Underground Media: Reloaded

In the beginning, there was Old Napster . It was 1999, broadband was new, and music-swapping had just EXPLODED onto the scene via a peer-to-peer application invented by a college student who coined it's name based on his kinky hair (don't get me started). Those were the good ole days. Search for a song, click on it, download, and listen. If your online life began after 2001, this music model should still sound familiar? It is identical to iTunes. Except that your wallet ends up $0.99 lighter for each click these days. But clearly with the popularity of iTunes and other online music stores, this is how the public wants to consume music. Think for a moment if iTunes had come to market in 1998, BEFORE Napster? In any case, it did not. And instead of innovating, the music industry branded it's customers as thieves and shut down Old Napster in the summer of 2001. But this was not the end of Napster. The brand name was so strong that it re-emerged a few years ago as a...

So remember how I was telling you all that stuff about the TV studios embracing Hulu (Fox and NBC sponsored the project), and how they had learned from the music industry's crippling Napster debacle? Well, that's only partially true. After a BANNER year, Hulu seems like it's becoming a victim of it's own success. Sometimes it seems like the site is overloaded, and even when using a fast internet connection, shows tend to "hang" for a few seconds while the stream from Hulu's servers catches up. Worse than that, the TV studios have somehow gotten it into their heads that they are losing some of their traditional TV viewers to Hulu. The reason they view this as a "bad thing" all boils down to one simple factor: advertising. Traditional TV advertising is literally the fuel for your favorite shows. Put simply, without commercials there would be no TV programming (PBS and Public Access aside). That is simply the American model. The Brits pay ...

Please tune into beatbasement.com . Yes, 56kbps sucks for quality. But the rotation is so incredible that I've almost stopped listening to smoothbeats.com . Almost. I think you can subscribe and get 128kbps access. Also, if you have not downloaded the new Aesop Rock album, DO IT NOW !!! I can't stop listening to it...

In my neverending quest to find great music on the internet, I ended up moving beyond the simple streaming services. Not that I have anything against the staple of internet radio. In fact, as I've said before, I'm an avid listener of stations like smoothbeats.com and beatbasement.com . But sometimes I want to hear music that fits my mood. A playlist that goes beyond embracing a certain genre, and maybe goes two or three sub-genres deep. Usually that would mean firing up my own music collection. That is, until I discovered a site called Last.fm a few years ago. Their famed audioscrobbler is actually a computer algorithm that gathers info on the music you like, and matches it up with music it "thinks" you should like. I was addicted for a while until I figured out that the scrobbling game had some competition around town. I'll break a few of the major players down for you. Last.fm Ah, the apple of my eye. Last.fm was my *first* music recommendation site...

So, I went back and forth on this latest entry for my Urban Thought Collective blog, Check The Tech-Nique . First I was going to review some netbooks (Asus EeePC, Acer One, HP Mini-1000, etc). But a few days later, fresh from setting up my Home Theater PC, I was all set to talk about Boxee and the new online TV options that are cropping up (Hulu, et al) . And in the end, my focus for the next few entries *will* be online media, but I have decided to start with music rather than TV or movies. My reasons are primarily selfish. :-) I tend to blog about the tech issues that are having the most impact on my life at the time. And right now, I am spending four days a week driving and living out of hotels. With so much windshield and hotel downtime, my music has gone from an important part of my life, to CRITICAL to my sanity. So, today, I am going to talk about the online music options that are available, some of the differences between them, and which ones are the best of breed re...

As many of you know, I am a big fan of last.fm . My fascination with the site began a couple of years ago. During my quest for new and interesting music, I stumbled upon last.fm. It billed itself as a music recommendation service, so I decided to give it a listen for a while. I was not initially impressed. It played some random but bearable music based on an artist I suggested (Prince, I think), but then quickly lapsed into heavy metal and then country, after which I promptly turned it off. Days later, I read that there were two ways for the audio scrobbler that powers last.fm to recommend music that I would like. Either I could listen to it's recommendations based on an artist, giving each song I heard a thumbs up or down, or I could let the scrobbler "listen" to my music collection. Basically, if I wanted to speed things up, I needed to play *my* music in my audio player of choice, along with a plugin that would feed that information to last.fm. After last.fm ...

