youtube, copyrights, & music sucking life.

my brother had mentioned to me that YouTube was slowly taking down videos of copyrighted content, and it was a discussion topic over dinner a ways back as to how they were tracking the videos. well, now it's at an outright record high, as YouTube is no longer giving removal notifications to users. this time, the videos are just soundless.

---

this is indicative of a number of concerns. sure, legally, it makes sense. kinda. but only in this atmosphere where i feel like the RIAA is scarier than Big Brother. the music folks are on everybody's minds wanting to save a failing revenue stream, so they're cutting off other avenues of listening--like YouTube. i don't know why film isn't also up in arms, legally speaking--oh right, their revenue doesn't suck.

ANYWAY.

sure, mash-up culture will find another way to thrive, it always does. but i'm looking at you, YouTube: do you really want it to? the community there is great and could you really live without your favourite parodies and ridiculousness that circulates through the intertubes? it's not like the users are making anything off this, most of 'em, anyway.

SO. all YouTube is doing is alienating the user without directly contributing to the aching revenue stream of the music industry. it's a roundabout solution. that is, i don't see there being a huge correlation between increase in music sales and decrease of information available on YouTube. all you wind up with is more pissed off people.

RWW suggests: "It would make a lot more sense for the music industry to provide a blanket license to YouTube so that users could use copyrighted sounds tracks on their homemade videos, while the record labels (or the artists) could get a share of the advertising revenue."

---

i leave you with one of my brother's old AMVs. i asked which one he would prefer me to post, but he never txted me back, the little bastard ;) so i'm showing the one with most views. say goodbye to anime mashup videos forEVER! [full disclosure: i love my brother more than i love pretty much everything else ever.] [edit: he made me take down Third Eye Blind in favour of Rise Against.]

accountability with a DRM-free iTunes?

give me accountability or give me Amazon.

i speak as a very loyal iTunes user/purchaser. i rack up bills in the iTunes store like you would not believe. that 4-day mix tape i made over holiday? that cost me a pretty penny there, like $40, give or take, for one day of downloads. of DRM material. [if you aren't aware, DRM--digital rights management--is an encoding on music that limits distribution, including what players it can be played on].

Amazon has had DRM-free music for some time. but i am lazy. i use iTunes to play my music, so i use iTunes to buy my music. a committed .99 per song made it painlessly easy. what's one more song? it's only a buck, right? [to the point where paying 1.99 for Rock Band 2 song downloads seemed like 'too much,' which is illogical.] so DRM-free music on iTunes should be wicked awesome for me, queen of mix tapes, right?

...right.

and it is. but i'm very skeptical of this tiered music iTunes now offers. i want to see a PLAN. in order to give up a little rights management control, the labels want kick-back. so we get DRM-free, while per-song-pricing changes. Yanni can go for .69, while the new Beyonce can go for 1.29. it's said that more songs will be .99 and .69 than 1.29, but let's look at the theoretical math.

[i say theoretical cos it's not really math. i suck at math.]

obviously the combined amount of (nearly) ancient stuff that (nearly) no one listens to, combined with slightly dated material going for .99 would account for more catalogue space than the 1.29 songs. DUH. so you're not selling me on that promise. i am concerned. labels want kick-back because not everyone is as brave as Nettwerk.

so how long before any song i actually give a shit about is 1.29?

i get they want money. in a weird way, i MAY be persuaded out of laziness to spend 1.29 on a song because, as i said, iTunes just flat out 'does it for me.' but i want something that is going to say to me that in 6 months, or 3 months, or some short TIME ALLOTMENT that this 1.29 song is going to become .99. if any of you can find me this, i will be happy. i haven't yet.

i want to see a plan, a promise, something, that says we're not still getting it up the ass from the labels. you give me DRM-free, but pardon me if i look a gift horse in the mouth. pps. it's too much to ask, but i want to trade in my 100+ purchased songs for DRM-free ones. otherwise i just feel penalized/gypped for supporting before.

lost your i/denti/tee? get a new one.

this is a pretty sweet idea: lyrics on tee shirts. novel, i know.

the concept is it has to start with "i." because... they like that.
i'm not really sure why.

i know it has nothing to do with iTunes other than that you get a free 10 iTunes songs with every tee purchase. that's pretty cool, admittedly, but that's also cos i'm a (legal) music download addict. a definite plus when their tees are $35 + S&H.

