Tag Archives: music

FAVORITE SONGS OF 2008: PORTISHEAD — “THE RIP”

Por­tishead­’s “The Rip” is hands down one of my favorite songs of 2008. The video is equal­ly beau­ti­ful. It’s on my cur­rent mix and I’m guess­ing it’ll stay there for the rest of the year. I did­n’t think that Por­tishead­’s Third could match their ear­li­er work; Dum­my had a major impact on me as a teenag­er try­ing to wean him­self off of crunch­ing gui­tars, and the melan­choly expressed in their music floored me.

Third is the sort of album that shows a band capa­ble of regain­ing their for­mer glo­ry. The emo­tion­al heft of “The Rip” real­ly demon­strates that Por­tishead still have a grasp on what made them so great to begin with. R.E.M. and Metal­li­ca could learn a thing or two from them.

I’m also fond of Radio­head­’s back­stage ver­sion, fea­tured above, with Thom Yorke and Jon­ny Green­wood both on acoustic gui­tars. It’s so ref­er­en­tial and love­ly; Yorke’s voice is a thing of won­der with mate­r­i­al like this.

WHY MUXTAPE’S PROBABLY GONE FOR GOOD

Both Val­ley­wag and Sil­i­con Alley Insid­er point out that one of the rea­sons Mux­tape shut down prob­a­bly was­n’t the R.I.A.A., but all the costs asso­ci­at­ed with run­ning a mas­sive stream­ing music data­base. One of the things I’ve noticed about Web 2.0 is that music con­tent is seen as more of a lia­bil­i­ty than an asset when grow­ing a busi­ness, as the Mux­tape shut­down demon­strates. That is to say, there’s prob­a­bly no bailout com­ing, at least not for Mux­tape as we knew it. The bot­tom line is if you’re bull­ish on “music 2.0,” Mux­tape’s sit­u­a­tion should be a case study for any­one who’s try­ing to find the right niche for music online.

IMAGINING THE PERFECT STREAMING MUSIC SERVICE

Read­WriteWeb has a must-read post for any­one who’s pay­ing atten­tion to what’s hap­pen­ing with Pan­do­ra and Mux­tape this week. As wi-fi becomes more pow­er­ful and wide­ly avail­able, I think more peo­ple will want on-demand dig­i­tal deliv­ery, rather than be bur­dened by the moun­tains of phys­i­cal prod­uct they rip to an mp3 play­er any­way. It’s equal­ly impor­tant for artists and labels look­ing to max­i­mize prof­its by cut­ting out the middleman.

Will it be free, like many of the ser­vices peo­ple enjoy today? Prob­a­bly not, but con­ve­nience and price will be major fac­tors as music like­ly tran­si­tions from a prod­uct in itself to some­thing that’s bun­dled with oth­er ser­vices. We’re already see­ing it with some mobile devices, and it’s prob­a­bly safe to say that this will quick­ly become an indus­try standard.

As the events of the past week have shown, not all stream­ing music ser­vices will sur­vive, nor do they deserve to sim­ply because they’re inno­vat­ing in the online music space. As the music indus­try grows more des­per­ate for rev­enue streams, you can only expect that the play­ers involved will be tough on those that do make it. We’re on the eve of a rev­o­lu­tion in the way we con­sume movies and music. No one said it would be easy.

Check out the arti­cle at Read­WriteWeb and share your thoughts on what would make stream­ing music bet­ter for you!

FAVORITE BAND OF THE MOMENT: CUT COPY

It took me a lit­tle while to warm up to Aus­trali­a’s Cut Copy, a band I first saw at the Rhap­sody Rocks par­ty at SXSW. Now I’ve fall­en in love with their lat­est album, In Ghost Colours. It’s got the glitchy bril­liance that I loved about Beta Band, with some of the splashy synths that made me swoon for Depeche Mode as a kid. Dan Whit­ford’s vocals cer­tain­ly war­rant that com­par­i­son, espe­cial­ly on their first sin­gle, “Lights and Music.”

Watch them per­form “Lights and Music” in this video from Pitch­fork TV.