I’m a big fan of online radio. There are lots of wonderful radio stations out there to cater to a variety of tastes and you can listen to your favorite music 24/7. Another massive bonus is that it’s all free.

With the advent of online radio, a whole host of recording software has emerged too. You can find both free and paid programs depending on personal choice and if you are willing to pay for it. However, one major drawback with a lot of these options is that you cannot schedule recordings with them. This means that if you are not at your computer while a show is playing, you will not be able to listen to it later. This is especially important if you enjoy listening to concert recordings.

continue reading "Schedule Recordings for Online Radio"

The album Ever Changing Times by Steve Lukather got a 2.2 out of 10 over at Komodo Rock which is one of the lowest scores ever. The reason why the album got that bad rating ? No, it’s not the music, the lyrics, the artwork. It’s a new form of protection to avoid leaks of the album to the Internet.

Frontier Records, the recording company, added voice overs to all songs on the record but two. Each song seems to have three low quality voice overs to stop piracy and Internet uploading. His problem now was that he could not review the music properly because of the annoying voice overs.

The album itself, at least the two tracks that he was able to listen to without interference, was superb according to his article. Trying to stop leaks in the distribution chain is one thing but doing it in a way that makes it impossible for some people to do their job is an entirely different one.

continue reading "Label add voice-overs to review CDs"

I could not sleep well yesterday evening because I was thinking about the Music Industry which was directly related to the article I wrote on that day. I was to tired to pen it down but I would like to try and recap my thoughts. We all know that album sales are down and that it will most likely stay that way. I thought about the reasons for this and came up with the following.

The last big innovation for the Music Industry was the CD and that is where they are stuck with. They cling on that CD no matter what and fail to realize that there another revolution and a shift that has happened in the last years. It’s called digital music. They do not want to accept that digital music will be the successor of the CD.

And digital music has it’s own laws that you have to cope with. You can’t just copy the marketing and business models that worked so well with the CD to digital music. Not working for several reasons. First is all digital music can be downloaded from the Internet without paying a cent.

continue reading "Music Industry Thoughts"

So, what do we make of this ? The rumor is that Apple is launching a record label together with Jay-Z according to BSG who say they have confirmed it from a high-up person attached to Jay-Z. We do not have many details as of yet but we can make some assumptions. The deal makes perfectly sense if you consider that Apple already has a very popular distribution model in place which would profit the most from artists that sign under the new label.

I think they will make the records iTunes exclusive on the Internet but sell CDs in stores as well. Correct me if I’m wrong but Apple would be the only music label, a big one that is, that would have a working online distribution model in place. All the other majors depend on other websites to sell their digital music.

This would be in my opinion a huge advantage for Apple. It could also proof worthwhile for the artists because Apple would be more flexible concerning artists cuts because they would own production and distribution thus eliminating the middlemen who are the Record Companies.

continue reading "Rumor: Apple launching Record Label with Jay-Z"

Ars Technica are reporting that CD sales this Christmas, that is the period between Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve, are down 20% compared to last year which means that 21.4 million CDs have been sold less than the previous year. This looks serious but is it ? We have to take a look at overall earnings to make a fair judgment.

It is not a secret that online sales are on the rise and are highly profitable and that especially the games sector is seeing a huge rise in sales. I unfortunately do not have numbers for the games and movies sector and online music sales but I suspect if you take everything into account it will even out more or less.

The RIAA will surely whine about pirates once again and fail to see the obvious. I can only speak to myself but I did probably buy three or four albums in the last six years. My main reason is that there are not many releases that please my ear. The charts are dominated by one hit wonders and bands that reunite again to make just another album.

continue reading "Christmas CD Sales are down 20% compared to last year"