Popular Music News Blog Hand-picked most interesting news from popular music world, commented by author of the blog. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 4 1340

Articles from Popular Music News Blog

Why I Gave Up On Hip-Hop 2007-09-10 13:53:24 You think every time you hear a black guy’s voice it’s automatically going to be something bad. Are you against hip-hop? There’s some really complex and challenging hiphop/rap art out there. Check this in-depth analysis of R Kellys epic masterpiece “Trapped in the closet”: http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=3337 ...

Kanye West Flips Out at MTV Europe Awards 2007-09-09 12:53:33 In a tirade riddled with expletives, Kanye said he should have won the prize for Best Video for “Touch The Sky,” because it “cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it. I was jumping across canyons.” … “If I don’t win, the awards show loses credibility,” Kanye said. Hey Kanye, with video editing, I can jump over Earth. Should I win an award now? The day he ACTUALLY jumps a canyon should be noteworthy. Until then, keep making the line longer for people that want to push you into a canyon. If they only would have kept his mouth wired shut…. ...

15 Ways To Get More Out Of Pandora 2007-09-08 11:53:41 There’s just so much you can do with music discovery engine Pandora. But listening to Pandora can be a drag on your system, and its song recommendations can go off the rails if you’re not careful. Check out these 15 ways to get better music - and better performance - out of Pandora. i tried pandora a while back, but it seemed like its song choices always meandered way off from the genre i wanted it to be in…so i ended up switchin to last.fm which has been a dream thus far, i highly reccomend it…seein this though, i guess i’ll have to give pandora at least one more try eh ...

Austinist Releases List of 240 Bands Playing SXSW 2007-09-07 10:53:55 The organizers of South by Southwest (SxSW) Music Festival are holding back the official list of bands this year, fearing that others will “poach” them for day parties and afterparties. Austinist.com has dug into press releases, MySpace, PureVolume, and a dozen other resources to scoop this initial lineup. The only bands worth seeing IMO: Aqueduct, Interpol, Mates Of State, Morrissey, Okkervil River, Voxtrot, Say Hi To Your Mom… Other then that theres a lot of crap on this list. ...

AllofMP3 on Life Support 2007-09-06 10:06:04 Despite recent reports that AllofMP3 is in danger of being overthrown by the RIAA, the media is now detailing litigation strategy that will allow it to remain operational until at least June, 2007. I’m not going to pay for DRM music. That’s just stupid. And i’m not going to pay .99 per song, it’s too much for poor quality. I’d just go to the damn store and get the CD. They need to provide a system just like allofmp3.com in the states and i’d be all over it. ...

Cingular offers free music 2007-09-05 09:15:16 Music on one’s mobile phone is nothing surprising. Downloading it for free is a different matter; both Verizon and Sprint’s service directs to a proprietary store and charges up to $2.50 per song. Cingular plans on another route: they are gearing up to offer free music downloads to compatible phones. They dont offer you shit. All they did was let you put stuff like Napster on your phone… by using a cable and hooking it up to your PC. No over the air stuff. ...

How YouTube is saving the lost art of guitar wanking 2007-09-04 08:03:29 1980s-style shredding faces problematic paradox: “Very often, profoundly exceptional guitar playing is boring to listen to.” YouTube, however, changes those stakes, because it offers us a new way to see the craft at hand. Frankly, technique is a means to an end. It’s not exclusive to the 1980s. We had guys like Jimmy Bryant in the 1950s, then in the 1960s Ollie Halsall and Allan Holdsworth and John McLaughlin. This lead to the 1970s fusion players (most of the 1960s guys but add John Goodsall, Robert Fripp etc.) and the 1980s we know but the 1990s/2000s brought us Shawn Lane (still the most musical of the fast players), Buckethead, and the rest. Like I said, it’s not particularly difficult to get somewhat proficient on the guitar but to make a musical statement on it is harder still when combined with technique. I myself have a youtube guitar instructional video but if I re-did it now, I’d have done it the “JerryC” way, in other words, in ... Youtube

EMusic launches in Europe 2007-09-03 07:17:39 EMusic is the second most successful download site in the US after Apple’s iTunes Music Store, and will sell tracks from 8,500 independent labels in Europe. I love eMusic in concept, higher quality MP3s and no DRM. I use it as my primary download service now, and if they are missing something (which is somewhat offen as big labels are to dumb to figure out that no DRM != piracy) I will sometimes use iTunes, but I would rather do all eMusic. ...