it's socially conscious, too. from their FAQ:
'Grow-to-sew' African means that from the cotton they source, through the spinning and knitting stages, all the way to the final logo print on the inside of every music tee - the benefit of each goes back to the people working on the product in sub-Saharan Africa.

only dilemma here? their lyrics are LAME.
of their current 9-tee line, the only one i can maybe relate to enough for purchasing... ok, well, none of them. and i even like Joan Jett by a lot. but for personalized feel, these "i" lyrics aren't really doing it for me.

i actually went through and read all 200+ song lyrics you can vote for. i submitted another 20 or so (odd that you can't also say who the artist is). i have not yet seen any added to the 200+ choices for the new line.

my suggestions included but were not limited to:
i am flawed if i'm not free [rilo kiley]
i won't sit nice & be quiet [the trucks]
i swear by my wrists that we're better than this [park]
i choose light i choose love [the submarines]
i want to be the car crash [snow patrol]
i am better with a pen [fall out boy]

music videos now online via mtv.

in case you are living under a very tiny rock and haven't yet heard about this, i give to you mtvmusic.com. that's right. mtv has become so NOT about the music that now their digital is about the music. so really it should be monline? mcom? mnet? digim? im? oh wait, that's taken. anyway. point being all those music videos you love and miss and only see shitty quality of on youtube, they're all at mtvmusic.com now. party on. as a halloween gift, here's the extended version of Thriller, using mtvmusic.

Michael Jackson |MTV Music

money, myspace, & music, oh my.

on another note, i've been playing around a fair amount with the new Myspace Music interface. and since Myspace is clearly trying to position--as it should--itself as a big player in music sharing&caring, i have had thoughts on the matter.

as it currently stands, users can add songs listed by bands' pages to their own playlists, which display on their profiles. previously, a user could only have 1 song on their profile page. now you can have whole playlists. that is the one major change given by Myspace Music. but i think they can push it farther.


as you can see above, "Download" is not available. this is often the case.

they're still entrusting me to purchase songs from iTunes, Amazon, or however else i might get them. this is problematic, especially as many of Myspace's bands aren't signed, or more underground--that's, you know, that thing they're trying to foster along with the bigger names. i should be able to buy my music from Myspace, especially from the lesser known bands that i can't get from iTunes etc.

also, it would be a big community pull if there were band-user incentives regarding music. like if a band has a new album coming out, i should be able to buy songs off that album at a discounted price providing i put those songs on my profile page for X amount of days (say, 7). that way, you get advertising, i get discounted music. things like that.

you make me wanna... LaLa.com?

it's time for 3 music posts. first on the menu: muxtape meets iTunes for your online music needs. if you haven't already heard about this new it-toy, you should look into it. it hasn't converted me from iTunes yet, but it has me poking around and it's definitely worth the curiosity invested.

the short of it:
6 million tracks (+counting). you can listen to any song once for free; no "thirty second preview." currently there are no ads and no subscription fees. just sign up and listen. if you want to listen again, you pay based on what you're licensing for... web only is 10 cents, mp3 download is 79--cheaper than iTunes. if you already own a song, they 'move' it to your purchased tracks for free.

oh and yeah, there's that social aspect where you can add friends, and a last.fm style graphic aspect where i know what kind of style of music a person is into on a sliding scale. it also has this "CD trading" feature you can do, but i don't know what that is yet. and for what it's worth, so far they seem to have most of the stuff i've looked for, including my more esoteric choices. okay, they didn't have Emily's Sassy Lime, but at least they knew the band existed.

and so forth...
so this is being hailed as something of a breakthrough in music distribution. i mean, it's cheaper, and that's a plus, but since it's newer, it's not as integrated. i will need more time before i surrender the awesome that is iTunes. it does seem like a step forward from last.fm and muxtape, merging the social with the purchasing directly, as well as offering a space for all of it to be held purely online if one should so desire. this is a plus for organizational types and i'm sure a few other 'types' as well; the lack of a subscription fee with an iTunes-like purchase system is just an added bonus.

blip.fm: great idea, applied failure.

so, this wasn't the post i'd planned for today... but then my computer committed suicide at 10AM this morning and hasn't yet recovered, pushing much of the rest of my day into work overload on another (not set up) computer. so sorry about the lack of posting--i did have stuff planned; you'll get it tomorrow. in the meanwhile...

