Phew, well now I’ve actually finished a blog post for the first time in over a year (hey I’ve been too busy over at Twitter) I thought I would ‘weld’ together my three lengthy posts on digital music distribution and put them out there as one lovely PDF!

Now take into account that I haven’t reorganized anything so you’ll be getting them in chronological order from the top. I’m going to post it at Google Docs so feel free to grab. This is just the rough’ beta mix’ as I do intend to tidy it up and reorganise very soon. Feedback please!

Grab it here: The Buzzsonic.com Ultimate Guide to Digital Music Distribution Extra!

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 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)

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)

Was Googling around catching up on the latest DJ mash-ups/bastard pop mutations, which I have written about on here quite a few times, when I stumbled across this older musical mash-up from DJ Party Ben. I’ve been a big fan of Ben’s Frankenstein pop mutations for a while now and somehow I missed this one which he actually did a few years ago now.

Its a mash-up of  the Eric B and Rakim classic, ‘Paid In Full’ and the White Stripes, ‘My Doorbell’. More importantly he uses ‘Coldcut’s Seven Minutes of Madness Mix’ of ‘Paid In Full’ which first appeared in the UK on 4th & Broadway 12 inch vinyl over twenty years ago. I remember Eric B dismissing the remix at the time but it continues to be as timeless as ever and for me is up there as one of the best remixes of all time.

In the spirit of Double Dee and Steinski, Coldcut breathe new life into Eric B’s already genius work, adding a story line and surreal imagery over one of the most subtly infectious bass lines in hip-hop history.

And that all encompassing Eric B bass line was pilfered from Dennis Edwards ‘Don’t Look Any Further’. Coincidentally  Snoop Dog appears in the frat house movie classic, ‘Old School’ doing a live version of ‘Paid In Full’.

Back to the point of the original Google search. I was looking for the brilliant DJ Schmolli (Kooks vs. Beasties) mash-up, ‘Sabotaging the Kooks’ a  raucous slice of genuine pop genius and one that actually got national airplay on BBC Radio One’s morning show. You can find the free track download here.

Related Links

White Stripes ‘My Doorbell’ YouTube.com

Eric B and Rakim ‘Paid In Full’ YouTube.com

This is ‘See Me (I Cant See You)’, the latest track from Anniversary Circle and the best thing they’ve done so far. Main songwriter and guitarist Martin Johnson was in a band with me called the Fruit Eating Bears years ago. Our main claim to fame was winning Gary Crowley’s Demo Clash show on BBC Radio London and supporting Divine Comedy at the legendary Bull and Gate in London’s Kentish Town.

Anyway, the track is a cross between late 80s UK goth (circa Banshees) and low-fi new wave, for want of a better description. There’s a fantastic dirty bassline wandering around in there too which brings to mind classic JJ Burnel in his Stranglers heyday.

There’s more music on the bands blog, the choice of which is ‘Winters Children’ and you can grab the MP3 here.

Anniversary Circle
(MySpace)

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)

The brilliant Green Day mash-up album we mentioned a few days ago has already had the plugged pulled by Warner Bros music officials apparently.

You can follow the subject at mashers hang out Get Your Bootleg On. Naturally the old download link is now dead but there’s a growing groundswell of support for the project just as there was for the famed (and similarily outlawed) DJ Dangermouse mashup, ‘The Grey Album’. You can, as of this minute grab the album here and read up further on the planned music activism set for December 13th.

Elsewhere this week we’ve stumbled across a Madonna mash-up project (‘the Immaculate Concoction’), one from Radiohead and a 50 Cent/Queen ‘co-lab’. Of course the artists themselves are blissfully unaware of all the DiY remix activity going on.

