It's Alright, Ma, It's Only Music

Why don't I listen to this show every week? It's Bob Reitman's show on UWM, and it's what radio should be. Bob plays what he likes every week - which means lots of Bob Dylan, and an eclectic range of other stuff, from the old familiar friends(Lou Reed, TheByrds, Joni Mitchell) to the more obscure (Gloria Mann, Robert Johnson) to the unknown (Defiance Ohio). The last band was played by his son, Bobby who seems to love music as much as Bob does, and has a segment on the show. I highly recommend tuning in. And I highly recommend clicking the link for Defiance, Ohio to check them out, and download some free tunes (I highly recommend Oh, Susquehanna!)

"It's Alright Ma, It's Only Music" airs on 89.7FM WUWM at 7pm on Thursdays, and rebroadcasts at 9pm on Sunday. Live streaming is available at the WUWM website.

Amie Street

Over Christmas, my parents bought me my first MP3 player - a 2 GB Zen V from Creative Labs. It's a great little player and, in addition to advancing me one phase further in the music playback game, it has provoked a brand new obsession. I've been spending hour after hour on AmieStreet.com

Amie Street is an mp3 store with an interesting business model. All tracks start out free to download. As the number of downloads increases, the price creeps up, eventualy topping out at 98cents. Customers can throw as little as $5 onto their account. Then, it's click to buy! The artist gets 70% of the sale price (after paying for a $5 listing fee). [Percentage corrected, thanks, commenter!]


But customers can profit, as well. For each dollar spent, the customer is granted a 'Recommendation' or 'Rec'. I've been tossed a few freebie Recs along the way, as well. When you Rec a song, and the price later goes up (due to additional downloads), you get a cut. It's just a few cents store credit, more of a thank you to the fans, and an acknowledgement that the fans are the really important part of the promotional scheme. I don't know if it will last, but it's just the kind of innovative thinking we need to save the recording industry from devolving into a theft-based free-for-all.

I think it's pure genius. Cheap songs attract customers. Free customer-driven marketting attracts the acts.

Christmas Gifts

I am finally the owner of an MP3 player. Mom and Dad gave me a ZenV for Christmas. It was the only one that didn't feel like over-conspicuous consumption to me. The iPod family just makes me wince when I look at the prices, and iTunes just infuriates me with their massively DRMed files. The ZenV are reasonably priced, with flash based memory, and the little buggers are tiny! I'd say about 1 1/2 by 2 inches. easily slipped into the coin pocket on a pair of Levis.

So I spent the afternoon moving my small existing mp3 library over to the new software that comes with the Zen, and cleaning it up. I tell you, we could use a little standardization on the genre tags. OK Go is Indie. Fountains of Wayne in Rock. And I've got no freaking idea what genre Emo represents (bizarre personality comedy? probably not). I consolidated a bunch of them, and spent a bunch of time on it. In the end, I think I'm going to use four genres, none very descriptive to outsiders.

1. The Girl's Music
2. Holiday Music
3. Curiosities
4. Other

The first three categories are a tool for removing stuff I don't want in my regular random playlists... like Hilary Duff, Mylie Cyrus, Auld Lang Syne, The Twelve Days of Christmas, or Louis Farakhan singing Calypso. Other is everything else. I'm guessing that'll be about it. Maybe I'll add a category for female jazz vocalists, but otherwise, I'm set. Now to start dumping CDs onto my hard drive. A long road ahead... a long road, indeed.