June 28, 2008
Wanted Soundtrack on Amazon MP3
Wanted Soundtrack on iTunes
I saw both Wanted and Forgetting Sarah Marshall today and I found that I really liked a couple of songs from the movie, one by Nine Inch Nails and the other is called “The Little Things” which turns out to be by Danny Elfman. The former is not even on the soundtrack. I went to look for the soundtrack online and I realized that most of it is score which makes sense, but I still wanted the song “The Little Things”. Well, it is marked ‘Album Only’. WTF? Some might think this is Apple or Amazon’s doing, but it isn’t. They both have it setup this way which tells you that almost certainly that this is the record company.
Do they think that by setting it up this way that I will say, oh, whatever, I’ll just buy the whole album that is 90% stuff I don’t want. Hell no I won’t. All they do is one of the following:
- Not sell anything as people are just annoyed by the lack of choice.
- Drive perfectly happy consumers to pirate the song.
Neither makes them a dime, so why don’t you all just wake up and realize that above all, consumers demand choice. Give it to them, or fade further into irrelevance…
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Posted by Waking Badger
March 4, 2008
Reznor releases new NIN album via online experiment - TECH.BLORGE.com
I’m downloading the first 9 tracks for free, but assuming I like those half as much as the last album, I’ll be picking up one of the for cost solutions soon. I’d be curious how this thing pans out for Trent Reznor as he’s already sold out of the “Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition” package. That set was the only one that was in short supply and there were 2500 available for $300 a piece.
I hope this brings the success that he’s looking for as it could be good for him and his listeners…
Check out all the purchase options here…
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Posted by Waking Badger
December 30, 2007
According to a story in the Washington Post that Slashdot picked up, the RIAA now considers songs ripped from CDs that you own to your computer (that are not shared) to be illegal copies of copyrighted music. How many ways is this an utterly asinine position? Well, first off, they are completely violating the concept of fair use as codified in law. Secondly, if they really felt they had a case, why aren’t they going after the likes of Apple and Microsoft that enable to ripping of CDs?
Is the music industry dying? Yes. Is that a good thing? Yes! Maybe we will finally get to a point where artists are getting our cash directly and have choices about where they want to sell their music and how they want to control their property. The RIAA is poorly suited to handle this in any capacity.
UPDATE: It sounds as if they’re actually suing over sharing of these “unauthorized” copies, but they do still have their heads up their collective ass over fair use even if they’re not actually suing over it…
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Posted by Waking Badger
September 27, 2007
So, for the past day or so, I’ve been playing around with Amazonmp3.com. I’ve only bought a handful of tracks so far, but all in all, I must say that I like the product, the storefront a bit less so.
First off, the music itself. The songs are 256kbit MP3s that come with tags pre-populated and cover artwork. The quality seems good to me, but I can’t tell the difference between a 128kbit and 256kbit file. My ears just are good enough I suppose. However, it all sounds good to me. The genre doesn’t seem to be populated correctly to me, but that is a minor quibble. Oh, and most important of all, the songs play just fine on my iPod 
The storefront is okay, but not great. There isn’t nearly enough there, but it is just getting started. The ability to listen to all the tracks intuitively in the browser is also nice (only tried Firefox so far). I also like the downloader which I have tested on Windows XP. It does what it should in that it pulls down the files and loads them into iTunes for me. Also, the price is getting closer to what it should be. However, I still think digital downloads should get cheaper. The only complaint I have so far is that there is no shopping cart feature and I get an e-mail order acknowledgment for every single song purchase. I just wish I could bundle individual songs together and buy all at once as I feel the process is a bit slow right now if you’re picking out lots of songs from a given artist rather than a whole album.
So, all in all, this isn’t as slick as iTunes Store, but it is a bit better priced for on the whole higher quality drm free songs which can’t all be found in that format in iTunes. I will probably continue to shop both storefronts to get all the music I want at good prices which is what I assume Amazon is hoping for…
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Posted by Waking Badger
February 26, 2006
Heather surprised me last night for my birthday and took me to see Tift Merritt at the American Tabacco Historic District in Durham, NC. This was really cool as I didn’t even know that she was going to be in town. It is also interesting as this is the location my company will be moving to later this year. The show was a lot of fun, but different than how I have seen her in the past. This show was a bit more toned down and lower energy performance. She did not have Zeke Hutchins on drums as she said it would have been too loud for the small room. However, she did have Jay Brown on keys, Brad Rice on guitar, and Greg Readling on pedal steel. Many of the songs had a slightly different feel to them from when I have heard them live before, but this was a nice change of pace. There were only about 400 people at the show and Tift did a lot of talking to the audience. It was fun to hear some of her stories and jokes. I was able to finally pick up Tift’s live album, “Home is Loud” and get her to autograph it after the show.
All in all, a very cool night.
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Posted by Waking Badger
July 31, 2005
That was my favorite line from Orgazmo. Heather and I just finished watching the unrated cut and I must say it was bad…no, really bad, but still funny. The title comes from Dave the Lighting Guy, played by Matt Stone, and he is referring to a nude mariachi band. I don’t think I would buy this movie unless it grows on me over time. Heather didn’t find it anywhere near as amusing as I did, but she also didn’t really like Baseketball either.
Overall, I would say this one rates about 2 out of 5.
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Posted by Waking Badger
