Tag Archive for 'DRM'Page 2 of 2

Immortal Technique: The 3rd World Release Date

published
on May 7, 2008
by
ACtual
in genres and music
. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

3rd World Art
{Editor’s Note: I’ve now heard three tracks off this album. You can check out my review of those here.}
{Editor’s Note 2: I’ve now heard the entire album, and the entire review can be found here.}
(Click here for Evolving Music’s exclusive interview with Immortal Technique)
It’s been the talk over here for a few months, but we’ve finally been treated to actual factual information concerning the upcoming Immortal Technique release The 3rd World. Revolutionary Vol. 2, Tech’s 2nd album, has been in circulation for 5 years now without a follow-up, and the buzz for his next album indicated that it would be something along the lines of a mix-tape format with tracks produced by Jay-Z’s DJ Green Lantern. Apparently though, fans waiting for something thrown together along the mix-tape lines will have to readjust their expectations in light of what has become a fully fledged concept studio album by the two intent on examining the underground hip-hop scene battling the major studio labels in the analogy of 3rd World countries against the economic powerhouses. I’m also fairly certain that we’ll be hearing a continuation of the other political ideals Tech is known for throughout the album.

I say this is a concept of marketing and lyrical attack that MixMatchMusic and us folks over here at Evolving Music can get behind. Long known for his revolutionary ideals and viciously direct lyrics, Immortal Technique has been a symbol of the growing war being waged on record distribution lines by major corporations and independent artists. He has remained fiercely independent in order to protect the integrity of his message from being tampered with by commercial interests. The result has been two full studio albums that examine poverty, economic and racial disparity, the various US “wars” on terrorism and drugs, and scathing attacks on the current state of our political system. With the war for the music consumer and methods of distribution heating up in the past 8 months with the media permeating success of Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV, a statement of underground strength on the level Immortal Technique is capable of is one that should be watched with interest.

Furthermore, the press release leads me to believe that there will be no attempt to tone down his message or alter his ideals here. Immortal Technique remains one of the most ideologically grounded rappers in the business, and with the premiere backing of Green Lantern, this album is sure to keep your head nodding. Here’s the track listing, straight from the publicity in Tech’s camp. Be on the lookout for an Immortal Technique interview in the next week here on Evolving Music and listen for the album to drop on June 24th.

1. Death March (featuring Dj Green Lantern)
2. That’s What It Is
3. Golpe De Estado (featuring Veneno & Temperamento)
4. Harlem Renaissance
5. Lick Shots (featuring Chino XL, Crooked I)
6. Interlude
7. The 3rd World
8. Hollywood Driveby (featuring Psycho Realm & Street Platoon)
9. Watchout (RMX)
10. Reverse Pimpology (featuring Mojo)
11. Open Your Eyes
12. The Payback (featuring Diabolic & RasKass)
13. Adios Uncle Tom-Skit
14. Stronghold Grip (featuring Poison Pen & Swave Sevah)
15. Mistakes
16. Out on Parole
17. Crimes of the Heart (featuring Maya Azucena)
***Bonus track (R.O.T.C. featuring J.Arch & Da Circle)

Ghosts I-IV

published
on March 13, 2008
by
ACtual
in artist/album reviews, genres, and music
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Creating Ghosts I-IVCreating Ghosts I-IV

When Radiohead released In Rainbows using the pay what you will download format, it was announced that Trent Reznor of NIN would be releasing something similar for his next album. And so he has, releasing the 36 track Ghosts I-IV album. While Radiohead went simple and released the tracks in a basic “name your price” style, with a physical CD following, Reznor has upped the ante with a multi-tiered release of his album last week. To date, he has realized $1.6 million in orders and over 780,000 transactions.  The method of release, the depth of the material and the options for the listener of Ghosts make the release of In Rainbows look like a half-hearted marketing ploy, even if Radiohead’s initial intention was otherwise.

Ghosts I-IV is not just available as an MP3 download, nor is it, as Radiohead’s was, available for free. What Reznor has done is to release various formats of the album for different prices. At the low range, you can get the first 9/36 tracks for free download. After that, it will only cost you a mere 5 dollars to get all 36 tracks in one of 3 of your choice downloads (Apple Lossless, MP3 or Flac Lossless). All these tracks are DRM free and come with a 40 page PDF booklet as well as various digital goodies like wallpaper. If 5 bucks is too cheap for you, you can bump to 10 and not only be given access to the 36 tracks immediately, but you will also receive a 2 disc hard copy sometime in early April.

