More music selling, sharing madness is upon us with Google Music and iTunes Match. A few months ago I started using Spotify. Here’s what I briefly am feeling now on overall topic. I’m still discovering most of my music via YouTube. I like obscur 80s electronic releases and even better the occasional rare demo tapes. If I find some new lost or interesting song on YouTube Google’s great search engine groups related videos in the sidebar. I’ve found over 100 songs that way in just a couple of months. Some of the songs I find on iTunes and then buy. Some will never be for sale anywhere. For example, a 1981 demo cassette uploaded in Italy with only 2 YouTube views. I “save” those songs audio and add it to my iTunes library. Apple fanboyism aside iTunes Match is incredible for my use case. It now takes all my purchased songs and obscur finds and let’s me have them everywhere. I thought I would use Spotify more but my friends who I follow aren’t listening to anything I really want to hear. The few Spotify playlist websites aren’t full of playlists that interest me. It’s an amazing service but I haven’t clicked with it yet. I’m not giving up on it yet though. I live in Gmail and Google docs all day. I’m trying to like Google+ but although I post things there my engagement seems low. The best thing about Google music will be it’s Google+ integration. Of course if Google+ doesn’t keep my interest then that’s out the window. As a musician I wonder what the cut will be for Indies on G+?

“If you want the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you haven’t purchased from iTunes, iTunes Match is the perfect solution. It’s built right into the iTunes app on your Mac or PC and the Music app on your iOS devices. And it lets you store your entire collection, including music you’ve imported from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes. For just $24.99 a year.” – Apple.com

Oliver’s Early Electronic Playlist on Youtube: click here

Happy Birthday – 4 Years – Wire to the Ear by thingstocome

It’s hard for me to believe that I have been writing to you for 4 years. In that time there were 1,235 posts, 622,235 Unique Visitors and a whole lot of conversation. The two most popular posts so far haven been “Is learning at the SAE Institute Worthwhile?” (link) and “Keep your channel faders low and the master at 0db!” (link). What’s a birthday without gifts? So I bought myself a Jomox Mbrane from Novamusik. Prepare for snare! I also loaded up the Songify app and did a disservice to the world with the diddy above. Thank you for reading and commenting. Stay on the rhythm!

“Happy Birthday to You”, also known more simply as “Happy Birthday”, is a song that is traditionally sung to celebrate the anniversary of a person’s birth. According to the 1998 Guinness Book of World Records, “Happy Birthday to You” is the most recognized song in the English language, followed by “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” The song’s base lyrics have been translated into at least 18 languages.” – Wikipedia

photo credit: Edg2s

If you are in the New York City area next weekend, September 24 come to SAE on 1293 Broadway and hang out with Ableton, Propellerheads, Steinberg, Keyboard Magazine, Celemony (Melodyne), SSL, IK Multimedia and many more pro-audio companies. They set up exhibits in the classrooms and practice rooms. It’s a great chance to see and demo new (sometimes yet released/announced) products. There is also an extensive panel series. You can sit and watch a group of people chat about a number of music related topics. I will be speaking on the “The Future Tech Tools Guide: How to us new music platforms & APPs to build your business & create a better workflow.” panel. The event is free but you have to register in advance. Come say hello: imsta.org/imsta_festa.php

“IMSTA FESTA, a celebration of music technology, features exhibits from the major music technology companies on the market today as well as the highly educating Shocklee Innertainment Panel series about music, creativity and business. Come hang out with NYC’s community of musicians, producers, engineers, DJ’s, artists, managers, studio owners, coders, music students and audio tech enthusiasts. You never know who you may run into.” – imsta.org

Register today: imsta.org/imsta_festa

I’ve been really pleased with all the remixes people have been sending me for Joyless Pleasure. I’m still waiting for a few but Maurice is already well into the album artwork. I’m keeping most of the mixes unheard for now but one of the mixes is out of the bag and happily already charting. Everyone knows Magda. She’s one of the big one so I’m pleased to post she’s got Miro’s remix of Hostage at number 3 on her most recent chart.

“Miro’s creative sound architecture shines in a variety of interpretations, living between romantic gloom, absurd musicality and rhythm mathematics that could be a Stanley Kubrick version of modern dance music whilst retaining functionality. His mostly dense assemblies enrapture the fantasy thursty listener, who can expect episodic surreal surprises. His deepest passion for detail and visionary audio adventures can be heard regularly on his label Lazerslut and has been unveiled on labels such as Klickhaus, Harthouse, Tic Tac Toe Records and several others.”

