Since Radiohead launched the contest for remixing “Nude”, a lot of things have been appearing here and there, but this HAS to be the most creative one. This one is played by:

• Sinclair ZX Spectrum – Guitars (rhythm & lead)
• Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer – Drums
• HP Scanjet 3c – Bass Guitar
• Hard Drive array – Act as a collection of bad speakers – Vocals & FX

 

Enjoy!

Big Ideas (Don’t get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

 

It’s very interesting to see all the different stuff Radiohead is doing online these days. From “giving away” their music to their own social network… I think the message is clear, and they now know that there is no better way to distribute their stuff and to be in contact with their fans than the internet.

Congratulations for Dany! You can see all the videos at Pitchfork.

(Found via Esquizopedia)

Well, it’s true that I haven’t been able to post for a while. To be truthful, I’ve been busy with video games, downloading, traveling a bit and very important stuff like that.

It’s funny how my mind works sometimes, but I have this draft saved since november in which I tried to explain our (Replica’s) experience with IODA, but this was meant to come out as soon as the new record hit the stores, but unfortunately this hasn’t happened yet, but still, I was waiting for it to happen until I posted anything else. Because you know… it was like the big event.

IODA is a very interesting concept we’ve been working with. I call it the “modern music distributor”. They call themselves “the industry-leading digital distribution company for the global independent music community“.

Since october we contacted Humberto Carmona (awesome dude), and he liked very much our material, so we gave a list of online stores we wanted to be in, which included iTunes, Amazon, Beatport and Bleep, among others. I consider myself a BIG fan of Bleep, and when Humberto told us that Bleep actually selects the material they sell I thought it was going to be a long shot, but they actually approved it and it was supposed to come out around december, but we were warned about usual delay issues so I decided today to break the silence a bit about it and to tell ya’ll the great experience we had with IODA.

So far our fist ep is already on sale on Amazon, iTunes and others (as I pointed earlier) and we couldn’t be happier.

Not because of a possible revenue share, but for the exposure. And I’m very confident that when we hit Bleep it would definitely mean a lot. It’s the right music at the right place. A place where Djs research for music do that they can play it on clubs or radio stations. And this goes as well for Beatport. So, pointing the obvious, we’re very happy with IODA, hopefully we’ll be able to work some more with them. If you have a band you should try it, I totally recommend it.

Finally, I know how stupid is to make New Years resolutions. I do believe that every single day is a great moment to change your life, but a New Year has a taste of conquer, and I always want to conquer the next year, so it’s a great excuse to put down some rules around and I’ll do my best to post as often as possible.

Pointing the obvious… happy new year.

This of course is something we wanted just to “be there” and to experience the store as a band. I’m still going to give the new album for free as soon as it is ready (we decided to make some last minute changes).

Pointing the obvious I’m not encouraging to buy this album, I just wanted to share the moment

A few day later I found this, one of the most interesting experiments I’ve seen in a while.

I’m a big fan of nerdy sequencers, so pointing the obvious this has to be the geekiest sequencer out there, at least for now. You can change pitch, velocity and even the length of the multiple samples on each one of the 6 sides of the cube.

This seems to be one of many interesting experiments done with Shockwave that you can find in Abstractmachine.net. It is totally worth a visit and spending some time on these online toys that explore both audio and visual fields (so this might be a good time to take out those headphones you carry around).

What really interests me is that years ago the only way to tell if an artist was popular was record sales, but today there are lots of people that use P2P networks as an “on-demand radio station” which, pointing the obvious, can be tracked and measured rather than the traditional radio, in which you don’t really know if someone who has the device on is really listening or cooking breakfast for the kids.

As Eduardo puts it, having an intensive research on music trends can be quite expensive, but watching the activity on P2P networks suddenly seems like a friendly idea, even though P2P is still “the enemy”. Perhaps, if record labels are so into these networks, we are close to finding a way to keep it free to users and make these companies earn some money from their contents, because its pretty darn obvious that the labels can be benefited from this new way of consuming:

In a business, this type of market foresight can be invaluable. Nearly always leading to more profits, customers feel happier and more satisfied with the products they are offered, leading to greater loyalty longer-term.

Link. Via ALT1040

I love it when you can find quality stuff for free like this, and it doesn’t come as a surprise to me because it’s known that Trent Reznor and the band have been offering some of the songs on Apple’s GarageBand format since “With Teeth” (previous to the newest album), so they make it easy for the fans to come up with great stuff like this.

Another example? LCDRemixed.com, a website that hosts a complete version of “Sound of Silver” from LCD Soundsystem (and calls it “Sounds Like Silver“). These guys are the team also responsible for remixing The Prodigy’s “Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned” and “Push The Button” from The Chemical Brothers (called “Flip The Switch“).

Pointing the obvious, if you wish to generate a “forward-thinking-like” response, you have to begin with your own actions and stepping at least a bit outside standard procedures. Great things may come from those actions.

Via: Digg

Despite labels’ efforts to keep new music under wraps, it’s no longer a question of if an album will appear online before its official release date, but rather when and how. Here’s why.

An extensive explanation of why a new record gets leaked on the internet. I wonder if all these reasons are not related to the artists?

Jack White went crazy about the leak of his latest White Stripes album but then he cleared out that that leak affected him as the master recording owner rather than him as an artist. Is this about money? I’m not sure. As for today, Icky Thump has over 3, 000 downloads on the “not so popular” p2p network OiNK, which tells me that at least a thousand of the downloaders are hardcore fans and they probably bought the record when it came out, but the White Stripes got another 2, 000 people to listen to it and maybe, some of them, bought it as well. As for the ones that didn’t buy it I could almost be sure that they were not going to spend money anyway. And this is only one tracker of thousands out there.