Related Links

Dean Grey Tuesday (Alt.fm)
RIAA Targets Mash-Ups (BoingBoing.com)
Grey Tuesday, Online Cultural Activism and the Mash up of Music and Politics (FirstTuesday.org)
Raiding The 20th Century, the History of the Cut-up (Musicalbear.com)
The Grey Album by DJ Dangermouse (BannedMusic.org)

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)

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]

We covered early developments on the forthcoming legal P2P services, from Mashboxx and Snocap back in November of last year. Napster (MK 1) founder Shaun Fanning’s new legal P2P (ie:major label friendly) service Snocap had agreed a deal with the Universal Music Group to distribute the major labels content using the digital fingerprinting software being adapted from a Philips blueprint.

At the same time Sony/BMG had been in talks with Mashboxx boss, ex-Grokster and Blubster president, Wayne Rosso.

Snocaps talks with the EMI Group began almost six months ago and an official deal with the UK major was announced to the press yesterday.

David Munns, Chairman and CEO for EMI Music, North America said in a statement, “This deal with Snocap underscores EMI’s commitment to developing legitimate ways to deliver our music in more ways to more fans, including peer-to-peer distribution models that ensure creators are compensated for their works.”

He continued, “This sends a signal to music industry critics who claim we are technophobic. If anything, we are embracing technologies like Snocap, which allow the P2P community to share music legally. It’s a big step forward for fans, artists and copyright owners.”

Mashboxx, who are going to be using the Snocap technology for their own P2P service started signing up beta testers on their website today, for the yet to be seen music delivery service.

Snocap is a technology embedded in a P2P network to block sharing of unauthorized works, including unlicensed music and pornography and facilitate commercial transactions. Audio fingerprinting provides the digital ‘fingerprint’ of an audio recording by deriving unique features that can be used to identify the music by comparing it with reference fingerprints stored in a central database.

That fingerprinting tool could be integrated into the file-swapping software itself in several different ways. Once an identification is made, the download could be blocked, unless the computer user pays a fee, as if they were downloading a song from iTunes or another digital song store.

Mashboxx’s P2P app will use Fanning’s technology to reveal which shared songs are being monitored on behalf of Snocap’s label customers. Download a track that is, and Mashboxx’s software slips in a DRM-protected version that invites you to pay, to listen, to burn or whatever usage the copyright holder permits.

Background Reading

EMI Signs Up For ‘Authorised’ Online Music Sharing [Reuters]
Mashboxx Opens Beta Test Scheme [theRegister.com]
EMI Signs on With Snocap [Slyck.com]
Content Identification:Audio Fingerprinting [Philips Research]
Napster Founder in Major Label P2P Talks [Buzzsonic News]
EMI Records Join the Snocap Queue [Buzzsonic News]
Napster Guru Fanning Breaks Snocap Silence [Buzzsonic News]
Grokster [Wikipedia]
The Major Labels [PBS Frontline]
Wayne Rosso on File-Sharing Frontiers [TechNewsWorld.com]

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]

Seems nobody and nothing is sacred in the world of the bootleg remixer, the bastard pop purveyer or the mash-up DJ/remixer. Impeccable coincidence it seems in light of Steven Speilbergs forthcoming (June 29th in the US) Tom Cruise starred remake, but latest opus to get the once over is Jeff Wayne’s 1976 ‘rock musical concept album of the film’, ‘War Of The Worlds’, courtesy of one Grafyte (aka Alex C) Dundee student by day, DJ and Masher by night.

Thankfully he edited the whole thing down to less than half an hour and threw in a bunch of breaks and the like from Leftfield, Faithless, Led Zeppelin and the Prodigy to liven up the prog rock classic and make it into one of the best mash-up projects I’ve heard in many many months. A bit of a keeper and handled with great respect for the original it has to be said.

Download from here

Trailer for Steven Spielbergs remake of ‘War Of The Worlds’ here.

