reference point. Its reassuring to know that Tunecore (who I use) also handle digital distribution for established artists such as NiN,  David Byrne & Brian Eno and Jay Z and newer MP3 blog faves like MGMT.

Also you need to know that you wont be signing away rights to your music and that you wont be tied down to any lengthy fixed terms

Music industry scribe Moses Avalon has a good breakdown of distribution terms for a few aggregators on his website. Its a couple of years old and as such covers only the longer established companies but is still very relevant. (more…)

In a climate where many artists are struggling to find income streams every avenue helps and one area worth exploring is music placement in film and TV.

The ‘gatekeepers’ to these type of gigs are the music supervisors. The music supervisor is a person who coordinates the work of the composer, the editor, and sound mixers. Alternately, a person who researches, obtains rights to, and supplies songs for a production (namely films and television programs).

TV viewers (particularly those who are geeky about music) tend to notice what songs get used on shows, and those touches can be credited to the music supervisor.

If you want to find out who the music supervisor is on any given movie or TV show you might not have earmarked the Amazon owned Internet Movie Database as a go-to  music industry resource but the site is packed with info on cast and crew members, including music supervisors.

Look up movies that have really great soundtracks then scroll through the credits and you’ll find out the names of the person responsible for music supervision.

(more…)

Now I’ve used the word ‘music industry’ here to encompass anything connected to digital music stuff, music 2.0, social media, whatever you want to call it. Truth is, the keyword today is convergence.

But if you’re struggling to come to terms with new terminology, new technology and new services I did a comprehensive scan of resources you can print out on PDF that’ll really set you up with an information boost if you’re playing catch up and haven’t got the time to dig around.

There’s some fantastic resources out there and some inspirational writers like Seth Godin, Andrew Dubber, Gerd Leonhard, Derek Sivers and even digital distributors Tunecore all offer some brilliant insight and the best news is its all out there for you to grab free as a bird. And legal too!

Promotion

Music Industry Survival Guide. This compact guide from digital distributor Tunecore crams a lot into its 30 pages covering college radio promotion, iTunes promotion, street marketing, music discovery, mp3 blogs and press and media tips. Some people actually charge for this stuff. There’s seven PDF guides from Tunecore including a vinyl 101 for bands/artists wanting to press up vinyl records.

Their other guides cover mastering, publishing, copyright and mixing.

Mastering The Music Website Cycle.  EasyB.com make e-commerce software for artists to sell music direct from their own websites. The handy 36 page guide goes into some detail on how to make and manage a successful music download website. They draw up a checklist of plans for structure, content and design. Again, some great pointers for many who may find the task a little daunting.

The Leading Question-Voice Of The Fans. This survey undertaken by UK digital music industry company Musically was aired at Midem this January. 1300 music fans were questioned across the USA, UK and France.

(more…)

I’m desperately trying to cut into my over populated desktop RSS feed reader as I really do not have the time to wade through the amount of subscriptions that I have in there. What with FeedDemon pop-ups and Tweetdeck its like having bloggers ADD (on steroids) and having too much information at your fingertips is as self defeating as not having enough.

Well over seventy percent of my feeds are music related, be they music news, music industry commentary,tech and MP3 bloggers and music 2.0 (is that term still in use?) evangelists. Very few of them are from traditional music biz news outlets like Billboard (USA biz bible) or Music Week (UK equivalent). Simply because I think that  much of the mainstream music press are as behind the rest of us as the recording industry itself. With some exceptions of course.

Walled garden restrictions to content are a major sticking point for me.

Probably the best place to start vacuuming up those music news resources is at Guy Kawasaki’s excellent  Alltop Music, though my main ‘complaint’ is that I have to visit each individual link to grab the RSS feed. A nice touch would be to have the feed URL next to the publishers headline.

Anyway, so I decided I’d do just that. Gather all the most useful and essential music/tech/social media (they blur into each other these days) related websites and blogs together in one big huge collection that I use on a regular basis through the beauty of RSS feeds. So I’ve done a bit (a lot!) of feed harvesting and squeezed everything into an OPML file for data portability.

I’m including an OPML download link so you can import all the feeds within seconds into your RSS reader of choice, whether that be via your desktop app of choice, Google reader online or a Firefox add on (like Sage). There’s an OPML file for each category to import or the whole bunch rolled into one.

Each category has an OPML link so you can grab the feeds by category. Do leave a comment if I’ve missed anything of note (I probably have).

(more…)

I mentioned the free music as viral marketing thing in an earlier post and thought I’d expand on it here.

