This version of Danny Boy will bring on the tears:
Wish I’d known about this version of Danny Boy two years ago.
Via NorthTemple.
This version of Danny Boy will bring on the tears:
Wish I’d known about this version of Danny Boy two years ago.
Via NorthTemple.
Vitamin Records, String Quartet – They’ve got a string quatert version of just about everything.
Tags: music vitaminstringquartet
NYGirlOfMyDreams.com – He found her, but says there will be no more updates and that we’ll have to make up our own ending to their story.
Tags: nygirlofmydreams
Sarah came across something different this week, The Vitamin String Quartet. Apparently they specialize in tribute records to other artists, string quartet style. And they’ve done it for all sorts of different artists, I’m talking from 2Pac to Aerosmith. Here’s a sample MP3 from their version of Janie’s Got A Gun.
They’ve got some sample clips on their website and plenty more in iTunes. Check it out, they are fun to listen to.
Okay, a few more sample links. From String Quartet Tribute to Billy Joel there is Piano Man, Uptown Girl and We Didn’t Start The Fire.
Fine, one more, Madonna’s Material Girl.
FT.com / Companies / US & Canada – NBC chief warns over iTunes pricing – ?We know that Apple has destroyed the music business … and if we don?t take control, they?ll do the same thing on the video side,?. So they entered into a contract to sell at a price that wasn’t profitable and now they are complaining about it?
Tags: music nbc itunes
Wondering how Steve Jobs feels about the DRM they are required to include in music from the iTunes Music Store? Wonder no longer: Thoughts on Music by Steve Jobs. There’s some great stuff in there (emphasis mine):
Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. Its hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.
Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.
This could be a very big day for the future on online distribution of music. Here’s hoping that Steve is able to pull this off, I’d love to have DRM free music available from the iTunes Music Store.
Looks like Weird Al is back with a new album, Straight Outta Lynwood. The new single is Don’t Download This Song, which you can of course download in MP3 format. The video is going up Yahoo! Music tomorrow (23 August). Additional info is available on Al’s MySpace site.
I’ve been a Weird Al fan since I first heard Eat It in 1983/84. Just the other night I was watching the DVD of UHF with the commentary track on. Did you know that Trinidad Silva (Raul Hernandez, Raul’s Wild Kingdom) died during the filming of UHF?
At any rate, I look forward to seeing what Al’s got on the new album. Oh yeah, it better be available via iTunes so that I can download it :-)
If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile you already know that I’m a fan of Information Society. So I was pretty excited to hear Kurt Harland announce that the band name Information Society had been turned over to Paul Robb, who is reconstituting the band at informationsociety.us. Unfortunately Kurt will not be involved, so the new Information Society consists of Paul Robb, James Cassidy, Christopher Anton (vocals) & Sonja Meyers (keyboards).
I want to have high hopes for the new Information Society. I’ve started going through the Live Journal Information Society community and their MySpace music site, which has a few tracks that you can listen to. They also have a MySpace blog, but the only thing there is the original announcement.
Only time will tell if Christopher Anton will be able to do well in Kurt Harland’s shoes. If they do put out a new CD I’ll likely buy it just to see how it turned out.
If you long for the good old days there are lots of Information Society videos on You Tube.
Through an odd series of questions about U.S. states at work the idea came up about states having songs, the same way that The Star-Spangled Banner is the U.S. national anthem. One of my co-workers mentioned that there were, so I did a little research. According to 50states.com we do indeed have state songs. The state song of California is I Love You California.
I learned something new today.
On the drive in to work this morning I was listening NPRs story on Paul Anka. I learned that he wrote My Way for Frank Sinatra. He also has a new album out, Rock Swings. Ordinarily I wouldn’t find this very noteworthy, but this CD is a bit different.
All of the tracks on Rock Swings are swing arrangements of 80s songs. The tracks are available on iTunes so go listen to the 30 second samples. It’s fun to listen to these familiar songs done in a completely different way. Some of the songs are harder to recognize than others, so you may want to check out the iTunes iMix with the new and original tracks, for easy comparison.