Related

War Of The Worlds Trailers [Apple.com]
The Complete War of the Worlds [WOTW.org]
Study Guide for H. G. Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898) [Washington State Uni.]
Get Your Bootleg On [GYBO.org]
Yet More Beatles Mash Up Mayhem [Buzzsonic News]
Music For the Bootleg Generation [Buzzsonic News]

We’ve already mentioned the Beastles and the ‘Revolved’ Beatles remix mash-ups on these pages in recent weeks and now there’s another one worthy (or not) of your attention. Beatallica.

Although they’re not in the truest sense of the meaning, mash-up or ‘bastard pop’ as celebrated vigorously on the bootleggers ‘bible’, ‘Get Your Bootleg On’ (or GYBO to those in the know), Beatallica have the spirit of the art down to a tee. A sense of humour and an unlikely clashing of musical genres. Online rockzine Blabbermouth probably summed them up the best by saying that musically they were, “arrangements of Fab Four standards with wonderfully unsubtle references
to Metallica’s songs and a spot-on imitation of James Hetfield’s distinctive vocals…”

So probably more in common with parody like the Rutles and Dread Zeppelin than the genius of Loo and Placido but worthy of a mention here also for their usage of BitTorrent to distribute both their albums, ‘A Garage Dayz Night’ and ‘Beatallica’, not only in the ubiquitous MP3 format but in the lossless audio format Flac. Props all round and great fun to boot (no pun etc….).

Related Reading

Another Beatles Mash Up [MusicbizNews24.com]
Meet the Beastles [MusicbizNews24.com]
Music For the Bootleg Generation [MusicbizNews24.com]
Culture Deluxe [CultureDeluxe.com]

Big Beat ‘Godfathers’ the Chemical Brothers are the latest big names from the world of ‘Electronica’ to get booted and remixed on the eve of the release of their new album ‘Push The Button’.

The Prodigy have been given the same honour twice. Last November ‘Music For The Bootleg Generation’ an unofficial remix of the ten year old rave classic ‘Music For the Jilted Generation’ appeared on BitTorrent and mash-up websites. Their last album, ‘Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned’ appeared on P2P networks, remixed, as ‘Always Outsiders, Never Outdone’ even before the release of the official album.

The Chemicals unofficial remix/mash-up album ‘Flip The Switch’ will be available for download tomorrow, with renegade reworkings from mash up scene hipsters like Cry.On.My.Console, Fake ID, Dunproofin, McSleazy, Big Bad Baz and others. The official album ‘Push The Button’ is released the same day.

Related Reading

Flip The Switch [ChemicalBrothersRemixed.com]
Chemical Brothers-Official Site [ChemicalBrothers.com]
Music for the Bootleg Generation [MusicbizNews24.com]
Boom Selection [BoomSelection.info]

The much vaunted arrival of the eXeem P2P software application was unveiled yesterday. The software that some peer-to-peer advocates are hyping as “download of the year”, Exeem is said to merge the speedy “swarmed ‘ downloads of BitTorrent with the powerful global search capabilities of Kazaa.

Andrej “Sloncek” Preston, Swarm Systems spokesman-the Caribbean registered company behind Exeem-told CNet News, “We have not created BitTorrent, but a totally new P2P, which is a lot different from BitTorrent.” ‘Sloncek’, who operated the now-defunct SuprNova site added, “I think it’s a fresh approach. Only time will tell if it’s going to work.”

The hype seems to have been working with 120,000+ downloads of the new P2P app in little over 24 hours though like many other file-swapping programs, eXeem comes bundled with several pieces of advertising spyware, including the Cydoor Technologies adware utility and the LookSmart toolbar, which plugs into Internet Explorer.

The software isn’t meeting with universally good reviews around the Net. Some users have already complained about the addition of the advertising software. Needless to say an unofficial spyware free version of eXeem, called eXeem Lite has already appeared online as a pre-emptive strike for file sharers wary of spyware laden P2P software like the underfire KaZaa.

