Filed under: Amusing, Music — Mike Laurie @ 8:47 am
Radiohead recently asked people to remix their Nude track, all in the spirit of user-generated content. Apparently it was in some bonkers time signature so it was fairly tricky but this chap James Houston, incredibly, managed to get a load of old tech gear to bleat through the number. It’s proper genius, each machine is struggling through like a new born chick.
UPDATE: Had a chat with James over email, apparently he was offered a record deal over email and he’s not even a musician. I guess that being a recording artist is probably a lot to do with visuals these days.
To me, Fader’s news of Blu’s challenge of releasing 763 albums (all collaborations), supported by 1,892 videos over the course of the approaching summer is an extreme example of how digital is changing way we consume music. With over 16,000 friends on MySpace, he’s certainly got the support. Without the creative restrictions of a major label deal it looks like he’ll simply be putting everything out and allowing the natural filter of the hardcore fans to decide what sinks or swims. In Blu’s own words “YallProllyBeSickOfHearingYaBoyBy’09″.
The music service Last.fm, which acts as you own personal MP3 player has never been quite as good as it could. The problem being that it could only play 30 seconds of tracks by more popular artists. That was until now, well, as of Wednesday. “As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website.” You can only play it 3 times before you have to pay for it, which seems to me to be more than fair to all involved and is a model made possibly by the support of all four major labels. The subscription service hasn’t launched yet but when it does it will allow you unlimited listening. It’s all very exciting, it seems that the major labels are basically adopting a number of different models, essentially allowing people to consume music in the way they best want to consume it. Fair enough really.
EMI is sacking over 2000 people in an attempt to streamline operations since it was purchased by Terra Firma Capital Partners in May 2007. Heading up the action is Guy Hands, far from being your average record industry exec, Hands is a workaholic banker with dyslexia who made a few quid (about 200 million) with a chain of pubs and is best mates with William Hague. Read More »
Incredible bit of trail bike style street biking from a very talented young media student called Phil Feeney, he shot and edited the film too - the music is from The British Expeditionary Force. There’s a high-res version of this in mp4 format on his site too.
I’m pretty late to this one, it was posted about two weeks ago. It’s a video for Radiohead’s Jigsaw Falling Into Pieces and it’s by Adam Buxton (from Adam and Joe). He’s clearly a better director than he is a comedian. They strapped web cams to cycling helmets. It’s a nice vid but it must have cost them about 20 quid, they must be skint after giving away all those albums.
Good example of a big brand hjacking prosumer culture?