I’ve just uploaded a bunch of some of the earlier versions of the 99th Floor Elevators, ‘Hooked’ for free download via MiniNova distribution. Think of it as an experiment to see if this has any effect on raising the profile of the 99th Floor Elevators in expectation of new material later this year and newer remixes of ‘Hooked’ also coming from Suesse Records.

Its all packaged as a Torrent and you’ll get five remixes and the original promotional video of ‘Hooked’ that was broadcast on MTV way back when. You can see the video on YouTube (see Elevators blog post here).

The audio files are all 192kbps MP3′s and the mixes included are:

Hooked Classic Remixes

Tony deVit Classic Trade Remix. This was the one that really made things fly for the 99th Floor Elevators, taking the humble white label original mix and stretching it into a near ten minute arms in the air club monster. Much credit must be given to Tony’s low profile engineer/co-producer Simon Parkes.

Originally a national top 30 hit in the UK before being re-issued as part of a Tripoli Trax double twelve inch remix package.

KillerHurts Remix.  DJ James Nardi and production partner Julian Dwyer, took chunks of inspiration from the OD404 and Pete Wardman remixes, added their own nails and came up with probably the perfect hard-house mix ever. Available on one sided 12 inch too if you’re lucky enough to find one.

Paul King Remix. Paul basically re-invents/updates the TDV mix for the 21st century with a monster synth riff from the Gods 2.30 minutes in that’ll have arms reaching for the sky. Previously available only as a very hard to find one sided 12inch white. Over nine minutes long.

OD404 Remix. Possibly my personal favorite mix and one I never tire of. Managed to take a Euro house gay anthem and turn it into the Prodigy with kick drums. Awesome.

Phlash Pop Edit. Only ever seen on a very limited release Tripoli Trax white label vinyl 12 and later on a CD single. Phlash! were ex-Tripoli A&R guy and DJ Steve Hill and engineer Mick Shiner (aka Nylon) and if you like your dance bouncy and radio friendly this is the version for you. Infectious stuff.

If you prefer the traditional route of MP3 download then you can grab each MP3 on my Drop.io page where you can either stream or download each track before deciding on the Torrent option.

I use and recommend UTorrent for my Torrents. Its less than half a meg download and spyware free. Install if you don’t already have a Torrent client.

Go to the ‘Hooked’ Torrent download link here. It’ll automatically open your Torrent client and you’ll get a pop up box so you can select which mixes you want and which you don’t want, if you don’t want the whole bunch. Click OK when you’re done and that’s it.

The files are very well seeded (well over 100 seeds as I write) so it’ll take something like 15 minutes to download the whole 74mb collection, depending on your connection speed. There’s a U Torrent beginners guide here and details on MiniNova Torrent distribution here if you’re considering getting some of your own tracks out and about ultra quick.

I uploaded the Hooked files to Mininova lunch time yesterday, by the time I’d left work five hours later Google had already indexed ’99th Floor Elevators Torrent’ and it was being seeded by users. A day later the package has over 100 seeders which means excellent download speed and availability.

Related Links

Mininova Content Distribution (Mininova.org)
Hey Content Producers, Get In The P2P Torrent Cloud (Lx7.ca)
Embracing The Torrent Of Online Video (BBC)
Thoughts On BitTorrent Distribution For A Public Broadcaster (NRKBeta)
Why You Must and How to Implement a Free Song Strategy (UnsprungMedia.com)

I wrote about some more ‘leftfield’ music marketing ideas earlier this week and continue here with some more brain storming that may give you some leads.

99th Floor Elevators-'Hooked'

One thing that has really taken off in the last year or so with artists is free album downloads, with high profile artists like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails getting the most column inches.

NIN’s album ‘Ghosts l-lV’ was Amazon’s best selling album of 2008 despite the fact that the album was legally available as a free download on filesharing networks.

It was significant also in that it was released totally free of record label shackles, Trent Reznor instead choosing to use digital music distributor Tunecore to make the 36 tracks available for download.

The band are said to have made close to two million dollars in a week from selling high-end limited edition versions of the album. The follow up album, ‘The Slip’ uses a similar marketing tactic.

Now obviously anyone reading this isn’t going to have that kind of following but artists can still use the same principles on a smaller scale. I’m trying it myself by giving away some of the original dance mixes of 99th Floor Elevators ‘Hooked’ here. A package that includes five different mixes and even the original promo video which you can see just above.

You can get individual mixes (as 192kbps MP3 files) or the whole package as a zipped download. There’s even a Bit Torrent link here. Download and seed.

Does this devalue my old mixes? Well no, its a ‘risk free’ introduction that will hopefully grab some new listeners who’ll be stimulated enough to be interested in the forthcoming newer mixes and also helps keep the name floating around the web in between new material coming out later in the year. People can also head to Amazon to buy other material on CD and download.