Users looking forward to the ‘decentralised BitTorrent’ claims of eXeem will maybe paying attention to the claims of peer-to-peer tracking company BayTSP, who track illegal downloads for major film studios and record companies. BayTSP said it has long provided information on BitTorrent users, including specific files shared and IP addresses, to its clients. It will likely do the same with eXeem, its executives said.

“We can still identify all the BitTorrent users,” BayTSP Chief Executive Mark Ishikawa told CNet. “Everyone who uses it still has the same issues of getting caught that they’ve always had.”

Related Reading

Exeem Opens New File Swapping Doors [CNet News]
eXeem Decentralises BitTorrent Sharing [BetaNews.com]
Exeem Released [Slyck.com]
Why eXeem Shouldn’t be Replacing our BitTorrent Clients [P2P Consortium]
eXeem Lite Launched [Slyck.com]
More On The Exeem P2P App [MusicbizNews24.com]
Bit Torrent Meets Kazaa? Exeem P2P Arrival Imminent [MusicbizNews24.com]
BayTSP Provides Automatic DMCA Notices [Slashdot.org]

Its not exactly a groundbreaking new idea, grab an old Beatles album, mash up with random choice of other tracks etc. Still, mash-up DJ/ ‘Frankenstein Pop’ artist CCC has undertaken the not undaunting task of putting his own spin on the Beatles classic 1966 ‘Revolver’ album.

The full track listing and ubiquitous MP3 downloads for ‘Revolved’ will be up next month on its completion, meanwhile there’s five variations already up for grabs, the most promising of which is ‘Eleanor Ciccone’ a rather wonderful pairing of Madonna’s ‘Ray Of Light’ and the Fab Fours ‘Eleanor Rigby’ . Theres an unadventurous mash-up of the Jams ‘Start’ and the Beatles track that was the inspiration for Paul Weller, ‘Start’ and overall its great fun but not nearly as clever as DJ Dangermouse’s groundbreaking (at least in terms of column inches)‘Grey Album’.

Related Reading

Meet the Beastles [MusicbizNews24.com]
MTV Premier’s New ‘Download’ Show [MusicbizNews24.com]
Music for the Bootleg Generation [MusicbizNews24.com]

The P2P underground is buzzing this week with further news on the imminent appearance of Exeem, the new file sharing app from the people behind the popular outlawed Bit Torrent site Suprnova.org. Suprnova.org, deemed a Universal BitTorrent source, was a web site which distributed descriptor files for various music and video files, computer programs and games. Many of these torrents described could potentially have been used for copyright infringement.

Although the Slovenian based site didn’t actually host any illegal files, but links to Torrents, the owners pulled the plug on the site December 19th 2004 after various legal threats from, in particular the MPAA after a protracted worldwide clampdown on movie file sharing from the film industry body and various copyright and legal bodies.

In an interview conducted by net radio station NovaStream.org yesterday (December 30th) spokesman Sloncek explained that eXeem is “like Kazaa and BitTorrent,” though unlike the Bit Torrent tracker sites Exeem is decentralized. The software is being developed by an anonymous (so far) company called Swarm Systems Inc., registered on the Caribbean islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis an ‘offshore ruse’ used to good effect more recently by the under fire Kazaa.

Cynics and critics have already expressed disappointment in the much hyped file sharing application with its proposed use of adware to finance development and the possibility of it being just another decentralised P2P network like Kazaa. There’s an early Beta test review here and latest screenshots here and you can download the Beta software for Exeem here.