Caution: There's some geek-speak ahead.  Skip ahead if you're a noob.  I'm too tired to translate right now... *********************************** Man, sometimes I wonder how Windows users tolerate the lack of good media players for their operating system.  I mean, seriously, you've got Windows Media Player which is a complete pile.  Then you've got Winamp, which only marginally sucks.  After that you're on to iTunes, which is only useful if you pledge allegiance to the Cult of Jobs.  Your only truly good media player is VLC, but that's only good for videos.  I have yet to find a really robust audio/music solution for Windows.  Thankfully, Linux has some really good choices.   Banshee and Exaile are absolutely top-notch for Gnome users and they are both installed on my laptop.  Depends on my mood as to which one I'll use.  But for my KDE desktop, AmaroK has clearly distinguished itself as the best of breed.  It's polished, intuitive, fast, and exe...

I am well aware of the fact that Satellite Radio is the current media darling. In fact, after six weeks of traveling across the country for my new gig, I have fallen passionately in love with Sirius Radio Channel 43 - BackSpin . All oldschool hip-hop, all the time. Driving out of Atlanta airport in my rental car a couple of weeks ago, I tuned in randomly to BackSpin only to hear the almighty Kurtis Blow introduce the next track: Public Enemy - Night of the Living Baseheads. He had me at hello. Now I can't live without it. Great DJ's, no commecials, and no edits!!! Seriously, life doesn't get any better. Or does it? After being suitably impressed by my alternative music options in the car, what's a guy to do when he's sitting on the tarmac for an hour on a delayed flight to Baltimore? Streaming internet radio on my trusty Palm Centro, that's what! I didn't even know the Centro *did* internet radio! As a consummate underground hip-hop fan, I was mo...

My company is launching an entirely new business venture, and one of the test markets just happens to be.... you guessed it. Hotlanta! And I just found out that I get to be on the team!!! It worked out really well, as my wife just accepted a post-doctoral fellowship to the CDC. So, we've both got brand new adventures ahead of us! Cool, hey? (Ugh, I still sound like a Cheesehead. I wonder what I will sound like after a year in the ATL?) Here's where we're going, courtesy of Google Maps. Click on the image to blow it up. Have I fessed up to being a Google-groupie??? Man, Google apps are like crack. You can't stop using them! Maps, Calendar, Email, Blogger, Documents, etc. And they've got a mobile version of EVERYTHING! And they support open source and linux. And they are launching an open cell phone O/S in the very near future. Wait, was this blog about me and Atlanta or Google? I forget. In any case, I'll be in the ATL in t-minus 30 days. In hono...

Or that he "gets it" with regard to downloading and the music biz. Most blockbuster artists (cough) Prince and Madonna (cough) are content to label their fans as thieves and distribute their content according to how the RIAA sees fit. They do a few public service announcements about how downloading is stealing, and stealing is wrong, and as far as they are concerned, the discussion is over. However, for the majority of NON-blockbuster artists (aka, the musicians who have a small but passionate following), mp3 distribution has allowed them to reach an audience far wider than they would have been able to reach without it. Thus the industry is seeing the rise of tiny local groups to more mainstream visibility. Kid Rock recently took the argument one step further . He's boycotting iTunes, the #1 online music retailer, because of the DRM'd chokehold they have on the industry, and how it's simply a replay of the old system where the rich artists get richer, and the...

Recently, I decided to give JungleDisk (powered by Amazon's S3 service) a test-drive. JungleDisk provides a toolkit for online data storage. Basically, I can store a bunch of stuff (music, docs, videos, etc.) remotely on Amazon's servers instead of my own local harddrives. The benefits include safe and super-reliable access to my data from wherever I am, at any time. I was thinking what a cool idea it would be to store all my music there , so I could stream it from any computer. In fact, I think storing things like pictures and music on local harddrives is a total waste. For the most part, this media just sits around on a harddrive doing nothing. Perhaps you occasionally search it for that wedding photo your mom wants to see. And then, at some point, the harddrive fails for some reason or another. Then you're really screwed. Online data solutions, on the other hand, have backups for their backups. And streaming pics or music is just fine for me. As long as i...

Live DJ Dr. Madness over at Smoothbeats.com is tearing the HELL out of some turntables right now. Or virtual turntables. Or whatever he's using. Who the hell cares, anyway! The point is that he is doing some next-level work over at Smoothbeats, and every hip-hop fan needs to hear it. It is NOT Top-40 crunk crap. It *is* a genre mash-up. I think he's on every Saturday evening, so please listen to him. Remember that old disco line, "Last night a DJ saved my life." Yep, after the day I just had, it was kind of like that...

So, $0.99 per track is still pricey, but Amazon's MP3 store is still pretty frickin slick. And they will discount full albums, sometimes by 40%. Linux support is complete and easy. I just grabbed a Murs album that I could not find on EMusic. My name is Akshun J and I endorse this service.