I used UTorrent to make the Torrent, instructions you can find here and here. I used Drop.io to host the MP3 downloads, a great straight forward service with no sign up required and no waiting through crappy ad loops that you find on free file hosts like Zshare.com

The message here? Speculate to accumulate to put it simply. Despite lots of negative press CDs are alive and well, vinyl is having a revival, fans ARE still willing to pay for quality music in premium packaging. Ex-Strangler Hugh Cornwall is the latest ‘name’ artist to try this route with his album ‘Hooverdamn’. Where, besides the free MP3 version you can grab the album on various vinyl, CD and DVD packages.

Download the 99th Floor Elevators ‘Hooked’ original remixes and promo video here or here. Or via BitTorrent here.

Contd tomorrow………

Related Research
How To Create A Torrent (Torrent Freak)
A Beginners Guide To Bit Torrent (BitTorrent.com)
How To Make A Torrent (UTorrent.com)
More Bands Oasis, Jamiroquai To Follow Radiohead (Daily Telegraph)
Steal Throwdown’s Music Please (Mashable.com)
Free Music Initiative Has Sparked 119% Rise In Sales (Mashable.com)
Why We’re Releasing Our Latest Album For Free On The Internet (HarveyDanger.com)
Band Recognizes Free, Unencumbered Downloads Are Part Of A Publicity Campaign (Techdirt.com)
Radiohead Shocks Record Industry With Free Download Of New Album (Zeropaid.com)

Wikipedia describes mash-ups (or bastard pop) as a song created out of pieces of two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another. One cultural commentator went a little deeper explaining, “It is merely the latest incarnation of a widely shared, deeply embedded cultural habit of cultural recombination across time and space.” Got that?

Someone else once said “all plagiarism is necessary its takes the wrong idea and replaces it with the right one”. With that in mind I find that mash-ups have actually been educational for me by taking two artists I’d never listen to alone, twisting them into something new and actually getting me to seek out original works of both artists.

After writing  about the Green Day album ‘American Edit’ here (who’s whole career was launched by plagiarizing Stiff Little Fingers) and hearing ‘Give Me Novacaine’ in the blender with Queens ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (as ‘Novacaine Rhapsody’) it forced me to re-evaluate both artists. I’ve also mentioned a variety of mash-up projects here including Primal Scream, War Of The Worlds, The Beatles, Chemical Brothers and the Prodigy. Not all great, but always interesting.

Latest album mash-up to pop up on the radar (admittedly its been around a few weeks now) is ‘Viva La Hova’ which takes some of the better known Coldplay moments and heaps Jay-Z over the top. Over the top sounds a little raw as these things are actually woven together with intricate precision  by  Brooklyn based mixtape crew Mick Boogie & Terry Urban.

Its very good too with big Coldplay hits like the Scientist, Clocks, In My Place, Trouble and Fix You all getting twisted and reborn into hip-hop epics and not sounding out of place either. Jetcomx blog writer Jim Fields illustrates things a little better.

” Late one night, I was at a small party, doing DJ duty and selecting songs on my iPod. I searched for a while, scrolled to a song, then clicked “play.” Chris Martin, of Coldplay, began to croon out his slow ballad, “Fix You.”

Initially, the crowd was not happy with this choice. “When you feel so tired that you can’t sleep,” Chris sang, slowly. “Stuck in reverse!” he whispered. Suddenly, the word “reverse” began repeating, and a bass beat started thumping. People at the party started tapping their feet. The beat built up, people started dancing, and by the time Jay-Z (aka Jazzy, Sean Carter, Jiggaman, Hova, The Roc, etc.) began rapping, the party was bumping. Such is the brilliance of Viva La Hova.”

Apparently the whole thing has already been given the thumbs up by Jay-Z himself. The rapper had an official co-lab with Coldplay late last year when he  dropped in for a guest verse on the Viva La Vida single “Lost!”, retitled “Lost+” and appears on the ‘Prospekts March’ EP.

Download The Album Here, here and here .

Related Links

Viva La Hova (IllRoots.com)
Mixtape Mondays: Jay-Z vs Coldplay:Viva La Hova (Jetcomx.com)

I talked about vinyl records here back in March so with year end music sales figures just released this seems like a good excuse to revive that piece. I’ve been releasing vinyl records since 1995 when my first 12 inch single crawled onto London’s house music scene. To see that same medium still making waves thirteen years later is encouraging news in an age when music as a medium has become fast food.

