Category: Music

Music related items.

30 Days of Coldplay – Dear God

So recently I had been listening to this XM station – XM Music Lab on channel 51. It was pretty good, played a good mix of music including Pink Floyd and Primus, and not just the “popular” tracks either. I thought I found my new station! Then I realized that the channel I was listening to online was not on the device in my car. Figures.

I had no other choice but to accept the fact that I could only listen to that station over the Internet – fine. Fast forward a few days and I click on channel 51 and I hear Coldplay. I let it play figuring the next song will be better. Nope, it was another Coldplay song. So open up my XM channel list and look to see what’s on. Sure enough, they took away the Music Lab and replaced it with 30 Days of Coldplay! Damnit! Thanks XM, you asstards.

Then I thought to myself, does Coldplay even have that many songs that it could possibly warrant taking over a station for entire month? As it turns out, no – they don’t. I decided to give it a try, maybe there are some Coldplay songs that haven’t been used in an iPod commercial or something that I might like, after all there are a few Coldplay songs I don’t mind. In 1.5 hours I heard that shit-awful song “Viva la Vida” 2 times! I had heard them talking about how Chris Martin had helped Jay-Z with a song. That sounded interesting, but they never played it.

I want my Music Lab back. Coldplay may be good, but they’re not that good.

Radiohead’s New Video, Now With Frickin’ Lasers!

Radiohead seems to love technology as much as music. Cool. What’s even cooler is now you can go interact with a 3D version at Google!

In Radiohead’s new video for “House of Cards”, no cameras or lights were used. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects. The video was created entirely with visualizations of that data.

NIN: The Slip Download Map

As most people (certainly any respecting Nine Inch Nails fan) know, NIN offered their latest album “The Slip” free for download on the Internet. Trent and the rest of NIN encouraged you to download, remix, share, etc. what they offered. After the success of Radiohead’s similar concept, NIN was ready to try it with their own work rather than that of someone they produced, such as Saul Williams’ album “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust.”

First, check out the cool data mapping representing downloads of their latest album according to geographic region: (click images for biggie size)
NIN Downloads USA and MexicoNIN Downloads EuropeNIN Downloads AsiaNIN Downloads AustraliaNIN Downloads South America
(If you have Google Earth installed, you can download the KML file.)

While Trent Reznor was clearly upset at the outcome of offering Saul’s album to the public with a chance for fans to pay or download for free – it wasn’t all that surprising. Most die-hard NIN fans had never heard of Saul Williams. Why would they pay for an album from an artist they’ve never heard of? It felt like a gimmick everyone is used to. You hear 1 good song on the radio, buy the album and instantly become disappointed that the only good song was the one you heard on the radio. You just paid $15 bucks for 1 song. I believe that is why most people didn’t opt to pay (contribute) to their free download.

However, it’s a different story with a band such as NIN with a long standing fan-base and a lot of creditability on their side. I don’t believe profit numbers have been made public as of yet (over 1,400,000 people downloaded “The Slip”), so at this point I can only speculate. While NIN’s latest album and release approach may not have beaten Radiohead’s numbers, I’m willing to bet it was a relatively positive result that would encourage Trent to continue this style of release.