Related Reading

Sloncek Announces Upcoming Arrival of eXeem [Slyck.com]
Is Suprnova Exeem For Real? [P2PNet.net]
Novastream Radio Sloncek Interview [Novastream.org]
Decentralizing Bit Torrent [Slashdot.org]
TorrentBits.org and Suprnova.org Go Dark [Slashdot.org]
Suprnova.org Wikipedia [Wikipedia.org]
BitTorrent Operator Bites Back at MPAA [InternetNews.com]
The Bit Torrent Effect [WiredMag.com]
BitTorrent Plus Kazaa Equals… Exeem? [ExtremeTech.com]
Interview with Sloncek of SuprNova [Slyck.com]
The BitTorrent P2P File-sharing System [the Register]

Boston, Mass. based spinner DJBC is the lastest Mash-up instigator to have a bash at the Beatles with his Beastles project. A mash-up of the Beastie Boys and the Beatles, unsurprisingly. There’s 9 tracks on the site and even downloadable cover art. Not sure if its on par with the much mentioned ‘trendsetting’ DJ Dangermouse ‘Grey Album’ Beatles mash-up but its a lot of fun and better than the Beatallica project.

Widespread publicity will probably mean a C&D somewhere along the line so grab the downloads while you can.

Related Links

Beastie Boys
The Beatles
Get Your Bootleg On [Gybo V3]
At Last the Mash-up Has Gone Mainstream [NewsDay.com]
Raiding the 20th Century, the History of the Cutup [MusicalBear.com]
Protest Music [Alternet.org]
BeatMixed [Beatmixed.com]
Boom Selection [BoomSelection.info]
Grey Tuesday, Online Cultural Activism and the Mash up of Music and Politics [FirstTuesday.org]

Edmonds, Washington headquartered digital media company Netmusic.com today announced the acquisition of Los Angeles based independent music distributor and download platform Audio Lunchbox. The combination of both companies catalogs creates the largest online collection of independent music in the world — a licensed catalog of over one million tracks, incorporating 4000 plus labels.

Downloads from the Audio Lunchbox website are unrestricted by digital rights and geographical limitations making the catalog available worldwide in the popular MP3 format encoded at 192 kbps variable bit rate (VBR) and in the emerging open source compression codec Ogg Vorbis. Vorbis files (which have an .ogg extension) compress to a smaller size than MP3 files and are said to be of better quality though the format has limited support from current portable digital audio players.

“We are thrilled to join forces with Audio Lunchbox,” said NetMusic Entertainment CEO Glen Starchman. “The acquisition of Audio Lunchbox makes NetMusic the largest independent music community on the Internet.”

“We now have the firepower to achieve our vision of bringing great independent bands to the masses,” said Morgan Harris, CEO of Audio Lunchbox. “The deal gives Audio Lunchbox a tremendous boost. The acquisition is a win-win-win for the artists, our users and the Company.”

AudioLunchbox’s nearest rival is industry ‘veteran’ EMusic who have been offering unrestricted downloads since 1998 and boast a catalog of over 500 000 tracks.

Related Links

Indie Only Audio Lunchbox Serves Music With no DRM [MacWorld.com]
the Orchard Independent Distribution [theOrchard.com]
Ogg Vorbis Tutorial [AngryCoffee.com]
About EMusic [EMusic.com]

The expected three week long trial of Kazaa continued in Sydney, Australia with the music industry seemingly holding the upper hand by the end of the week. Major record labels, Universal Music Australia, EMI, Sony/BMG, Warner, Festival Mushroom and 25 additional applicants are suing Sharman Networks and associated parties–including Altnet, which delivers so-called “piggyback” technology with Kazaa, Altnet associated Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Sharman CEO Nikki Hemming and Altnet chief executive officer Kevin Bermeister and two technology directors–over alleged music copyright infringement made using the Kazaa software.

The labels hope to stop illegal P2P file sharing and to recover compensation for past infringements, says Michael Speck, general manager of the Music Industry Piracy Investigations unit of the Australian Record Industry Association.

The best coverage of the trial has come from Garth Montgomery’s lighthearted daily blog at Australia Personal Computer Mag where complete transcripts of the days proceeding are made available as PDF downloads as well as the writers rants and what he calls “anti-journalism’ pokes at applicants and respondants alike. He also deserves the credit for coining the term Kazaagate .