For more info: xlr8r.com/podcast/2011/08/magda

The UK Riots will have an effect on independent and electronic music. The Sony DADC warehouse has been burned down. It contains large stocks of records from Warp and others. I’m certain some of these labels won’t survive this. To see a full list of those effected: click here.

“Numerous independent record labels fear they have lost a catastrophic amount of stock in a fire at a distribution warehouse in north London during the riots in the capital on Monday night. A three-storey, 20,000 square-metre building in Enfield, owned by Sony DADC and holding stock to be distributed by the Pias Group, was burned to the ground.” – guardian.co.uk

For more info: guardian.co.uk/independent-record…

A friend of mine Emrie Sherwood decided she needed to promote her album Richter Feat Eden. She didn’t think the label was doing enough so she hired her co-worker to do what you see above. Is the the best $5 or worst $5 ever spent? God help us she apparently has more on the way…

“I hired 5 more of these kinds of guys.” – Emrie Sherwood

UPDATE: Interesting (and kinda wow) this isn’t one of her co-workers! She used this website to hire the guy: fiverr.com. That actually is a pretty cool idea.

Hear the original song: iTunes or Beatport

I hated the old Beatport Flash site. It was slow, the tiny fonts got on my nerves and I couldn’t easily share URLs to releases. There’s an all new Beatport based on HTML5 and I’m really enjoying it. There really isn’t a better way for most DJs to music up before the weekend than this.

- Track pages with BPM, harmonic key & waveforms
- More personalized recommendations
- Improved search
- Even deeper list-digging capabilities
- HTML5 for access on multiple devices
- Individual track pages
- Top releases ranked separately” – gearjunkies.com

For more info: beatport.com

So the biggest of the all you can eat streaming music services has arrived in America. You can read a mountain about Spotify everywhere so I’ll just chime in with my own opinion.

I feel a little old. I like owning my music. I have a giant record, cassette and MP3 library. It’s stupid I know. And now what? Everyone can just have everything for a monthly fee? That’s unfair! But wait do they have everything? What about Scarecrow “Black Door”? I bet they don’t have that. If they do I will probably join. Can anyone verify that for me? I hear the social sharing stuff is good. Although I think it’s pretty easy to post a Youtube link into Facebook these days. On a positive note I do think it’s pretty futury to have access to all the music ever made anywhere you are. Funny that last part should carry a lot of weight with me.

As a musician it seems this is another blow to making income from music sales. I do make some nice “buy a new synth every now and then” money from my iTunes sales. But the streaming services? You really have to have a mega hit for all those fractions of pennies to add up.

So what do you think? Are any of you loving members of Rdio (the Spotify like competitor)?

“The award-winning music service that’s taken Europe by storm has now come to U.S. shores. Millions of tracks ready to play instantly, on your computer and your phone. Any track, anytime, anywhere. And it’s free!” – spotify.com

For more info: spotify.com

I often joke on this blog that the vintage and vintage sounding pro-audio equipment is actually helping me build a time machine to the 80s. While I’m in love with modern times (internet, iPads) I hold the 80s in high regard as the decade man decided to come to the future. The electronic music scene was full of originality. Most of the bands I listened to in 1987 sounded quite different from each other. Of course this must have to do with my age. Or is it something else? Simon Reynolds new book Retromania which will be released on July 19th holds a mirror up to society and asks if we have run out of ideas. Do you think we have?

“We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. Band re-formations and reunion tours, expanded reissues of classic albums and outtake-crammed box sets, remakes and sequels, tribute albums and mash-ups . . . But what happens when we run out of past? Are we heading toward a sort of culturalecological catastrophe where the archival stream of pop history has been exhausted?

Simon Reynolds, one of the finest music writers of his generation, argues that we have indeed reached a tipping point, and that although earlier eras had their own obsessions with antiquity—the Renaissance with its admiration for Roman and Greek classicism, the Gothic movement’s invocations of medievalism—never has there been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its own immediate past. Retromania is the first book to examine the retro industry and ask the question: Is this retromania a death knell for any originality and distinctiveness of our own?”

For more info: Retromania at Amazon.com

Just watch the first few minutes of this to see Billy Preston dance! Believe it or not I can dance like that. I’m not kidding. I don’t have the yellow outfit though. Keep on watching it’s worth it.

“This documentary explores the reason why so few companies currently control the music played on the radio and for sale at retail stores, and whether corporations really have the power to silence musical innovation.” – talenthouselive.com

Watch direct on Hulu: hulu.com/watch/62945/before-the-music-dies