For all its convenience, flipping through the 10,000 tracks crammed onto my iPod has given me the attention span of a common house fly. When I was buying vinyl it was more of an event, you read the sleeve, you held it up and admired it, hell, you even read the label and the etch scratched on the run out groove by the mastering engineer. My first vinyl single was mastered at London’s Abbey Road studios, my last one in 2005 was done on a laptop in a home studio set up. You can’t stand in the way of technology.

Ironically one of my old tracks was recently signed by underground house label Suesse Records and in all likelihood the new remixes will be issued as high bitrate MP3′s and will be found at download stores like Beatport and TrackitDown instead of on the shelves of one of those fast diminishing underground DJ vinyl stores that used to pack London’s Westend.

Figures released by Soundscan reveal that 1.88 million vinyl albums were purchased in the USA, more than in any other year since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking LP sales in 1991. That was an increase of 89%. The previous record was in 2000, when 1.5 million LP albums were sold. More than two out of every three vinyl albums bought in 2008 were purchased at an independent music store.

Industry observers say vinyl record sales have skyrocketed because new buyers are discovering the value of owning albums, with their cover art, large liner notes and warm sound. According to Computer World who spoke to one of the few vinyl pressing plants left in the US, Rainbo,  they’d doubled vinyl production from 2006 to 2007 and more than doubled record output this past year.

Related Links

How To Press Up A Vinyl Single……. (Buzzsonic.com)
Back To The Future:Vinyl Record Sales Double In ’08, CDs Down (ComputerWorld.com)
Web Music Sales Up, Album Sales Plummet (P2Pnet.net)
2008 U.S. Music Purchases Exceed 1.5 Billion; Growth in Overall Music Purchases Exceeds 10% (MarketWatch.com)
Coalition Of Independent Music Stores (Cimsmusic.com)
Almighty Institute of Retail (AlmightyRetail.com)

An often overlooked aspect of David Lynch’s movie-making excellence is his choice of music and sound. Late last year saw the release of ‘Mashed In Plastic: The David Lynch Mash-up Album’ a collection of re-interpretations of some of the more memorable audio moments lifted from David Lynch movie soundtracks.

Mashed In Plastic gathers together a veritable who’s who of  mashup creators like Colatron,  Wax Audio, Phil RetroSpector, The Who Boys, ToToM, Voicedude, RIAA, G3RSt, Neiltomo and The Reborn Identity amongst others.

The Mashed in Plastic trailer features the music of Angelo Badalamenti, David Bowie and Rammstein, plus the man himself, David Lynch.

Its a varied and adventurous collection spanning eighteen tracks and David Lynch himself opens up the collection on Colatron’s ‘The Voice of Love Is Crying’ with a few words of his own. “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.”

The track molds together Rebekah Del Rio’s haunting “Llorando” ( a Spanish language version of Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying’) from Mulholland Drive, bits of Angelo Badalamenti, Chopin and Burial.

Wax Audio somehow manage to make the Beatles ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and Badalamenti’s theme from Blue Velvet sound made for each other on ‘Blue Rigby’ and Phil Retrospector twists the Beatles into another unlikely duet, this time with Julee Cruise with ‘In My Twin Life’.

Overall, as befits most anything Lynch does (although this a totally unsanctioned release of course) the whole album is a real oddity given the source material.  The remixers have added some quirks and pop twists of their own too with some unexpected sound collabs, just like the best mashers always do. So expect to hear bits of the Jackson 5, Kylie Minogue, Garbage, Leona Lewis, Smashing Pumpkins and Roni Size in amongst all the weirdness.

Mashed In Plastic Tracklisting, Download, Video

Related Links

David Lynch (IMDB.com)  (Wikipedia) (DavidLynch.com)
Angelo Badalamenti (Last.fm)
Mashed In Plastic: The David Lynch Mash-up Album (Colatron.com)

Here’s a clever idea. Marketing and design specialists Ralston 360 have come up with a great angle to market their services, a streaming video that explains all the basics of Podcasting all wrapped up in a ‘virtual ipod’.

There’s also a free 14 page whitepaper, ‘Podcasting-the Pod Has Landed’ (in PDF format) on the website (in exchange for your email, natch!) which explains a bit more. They also have another free download, ‘To Blog or Not to Blog’ which kind of speaks for itself but is worth a look for newbies if you’re thinking of starting your own.

Thanks to Steve Rubel at the Micro Persuasion blog for the lead.

Related Reading

The Buzzsonic Podcasting Round-up (Buzzsonic.com)

Its been a while since we featured any posts on musical mash-ups here. Since the last mention (the excellent Green Day mash) the word mash up has taken on a slightly different meaning. Now the term is more likely associated with the latest Google Maps Api mash up rather than the latest frankenstein pop remix flying out of some digital DJ’s laptop studio.