I pointed earlier at the Michael Moore case and his movie Sicko (also leaked previous to the official launch). It went pretty well on sales as well as the latest album from Linkin Park… also leaked…

Pointing the obvious, I think we should ask ourselves if a leak is the end of your career or a great marketing tool for promoting new material. I’ve already made my statement and I stand on the idea that it really helps.

An extensive study of many similar stories is available on the original post.

It’s called Sellaband, and it’s basically a system that supports new artists from their fans. They put it like this:

1. Find believers (people who will be willing to give up some cash for the project)
2. Record a CD
3. Make money

Now, the most interesting thing is that Sellaband is supporting free downloads, which I believe is great for promoting new (or maybe not that new) bands. So you raise fans (5, 000 to be exact), and each one of them gives away $10 bucks so that Sellaband can hire an A&R expert that will guide you through the recording process with a producer (also by Sellaband) in a “state-of-the-art” studio. There you can build your CD (actually a limited edition CD) which of course will go to all the 5, 000 believers you gathered, and then you give away the music on the internet so that you can get more fans. Sellaband says they’ll only give away three of the songs which I believe circles around the same concept we’re trying to escape but, what the hell… someone has got to make money!
What they do is that they put up for sale the rest of your songs on their website as paid downloads. Each download costs $50 cents and the profits go to you of course, your believers (interesting) and Sellaband. In addition, the website has advertising that generates profit to all members of this business as well, based on market share which basically means the more unique downloads you generate, the more money you make (and of course your fans will too).

Then you have the choice to ask for more copies of your CD so that you can sell it at gigs (technique proven to be VERY effective), your website, local stores, etc. You can set the price of this CD but you have to save $2 dollars for your fans and Sellaband gets nothing, but they’ll put the CD for sale as well on their own terms. For offline sales you get nothing, for online sales you get an equal revenue share with your fans as well.

I know what you are thinking, these guys must own all my music after all, but they say “no strings attached”. You are free to go whenever you like through the whole process. I find this very interesting as a band member, but also as a music fan. As a believer, you’ll notice you can make an investment and get some money in return (a small one though), but it’s not all about Sellaband or the artists, so it is quite a project.

As for today I haven’t heard of anyone of the artists nor the music that came out from Sellaband but they say there are some success stories so far (from both believers and artists). They also have a chart that shows how much money the artists have made so far.

Pointing the obvious, I’m not sure if this is the answer or the next big thing, but at least it is a new way of making music and money. It is very important that new ideas like this come out and break the paradigm of the music business as we know it.

Found via: Springwise

Update: I forgot to point out that Amazon decided earlier this month to invest on Amie Street, one of the most interesting startups in the music biz. I posted about it on Dixo if anyone is interested. Here is a link to the original post.

As a friend always says: “music is culture, and it has to be shared”

A few days ago I was reading about Sicko, the new movie from Michael Moore (it’s great, I totally recommend it), and how it had a great revenue from the box office even when it got entirely leaked weeks after its arrival on theaters. The whole projection they had for the box office was reached and it had already been seen by thousands of people in the U. S. Is this luck?

I believe music can achieve the same results, and it can get a lot better. I think today we suffer from what I call “disposable music”, and while I was talking to a friend about this he said something you’ll find very interesting:

In the 80’s, you listened to the radio. Artists were presented there, along with their hits. If the band was lucky (or big) enough you could find the record in stores, so if you really liked it, you could go and purchase it. Then became the ritual of listening it a thousand times if it was necessary while reading the box again and again until you learned the lyrics for you favorite song. Actually, listening to the record in your house needed of some sort of attention and time. Today, we can download (legally or illegally) hundreds of songs. If you really are into music, you can get from 5 to 10 records every week. All of them new. If you are a bit obsessed maybe more, who knows, but the fact is that most of this music you’ll probably hear just 1 or 2 times. If you really really like one song maybe you’ll stick to it for around a month or so. And all of this music is never to return to your playlists.

So what’s the point with selling records these days? As Rafa J. pointed out on his comment in the last post, the CD format is due to disappear very soon, I mean, we already know that iTunes is the third largest music retailer in the U. S.

But… and there is always a but… Mexico is not quite the same as other countries. Here is a funny example. We have this band called Porter. This guys went from zero to famous with just one song and this song wasn’t even published when it suddenly got some serious heavy rotation (as requested by listeners) on the radio. So, they started playing live a lot around the country (still without any published song) and several months later they decide to make their record by themselves, and came out with a relatively small number of them to sell it on venues. Early this year we had the Vive Latino 2007 festival and they sold 4, 500 copies of their newest material (second album) that day. They sold it “small”, and now, you can find pirate copies in every corner of the city and of course on every peer-to-peer network.

When Moby released “Play” in 1999 it became the first record ever to license each and every track on it. This of course gave him a significant amount of money that didn’t came from the record sales. It was mind opener for a lot of artists that were searching for different ways of commercializing their music. Moby managed to put his songs in several movies, television shows and commercials, and this helped of course to keep the record on the charts for years after the release. It has sold over ten million copies worldwide.

So, pointing the obvious, I think the best way of succeeding in the music biz is to get your songs heard as much as you can without worrying about the money at least until you are known. Licensing over songs is a great opportunity to earn some money and get heard. At the same time, if you choose not to leak your songs, you can always use other online alternatives like WE7, Amie Street, GoodStorm Music, websites like MySpace and other social networks, and of course Creative Commons (here is a post I made about this).

Since this blog is read only by 3 people I’ll give you a special gift Hope you like it!

P. D. Recently two torrent trackers were shut down in Spain, and their founders ended up in jail for copyright infringements. According to the authorities, they are responsible for a loss of 500, 000 €

A true act of ignorance if you ask me, some people just don’t get it.

Link: BitTorrent Sites Shut Down, Admins Arrested