I subscribe to eMusic.com, a damn fine way to load up on good tunes without ripping off the musicians. For fifteen bucks a month I can download sixty-five tracks, and I can feel good about it because the giant record label assholes don’t get squat. The right people get paid. And let’s face it, the big label’s sales are slumping not because of piracy but because the independent labels have done a better job moving with the times. Indy sales are up.
So today was download day. On what, out of the vast musical universe, did I blow my precious sixty-five? I’m glad you asked!
- Johnny Cash, The Sun Sessions, Vol 1. – nothing left to say, except listen again to I Walk the Line, and listen to the Man in Black hum, slightly discordant, as he introduces the next refrain. Step back in awe.
- Orchestral Works Of Liadov – Symphony Orchestra of Russia under Veronika Dudarova – still digging into Russian orchestral stuff. It’s a good trip.
- Giggles in the Dark – Lesbians on Ecstacy – not sure what to make of this one yet. Riot Grrrl remixed. I think I like it.
- The Time Of The Preacher by Johnny Cash– off the No Depression: What It Sounds Like Vol. 1 album, and way better than any other track on the disk. Johnny Cash goes Seattle and the result just plain rocks.
- Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven by godspeed you! black emperor – I can’t describe it, I just like it. Someone somewhere said ‘post-rock’, but I call it music.
- Golden Ocean by 50 Foot Wave – After the debut EP, I have been waiting anxiously for more from these guys. I was not disappointed. This album rocks all over the place.
Good tunes, man, good tunes.
For some reason the ‘now playing’ script does not like Tchaikovsky. I’ll figure it out later. I just wanted you all to know that I was all cultured and shit, and that I’m listening to that right now.
roll over beethoven and tell tchaikovsky the news.
This sounds really good. Especially the part about helping the musicians and not the conglomerates.
I dunno what to do because I really like physically holding something in my hand…reading the liner notes…filing on the bookshelf…eLuddite.com
Hey, Jesse, You might try music.download.com. It’s free, but in general you can only download a couple of tracks from a given album. You can find out if you like the band, and if you do, you can buy the CD directly from the band’s Web site. It’s a good way for you to experiment without risk, and the band still gets a larger cut than if you bought in a music store. The site is reasonably helpful at guiding you to similar bands if you find one you like.
The difference between the popular bands on the big labels and the obscure guys just getting by: the marketing budget.
Well, that’s a bit of an oversimplification — at least someone must have liked the band to allocate a marketing budget to it, but I think we’ll all agree that the big labels are driven by finincial necessity to be somewhat formulaic.
This is something I will have to face in my own profession as well. Fortunately, in my genre I’m pretty comfortable with the formula.