Latest renegade remixers to join the fray are the Brooklyn based DJ duo Sound Advice who have ironically (see DJ Dangermouse) chosen to weld the music from the ubiquitous Gnarls Barkley album ‘St Elsewhere’ to the vocals from deceased rapper Biggie Smalls biggest hits.
The result is Gnarls Biggie a hit and miss collection of eleven tracks (all available as MP3′s naturally). ‘Smilie Faces Hypnotize’, ‘Gimme The Online Loot’ and ‘The Last Nasty Boy’ are worth more than one spin but the simple A vs. B formula is not nearly as inspired as the more elaborate examples of the ‘art’ like DJ Dangermouse’s (half of Gnarls Barkley) groundbreaking Beatles vs Jay Z mash up the ‘Grey Album’ or the aformentioned Green Day (or Dean Gray) remix project.

The guys have already got themselves banned from MySpace (though another ‘fan page’ has already sprung up). The cease and desist is in the post.

Related Reading

Gnarls Barkley Mashed Up with B.I.G (Spin.com)
Green Day Mash Up Leads to Cease and Desist Order, Grey Tuesday Style Protest (MTV News)
Grey Album Poducer Danger Mouse Explains How He Did It (MTV News)
Gnarls Barkley (Wikipedia)
Sound Advice Blog (Blogspot)
Party Ben (PartyBen.com)
Mark Vidler (GoHomeProductions)
Grey Tuesday:A Quick Overview of the Legal Terrain (EFF.org)
Grey Tuesday-Free the Grey Album (GreyTuesday.org)

We started writing about Podcasting over six months ago when it was still a niche buzzword. Since our last post on the subject there has been an incredible explosion in the fledgeling web broadcast medium.

You cant look at the interweb nowadays without stumbling across the words, Podcast, Podcasters, Podcasting or iPodders and the like. Least of all, easily the biggest boost for Podcasting this year came in June when Apple added support for Podcasting with the release iTunes 4.9 (the software is now up to version 6.)

Even since we last wrote on the subject back in May, there’s been a great amount of new and improved and streamlined resources for you to get involved, broadcast yourself, listen or just learn what all the fuss is about. What we decided to do here was get up to date and trawl around for the best sources of information, links and resources, wether you simply want to put your own podcast together, or just subscribe to some shows and listen for yourself.

Some Podcasting Background

Podcasting (Wikipedia)
How Podcasting Works (HowStuffWorks.com)
iPodder:A Brief History (iPodder.org)

Creating Your Own Podcast

Podblaze.com (Podcasting Resources)
Wave Pad (Free Audio Editing Software)
Audacity (Free Audio Editor and Recorder)
Liberated Syndication (Libsyn.com)
RSS Radio (Podcasting client)
Juice (Podcasting receiver)

Podcasting Directories, Shows & Resources

Odeo
Podcasting News
iPodder
Podsafe Music Network (Podshow.com)
Christian Podcasting (Christian Podcasts)
Dailysonic (MP3 Zine)
Podcast Alley (Podcastalley.com)
Podomatic (Podcast software & directory)
The Podcast Network
Podfeeder
Vital Podcasts
Podspider (Podcast Search)
Podcast Pickle (Podcast community)
Podnova
Gigadial
Yahoo Podcasts

We’re big fans of well done mash-ups here at Buzzsonic and one of the better done bootleg DJ mash-ups (or, unofficial remix/bastard pop to give it two of its many names) in the last eighteen months has easily been San Francisco DJ Party Bens ‘remodel’ of Green Days ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ (as Boulevard of Broken Songs) which seemlessly mixes up Green Day and Oasis and throws in a bit of Travis for good measure. There’s even a companion video mashup of the audio mashup here.

Now Australian mashers Team 9 have taken on the whole of Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ album with great effect.

‘American Edit’ grabs the album, shakes out all the crap bits and sprinkles the whole project liberally with cheeky samples from the likes of Johnny Cash, Queen, the KLF and Ashanti, amongst plenty more. Wholely applauded at the ‘bootleg barometer’ GYBO.
Stand out track for us is ‘Novacaine Rhapsody’ a brilliant mixup of ‘Give Me Novacaine’ and Queens ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, pure brilliance. Grab the album while you can here.

Get Your Mash On….

Get Your Bootleg On (GYBO)
NWA As Remixed Illegal Art (Buzzsonic)
Primal Scream Get The Mash-up Treatment (Buzzsonic)
Beatmixed (Beatmixed.com)

We mentioned the prototype iPod DJ mixer from Numark back in April after its unveiling at Frankfurts Musikmesse exhibition.

