Offmessage

I done gone made a thing – portify converts audio files from any format to one more suitable for your portable player.  For me, sadly, that means converting everything to mp3.

Testers are welcome, particularly on non-Linux platforms, but please be gentle

Florence and the Machine’s cover of You Got The Love is really starting to get on my tits.  If I hear one more gushing “ooh, what a great version” or, worse, one more person telling me what a great track it is, completely unaware of the original, I shall be moved to violence.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is John Truelove’s original version – melding Candi Staton’s acapella vocal with Frankie Knuckles Your Love in the one true version. Re-released, remixed, re-recorded many many times this is, for me at least, the one we should all remember.

And please, if we’re going to get gooey about modern cover versions, sod Florence and The Machine and Joss Stone.  Try The XX version instead.

The record industry may well be dead (or so they say), but there are some fine ideas being tested out at the moment…

Mos Def is selling t-shirts that come with download codes for his latest album, while The Flaming Lips are selling gig tickets that come with a download code for a ‘bootleg’ taken from the mixing desk on the night you went (quoted from their latest mailer):

the bundle will come with a ticket to see the band live along with an exclusive online digital EP that will contain 3 songs from the upcoming record – “Convinced of The Hex,” “The Impulse,” and “Silver Trembling Hands” plus three additional rare b-side tracks that we’ve selected. In addition to the ep, the bundle includes a digital download bootleg of the same show that you attend, which will be available after the show.

I have to say the Lips idea is awesome – I’m always on the look out for bootlegs, and to get one from the night I was there? well…

Girl Talk’s latest album Feed The Animals is awesome.  It’s also made up entirely of samples (list of some of which can be found at wikipedia). It’s not going to be available for long is my bet, so download it while you can.

It’s on a “pay as much as you want” basis, but $5 gets you FLACs.

As a piece of music it’s fantastic; as an exercise in sampling it’s technically faultless; and it’s a trainspotter’s paradise. Get it while you can.

This is fascinating. Apparently “average teenager’s iPod has 842 illegal music tracks“. Nice headline. In the detail, however, comes the fact that on average that iPod has 1770 tracks, meaning that only 48% of the tracks are “illegal”. In the under 18 age group this figure grows to 61%.

When I left home (1990) I took roughly 50 prerecorded purchased albums on cassette with me. In those days there were approximately 10 tracks to an album; none of these 16 track monsters you get today. That means I had roughly 500 legal tracks on cassette. At the same time I had about 100 7″ and 12″ singles, many of which were repeats of album tracks, adding roughly another 200 tracks.

Alongside my “legal” music I had 40 TDK D90 cassettes (I know this because I was sad enough to number them). These had on average 20 tracks each. That’s 800 “illegal” tracks.

So, age 18, I had roughly 1,500 tracks, of which 53% where “illegal”.

This is remarkably close to the current figures. What’s more interesting to me is that I was properly obsessive about music at that age. But, I had less than the current average total number, and less than the current average “legal” number.

So let’s get this straight. Today’s average music consumer has more legal tracks than an obsessive music collector of 20 years ago.

“…this totally dwarfs that, and anything we expected”

Fergal – bite me.

Over and over and over and over

Like a monkey with a miniature cymbal

The joy of repetition really is in you

More mp3s.  We’ve been wandering down the French electro route in the office for a while now; Kitsune, Digitalism, Simian Mobile Disco, Justice, that kind of thing.  We’ve also been rather enjoying the Fabric/FabricLive series.  To find Justice’s rejected Fabric Mix linked to from MeFi was, as you can imagine, a bit of a bonus.  (Although you can see why it was rejected, to be fair – it isn’t traditional Fabric fare).

Audio.out’s latest post, with the full length Magnetic Gravity Arc Suite (all 8 mixes of Gravitational Arc of 10 in one almighty megamix), the full length Blue Room and the full length Space.  All in one glorious post.  I am in early nineties heaven.

A while back MeFi pointed the world at Funky16Corners for his awesome Rubber Souled Beatles covers mix.  He didn’t stop there though.  What followed was installments 2 and 3 of Rubber Souled and Soul Satisfaction.  If you loves the funk (and who don’t?) you know where to point your RSS reader.

And… If that weren’t enough, he also maintains a psyche/garage blog over at Iron Leg (that persuaded me to buy Bull of the Woods).  My kind of guy.

Radiohead let fans pick their own price for the latest album.

For all these “end of the music industry” type commentators (like Bob Lefsetz: This is the industry’s worst nightmare. Superstar band, THE superstar band, forging ahead by its own wits. Proving that others can too. And they will.)… I have one question… Who exactly made them THE superstar band? And who promoted the first 6 albums?

Many acts have made the self same switch already – unsigned, self released, promoted entirely on the web. Cliff Richard. Simply Red. Marillion. Those in the know say Robbie is only an album or so away as well. This is simply getting out at the top of the market. Milking a huge and increasingly static fanbase is not really revolutionary behaviour. Just because we (the blogosphere) are part of that huge and static fanbase does not mean that Radiohead are different, it just means we are getting old. Sorry about that.

(Links from this BoingBoing article)