For the heavy NIN fan, you can order the $75 deluxe edition, which includes “Ghosts I-IV in a hardcover fabric slipcase containing: 2 audio CDs, 1 data DVD with all 36 tracks in multi-track format, and a Blu-ray disc with Ghosts I-IV in high-definition 96/24 stereo and accompanying slideshow.” Finally, for the audiophile/obsessive in all of us,$300 bucks will get you a limited edition (2500) package, which has already sold out.

While Radiohead routinely operates far outside the typical paradigm for musicians and music distribution, Nine Inch Nails has always followed a more typical release path and popular appeal. Because of this, the marketing, structuring and release of Ghosts trumps that of the In Rainbows release, as Reznor performs the release with a greater eye to packaging and multiple options for the consumer. While you can get 9 free tracks, the majority of fans will have no problem shelling out 5 bucks for 36 of them. This offers Reznor the opportunity to record more profit from the sales, as well as provide more accurate statistics when it comes to breaking down who bought what, and how much consumers were willing to pay for his work.  Reznor, following this release, has called Radiohead’s release of “In Rainbows” as more “gimmick” than consumer gift, and “insincere” due to the fact that there was no album art, the sound quality was downgraded and the main mode of sales has now transferred to a typical label release album.

What’s more is that Reznor has opened up the experience of the album to everyone. Billed as a series of soundscapes to be imagined with various land and cityscapes, Ghosts is a completely instrumental album of various tempos and moods. It covers just about every style NIN fans will recognize from all of his albums, with airy and spacious piano laced tracks to songs that drive from the electronic noise, drums and synths. I’m not going to actively review the 36 tracks here other than to say that they range from instrumental NIN tracks that could be found on any previous album to songs that are reminiscent of Aphex Twin‘s Selected Ambient Works series.

And here’s where the mix and match element of this concept album really gets exciting…Reznor has invited listeners to create their own videos and post them to YouTube to be evaluated and have the winners presented a few months from now. He’s left song titles off to allow an even blanker canvas for people wanting to make movies to them, and the posting and selection will culminate in a virtual “film festival” of the winners. Now not only has he allowed the consumer to dictate the distribution of his work, but he has created a forum for direct creative interaction.

The fact that the method here has been so well received by consumers, as well as profitable for NIN, leads one to believe that his is but the first in what will become a great series of multi-tiered, optional music purchases that allow far greater interaction with the band and music than ever before. While Radiohead may have opened the door for this kind of idea, Reznor’s dedication to taking the experience a step further for the end listener is a model that will be interesting to follow in the months and years to come.

DRM War Update: QTrax

published
on January 30, 2008
by
ACtual
in genres, music, startups, web 2.0, and website
. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

It should come as no surprise that people are still trying to get free music on the internet. Piracy and file swapping happens daily on massive levels that would probably turn a record executive green if they were fully aware of at least 50% of the volume. Luckily for the rest of the new and frontiersman-like recording industry, record executives are like mushrooms…they eat shit and grow in the dark, and in the end, you’re never sure which one is going to poison you or take you on a funky and psychedelic expedition. Similarly of good fortune for all of us…eating mushrooms isn’t mandatory or necessary anymore.

While the ultimate fate of DRM in general and player/company identified DRM specifically is still up in the air, there are a number of companies out there attempting to torpedo the industry by offering free mp3 downloads. Through deals with the major labels that tie-in to ad revenue generated by the site, these sites are offering songs, sometimes DRM protected, sometimes not. One of the big players that was geared to take the internet music download scene by storm this week was QTrax, a French based company that held a gala event this past weekend as a launch party. Apparently, they didn’t get the memo that the Warner group has not authorized the site to provide music from its label. Universal and EMI have also announced that they had no licensing deal ready yet and were still working on it. Not sure how a “free” music download site got to the point of throwing a launch party before it had wrapped up licensing and distribution sales with the major labels, but somehow they did. Guess it speaks to the necessity of having a solid business plan in place.