The iDJ is a two channel mixer that lets iPod DJs use their portable music libraries alongside other music and sound reinforcement systems. It’s equipped with two universal iPod docking stations. Users aren’t restricted to using iPods: the iDJ has phono/line inputs for adding additional devices on both channels. The product also offers a USB port, so users can dock with their computers to input and edit music to the device. The device is set to ship in the summer in the US and will retail at $399.

Related Links

iDJ Overview PDF (Numark.com)
Computer DJing Summit (ComputerDJSummit.com)
Prototype Numark DJ Mixer (CreateDigitalMusic.com)
Playlist (iPod-DJ.com)
The iPod DJ Revolution (Methodshop.com)
No Wax (NoWax.co.uk)

The expected new update of Apple’s all-in-one music jukebox software, iTunes 4.8 was released today and adds new video playback features, including the ability to drag and drop movie clips from your computer into the iTunes Library for easy cataloging and organization. The video clips appear with a new movie camera icon in your library.

There’s three options for video playback under the preferences tab which gives you the choice of full screen, separate window, or main window playback. You can drag the borders of the video to change the size of the screen. There’s also a new iTunes store preference with a choice of 1-click buying (though not sure Amazon will be too pleased with Apple’s use of that term) and ‘buy now’ shopping cart puchasing . Its all pretty seemless and using my Paypal account plugged into iTunes its made buying music the easiest its ever been for me in over thirty years of musical fanatasism, going back to the days of the 8 track cartridge.

Download iTunes 4.8

Related Reading
Apple Releases iTunes 4.8 [iPodLounge.com]

No great surprise to learn on Friday (via CNet’s News.com) that Yahoo are working on a music search engine for finding downloadable songs and music data from across the Internet. The specialty engine will let people search on an artist’s name, and retrieve all the available songs from other music services, as well as album reviews and band information from Yahoo Music. The Launch name was ousted in favour of a rebranding to Yahoo Music in February.

Concrete details are scarce at the moment with Jeff Karnes, Yahoo’s director of media search, declining to comment on the development of the audio search engine last week. Two of Yahoo’s search acquisitions, Alta Vista and All The Web are still destinations for MP3 file seekers with their specialist audio search options, though both have been made somewhat redundant by the more streamlined P2P search options from people like Kazaa, Limewire and Grokster.

Yahoo have been investing heavily in music for a while now with the $160M purchase of the MusicMatch jukebox software and download site late last year and in the buyout of pioneering UK music portal Dot Music from British Telecom eighteen months ago.

“It makes sense because Yahoo’s got access to all this music to begin with,” Gary Stein, an analyst at Jupiter Research told CNet. “Music needs better search, and by looking at the structured data of music–title, genre, etc., they could provide a better experience.”

An estimated 24.5 million people visited Yahoo Music in March, according to market researcher ComScore Networks. The new Yahoo search service will compete directly with other search services like AOL’s SingingFish, GoFish and the CNet owned MP3.com.

Related Links

Yahoo Developing Music Search Engine [SearchEngineWatch Blog]
Yahoo Developing An Audio Search Engine [CNet News.com]
Yahoo Search Blog [YSearchBlog.com]
Yahoo Readies iTunes Rival for Launch [CNet News.com]
Yahoo to Challenge iTunes With New Acquisition [NY Times]
AOL Revamps Audio Video Search [Buzzsonic News]
Legal Download Search Engine GoFish to Launch [Buzzsonic News]

Primal Scream are the latest in a long line of artists to be ‘honoured’ by getting some of their best known music hacked and rehashed by a group of Mash-up bootleg remixers.
The Beatles, the Beastie Boys, the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, Blur and the Clash have all recently been given the unofficial remix treatment by DJ ‘Mashers’.

Primal Screams classic 1991 UK indie-dance crossover album ‘Screamadelica’ was hailed by NME writers as one of the top albums of all time in 2003. The original album boasted production credits from UK club legend Andy Weatherall, the Orb and veteran Rolling Stones producer, Jimmy Miller.

The remade opus, ‘Screamadelica-Primal Scream Remixed’ was reworked by some of the main players in the UK bootleg / remix community including Mark Vidler (who produced the albums bonus track, ‘Screamadelica’), Soundhog, Tone 396, FakeID, Dunproofin and Cry On My Console, amongst others.

Like all the best made projects in this vein, the album is available for download as a BitTorrent file. The makers are eager to confess, “ We don’t pretend to think this comes close to the Scream’s masterpiece, but then nothing else does. So what primalscreamremixed.com offers is a different spin, moving from chill through dub via glitch to drum & bass. Not a million miles away from the eclecticism of the source.”

