Shouzer

Apparently, the RIAA is going to stop suing individual consumers for illegally downloading/uploading music from their computers, and instead go solely after the service providers. Would this be considered a sign of the apocalypse?

Engadget via WSJ

Anybody else noticed that iTunes is an absolutely horrible, bloated piece of shit?  For as much love as Apple gets (and hell, I provide my fair share), iTunes 7 really is one of the worst apps I’ve ever used.  The simple fact that it mysteriously requires Quicktime to be installed is bad enough, but on top of that it’s just dog slow.

Stupid iPhone and its software lock-in.  If I could sync that bad boy with Winamp, iTunes would be uninstalled in a heartbeat.

I caught this article a couple days ago, and I found it to be a pretty good read. It points out, among other things, that more music is being sold than ever before. CD sales are down, and the record labels’ profits are shrinking. But more music is actually being sold.

I’d encourage everybody to read the article–it’s fairly short at just two pages. The main impression it left me with, though, is an upsetting impression of how long and how much the record labels have been ripping us off…

With EMI and Sony now releasing mp3s without DRM through Amazon’s mp3 store, it looks like they’re finally starting to learn. It makes me wonder just who else is ripping us off, too.

I happened to catch this article on Engadget about Sony adding it’s music catalog to Amazon mp3. It’s amazing to me how quickly all the major studios have come around on drm-free downloads after EMI showed that it was perfectly sane.

EMI couldn’t have put drm-free mp3s on iTunes anymore than a year ago. I don’t actually remember when it was, but seriously… After such a long-fought “battle” against college students, you’d think one of these companies would have jumped to this conclusion a little earlier.

As far as I’m concerned, DRM of all forms is anti-consumer. It’s not pro-copyright or anything like that, it’s just plain old anti-consumer. Bought the first couple seasons of The Office on iTunes? Too fucking bad, you’re going to have to get the next couple on Amazon Unbox, and you’ll have to watch them on different devices. Fuck that shit. You know what that’s going to do? That’s going to make me more likely to pirate it. That’s the only way I have any guarantee that it won’t quit working at some point.

i installed winamp on this crappy laptop for the first time ever. i installed foxytunes for the first time a long time. i started retagging my songs to give them a hint of orderliness. i’ve been music deprived for too long.

Some of you know that I’m an avid reader of The Sports Guy at ESPN Page 2. I want to quote for you a paragraph from his most recent blog, because I felt like it was time that I, and maybe you, together as ‘we’ take a second look at Justin Timberlake.

It’s a tie between Justin Timberlake and Chase Budinger for “white guy who does the best job transcending his whiteness.” Justin Timberlake is performing right now, although he made the tragic decision not to sing “D*** in a Box.” Hey, it’s OK to think he’s talented, right? Two hit albums AND he’s one of the best SNL hosts ever AND he sold at the highest point possible on Britney’s stock AND he wrote the best revenge song ever (the “Cry Me A River” song that pretty much murdered Britney’s soul) AND he’s plowing through every hot female in Hollywood right now. He’s a hero, I say.

A few things here. First of all, I like Dave Melillo six track album “Talk Is Cheap” quite a bit. I have to admit it’s a little frustrating that he’s three years younger than me, but I guess I should get used to that. I’m over the hill, haha.

Second on the agenda is The Shins. One of my buddies sent me a link to their new single Phantom Limb. Check it out if you’ve got a chance. I liked the song quite a bit, so I’m probably going to have to grab some of their old albums. Give it a listen if you’ve got a chance.

Now on to games. I’m a gamer, and that’s all there is to it. I love playing games. I’ve been playing Kyle’s copy of NBA 2K7 for 360 recently, and it’s great. I started a franchise with the Jazz, who I guess are more or less my NBA team now. They’ve got a couple players from the Illini of a couple years ago, and that makes them the only team I care about.

I’m also about 30 hours or so into Final Fantasy XII. I haven’t beaten it yet, but in my opinion it’s the best FF game so far. They’ve added a few new game mechanisms and have made it a fully 3d game, which is nice. If you’ve got a PS2 (or, in my case, your roommate does), I’d recommend picking it up (or, in my case, letting your roommate buy it and then play it when he’s not).

Well, I’m back up at school again.  The posts should start flowing a bit more freely.  Moving in was a tiring experience, mainly because I moved my stuff up here last Friday, went home Friday night, helped my parents move on Saturday, went home, and then helped my sister move some stuff up on Sunday.  I was pretty worn out after it all.

Classes started today, and the ones I had didn’t seem like they’d be too bad.  However, they were two 100 levels and one 200 level.  Both of the ones I have tomorrow are 400 level, so I imagine those would be quite a bit more work.  Hopefully it’s not too bad, though, as I could use an easy semester–it would certainly be nice.

Kyle found out that the band Quietdrive will be here next Wednesday, and tickets are only $6.  I believe we’ll be hitting that up.  It’s at this place called The Canopy Club that has a lot of smaller bands show up.  We’ve never actually been there, so hopefully it’s decent.  I imagine it’s got to be considering how many shows they end up with throughout a semester.
I suppose that’s all for now…

I went down to the All American Rejects at the Comerica Tast Fest tonight.  The taste fest was a 4 day festival showcasing many of Detroits restaraunts accompanied by lots of free concerts. 