Music industry attorney Tony Bannon told Australian Justice Murray Wilcox that ownership of Sharman, which has been kept secret through its registration on the tax haven island of Vanuatu, is in fact controlled by Kevin Bermeister, CEO of Kazaa partner Altnet. Bannon said there is “ready inference that Kevin Bermeister is in fact the ultimate controller of Sharman,” ZDNet reported.

The music industry presented a number of key witnesses in effort to prove that Kazaa could indeed filter out copyrighted material despite denials to the contrary. Nigel Carson, a computer forensics investigator from KPMG, testified that it is possible to locate the physical computer and user of the machine by tracing the IP address. Carson said that if a company like Sharman Networks wants to trace a specific user who shared unlicensed music files, it would need to store the date and time that the transaction was done.

More potentially damning was the evidence given by Tom Mizzone, vice president of data services at New York-based MediaSentry who had been hired by the RIAA in March 2003 to search Kazaa for users located in Australia and download evidence they were swapping copyrighted material. Up to 600 scanners were turned to the task, and the internet addresses of the users recorded and checked against a database of internet service providers in Australia.

The court also heard that the major record labels were engaged in a program of actively disrupting the file-sharing network by bombarding it with billions of decoys and spoofs that pose as song files. The success of the spoof war meant as few as 7 per cent of a given artist’s tracks found on the network were usable, according to record industry memos.

Mizzone said that MediaSentry is also able to detect the copyright-infringing music files made available for download in the Kazaa system’s shared folders. He told the court that his company is doing what any ordinary user of the Kazaa system is able to do. Aside from detecting files, he said, they can also communicate with the users via the applications built in instant messaging.

Kazaa’a main defence inevitably seemed to rest on the previous legal precedent set in the 1980s. The much used Sony Corp. vs. Universal City Studios ‘Betamax case’ ruling in 1984 which said electronics giant Sony wasn’t liable when people used its Betamax videocassette recorder to copy movies illegally because the technology had significant uses that did not violate copyrights.

Federal Court Justice Murray Wilcox dumped 12 of the 14 of the respondents’ affidavits for the civil trial, saying they were not relevant to the case about copyright infringement. The rejected affidavits contained details of how Kazaa could be used to exchange legitimate materials. Wilcox said he agreed that Kazaa could be used for the sharing of licensed materials and that court time should not be wasted discussing the issue.

Judge Wilcox set aside Sharmans objections on Friday against more potentially damaging alegations in an affidavit containing a report from Dr. George Barker, director of the Australian National University’s Center for Law and Economics, Intellectual Property and Copyright.

According to the report, the Kazaa system is a “marketplace” that brings together people who have copyrighted works and people who want to make unauthorized copies of those works. The report adds that Kazaa “designs the rules, facilitates the ‘market’ for exchange of copyright works, and enforces or has the capacity to enforce the rules of that market.”

US. technical experts were due in Sydney over the weekend to debate whether its song files could be filtered to restrict the illegal flow of music on Kazaa’s “peer-to-peer” network on the Internet, the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said on Saturday. The trial continues on Tuesday.

Further Coverage

Daily Despatch-KazaaGate [APCMag.com]
ZDNet Australia:Hot Topic, Sharman [ZDNet.com.au]
Report Asserts Kazaa Makes the Rules [CNet News]
Sharman Counter Attacks [MacWorld.co.uk]
US. Experts to Examine Filtering Web Songs [SignOnSanDiego.com]
Trial to Unmask Kazaa Owners [Wired.com]
Kazaa Faces Allegations in Copyright Trial [NewsFactor.com]
Witness Assaults Kazaa Filter Claims [CNet Asia]