Thanks to Beatmixed.com

Related Links

Get Your Bootleg On [GYBO]
Culture Deluxe [CultureDeluxe.com]
Bootie San Francisco [BootieSF.com]
Twenty Questions [TwentyQ.Blogspot]
BitTorrent FAQ and Guide [Dessent.net]
Bastard Pop [Wikipedia.org]
Boom Selection [Boomselection.info]

That much over hyped headline, ‘iPod Killer’ made its now regular appearance in the news again last week (and has been appearing since 2003) when Nokia announced the N91 4GB hard-drive multi-media cell phone in Amsterdam last Wednesday. The N91 looks great and is impressive sounding enough, coming standard with MP3, M4A, AAC and WMA music compatibility.

There’s connectivity with your PC via USB 2.0 for simple drag and drop file transfer. Also included is an audio industry standard 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a two megapixel camera and multiple wireless connectivity options, including WCDMA, WLAN and Bluetooth technology.

Expected to be commercially available worldwide by the end of 2005, Nokia estimates the retail price of the N91 to fall between 650 and 750 EUR ($835-$963). For all its looks and killer features, without a substantial manufacturers subsiduary its hardly going to threaten or even tempt the average iPod demographic. In comparison the 30GB iPod Photo retails at $349, less than half the proposed price of the new Nokia.

Korea’s Samsung Electronics introduced the SGH-i300 last month with a 3-gigabyte hard drive, enough to store 1,000 songs. A 10-gig phone could hit the market within two years. Research firm Strategy Analytics estimates that in 2008 50% of the 860 million cell phones sold will be able to store and play songs, up from 8% today.

Related Reading

Nokia N91 Preview [InfoSyncWorld.com]
The iPod Killers? [BusinessWeek.com]
Of iPod Killers and Mobile Dreams [Billboard Postplay]
Attack of the Anti-iPods [Time.com]
Samsung Unveils SGH-i300 3Gb Hard Drive Mobile Phone [Pocket-Lint.co.uk]
The Father of the iPod [Cult of Mac Blog]
Inside the Apple iPod Design Triumph [DesignChain.com]
Microsoft’s iPod Killer? [CNet News]
iPod Killers Coming Soon [CNet MP3 Insider]

NWA’s 1989 album ‘Straight Outta Compton’ is hailed by many as one of the most seminal albums in the history of rap and greatly influenced countless gangsta rappers. Ice-T and Schooly D were the first gangsta rappers, NWA took it mainstream with this controversial and massive selling piece of profanity. The parental advisory sticker could have been invented just for this album and backlash from the ‘moral majority’ at the time lead to the album being issued with an alternative version, sans-profanity.

Over fifteen years later, Ice Cube is a film star and Dr.Dre is producing Eminem. Technology has also taken a great leap forward and in a humorous about turn Brooklyn design and technology student Evan Roth has cut up the NWA classic and spliced it back together in an edit of the entire ‘Straight Outta Compton’ album with all the adjacent non-curse words edited out. A nod to Steinski but with swearing. Like one of the college radio station WFMU’s blog poster’s comments say, “I haven’t laughed this hard at cursing since I was nine”.

According to the creator, “‘F**k tha Police’ edits down to 42.6 seconds after all the non-explicit material is edited out. This gives it a 12.3% explicit content index (much higher than ‘Straight Outta Compton’ at 7.4%)”.
Now you know. get it here, whilst its still up.

Thanks to WMFU’s Beware of the Blog

Related Links

Napster Dealt Copyright Rap by Dr. Dre [CNet News]
Chilling Effects [ChillingEffects.org]
Illegal Art Audio [Illegal-Art.org]
History of the Cut-Up [Beatmixed.com]
Bastard Pop [Wikipedia.org]

If you’re slow getting started on the MP3 portable player bandwagon, can’t afford an iPod and have a sizeable CD collection just waiting to get squashed into MP3 files and put into your pocket and on the move DAP Review put us on to a deal right now at J&R.com. Actually Amazon are doing the same too.

They are both shipping the 20GB Entempo Spirit for $99.98 and OK, the Spirit is never going to win prizes for the design, in fact they would if there was an award for ugliest hard-drive player ever, but besides that, even as a cheap hard drive back up its pretty impossible to beat at that price. All for less than the cost of the half gig Shuffle.

The blue and white unit comes with integrated FM radio and built in voice recorder, something even the mighty iPod doesn’t offer. There’s the usual USB 2.0 transfer, built in shock protection and WMA and MP3 compatability. The California based Entempo also have the much nicer looking 20GB Rubato which retails for double the price of the Spirit.