What I find more interesting is that not only is this site trying to provide music for free with the labels’ consent, but they’re allegedly trying to take a bite out of Apple, claiming that their music files will play on iPods. This would indeed be a big step as the only current music files that can play on the pod is either DRM-free or Apple FairPlay DRM tracks. How QTrax figures their DRM songs will make it onto the iPod is beyond me, but it will certainly be worth watching if and when the company starts allowing downloads.

Ringtones: When DRM Goes Too Far

published
on January 21, 2008
by
ACtual
in music and technology
. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Digital Rights Management and the relating issues have been big topics recently in both music news and the world of MixMatchers. As a large portion of our group is involved with creating music, the questions as to who owns it and how it can be controlled are always at the top of the conversational trash heap. It’s a sticky situation which I touched on a bit in my previous post “Record Execs: Stupid or Just Plain Greedy?“, and constantly up for debate. It’s also the subject of quite a bit of mud throwing in the higher levels of the music industry as executives try to pass the buck as to who wants DRM, how they want it and where it came from. Furthermore, some of the bigger companies are starting to roll back their DRM in an effort to make more content cross-compatible with multiple hardware solutions (Apple DRM will only play on iTunes and iPod). Steve Jobs has expressed his opinion, and despite having helped create one of the most profitable and highly controlled DRM markets with iTunes and FairPlay, he advocates an end to DRM for music. I find the amusing point here that Jobs probably said one thing about DRM when he was trying to get label executives to let him sell music on iTunes, but has a much more pro-consumer point of view in his open letter.

Unlike a large majority of my peers, I don’t have a problem paying for my music. In my mind, the .99 cents we pay per track now is a much better deal than the 16-18 we used to pay for CDs. Think about it…on an 18 dollar CD, there might be 12 tracks. Of those, you might only like two. But you don’t know that until you buy the entire thing. Now, you just buy those two tracks, $1.98, and you’re on your way. Furthermore, when you really think about it…if you pay 1 dollar for a song and listen to it 4 times (which you know you’ll do if you’re buying it), that’s .25 cents per listen, right around juke box prices (for those that remember those). Keep listening and the math’ll eventually drop you to fractions of a penny per listen. Not a bad deal in my mind. I’ve noticed that the price and ability to preview tracks before buying them has made me a much more intelligent buyer, and I almost never look through my library and think, “I shouldn’t have bought that.” I can’t say the same for some of the CDs in my collection.

Still, so many of this Generation Y grew up with the full force of Napster, LimeWire and others running the show, and still can’t get used to the idea that maybe musicians deserve to have their music bought. While I won’t name any names here, one of the worst culprits of this idea of stolen music is not only a great friend of mine, but also a musician and aspiring attorney. You would think that if ever there was to be someone who would respect the legal rights and compensation of musicians it would be a fellow musician with a legal background, but not the case. Regardless of how much I pay for my music, he has no problem taking it from me for free, and in the end, I believe he feels an inward sense of smug satisfaction that he’s getting away with something, all the while failing to see where that would leave him if his musical career ever got off the ground.

Where the DRM conversation get really interesting is when you match it with the topic of ringtones. Now that phones are mp3 players too, and Apple’s iPhone is running the game in terms of what a hybrid hardware solution has the potential to be, the ringtones of beeps and blips from our Nokia phones has been replaced with full 2-30 second clips of songs. Just when everyone thought the copyrights were locked up for music, you have to now examine them in the context of clips for ringers. According to Gavroche, the reason for this is that the end user agreements for a song and for a ringtone are different. Then the question becomes why. In my mind, once you’ve paid for something, you should be able to use that personally however you see fit. I’m not advocating the free sharing and swapping of music and ringtones among friends, but if I want to burn the song I bought to a CD, listen to it on an mp3 player or program it as a ringtone, I should be able to without additional cost. iTunes, however, requires you to pay an additional .99 cents to turn one of your songs into a ringtone, and they don’t offer a simple solution, within the application, for turning a non-iTunes store purchase into a ringtone.

Now without getting into specifics that could be at odds with the legal standpoints of the companies I’m talking about, I will tell you that there are solutions to this problem out there. GarageBand offers one of them, and a bit of simple maneuvering of songs within iTunes will help you create a free, custom ringtone from any song in your library. It’s really quite easy once you’ve learned the process and done it a few times, but it still requires multiple steps in order to “trick” iTunes into thinking the clip you’ve made is a ringtone. The problem here is that having already established one payment and method for protecting music, the industry wants to change what and how much you pay to use music you already own in a different way from what they intended when you purchased it. It smacks of revisionism…already late to the party in terms of recognizing the moving trends towards digital music, the industry again finds itself behind the game. “What? You mean people might want to use the .99 cent track as a ringtone and not just a song to listen to? Better find a way to make some money off that.”