@OneLuvGurl sent me a DM asking to join her on blip.fm; i had been peripherally aware of blip, but hadn't dabbled so i said sure, why not, and went at it like a good little social media scene queen. see the fruits of that labour along with my frustrations at my "station" here: http://blip.fm/thegirlriot (and no, it's not yet added to zoolit, haha. i'm not sure i'm keeping this.)

on premise, blip.fm seems pretty awesome. OLG described it as "twitter for music." i like twitter, i like music. seemed a natural fit. i love the idea of carrying on a conversation through songs, as i did about last night's Heroes ep with blip.fm user ZachsMind. so that's a major plus. it's like communicating with other total music dorks, and i like that, because i used to have txt convos using only lyrics. [i am that dork.]

in implementation it's super frustrating. for these reasons:
1 -- shitty music selection. it took me forever to find a song i wanted to post, let alone the one i was actually listening to.
2 -- strike through songs. if the song doesn't work or you don't want me to use it, why is it there? delete it. don't let me preview and then not let me blip. like seriously. wtf?
3 -- incomplete songs. Epicentre by VNV Nation? yeah, no. you only get the first minute. but you don't know that in preview, or, well, anywhere until you get to the 1 minute mark. cos then it stops. but by then it's already in your stream.
4 -- unregulated song titles. "Slide" is by the "Go Goo Dolls." the first song that comes up as "Girl's Not Grey" AFI was unidentifiable. i have no idea if it was a shitty recording of the acoustic of that song, or if it wasn't that song, at all.
5 -- shitty load time. i waited for 20 minutes for "Hurricane" by Something Corporate to load. before i gave up. and found "Girl's Not Grey" by AFI instead (see aforementioned ordeal). which wasn't what i was listening to. until i had to.

in short, song titles should be regulated. also, like on songza, users should be able to vote a link up or down for quality (which would take care of bad copies and shortened songs). shitty load time? i have no suggestion, but i used blip all day, and i had the problem about 1/4 of the time. so maybe not the biggest problem, comparatively. i suppose i could deal.

but the heart of it? APPLE NEEDS TO GET ON a dj system similar to blip where i can stream from my own goddamn music. i have shitloads of iTunes. let me be a user. let me make a stream in the same conversational way, where also in my stream you can buy the .mp3s from iTunes. let me USE the music i've GOT so i'm not so frustrated when YOUR selections are CRAP in variety, length, and quality. just a thought.

"Communities already exist. Instead, think about how you can help that community do what it wants to do." -- Zuckerberg. i just think with an app like iTunes and a share like Apple has in the online music biz, it seems natural to add a similar feature. LET THE PEOPLE MUSIC TWEET! hahaha okay. i'm done here.

[PS: Kathleen Hanna cancelled. i didn't miss her. i feel slightly better about that.
PPS: Rise Against concert was AWESOME. made of win. anyone who says different is a liar.]

people (&musicians) should say what they mean.

and by that i mean, wouldn't it be funny if what you saw was exactly what you got? perhaps even refreshing. check this video out, courtesy of @johnny_bones, who is awesome at finding funny shit. this video is a good adaptation/translation of "Take On Me." cheers to your afternoons--mine are busy!

i may cry: Apple to shut down iTunes?

hot on the heels of a conversation i was having yesterday about music subscriptions and the issue of transference, it seems that yet another legal battle or other may destroy music lovers' hearts. Apple is threatening to shut down iTunes if it goes through.

i think that of all businesses, the music business has single-handedly gone out of its way to make shit absolutely horrid for themselves. if there is an antithesis to social media, it's the music business. there is nothing social about it and there seems to be an utter disrespect and apathy toward the consumer which they, on the other hand, so avidly court by banning pirating and slapping on RIAA fines before you can say "student loan."