Thanks to DAP Review for the lead

MP3 Player Shopping

MP3 Player Love [MP3PlayerLove.com]
Digital Audio Player Review [DAPReview]
Top 10 Portable MP3 Players Guide [About.com]
MP3 Player Buyers Guide [CNet Reviews]

P2P software pioneer Ian Clarke, creator of the Open Source P2P platforms Freenet and more recently Dijjer has this week quietly unveiled his latest project, Indy.

Speaking to P2PNet Clarke promised that Indy, “does for freely available independent music what Google does for the world wide web.” Indy uses collaborative filtering, a system similar to that used by Amazon to recommend books, etc, to prospective buyers, to learn about your musical preferences in relation to other Indy users.

“Everything it plays is from online indie music freely available on the web and you can rate each piece at between one and five stars. Using that as feedback, Indy will find and download music that’s keyed to what you like as opposed to what you don’t like.”

“We were concerned that even with all of the advancements with online media in the past few years, it was still pretty difficult just to find new independent music that you liked.”

According to Clarke, Indy is inspired by iRate, another collaborative music filtering set-up. As users rate music in iRate it automatically finds more free music that you’ll like by finding people with similar music tastes. Indy is said to have a much cleaner and simpler user interface and it is freely available for Windows OS initially with other platforms in development.

Submit Music to Indy

Related Links

iRate Radio [iRateRadio.com]
Freenet Creator Unveils Dijjer P2P [Buzzsonic News]
Dijjer [Dijjer.org]
The Free Network Project [Sourceforge]
Mobster [Sourceforge]
Collaborative Filtering Research Papers [JamesThornton.com]
Collaborative Filtering Comes To Independent Music Makers [MasterNewMedia.org]
The Music Business and the Big Flip [Shirky.com]
InDiscover [InDiscover.net]

A free new Open Source music samples database has been launched by the Barcelona, Spain based Music Technology Group (MTG), part of the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF). The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings and bleeps all released under the Creative Commons sampling plus license.

The project is also part of the forthcoming International Computer Music Conference hosted in Barcelona this coming September where sounds taken from the database will be part of live performances at the event.

There’s an increasing amount of audio projects adopting the Creative Commons licence idea including ‘Wired’ magazine who issued the ‘Rip.Sample.Mash.Share’ compilation CD with the November issue of the tech geek bible in association with Creative Commons. Readers were invited to remix and mash-up artists including David Byrne, the Beastie Boys, DJ Dangermouse and the Thievery Corporation.

Creative Commons also have a collaborative community music sharing /remixing site CC Mixter featuring songs licensed under Creative Commons, where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want. There is an ODB remix contest coming up soon and a Magnatune remix contest, with a recording contract for the winners.

Related Links

Creative Commons [CreativeCommons.org]
The Wired CD [Creative Commons]
CC Mixter-The Remix Family Tree [CCMixter.org]

As a dance music producer myself and someone who has humped around boxes of 12 inch vinyl records all in the name of DJing in the past I’ve seen the ‘death’, or more accurately, the steep decline of vinyl for years. Instead of backbreakingly heavy piles of vinyl, a handful of CDs can take their place. With MP3 music compression it hasn’t stopped there however, why bother with CDs when you can carry all your music on a device the size of a box of cigarettes. The end of vinyl getting lost in transit for the DJ jetsetter, everything fits in your pocket. The only minus point about DJing with an iPod in the past has been the lack of pitch control. Not anymore.

DJ gear specialists Numark unveiled a prototype iPod DJ mixing console a few days ago at Frankfurts Musikmesse exhibition. Though camera shots of the unit were apparently shielded at the show, German HipHop website WebBeatz managed to grab some shots, one of which we have here the other is being shown at Engadget.

Details are sketchy right now but Engadget are reporting that Numark aims to put out a consumer model in the next couple of months, retailing in the $250-350 range, to be followed with a pro DJ version with pitch control and other goodies required by the pro mobile DJ. Both versions will feature the dual iPod dock with crossfaders and transport controls.

Another turntablist website, Skratchworx were showing the same leaked pictures.

Thanks to Engadget

Related Links

Prototype Numark iPod DJ Mixer [CreateDigitalMusic.com]
iPod For DJs [DJZone.net]
Playlist iPod DJ [iPod-Dj.com]
With iPod, Who Needs a Turntable ? [Wired.com]
Downloaded and Ready To Rock [Washington Post]
iPod Lounge [iPodLounge.com]
Everything iPod [Everythingipod.com]
NoWax [NoWax.co.uk]