Survival of the Fittest

The music industry is changing, and only the strongest will survive. Who will it be? I’d put my bet on Radiohead.

Radiohead is releasing a new album this month, their first since 2003’s Hail to the Thief, titled In Rainbows, and at the moment it is only available online at a tailor-made website. Having fulfilled their contract with EMI, the band is now free from the restrictions of a record label, and that fact is quite obvious in their new sales and distribution scheme. Fans have two options:

1. Order a digital download, which will become available on October 10th, and when you checkout, there is a form where you enter how much you want to pay. That’s right. “It’s up to you,” as the website says. Pay nothing, or pay $100 — whatever it is worth to you.
2. Order a “discbox” at the cost of £40 and receive: the album on a CD, the album on two 12-inch heavyweight vinyl records, an artwork booklet, a lyrics booklet, and an enhanced CD containing more new songs, digital photographs, and artwork. To top it all off, everything is encased in a hardcover book and slipcase, and you automatically receive the digital download on October 10th. Discboxes will ship on or before December 3rd. This is a sweet deal.

It’s great to see a band acting intelligently and embracing the inexorable changes in the music industry rather than fighting in vain against them.

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99¢ + 99¢ = $1.98? No way!

Thank you, Apple, for doing that math for me. Now let me do some math of my own.

Apple’s iPhone holds songs. Lots of them. Some people would like for those songs to play when they receive a call. And, understandably, many of them would like for the songs to start playing at a certain point when a call comes in.

In the latest version of iTunes, a brilliant piece of software, Apple has added a feature that allows these people to do just that: pick a song and decide where they want it to start playing when they receive a call. However…

Apple charges them a dollar to do so. (Okay, 99¢. Same difference.)

So, basically, these people are paying 99¢ for a software feature. And not just once. Every time they want to use this feature in iTunes, they have to cough up another buck (read: 99¢).

See, you’re not paying for the ringtone. The ringtone is simply a 30-second clip of a song you already own. You’re paying to make it. By yourself. You do the work, then you pay someone else for your work. It’s like spending $10 on a stock photograph, then paying another $10 to crop it. What a load of crap.

Whatever. Custom ringtones are so last year anyways.

Weird

I love it when stuff like this happens.

So I’m sitting here in my dorm room in Prague, snacking on some Nutella, listening to my “Good Front-to-Back” playlist (albums that I enjoy from the first song ’til the last), and pushing forward with the tedious task of uploading to Flickr photographs that I posted in the past and then editing each of their corresponding entries.

So, I had been at this for a couple hours. Guster’s Lost and Gone Forever and Jason Mraz’s Mr. A-Z had both played in full, and at the exact moment that I opened the entry “Sprout”, from June of 2004, Rachael Yamagata’s Happenstance cues up in iTunes.

So why the fuss? Well, in the entry “Sprout” I wrote: “Just downloaded a new CD: Rachael Yamagata’s Happenstance. I’d say she’s one part Tori Amos, one part Norah Jones, and about one part Fiona Apple. Very relaxing and refreshing. Check her out.” Weird, right?! I literally noticed her name in the entry as she began to sing. Like I said, I love it when stuff like that happens.

Anyways, it’s been three years since I downloaded the album, but it’s still a favorite. Check her out.

Terra Naomi and the changing music industry

I always get a little rush when I come across a new song that’s so good it instantly makes my “Current #1’s” playlist in iTunes. I get an even better rush when the song is not only musically stimulating, but intellectually stimulating as well. The rush peaks when I discover that the artist behind the music is as intriguing as the music itself.

Case in point: Terra Naomi.

I came across her recently widely-released single “Say It’s Possible” today on the iTunes Music Store and was a fan after one listen of the 30-second preview. Reading through the Customer Reviews it was clear that she already has a strong fanbase, and many of them recommended checking out the video for “Say It’s Possible” on YouTube, so I did.

After watching the video I headed straight back to iTunes and purchased the song. Then, it was back to researching the artist that had created such a great song with a very relevant message. What did I find out?