[i'm not referring here to social media music sites like Last.fm or iLike, i mean the industry itself--those in charge of distribution and collection to and from those lesser sites.]

this is not Apple's fault. i don't want them to shut down iTunes, but i don't think it's right for the record execs to hoc more cash out of the resellers, especially when in most cases it's not like the artists see a raise. it's like the music bailout to save some cushy chair's job.

between a copyright hike and streaming radio battles the likes that Muxtape, Pandora, and many more face, all that the music industry is accomplishing is blowing off the one foot they've got left. REALITY CHECK. people are going to find more, new ways to pirate if you're going to make it harder to be legal. work WITH our needs, not against them!

i am a full legal music downloader. i buy everything from iTunes (if .mp3) or Amazon (if CD--i do still buy those). if i hear it on Pandora and like it, i buy it legally. partially because it's easy and partially because, at some point, i respected the industry, and still respect the musicians. the former is fast going down the crapper.

UPDATE 10.03: The Copyright Royalty Board Does Nothing. iTunes’ Rates Remain The Same.

we need to chat about kissing girls.

found via Dear Jane Sample. click to view source and Katy Perry's obnoxious video.

i am not even going to get into the religious aspect of this. no. instead i'm going to bitch about the song. i'll grant you it's catchy. but i'll tell you why the church is afraid for your daughter's heterosexuality. it has nothing to do with 'catching lesbianism' and everything to do with going to an all girls' school. don't believe me? clearly you've never dated, or had a friend date, a Catholic school girl. sucks for you.

this song is not about reveling in the awesomeness of kissing some femme wonder. it's about getting "rebel cred." even if you don't know any other words to the song, you know the chorus: i kissed a girl and i liked it / the taste of her cherry chap stick / i kissed a girl just to try it / hope my boyfriend don't mind it.

a) it assumes that kissing a girl is just some fun thing to do on the side--while you are busy being respectable and having a boyfriend. no boyfriend?! OMG. you're such a LEZZIE. having the boyfriend element in the song makes kissing a girl "okay." especially when she's unimportant--after all, you're drunk and just met her, you "don't even know [her] name."

b) so we've already got heterosexuality down while remaining cool by dismissing people who are actually homosexual. after all, it doesn't mean you're "in love tonight"--it's just something to do. "it's no big deal, it's innocent." we'll just go back to being hetero in 5 mins. that okay with you honey? oh good. go get me a coca cola.

c) "it's not what good girls do." OOOOOH REBEL! that's right. mommy and daddy will hate you, the church will condemn you, your boyfriend will think it's hot, and tomorrow you can pull an Anne Heche about how 'crazy' you went. it'll all be okay by 3pm and you can laugh about the Facebook pictures and talk about Lindsay Lohan.

in short i think that contrary to opening up possibilities of alternate sexuality in mainstream pop culture, it instead reinforces the fact that alternate sexualities are just a 'game' that can be elected to be acted on--or not--and that we should all return to our regularly scheduled hetero programming.

this does not lift up homosexual--or hell, even bisexual--women as a theme song. even if it were a man singing about kissing a girl, it's terrible. it's too derogatory to the rest of the situation, especially the girl the narrator is kissing. it's certainly not enticing you, or your daughter, to go date girls. if anything, it's trained on the "male gaze" and acting out for it, emphasizing that "oh shit did i just make out with that girl in front of you--oops!" moment that drunk chicks get. so congrats to them. they get one more hit to fall down on the floor to. so rest assured. you have nothing to fear for her heterosexuality. you may want to watch that socolime intake, though.

and if i have to hear that girls are MAGICAL one more time i will fucking vomit. what is that word. seriously. magical? that's for unicorns and My Little Ponies and movies like Legend.

good use of ad placement.

YES. YES YES YES.

very rarely do i find an ad placement that absolutely works.
but this absolutely works.

relevant? CHECK. Myspace users are totally the type who may be interested in seeing Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist when it comes out. actually, i intend to.

placement? CHECK. Myspace, having just launched Myspace Music which enables you to put not just 1 profile song but a whole playlist, showcases N&N's Playlist ad above YOUR playlist on your homepage.

was there an ad above your single song player before? no.
do you HAVE to upgrade to a multi-player? NO!

the ad comes with the upgrade, and if the ad continues to be this relevant, if the ads continue at all, then i have absolutely zero problem with them. nice tie-in. kudos. i'm a fan.

the good, the bad, and the ugly, deux.

other places to be. 1) because it's 9/11 and i'm sad and inarticulate. 2) because i was just on a three hour conference call. 3) because all lists need at least 3 things.

