The online music retail market is slowly catching up with what its customers have wanted for years. While the iTunes Music Store leads sales with its relatively low-quality, DRM-encumbered files, many customers have for a long time been asking for an open subscription model. Under this scheme, you would pay a regular amount to gain [...]
Back in 2005 Myspace became the most important tool for bands to get themselves noticed online. The huge mainstream uptake of the service meant there was a ready audience of potential fans for eager unsigned acts to tap into.
The good times didn’t last though. It didn’t take long for fatigue to set in amongst Myspace’s [...]
I’ve been thinking about launching a 14sandwiches podcast for a few weeks now. It needed the right format though. After all, me talking non-stop would be rather boring. So, when the chance to interview UK hip-hop’s brightest star, Sway, came up it seemed like the perfect excuse to put those podcast plans into action.
Sway has [...]
Is this the first song to be commissioned via Twitter? A couple of weeks ago Manchester-based music blogger Justhipper posted a message on Twitter saying:
“Dear Twitter musicians. For my birthday, can somebody write me a bleepy electronic song about robotic pigs driving flying cars?”
Quite why she wanted that particular subject matter I have no idea. However, [...]
Kevin Rose may have been stirring things up among Apple rumour-mongers today but a more interesting rumour was doing the rounds earlier in the week. The suggestion, resurrected from a few months ago, was that Apple would soon launch a subscription plan for iTunes music downloads.
Such a move would certainly be welcome. The idea of [...]
My post on Sunday about Apple cutting its customers’ legs off was written as a result of my frustration at not being able to do a simple thing - burn a DVD of a film purchased from iTunes. In the end I decided to rent the film instead and watch it [...]
This week a major victory was won for the old fogies of the music world. The European Union announced a plan to extend the copyright term on recordings from 50 to 95 years. This means that an aging rocker who played washboard on a skiffle hit back in 1959 won’t need to worry about where [...]
It was with a smile on my face that I read last night’s announcement of the new Last.fm iPhone app. I make no secret of the fact I love Last.fm. Even being bought by CBS hasn’t stopped them being ’some nice people in London who do brilliant things with music and social media’.
The new iPhone [...]
For an independent musician such as myself, it’s often difficult to make money from music. Having another job is usually the only way to make ends meet while you carve out a niche for yourself in the music world in your spare time.
So often, web services like Myspace and Virb are keen to get [...]
After taking part in the Signal Patterns personality test the other day, I thought I’d try their music test. The personality test was an interesting insight into who I am (turns out I’m intellectual, aesthetic and astute, apparently). While that test revealed a pretty accurate description of who I am, I’m incredibly [...]