Related Reading

Appeals Court Holds Grokster Not Liable [PCWorld Australia] August 2004
Digital Piracy – Definitive P2P Piracy Figures for Year 2003 [ITIC.ca]
RIAA, MPAA Appeal Against ‘Grokster is Legal’ Ruling [the Register] August 2003
Judge:File Swopping Tools Are Legal [CNet News] April 2003
File Swapper Eluding Pursuers [Washington Post] Dec 2002
Napster vs. the Music Industry [HK-Lawyer.com] June 2001
RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc. [Gigalaw.com] June 1999
RIAA, Diamond Sweep Away Suit [Wired.com]
Enforcement Bots-Who Does the Dirty Work? [No-ip.org]
CBS Songs Ltd. v. Amstrad Consumer Electronics 1988 [Xenoclast.org]

According to the latest digital music research undertaken by analysts at JupiterResearch their latest survey strongly supports two critical JupiterResearch forecasts: subscription services will eventually outpace a la carte downloads and CDs won’t be replaced by digital music in the next five years.

The study, “Consumer Survey Report: Music, 2004“, was based on a survey of over 2,300 online adults, and also compares results with a survey of over 2,100 online teens, ages 13-17 and suggests that by 2009 digital music sales will still represent just 12% of consumer music spending.

The majority of online adults, 51%, think physical music is more valuable than digital. “CDs offer higher sound fidelity, aren’t burdened with awkward copy protection and are compatible with pretty much every way people listen to music,” said JupiterResearch VP and Senior Analyst David Card. “MP3 players and portable rentals could turn around that value perception, but it will take time,” added Card.

“Digital music is a young person’s game,” said Josh Green, Analyst at JupiterResearch. “Forty one percent of 18-24 year-olds burn CDs and 31% use file sharing. For the over 25 crowd, those numbers are only 14% and 4%,” added Green.

A seperate study conducted by the Online Publishers Association in partnership with comScore Networks earlier in the month revealed that online music sales, seriously came into fruition in the beginning of 2004, and pushed the entertainment and lifestyles category of online content up by 78.3% in the first half of 2004 to a grand total of $182.8 million in spending.

It was the first time that the OPA had included online music in its online content measurements. The OPA report also noted that nearly all online content spending in the US is attributable to subscription payment programs, at 90% of sales.

In another report, published a week before the Jupiter study, Simon Dyson, editor of the ‘Music on the Internet’
survey for the Informa Media Group confirmed predictions that it’s going to be a long time before digital music downloads challenge CD sales, even in the online world. The IMG report says that by 2010 global online music sales will exceed $6bn. An impressive number, but still only 15.2 per cent of total spending on music worldwide.

Dyson, told BBC News, 2004 had been an “important” year for the digital music sector. But he warned that converting illegal peer-to-peer file sharers was central to the industry’s long-term success. He added that legal action being taken by record companies against illegal downloaders had so far failed to make an impact. But the IMG report differed from Jupiter in its predictions regarding subscription music services saying that digital downloads would continue to dominate (in terms of the value of sales) against subscription-based services.

Related Research

JupiterResearch Full Press Release [Yahoo Biz]
Subscription Services to Drive Digital Music [CNet News]
Digital Music a Long Way From Displacing CDs [the Register]
Inside Digital Media Interviews [InsideDigitalMedia.com]
TEMPO:Keeping Pace with Digital Music Behavior [Ipsos-Insight.com] PDF
Researching the Digital Music Landscape [Ipsos-Insight.com]
Can Music Move Online Content Mountain? [E-Marketer.com]
Online Publishers Assoc. Online Paid Content US. Market Report Nov.04 [online-Publishers.org] 18pg PDF
CDs Still Overshadow Digital-Music Downloads [NewsFactor.com]
Industry Focus:Music [Forrester Research]
Online Music Report-2004 [IPFI.org] 20pg. PDF
Digital Music Research Network [Queen Mary, University of London]
CDs May Soon go the Way of Vinyl [CNN.com]
CD Prices Sing the Blues [CNet News]

The long running saga of the music industry’s copyright battle against the worlds most popular peer to peer file sharing software Kazaa moved to Australia today as case number NSD 110, Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd v Sharman License Holdings Ltd got underway in the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney.