I like the All American Rejects quite a bit so the concert was fun for me.  There was a pretty good turnout, probably because it was free.  I was a little disappointed with the level of crowd participation, but it was a pretty mixed crowd.  I got the impression that a lot of people just wandered up when the heard the music.  Still, it was a good time.

This is a pretty crazy video that shows the transformation of Michael Jackson.  It’s pretty sad, really.  He looks like ass nowadays.

On Tuesday night I took Scott to see Dave Matthews Band in concert at the UMB Bank Pavilion. It was his birthday present even though his birthday was last Thursday.

The show rocked!!! It was the first show of the summer tour. They played a lot of old songs which was great. Some of my favorites from the concert included: Crash into Me, Grey Street, Granny, Rapunzel, JTR, Grace is Gone, and Pig.

We had seats and after the set was over we both turned around and everyone in the lawn had either a lighter or cell phone up in the air….it was an amazing sight! Then he came back out and did an encore. He played Sister alone, which was good. Then they did Where Are You Going–another one of my favorites–and ended the concert with Louisiana Bayou.

Here’s a picture of the stage

Overall, it was a fantastic concert and we had a great time!!! I was surprised to see so many older people though. There was one woman next to me who was my mom’s age, but about the size of Stephanie. She was drinking and rocking out, singing along to every song. That was pretty amusing.

Also, a quick update: I’m going to be home June 12-June 16. If any of you guys are around I’d love to see you all.

Story

Some rock bands are suing Sony for breach of contract over online music sales. I think this quote from the story sums it up well:

“Tracks sold over the Internet usually go for about 99 cents. About 70 cents of the sale price goes to Sony. The bands are getting about 4 1/2 cents per song, according to the suit, rather than the approximately 30 cents they claim is rightfully theirs.”

Right now there’s about 4 or 5 albums in the rotation on my mp3 player. Sure, I’ve got room for thousands of songs on there, but I typically only listen to a few bands at a time. It’s still worth it, though, as I like not having to swap shit out all the time.

A few weeks ago, Stephanie gave me the Bayside Acoustic album, and I’m a pretty big fan of that. They’re supposedly a screaming band on all their other albums–something I’m not a fan of–but the Acoustic album is not at all. Winter is a great song, and the rest of the cd is pretty good too.

Next up is Teddy Geiger’s Underage Thinking. Megan hooked me up with the cd a couple weeks ago. I like the whole cd, but there’s a few songs that stick out to me. I really like Night Air, which is by far my favorite song on the cd.

After that comes School House Rock! Rocks. It’s basically a compilation cd of a bunch of bands covering School House Rock! songs. I don’t like every song on the cd, but I like Blind Melon’s version of Three Is A Magic Number. It’s pretty catchy. I’ve got Jordy to thank for that one.

The other day Al was watching the newest episode of Scrubs and I happened to notice I liked one of the songs that was playing. This really didn’t come as a surprise as I really do love the Scrubs soundtracks. I think the show probably has the best soundtrack of any show on tv. The fact that J.D., the main character, loves Journey doesn’t hurt either.

Anyhow, it turned out the song was called How To Save A Life from The Fray’s album of the same name. I’ve listened to it a couple times through and I really like it. The song She Is is also a great song. So that’s certainly on the recommend list, as well.

Yesterday I also picked up Blind Melon’s first album, which is self-titled. I haven’t honestly listened to any songs other than No Rain, which was the reason I downloaded it. I like the song quite a bit, but had forgotten about it until I heard Jordy play it last weekend. Hopefully the rest of the album is on par with that, too.

Lastly, I found out yesterday that Harvey Danger (of Flagpole Sitta fame) released their latest album on the internet for free download. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I’d say everybody should go pick it up. Who can complain about free music? If you like it, they have a system where you can donate a couple bucks to the band, which I’ll probably do. I just appreciate them not treating fans like pieces of shit.

Oh, and before I forget, I love the “Panic! At The Disco” album “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out”. They were discovered by Pete Wentz (Fall Out Boy’s bassist), and they’re great. It took me a couple times through the cd to really start liking them, but I definitely do now. They’ve got a nice sound. That’s another one for which the credit should go to Megan.

Lastly on the rotation is The Strokes new album First Impression Of Earth. I’ve had all their albums other albums for a while, but had never really listened to them much. Corinne and Jordy went to one of their shows a couple weeks back, so I figured I should give them a bit more of a listen. It turns out I like them quite a bit, too.

So that’s the general rotation on my mp3 player right now. Chances are it’ll last quite a while since it’s a pretty hefty list. I’d certainly recommend any of those albums to anybody reading this though. Top on the recommendation list would probably be Panic!. It’s just a fun cd.

[Edit:] Yeah so it turns out I get a lot of my music from other people’s recommendations.  I’m perfectly fine with that, though.  It saves me a lot of the work, haha.

First, they sued a bunch of their potential customers over file sharing. Then, Apple came along and introduced iTunes, which kept them happy for a while, but now they want more money.

“We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don’t have a share of iPod’s revenue,� he said. “We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only.�
Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr.

So he wants some of Apple’s profits on the iPod. I wonder if this guy thinks before he opens his mouth because this is ludicrous. While we’re at it, Warner should get a share of Sony’s profits on the diskman, Creative’s profits on their MP3 player, etc.

I guess it doesn’t really matter to me anyway, since I use All of MP3. Props to Jared for introducing me to it.

Source

Santanta feat. Michelle Branch – I’m Feeling You

I’m feelin’ that song.