1FPS|by David Chartier

I’m really digging Styrofoam’s music which I found on Amie Street, my favorite new digital music store. I bought Styrofoam’s “A Thousand Words” album first (when it cost only $3.36. now it’s up to $8) and loved it. Yesterday I bought “Nothing’s Lost” and it’s another overall hit. Favorite song so far is easily “Make it Mine,” which costs only 32¢ right now (Amie Street music prices start low and gradually increase according to popularity and recommendations. How cool is that?). A sample is embedded below:

The stepped and rolling melody, the accompanying piano, the hint of what I think is a flute, the dancing beat, and repetitive vocal melody all make for a fantastic, contemplative song. Be sure to listen all the way to the end where the song trails off and it’s just the piano, hints of the rhythm, and the trailing vocals. Love it.

I wrote about Amie Street, a DRM-free music shop, earlier this week, and I just made my first purchase, “A Thousand Words” by Styrofoam. After getting to know its site better, I have to say this company has some great ideas, and I really hope it goes places. The site is a pleasure to use, and incentives like “recommending” songs to earn credits for buying music, social features, and a pricing model that is friendly to both consumers and artists all top off a great store that I plan on spending more time discovering new music at. In fact, check this out:

Above you should see an embeddable Flash music player for the artist and album I bought. You can preview everything right here, as well as each song’s price which increases with popularity.

Keep up the great work Amie Street.

LOVE IN THIS CLUB from ( *_* ) on Vimeo.

Usher’s “Love in this Club” programmed into a Rock-a-Fire Explosion set. Hah.

via Ryan J. Budke

YouTube - Andy Mckee - Art of Motion - Guitar - www.candyrat.com

Holy shit.

Here’s more info on what a Theremin actually is.

via Kaylow Media

It isn’t about sharing or consumer’s supposed thirst for wild new business models. The problem boils down to the fact that, given the chance, most people‚Äîor in this case specifically, more than 80 percent of them‚Äîsimply will take what they want without paying for it. Reznor charged nothing more than five fucking dollars‚Äîfive‚Äîfor this album, and just 18 percent of the people who downloaded it could be bothered to pay for it. Says Reznor:

“I’m not sure what I was expecting, but that percentage‚Äîprimarily from fans‚Äîseems disheartening.” [From Ars Technica: Will fans pay? Reznor opens books on ‚ÄòNet music experiment]

The innovative new stuff that some artists like Radiohead are trying is wonderful and all, but these incredibly unique situations don’t mean shit to real world applications or trying to make money‚Äîlet alone a living‚Äîas a musician. Sure, Radiohead was able to make “more money than every other Radiohead album combined” from its In Rainbows experiment, but I dare any indie band who has even 1/100th the popularity of Radiohead to try the same experiment and come out with enough revenue to even pay for the food eaten during their time in the studio. Never mind money to pay for studio time (whether it’s a real studio or something home-brewed), instruments, rent, clothing… y’know, even just basic necessities.

For better or worse, Radiohead was only able to make a lot of money due to the popularity they’ve garnered after all the marketing and promotion that the labels did for them. Let’s also not forget all the free press they got from simply embarking on the experiment in the first place. How much press will the next mainstream band to do the same thing get? The one after that? Will the news vans show up when Billy’s Little Band from Nowhere, NE tries the smae thing?

The fact that Radiohead isn’t speaking about its numbers only leaves us with the statistics from Trent Reznor’s similar experiment, and I’ll bet real money Radiohead’s numbers were more or less the same. At least in the same ballpark.

People are jackasses, and they just want stuff for free. Piracy isn’t about some wild new business model or revolutionary social frontier. It’s about people who don’t give a shit and don’t want to pay for anything.

Period.

I would genuinely love to see what would happen if these same people’s paychecks were to start getting pirated. Hell, most of these people are probably the same ones to get their panties in a bunch when they see how much their government takes out for taxes.

Reznor’s right; this is a genuinely saddening problem, and one that isn’t likely to disappear anytime soon. Not while people are able to steal anonymously and continue not giving a shit without any repercussions.

I always liked this section because there’s a lot of great advertising out there that’s showcasing some great music. I’ve found artists that I genuinely love and follow via some of this stuff.

Check out the the full 41-song album.

William Shatner voiced the mayor in Lil’ Pimp (iTS link), apparently the first feature-length movie made in Flash. If it didn’t look so terrible I would already be downloading it; Shatner is otherwise doing surprisingly great work these days. His Has Been album that Ben Folds produced is fantastic.

Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight

This is just a quick note, as I’m working on today’s podcast for TUAW, but: Minutes to Midnight rocks. The band is totally maturing both lyrically and musically, and this album has a surprising array of diversity from a really talented group of guys. I honestly haven’t checked in on what the rest of the web or the critics are saying, but I think it’s a safe bet that if you’ve followed the band through the years, you won’t be disappointed.

That link above, by the way, is an Amazon Associate link; buy the album through that and you’ll be supporting my efforts with 1FPS.

Pearl Jam: Activism and Information

Many of you know that I have Crohn’s Disease. For those who don’t, it’s a chronic debilitating illness that causes ulcers on the colon or other areas of the digestive system.

My heart goes out to the guy; Pearl Jam was *that band* when I was growing up that blew my mind and introduced me to music. I saw the Jeremy video on the static-ridden channel The Box, a Milwaukee-based music video service that must’ve used a bent metal coat hanger for a broadcasting antennae. The Box allowed you to call in and order a video to be played for $1.99 (inspiration for the iTunes Store video pricing? One can only wonder). As you might guess, in the early days this allowed the service to sometimes be riddled with the same video five times in a row, but Jeremy made it through. I immediately rode my bike down to The Exclusive Company - against my parents’ wishes - and bought this Explicit Content cassette tape in 6th grade before anyone got sued for letting 6th graders buy explicit content albums.

I wish the best for Mr. McCready and his efforts.