THE GOOD
if you thought Blue Oyster Cult was better with cowbell, you have NO IDEA. now, you can bring a little Walken into any situation. that's right, i said it. i have a fever and the only prescription is MoreCowbell.dj. and if you think your friends are funny, they are even funnier in 140 characters. so says ChoiceShirts, a spiffy company now promoting a tee shirt widget. you can get anything your friend said on a tee shirt with ChoiceTweets.

THE BAD
dear Miriam decides that she'll stick to mechanics rather than touch advising a woman about her cross-dressing husband. also--i am late on this, sorry, but Dane Cook is too funny at addressing this photoshop disaster.

THE UGLY
why did the chicken cross the road? Political Disgust answers. and if you need more disgusting politics... nah, i'm sure you know where to find all that.

interlude: both sides now.

an interlude having nothing to do with advertising
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have you ever had that song you were totally addicted to?
it seemed, at first, to make perfect sense in the scenario in your head?
maybe it became a positive, self-affirming theme song for awhile.

no i won't sit nice and be quiet.
[shattered - the trucks - listen on songza.]

and then curiousity gets the best of you. or things decide to be serendipitous.
either way, you come to know the undeniable truth in the song.

it's not at all what you thought it was.

this just happened for me. i tripped across this blog post yesterday.
i have no idea who the girl is. but it brought me back to perspective.

i don't care about what some folks think is over sharing.
at some points, communication, expression, is really what it is all about.

you shattered my image of love.

thank you for writing it. thank you for being brave.
my heart goes out to her and to whomever else has had this happen.

i am so sorry.

so when i bit, it was for blood.

you didn't want that finger, did you?

world's best warning sign evarr, found here, where this spiffy author Shaun has a possible living pic of the Montauk Monster as his user icon. okay, i'm a liar. he has nothing to do with the Montauk Monster. i think his user icon is actually two meercats spooning. check it out. he says some clever stuff, too.

on that note, i'm going to go vacation on Fire Island until sunday. you kids don't get too drunk without me. oh--and if you are the sort who thinks "don't touch that" really is reverse psychology for "please touch that" and you wound up without a finger--check out this youtube video for The Kelly Affair with a drag queen cannibal. it's a badass song by Be Your Own Pet based on the cult film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. cheers!

Rush epic fails at playing... Rush.

courtesy of @ischafer, this pretty much sums it up, but i had to share:



you can watch Rush fail at playing their own song, Tom Sawyer, on Expert in Rock Band here, courtesy of Laughing Squid.

[note: i'm not surprised. all my musically inclined friends tell me that all Rock Band/Guitar Hero do is teach you to miss, and thus fail. doesn't stop me from playing anyway! still, this gesture is really awesome, and fun to geek out to. kudos to Rush.]

someone make money off this.

okay, if this service already exists, someone, please leave me the link.

EDIT: i am told iLike.com does this; i am investigating. want to be my friend?
also--does iLike email me, or do i have to remember to check iLike? cos then it's the same damn problem.

if it doesn't exist, someone get the fuck on it please? for real.

i want to be updated when bands i subscribe to come tour in my area. i feel like i'm forever checking 5 venue sites and 4098554 band pages and i ALWAYS seem to JUST miss whomever i wanted to see.

i need instant gratification and updates better than ticketmaster.com can give me. this can't be hard. if you have a database of bands constantly being added to and updated with tour dates, and then people subscribe to those updates when the variable is within XX mile of them...

then again, i'm a copywriting creative. i only moonlight as a programmer. what do i know.

PS >> no one wants to go see the Faint with me @ Terminal 5. i'm sad.
PPS >> the image is the Cliks. i'm addicted right now. Lucas Silveira's voice is yummy and will make you like Justin Timberlake again with the cover of Cry Me a River. don't hate. check it out on last.fm. if you like that cover, try on Complicated and Oh Yeah.

why i still buy CDs. & the issue of transference.

