Offmessage

We bought a squeezebox for the office a month ago.  In so doing we took the music from being either my or Doug’s choice (we were the only two with speakers attached to our machines) to being anything anyone has brought in, democratically served up on a first come first served basis.

Things we’ve learned?

• It was a fantastic idea.  For a rapidly growing company the music we play in the office has been culture forming, and democratising it was the best thing we could have done
• Man’o'war are shit
• The new UNKLE album is ace
• Pure Reason Revolution are amazing
• Switchfoot are hugely overrated
• Early Iron Maiden is better than I remember
• Lost Horizons by Lemon Jelly is really good
• Almost all post-rock is dreary poo, except one band, God Is An Astronaut, who are very good, but I can’t quite work out why.
• No-one in the office apart from me appreciates Talking Heads
• No-one in the office apart from me will own up to liking the Fields of the Nephilim, but they all nod along when they think no-one’s looking

If you are so inclined you can see what we’re listening to right now over at last.fm, where we scrobble as Isotoma.

Fake Steve Jobs (who, strangely, I was only turned on to by this post slating him over Technology Evangelist) has a fantastic write up about the “Universal doesn’t renew iTunes contract” story.  What the man says is true.

The music industry nobs have finally worked out what we’re doing

Apparently.

Environmental groups claim the music industry’s transition from physical to digital has no discernible benefit to the environment and, in the short term, is actually causing more harm than good.

Rather obvious when you think about it…  Apple embeds your account information in its un-DRMed downloads.

Fascinating analysis of the new Hi Five format from Rhino (as sold through the Sonly store). A mini greatest hits really appeals (to me, at least).

Thanks to Monty for pointing me at this link

Are JPEGs the new album covers?.

From the WSJ:

• US CD sales for the first three months of this year plunged 20% from a year earlier,
• The sharp slide in sales of CDs has far eclipsed the growth in sales of digital downloads,
• About 800 US music stores closed in 2006 alone,
• This year has already seen the two lowest-selling US No. 1 albums since current sales recording processes were set up in 1991,
• oh, and Apple have sold over 100million iPods

I wouldn’t want to be a music exec in 2007. It ain’t gonna be pretty.

Very interesting post over at TechCrunch about Amie Street Music. They offer DRM-free music downloads whose price varies according to popularity. All tracks start off free, and the price rises as the track is downloaded more often (to a maximum of $0.98). Fascinating idea. As Monsieur Arrington says Market driven prices and no DRM = Music Nirvana. Shame that the first release from more mainstream labels/artist is the Barenaked Ladies, but you can’t have everything I guess.