What’s new in my playlist
If Pink Floyd met The Beach Boys and part of the London Philarmonic Orchestra and they all had a subtle LSD party the result would probably be similar to The Besnard Lakes. Their latest album, The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse (released in 2007) is an impressive moody record, which could use a little more variation, but that has made it into my favorite's list quite quickly. The first two tracks use the same, very effective formula, building a momentum from a very soft start to a full scale strident ending filled with a myriad of different sounds.
I shall say no more and leave you with the music:
What I’m doing today
I'm login off on an unduly early hour (6:30PM local time) and heading towards River Plate Stadium to watch the first on a series of concerts by Soda Stereo.
As part of the reunion craze (note to self: I need to get tickets for The Police in December) Soda Stereo, which disbanded 10 years ago are reuniting just for this tour.
The band yields some fond memories, of my brother studying for Architect, Soda Stereo being the soundtrack.
It shall be a good night.
Another example of bluntly honest blogging.
So through TechCrunch I found myself reading this article. This is Ian Rogers talking to the Music Industry telling them to, well, rethink their strategy (See how polite I can be?).
The interesting thing, besides the post itself which is a must read, is the brutally honest way Ian tells the hand that feeds him they are hugely wrong.
I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. (...)I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor.
The original post is a transcript of a presentation he gave to "some friends on the music industry", then he probably decided it would be cooler to have the entire universe reading upon it. I agree.
So here's the guy in charge of the most popular music web portal telling openly and rather harshly to the industry providing him with content that he's not willing to waste his energy or his employer's money unless they change their policies. Bold, direct, very Web 2.0. Kudos Ian.
July’s musical discovery
The Deadly Syndrome.
Sorry, this is the best quality YouTube has to offer:
Some more videos at rehearsals.com. (BTW, they should offer the option to embed videos as YouTube does)
Pandora not available outside the US
After reading Churbuck's comment on the band Battles I thought I'd go to pandora and see what bands might be suggested. I hadn't used Pandora for a while. I type the URL, hit "Enter" and I'm "welcomed" with this message:
Dear Pandora Visitor,
We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for most listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.
What the...?
So I do the natural thing: I google it. Tech Crunch explains the deal to some detail. Here's the most relevant paragraph:
Pandora operates under Section 114 of the DMCA, which gives them a clear process for paying rights holders in the U.S. There is no international equivalent of the DMCA, and so to operate legally in other countries, Pandora must sign deals with rights holders directly. That means separate deals with labels and publishers for each song, an extremely difficult and time consuming task
I can understand, yet it wont make sense. Major record labels are already global, and those who aren't have deals to ship and commercialize their material overseas. If they were a little bit interested in using Pandora (or last.fm or any other online broadcasting service) for their own benefit and artist promotion (and they could easily do so!!) this sort of thing as well as the issues they are facing with RIAA fees would be solved in a millisecond.
Yet record labels fight every front on the internet they can't control. (Note how this statement excludes services such as iTunes store). They are realizing they are starting to be a waste of money, an unnecessary annoyance. Instead of having the old model for commercializing music (artist -> label -> store -> purchaser) the internet allows new models that render record companies obsolete (artist -> store -> purchaser or artist -> purchaser). No one likes to loose a perfectly profitable business, but I do believe it is just a matter of time before record companies either disappear or are forced to re-invent themselves (a role they could still play is merely advertising artists, charging a fee for that). Artists should be paid for their creations, that is utterly out of the question.
The process has already started. Labels fought (and fight) p2p, now it's the turn for internet radio (mascaraded in the form of legislation). They can't possibly win; and if they do, only the music lovers and artists will suffer the consequences. And that is almost all of us.
Saturday Flashback
High school jams... or "what I listened to back in the day". I've tailored the questions a little bit.
Tagged by Krista... here it goes:
First Concert You Ever Attended? Not a lot of bands ever went to Bariloche... First was a local band: "Mosca Rosetta"
First Album You Ever Bought w/Your Own Money? First Cassette was "The Razor's Edge" by AC/DC, first CD was "Animals" by Pink Floyd
First Single You Ever Bought? I never bought a Single in my whole life... as a matter of fact it is very rare to find singles in Argentina.
Song that Rocked Your High School Dances? Same as with Mark I was never too fond to dances during high school.
First music video that drove you to go buy an Album? "What would you say" by Dave Matthews Band. I remain in love with "Under a table and Dreaming" CD till today.
Next international Band you plan to see? The Police! they are coming next December, the tickets are as expensive as they can get, but well worth it.
I'll Only tag Midori in this case.
Why I haven’t posted a lot lately
Lately I've been devoting myself to some of my "old" pastimes. One of them is music. After all I have a major in musical composition. It's quite nice to be back fiddling my bass and guitar for a change.
On the other hand Luciana and I want to travel some more, so weekends are usually an escape for us. Latest Destination was Rosario, some 360km north of Buenos Aires. The excuse? Going to a Cielo Razzo concert.
I'll post some Photos once Silvio gets them!