"Last April, Microsoft met with criticism when it announced that it would deactivate all music purchased from MSN Music." more at my legal love, the EFF.

as we move more and more digital, we will be experiencing ownership risks. i'm not talking copyright. i'm talking unabashed cynicism. i'm saying as money becomes credits and CDs become digital--as these things are subjected to hacking, crashing, burning, and who knows what else--we are going to be faced with the dilemma of easy transference. when something intangible goes "missing" who owns it?

for an easy example. i purchased for my mother a Starbucks iTunes card which would theoretically have enabled her to download, via iTunes, the entire new Duffy album. i spent tangible cash on it. she goes home and it won't download. now, yes, the iTunes reps have been very helpful. but that's not the point. the point is, it's not in her purchase history--so she can't report a problem on it. it's not downloaded somewhere odd on her hard drive, and yet, it says it's already been redeemed. where did my $14 go? to a little 5x7 plastic card with some musician in chiaroscuro on the front.

now with things like MSN threatening to "deactivate purchased music" by 2011, what happens with that? it was purchased. ownership was transferred. and yet, they are able to legally retract that. purchase not valid after X date. sounds like a library to me--and yet there was a monetary exchange. where did that go? if you can't hold your music in your hands--do you own it? have you purchased it? or just lent a big company some cash? in a way it reminds me of folks paying real dollars for intangible World of Warcraft objects.

"DRM-crippled music still has an expiration date –- whenever the company that sold that music becomes unable or unwilling to continue supporting the copy protection."

but hey. maybe that's just my affinity for the stone gods talking.

Lovefool: 2: Pandora

i am going to be having a music-based theme this week. i am looking to consider and address different aspects of how digitalization, technological distribution, and social media have affected our consumption and understanding of music.

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this is the second official post of project Lovefool, wherein i promised i would:
"post about how much i love your brand. why i love your brand. and how much i'm willing to talk about how much i love your brand."

this is actually proving harder than i'd thought. i definitely hardcore love less brands than i'd previously thought. sure, i like a lot. but we all know how fickle i can be with brands. heh. anyway...

target #2: Pandora

why you should care:
if you're into music, this is the thing you want to be paying attention to. yes, stereogum, pitchfork, and obscure are awesome too, but to my knowledge they just hook me up with new tunes and don't yet create entire radio stations for me. Pandora will make radio stations just for you with music you WILL like. they're the best site to date to accomplish this. to boot, you can follow Pandora on twitter and get to know the folks behind it. Lucia at @pandora_radio is a favourite of mine, but there's also @pandora_kevin, too.

why i love them:
i have finely tuned at least 3 of my stations to the point where not one song i dislike comes on. i love that. rather than submit a band or a song i like and have an entire station based off of that, Pandora lets me add multiple bands or songs and configures the station to my exact tastes, rather than "artists similar to X." this combined with the thumb up/down function to better instruct the station makes this net radio amazing. i can listen to other members' stations as well as add an already existing station as my own to finesse, as i did with @spdracerx, whose riot grrrl station had a few years on my own, on the recommendation of Lucia.

i know this sounds simple, but for example, take Last.fm. sure, they can track what i'm listening to, which i grant is cool. but my "neighbours" never listen to what i like, and their stations are so vague that i hate almost everything that comes up. i put in Panic! at the Disco as a band i like, and i'm stuck listening to Simple Plan. GAG ME WITH A SPOON. i hate Simple Plan. i hate Good Charlotte. i hate most anything they toss up. so i stopped listening. no amount of scrobblizing or whatever is going to bring me back when i can't even stomach the music--or, for that matter, the fluctuating levels. constantly adjusting my volume DNE fun.

i also love that when i find music i like with Pandora, i can click on the song and it links directly to iTunes to let me buy it. yes, i am one of those oddballs who's alright with paying .99 per song (i also still purchase CDs, but hey, that's me). my only sadness about this is on iTunes' part: they don't yet sell every song Pandora offers. for example, i couldn't purchase More Than I Can by Jane Jensen (though i could add it to my myspace profile!). it's just a little counterintuitive. another thing Pandora has on Last.fm: i buy CDs from Amazon, not .mp3s. iTunes pwns there. in short, Pandora has made it easier to locate new music i love online, taking the place of a net radio that died for me (i used to use Spinner in high school).

how much i'm willing to talk about how much i love them:
well, i already chat them up any time i'm listening or talking about music online; i reference them in this blog quite a bit; if they were on SocialVibe, Pandora would be my sponsor and help me support my favourite charity; if Pandora made buttons or tee shirts, i would wear them (but they don't). i do refer Pandora to my friends. where music in concerned, they are the top online tool that i talk about. they do what they do well, and that gets a huge kudos in my book.

how much i love them/aka/the backstory:
! Pandora is important to me because it filled a void.