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Tori Amos and her posse to arrive May 1

Tori Amos, likely my favorite musician in existence, has reinvented her music and look yet again on her 9th studio album, American Doll Posse. The “posse” actually consists of five female personalities — Santa, Clyde, Isabel, Tori, and Pip — all played by Tori herself, and each has her own few songs on the album. Tori explained the origin of the girls in an interview with WE tv: “Once I began to recognize that there were many different musical styles, structurally, I could hear that the songs were not just coming from the voice of one woman.” In an audio clip on her MySpace page that exemplifies Tori’s somewhat eccentric, and fantastic, sense of humor, Tori informs us that the “they will all be going on tour.” “We’re out shopping right now,” she says, “and I can’t keep ahold of a’one of them.”

You can purchase her first single, “Big Wheel”, from the iTunes Music Store, and listen to “Big Wheel” and, my favorite so far, “Bouncing Off Clouds” on her MySpace page as well. Both songs are fantastic and have me extremely pumped for the album’s release on May 1.

Specific details regarding the girls in the posse have already been revealed, and each girl maintains her own blog. I love how the blogs are maintained across a variety of blogware websites, greatly enhancing the illusion of various and distinct personalities. For example, on Blogger there’s Clyde, an appreciator of art that applies how one might examine a work of art to her relationships: “When I meet a person I try and see not their mask, with its defenses, but what’s underneath.” Isabel’s blog, on the other hand, because she is a photographer, exists on TagWorld. So far, Isabel is my favorite member of the posse, described as the “most outwardly political of the bunch.” She opens the album with a short, yet sharp, political number titled “Yo George” that is, of course, directed towards our Commander-in-Chief (ha), President George Bush. You can listen to it on Tori’s site, but here are the lyrics to give you a sense of where Isabel stands:

I salute to you, Commander, and I sneeze
‘Cause I have now an allergy to your policies, it seems
Where have we gone wrong, America?
Mr. Lincoln, we can’t seem to find you anywhere
Out of the millions, from the deserts to the mountains
Over prairies to the shores
Is this just the madness of King George? Yo George
Is this just the madness of King George? Yo George
Well, you have the whole nation on all fours

As I said, the album is out May 1. Get it.

Alanis Morissette covers BEP’s “My Humps”

Yesterday, recording artist Alanis Morissette, who is best known for her unique vocals and memorable lyrics, released a video on YouTube in which she parodies both the song and video for the Black Eyed Peas’ club bumper “My Humps”. The video is funny, but it’s her cover of the song that really shines, exposing the pure absurdity of the lyrics in “My Humps”. It is difficult to pay close attention to the song when watching the video, in which Alanis mocks the booty-shaking Fergie of Black Eyed Peas, however if you do, you’ll notice how great a cover it actually is.

According to Wikipedia, the video welcomed an astounding 200,000 hits in its first day, and as of posting this, has nearly 1,000,000 hits, not including the duplicates that have cropped up across YouTube. That a video can reach more than a million people within 48 hours of being published is yet another great example of how YouTube is changing the way we obtain and share new sources of information and entertainment, not only online, but in our lives in general.

My latest directorial project

Here it is, my latest project: a music video for my best friend, Stephanie K, an up-and-coming recording artist out of Michigan. She’s an incredible musician with so much talent and I was so excited to collaborate with her on this video. The promo is for her pop/R&B ballad titled “It’s You”, and while the style is very different from my first music video for Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek”, the two carry the similar theme of a girl with a terribly broken heart that deals with it in her own unique way.

I produced and directed the video, as well as shot it on my new Panasonic AG-DVC30. The shoot lasted two days, one day per location. I edited it in Final Cut Pro on my black Macbook and have uploaded it to YouTube, as well as to the site in HQ format.

I truly hope you guys like it, and would greatly appreciate any feedback and comments, either here or on the YouTube page. Thanks!

Download QuickTime Movie 50.0 MB

You can also watch the video on MusicNation, where Stephanie and I have entered it into a video music competition for independent artists. If you liked the video, the song, or both, and would like to support me and Stephanie, we would both appreciate it very much if you could take the time to vote for it at MusicNation. It only takes a second to register and you vote for it by giving it stars. (Hint: the more stars, the better!) You can also vote by texting VA77 to NATION (628466).

We are currently placed 10th out of 359, so help us keep that momentum going. Thank you from both me and Steph!