As someone who supports the idea of paying artists for their work in a way that is fair and equitable both to them as the producer and me as the consumer, I don’t have a problem with DRM. I don’t think it really solves anything (there’s always multiple ways to “unlock” a track), but if it helps the industry feel better about digitally distributing their product, in the end it benefits me as a listener. But rights are rights, and once a song is purchased, be it an mp3 or a hard copy CD, the purchaser needs to be able to take that song to any device or medium they want, even if that requires copying it for multiple locations. It’s one thing to limit the ease with which people illegally share music with one another. It’s another thing to try to step in and dictate how and when the consumer enjoys their purchase. That’s why my ringer is The Fall by Blake Leyh. So stick it to those DRM people, People, and make your whole library into unpaid for ringtones! Go crazy! That is, of course, if you already own it.

5 Predictions for Digital Music Trends in 2008

published
on January 17, 2008
by
Sandra
in music and technology
. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

After watching my Mac-obsessed friends win/lose their bets about Steve Jobs’ announcements at the MacWorld Expo this week, I feel obligated to make some predictions of my own. Plus, every self-respecting tech or music blog has to make some predictions for the coming year, right? In no particular order:

1. The beginning of the end of big record labels: With CD sales continuing to plummet and big name artists like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails cutting out the middle man in favor of a direct relationship with their fans, record labels are beginning to look a bit outdated. Probably not the best place to look for a job right now, anyway.

There are now so many ways that artists and fans can find each other online: band websites, social networking and/or music sharing communities (e.g. MySpace, iMeem, iLike), individual mp3 sales (e.g. iTunes, eMusic, Amie Street), music discovery sites (e.g. Musicovery), internet radio sites (e.g. Pandora, Last.fm) subscription services (e.g. Rhapsody, Napster), webzines (e.g. Pitchfork, Mix) etc. Furthermore, services like Slicethepie and Sellaband are paving the way for a more direct financial and emotional connection between creators and consumers.

Not to mention that artists don’t really need a label to get them started on recording an album anymore. With the plethora of affordable software and equipment available, virtually anyone can record their music at home. At this point, it seems the labels have all but given up on reviving CD sales. So, the question is can they find other ways to be profitable? What’s in store for them in their not-so-big future?

2. Music Search Engines: Several new “playable search” engines allow you to simply type in an artist name and then give you a host of options for a song/artist such as: listen to, buy, share, embed, blog, download ringtone, find tour dates, youtube videos, photos etc. Seeqpod, in my opinion, is the best service so far. Also worth checking out are Songza and SkreemR.

On the flip side, there is the concept of search based on sound recognition, which I think is likely to start catching on. Midomi, a community for music fans, uses MARS (Multimodal Recognition System) Search technology, developed by Melodis. Their goal is to “create a comprehensive database of searchable music based on user contribution”. Can’t remember the name of that song stuck in your head? Sing, whistle or hum it to Midomi, then search!

3. Music Widgets – More and more widgets, typically music players that you can embed into, say, your myspace profile or your blog, are popping up. Facebook, with its innumerable enthusiastic application creators, is of course churning out a ton of music-related apps. I think that 2008 will see not only an increasing number of music widgets but also a much higher level of sophistication in these apps.

4. Copyright Restrictions Lesson – Though still a very sensitive area, it seems there is a general trend toward dropping DRM protections. Even Sony BMG is preparing to join the other top music labels in doing so, in an effort to man up and compete with Apple and its market share.

5. Niche Social Networks for Musicians – Now that social networking has pretty much infiltrated the mainstream and everyone from grandparents to business people are hip to the concept, the industry has begun to specialize. All kinds of niche social networks have been popping up, and I predict that in 2008 this trend will gain significant momentum. With special interest groups ranging from beer lovers (Coastr) to shoestring travelers (CouchSurfing) and everything in between, clearly musicians will be trying the various music related social networks on for size. There are quite a few communities and networks for musicians out there now. Some pretty decent. Some…not so much. Luckily, musicians far and wide will soon have a place to call home.