Remember those chicks who wore armor, kicked ass, and burnt off their right breast so that it would not interfere with their ability to draw a bow and fire an arrow? Not that I am even remotely in favor of breast mutilation, but THAT is what I call commitment! However, it is a different Amazon that I am loving today. Amazon.com to be precise, and although the book-selling e-company could not be further from historical Amazons if it tried, it has certainly displayed a level of commitment worthy of its warrior namesake. First, it muscled all of the major record labels into providing DRM-free music through their catalog. And then today, it has released download clients supporting most desktop computing platforms including Windows, Mac AND Linux. In the span of 6 months, Amazon.com has jumped to the top of my music download list, although $0.99 per track is still a little rich for my underpaid blood. Has anyone tried their service? If you have, what do you think? I will report on...

Recently someone asked me which sites I frequented for music downloads. Legal ones, that is. Heh. I really didn't have to consider the question for long. Over the last two years, I have settled into a fairly predictable music routine that costs me about $15/month. I stream Last.fm tunes while I'm hanging at the house doing things like blogging or laundry. It's a "smart" music recommendation system that learns what I like and what I don't like. This includes distinguishing an artist I don't like from a track I don't like. And if I like what I hear, I bounce over to Emusic.com and download it. As I've blogged in the past, Last.fm and Emusic were my first steps into a much larger musical world. And while much of what I listen to is new to me, I rarely download a new release. In fact, most of the time, the stuff I listen to was released a decade ago. Sometimes this is awesome as I have ten years worth of albums by the artist to sift throug...

I was driving home today and listening to the radio. Yeah, yeah. *I* was actually listening to the radio. Oh how I fantasize about the day when Wi-Max brings internet radios to cars. Anyway, it was Marvin Gaye who caught my ear. Inner City Blues: Inflation no chance To increase finance Bills pile up sky high Send that boy off to die Make me wanna holler The way they do my life Make me wanna holler The way they do my life Hang ups, let downs Bad breaks, set backs Natural fact is I can't pay my taxes Oh, make me wanna holler And throw up both my hands Yea, it makes me wanna holler And throw up both my hands Man, I was FEELING him today. I don't know what it was, but I was feeling him. Maybe it was a random remembrance of my youth growing up in the "inner city"? I had just come from the oral surgeon who finished the visit by giving me the dreaded news: the wisdom tooth has GOT to go. As we talked about insurance and dates, I flashed back to when I was 15. I ...

These Brits are about to bury they're competition : "As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website. Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free—is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be. Full-length tracks are now available in the US, UK, and Germany, and we’re hard at work broadening our coverage into other countries. During this initial public beta period, each track can be played up to 3 times for free before a notice appears telling you about our upcoming subscription service. The soon-to-be announced subscription service will give you unlimited plays and some other useful things. We’re also working on bringing full-length tracks...

The recent unpleasantness began two months ago when my good buddy Wxman asked me to grab a copy of Queen's "We Will Rock You" for him. I jumped over to the much-lauded DRM-free (giggity!) Amazon.com MP3 store . Queen - Check. "We Will Rock You" - Check. Only $0.99 - Check. Emailed to Wxman - Check. Five minutes later, Wxman calls. "I don't know who the hell this is, but that's NOT Freddie Mercury." Hmmm, something was rotten in the state of 70's classic rock. Two hours of searching and a Pirate Bay torrent later, I had Queen's Greatest Hits on my hard drive. Just to make sure Wxman wasn't yanking my chain, I played both tracks for my wife in a blind test. "Who the hell is that? And why can't he sing?" she asked of the Amazon.com track. After some research, it turns out that Amazon.com was not licensed to carry Queen's stuff, but they did have some "great" cover bands. Ho hum, I thought. Seven...

Somewhere in the middle of high school, I decided to expand my musical horizons beyond hip-hop. One of the first groups that captured my attention was The Brand New Heavies . Although technically classified as Acid Jazz (huh?!), they are an electrifying soul ensemble, with vocals by the incomparable N'Dea Davenport (on and off through the years). I rediscovered them last night on last.fm . I thought they had disappeared in the mid-90's, but now I find that they've done a PILE of albums since them. Man, I've got some downloading to do...

Apple cuts us off "So, it's finally happened. Unhappy with other media players being better than iTunes, Apple have apparently decided to stop them from working with the new range of iPods.Who does this affect?This affects Linux users - there's no iTunes for Linux, so popular Linux iPod management tools like gtkpod and Rhythmbox will not work with the new range of iPods.Windows users who just plain don't like iTunes and perfer an alternative like Winamp, Ephpod or many of the other iPod management applications out there." ipodminusitunes: Apple cuts us off Blogged with Flock