Posts in music
Katrina and the killer waves

As an update to my previous post (Florida hammered by Katrina and the waves), here are some more Katrina headlines I've spotted:

I'm not even sure why this fascinates me so much. It has this unique natural disaster/one hit wonder/tragedy/walking on sunshine combination that's apparently very attractive to me.

Update: Back on the 24th the Atlanta Journal Constitution ran a story called Tropical storm bears down on Florida that opened with:

South Floridians won't be walking on sunshine when Katrina and her waves crash ashore later this week.

Which is pretty much the motherload.

musicBrad Turcotte Comments
Warner Music Group is starting an e-label

I meant to blog about this a couple days ago. Warner Music Group is starting an e-label:

Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music's chairman and CEO, said Monday that the new mechanism will be called an "e-label," in which artists will release music in clusters of three songs every few months rather than a CD every few years.

Magnatune owner John Buckman has some good observations as this is basically what Magnatune has been doing for a few years now.

The article claims that artists signed to the e-label will keep the copyright to their master recordings, which John says is a less evil agreement. But I'm assuming that all the major perks of getting signed: advances, promotion, etc, are all out the window as well. Which makes it another digital store with a decent brand name. I'd be like "I'm signed to Warner...'s e-label. Can I borrow ten dollars?"

It's a good idea and an e-label would give them flexibility and let the label experiment more with what might catch on with the kids these days without losing a bundle of money. It could work as a minor league for artists that aren't quite ready to be called up to the real Warner Music and have some money invested in them. If they do it right -- like pick bands with good songs for instance -- they could develop a neat little Internet alternative scene. But in my mind I picture a half-broken, basically unusable website covered in flashing ringtone ads, forcing DRM on you, pushing established bands and three song sets of watered down clones of them. But who knows.

business, musicBrad Turcotte Comments
Extraordinary Machine

Coolfer has a good overview of the final outcome of the Fiona Apple Extraordinary Machine debacle. The summary: the press went off about Sony holding back Fiona Apple's album without any evidence, the album got leaked, people went nuts about it on the internet, I believe "information wants to be free" was said at some point, over three grand was donated to freefiona.com, and everyone hated on the evil, evil record company. Neither Sony or Fiona offered comment. And it turns out it wasn't true. Fiona herself was holding back the album and has re-recorded most of it.

So the whole thing magically transforms into an evil record company red herring and a lot of free PR for Fiona's new record. Nice!

business, musicBrad Turcotte Comments
Remixes, drummer and news

I'm sure there are more I've missed on CCMixter.

Also, holy crap, a drummer has been found. His name is Bruce, here's a sample of him on his electronic kit rocking out to Look and Feel Years Younger:

I met with him this week and Rob and I are pretty excited about kicking it live.

Podcasts I'm told I've been played on recently:

Some other things:

  • One of my songs is in "A Few Minutes With Them" (Windows Media / Quicktime) a short film that's getting submitted to festivals. If you have any feedback on it, send it to comments@bullyfilms.com.
  • One of my songs is also going to be in a Dutch snowboard movie being made by RELOAD. I went snowboarding last winter and broke my ass.
  • Teru, a prolific remixer, has gotten a page of his Brad Sucks remixes up on New Music Canada. Check out the page here.

The many times delayed remix album is more dangerously near completion than ever before.

musicBrad Turcotteextras, media, remixes Comments
Remixes

If I missed your remix, please send it in again because I have no mind:

Thanks to all the remixers as always. You can get the source to a bunch of my tracks here. You can email them to me or put them on my CC Mixter page for instant gratification.

musicBrad Turcotteremixes Comments
Crimewire

Crimewire is Louise W. Klinker's proposed Limewire skin that reorganizes the P2P app into a different light. For instance instead of there being a "Library" of what you've downloaded, it's called your "Criminal record". Crimewire would track how much you owe each band and record label and you have a Justification Profile:

The last new function is the "Justification Profile". This section is the most fictional part of CrimeWire and based upon a point system. When you input your salary, number of records in collection, amount of vinyl in collection, number of concerts you go to per year etc. it returns the amount of money it is fair for you to "steal" for per day.

I like it, it's pretty funny. I'd also like to see aggregated stats of how much all downloads on the service are costing individual artists and labels, damage you're doing to the economy, the amount you would be fined for the material you've uploaded and maybe how much you're hurting Coldplay's feelings.

business, musicBrad Turcotteart Comments
Mad Hot Ballroom copyright

Stay Free! has a great interview with Amy Sewell, writer and producer of the movie Mad Hot Ballroom, about the hell they had to go through to clear all the music in the movie:

If filmmakers have to worry about these things, documentaries will cease to be documentaries! What happens when the girls go shopping and there's music playing in the stores? We were lucky because in our movie the music wasn't identifiable, but otherwise what are we supposed to do: walk up to the store manager and say, "Excuse me but can you turn off your radio?"

I've been meaning to see this movie, I hadn't even thought of this aspect. Very interesting.

business, musicBrad Turcottecopyright Comment