Queen guitarist wraps studies for doctorate 2007-09-02 06:03:50 Brian May, the lead guitarist from rock band Queen, is close to earning his doctorate in astrophysics — more than 35 years after quitting his studies to become a rock star. We need more celebrities like Brian May and less like Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Mike Vick, ect. An amazing guitarist, who built his own guitar (which he still uses), and now with a doctorate in astrophysics? now there’s a role model for kids. (Plus his hair is amazing) ...

Download Any MP3 From MySpace Bands 2007-09-01 05:14:04 Forget about complex methods to downloads MP3 from MySpace, just enter the Band Name and get a list of MP3s to download. Its 100% Free!! The majority of good artists and the ones who are signed have the download option disabled anyways. Typically it’s the struggling garage band trying to get their music out that allows you to download. ... Download

Spice Girls plan to go to Baghdad, Iraq 2007-08-31 04:02:11 They have given their fans the chance to vote for where they would play next on their world tour. And now a massive internet campaign could mean the Spice Girls end up performing… in war-torn Iraq. They’ll never play Baghdad. But it would be smart of their publicist to say its possible just to get the media to talk about them and the “massive internet campaign” that is actually a joke. but it could be twisted in their favor. ...

Cingular offers free music 2007-08-30 03:12:24 Music on one’s mobile phone is nothing surprising. Downloading it for free is a different matter; both Verizon and Sprint’s service directs to a proprietary store and charges up to $2.50 per song. Cingular plans on another route: they are gearing up to offer free music downloads to compatible phones. $15 a month gets you access to Janus DRM WMA files. I don’t care what anyone says… Janus is a good thing… unless exploited (Thanks Fairuse4WM+Yahoo Unlimited) ...

RIAA: CDs Don’t Cost Nearly Enough 2007-08-29 02:00:34 The cost of a CD should be exponentially higher, according to the RIAA. maybe if the content of cd’s were better they could charge more. The demand is not there for 1 or 2 songs sold at $12. I believe that is why Itunes is making a killing, you don’t have to buy all the filler. When cd’s came out they were $15-20 (if my memory serves me correctly) and vinyl could be found for $8. ...

Why New Music Doesn’t Sound As Good As It Did 2007-08-28 01:10:43 Never mind that today’s factory-produced starlets and mini-clones just don’t have the practiced chops of the supergroups of yesteryear, pop in a new CD and you might notice that the quality of the music itself? Maybe something as simple as a snare drum hit just doesn’t sound as crisp and as clear as you’re used to. Why is that? Meh. The comments on the actual story are going on about the actual peak and actual volume levels. Sure, newer stuff goes right up to 11–that’s what you should do with digital if you want to capture the full range. The thing that sucks is that so many people throw out the advantage of getting the full range by compressing the living hell out of the audio. In my own playlist, compare anything from King Crimson’s Lark’s Tounges in Aspic to Opeth’s Blackwater Park. The latter has music that *should* be louder and *should* be softer, but really isn’t, not noticeably. The former, though, well, the first trac ...

Who is YsabellaBrave? A 2nd lonelygirl15, or merely a young talented woman? 2007-08-26 23:58:54 You’ve seen the digg link to her page - it’s been dugg over 2800 times. On her profile at YouTube.com there are photos of a twenty-something woman with a full mouth, dark eyes, and in thumbnails from her videos, ever-changing hair. But the question is - who is she? Is she an act, like lonelygirl15 last year, or an original, shooting to fame? It seems a little weird to me that her homepagerefers to her in the third person: “To contact MaryAnne, please Subscribe and add a comment to a video by clicking above during or after play. Linking or embedding is great, but please do not repost or distribute anything from here without her permission! Copyright 2006-2007,  All rights reserved.” ...