! in high school, i was that girl who knew seventy bands you'd never heard of (but would in a few years); i knew the EPs, what would make great singles, where they came from, what their band name meant, and probably knew either their booker or their main contact. it's what made me originally want to go into music business.

! since going to college and realizing that music business didn't have a future as i knew it, and that entertainment law was bloody boring, etc etc, i threw myself into the english/writing/art aspect i'd also done in high school, forgoing my musical hobbies in favour of newfound passion and a sincere lack of time due to work and classes.

! since graduating, i miss indulging that part of myself. being into music was part of what defined me as a person. without that piece, i had felt somehow less myself. Pandora is helping me to get back to where i want to be.

...previous lovefool projects: To Write Love on Her Arms.

how the internets are boosting music integrity.

i was considering this the other day when Am&a (@reverieapparel) and i were talking about how apparently Mae performs poorly live... among other bands. it had come from a discussion about this post, among other things. so if you want to read about the effect of social media on music, read that. it's good. i'm not going to repeat.

regardless. as the internets go up, the physical record sales go down.

itunes is pwning, amazon has a piece of the pie. record labels floundering. surprise nowhere to be found. bands are being forced to do a lot for themselves, often by choice. moreover, most of the pretty money is coming in from "grass roots" places: ie, the merch, the concerts--the experience, rather than the disc.

i argue: this is a good thing.

ming you, i love buying CDs, the actual physical thing. but for music integrity, i think this is doing wonders.

placing emphasis on live shows to bring in cash monies also places emphasis on the talent and ability to perform live, as was previously more prevalent. this enables people to actually see the acts they want to see--likely (or hopefully, i should say) for less money, in ratio to the amount of shows that should be played.

moreover, even if this should not be the case, it heightens the quality of music insofar as its integrity. there would be far less episodes of lip syncing, and those bands who perform poorly will be less likely to make money on the road where the music has to stand for itself outside of the "fixing" of record labels and track rooms, which has cast a pallour across the music industry.

(the more amusing aspect is once everything finishes its shift to live-base again, there will likely be a postmodern backlash of bands which never play life and only released synth-esque music in order to make a statement. they will be elusive and their cult following will be elitist. all of this will be wonderful. heh.)

interlude: good monday to you, sir!

okay, before i get back in the swing of things, this is entirely unrelated to advertising. feel free to skip if your whole life revolves solely around advertising. there's no shame in that ;)

i am in such a bouncy mood for a monday!
worthy of multiple explanation points!! even. and, moreover, i know why.

summer is knocking down the door and i love it.

i spent part of yesterday making a mix that reminds me of summer for my friend Ell.
i was surprised by how much of it was what i'd deem "mainstream" or popular, especially when i listen to so much underground music. i also had deliberately excluded a lot of my riot grrrl music because i didn't know if she liked it, and, well, if you know that sort of stuff, you know it's a (wonderfully) acquired taste. s-k ftw!

if any of you want to listen to what i'm listening to--
which i'm sure many of you shall roll your eyes at, but hey, i gave fair warning of the candylike nature of this mix. moreover, it's equally able to rot your teeth and make you hyper--but that's the point. try it. you might like it. and if you don't and a coworker overhears, just say a colleague is a secret scene queen and it's not your fault.

SUMMER SHUDDER:
01. We Were Made For Each Other / You Can Breathe Now - Jack's Mannequin
02. Nine in the Afternoon - Panic! at the Disco
03. Of All the Gin Joints in All the World - Fall Out Boy
04. I Want You To Want Me - Letters to Cleo
05. Anyway You Want It - Rise Against!
06. Amphetamine - Everclear
07. Everything is Alright - Motion City Soundtrack
08. Out Here All Night - Damone
09. Shut Up and Let Me Go - The Ting Tings
10. Phenomena - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
11. Faster Kill Pussycat - Paul Oakenfield ft. Brittany Murphy
12. Le Disko - Shiny Toy Guns
13. Twitch - Bif Naked
14. Glow - Alien Ant Farm
15. Set Phasers to Stun - Taking Back Sunday
16. Praise Chorus - Jimmy Eat World
17. Blue Carolina - Alkaline Trio
18. Born For This - Paramore

What songs make you bouncy and happy? Any genre! I want to know. I love to bounce in the summer. Bring it on <3 Please!