At the start of a trial over the legality of Kazaa software, the court was told today that Kazaa had 100 million users worldwide, sharing three billion music files a month. Five major Australian record companies-Universal, EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music, Festival/Mushroom and 25 other North American, European and Australian record companies -are suing Sharman Networks, which develops and distributes the software, for copyright infringement.

The labels contend that Sharman was fully aware of how the software was used and did nothing to stop copyright infringements. Lawyers for Australia’s recording industry branded the popular Kazaa file-swapping network “an engine of copyright piracy to a degree of magnitude never before seen”. Kazaa’s owners, Sharman insist that while they urge users not to commit music piracy, they have no control over what people do with the popular “peer-to-peer” software they provide.

Tony Bannon, representing Australia’s major record labels dismissed Sharman’s defense, saying Kazaa’s owners actively take steps allowing users to filter certain files from the network such as those that could contain viruses or pornography but not the files containing copyrighted songs. Bannon said the owners of the P2P software were seeking to get rich from advertising revenue based on the volume of traffic on the Kazaa network, while painting themselves as crusaders for music fans. Mr Bannon said Sharman’s actions were “all a charade” because it was interested only in making money from the copyright-infringing behavior of its users.

Each file traded on Kazaa has a unique digital fingerprint in the form of an MD5 hash a mathematical signature produced by running an algorithm across the contents of a file. This signature allows Kazaa to identify how many users are sharing the same file so that it can be downloaded from many places at once with complete integrity. If Kazaa were really trying to become a legitimate service, an obvious first step would be to block the MD5 hashes for known pirated files, argues the music industry. The reliability of P2P filtering technologies are still conclusively unproven however and are still under constant development.

Kazaa already has one major court victory under its belt, with the Dutch Supreme Court ruling in December 2003 that Kazaa’s then Swedish owners could not be held liable for copyright infringement. A possible difference in the Australian case is the recording industry’s invocation of the controversial, Anton Pillar Law that allows litigants in civil copyright cases to gather evidence. An Anton Piller order is granted when a judge is persuaded that there are reasonable grounds evidence may be destroyed if advance notice is given.

In February, after a six-month inquiry by the Music Industry Piracy Investigation unit of the Australian Record Industry Association, the record labels, organized under a cloak of absolute secrecy secured the Anton Piller order permitting a surprise search of Kazaa premises, to avoid any potential loss or destruction of evidence and legal authority to gather evidence without police being present. The information gathered has yet to be revealed.

The true owners of Sharman remain a mystery. Although it has offices in Australia, Sharman was formed in the island state of Vanuatu, a no-tax haven where the secrecy of private companies is sacred, improper disclosure of financial information to others is subject to criminal prosecution and tax information is not shared with any outside jurisdiction.

The Federal Court case, before judge Murray Wilcox, is expected to stretch over three weeks.

Related Reading

Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd v Sharman License Holdings Ltd (March-Copyright Suit) [Federal Court of Australia]
Anton Pillar Order [Wikipedia.org]
Kazaa Trial [Google News]
Trial to Unmask Kazaa Owners [Wired.com]
Net Music Swop Firm a ‘Pirate’ [the Australian]
Australian Music Industry Decries Kazaa [ABCNews]
Huge Music Piracy Encouraged [HeraldSun.com]
Kazaa Gears for Next Showdown [News.com.au]
Kazaa Heads to Court for File Swop Trial [CNet.com]
Hide and Seek (July) [APCMag.com]
Sharman Fails to Deliver Evidence Again:MIPI (May) [ZDNet Australia]
Kazaa Tripped up in Aussie Court (March) [Wired.com]
Telstra Attaks Music Industry Raids (Feb) [ZDNet Australia]
Kazaa Fights Court Order (Feb) [PCWorld]
Record Industry Commences Court Proceedings Against Kazaa for Breach of Copyright (Feb)[IFPI press release]
Inside the Kazaa Raid (Feb) [APCMag.com]