Category: Music
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Julie Fowlis Live at Union Chapel
A great little gig at the wonderful Union Chapel in Islington with Julie Fowlis singing and playing some superb music in Gaelic. It was real toe-tapping stuff. And the support from Emily Smith was excellent too. I picked up her most recent album at the back of the hall on the way out. More photos…
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Sorting Out Your Music
It’s come to my attention that over the last couple of years, although I still buy and listen to a lot of music, too much of it is through my iPod. Although I’ve got some half-decent Sennheiser earphones (i.e. not the ones that came with the device which are embarrassingly bad), that’s not really the…
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Musical Tastes and Personality
A friend of mine pointed me towards this story based on some research that suggests that your musical tastes are linked to your personality. I think she took exception to the idea that “heavy metal fans are gentle.” Obviously, making broad genearlisations like that is nonsense, but I wanted to learn a little more about…
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Cliq
UBC today announced that it was closing down the phone service Cliq while it continues to look towards “connected” radios which will become available later in the year for its future business model. Cliq worked by installing a JAVA app on your mobile that used the data network. The service monitored the output of 28…
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Feist
The FX channel has rather smartly just started showing the very excellent Colbert Report. It’d be great if they showed it at 9.00pm just after More 4 has shown its sister The Daily Show. But anything’s better than nothing. This week, both shows are off, but we get repeats, which are welcome since in this…
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When is Free Really Free?
In some respects, this is a continuation of my last entry about Qtrax. While the final position of Qtrax has yet to be established, it’s interesting to look at another high profile example that got plenty of coverage last year – Nokia’s Comes With Music package. As you may or may not recall, Nokia announced…
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Qtrax
So what’s the deal with Qtrax? On Saturday, Channel 4 News carried a report highlighting the launch of a new music service. Qtrax, they reported, had signed deals with the big four record companies and would be launching their free music service on Sunday. Details were a little sketchy, but it was clear that the…
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Summarising Digital Music
More on the music industry will be forthcoming. But today the IFPI which represents the recording industry worldwide has published it’s digital music report. The report runs to 28 pages including front and back covers, a contents page, three full pages of pictures and drawings, and a list of members. But we’re all busy people,…
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Tin-Pan Dead End Alley
“Pandora’s ex-customers in the UK will be wondering why the service they want can’t be catered for by the recording industry. And they are not alone – for what are the millions of illicit peer-to-peer file-sharers, but a huge potential market? Internet users are showing the industry how they want their music in the digital…
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Pandora and Internet Radio Services
If you’re interested in this sort of thing, then you’ll already know that Pandora is shutting down in the UK. The full email sent to Pandora users is on James’ site. As the email explains, the service has been shut down because they were unable to come to an agreement with the music rights organisations…
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Ordinary Song
A good song, with a very good and very “radio” video… Via Why That’s Delightful
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Some More Decent Radio (and TV)
I missed one other programme that I should have mentioned the other day – this Saturday’s Archive Hours is called God, Pirates and Ovaltineys. “Sean Street investigates the history of the cultural battle between the BBC and commercial radio, which predates the pirate music stations of the 1960s by several decades.” That’s got to be…
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US Album Sales Fall
I’m really not sure what to make of the news that US album sales fell by 9.5% in 2007, and down 15% on 2006. Digital sales increased by a whopping 45% but only 10% of them are albums. Basically, as we know, most people only buy the tracks they want and not the whole album.…