Something is not right.

In the past two weeks, Rick Astley has reappeared, not once, not twice, but thrice.

The first occurrence was innocent enough, I was at an outlet mall and after a horrible tune from Phil Collins, Rick Astley music was played over the PA system. I almost gouged my eardrums out, especially right after "She's an Easy Lover" by Collins. Oof.

Then, this Flickr prank appeared:

Finally (and best of all), someone has writted a Doom add-on featuring his most ghastly:

NO monster has a chance against that WMD!

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Here's a new approach to statistics;

Gracenote, the company that most people know for taking over the services of CDDB, providing tracklistings for universally all software CD players, receive huge amounts of data from all over the world every minute. Not only in the form of fresh tracklists - they also log every time someone retrieve an already existing tracklist.

Based on this statistic data, they have now launched the Gracenote Music Maps. In here, they provide top 10 lists for all countries in the world, showing what artists and albums are most often wanted for tracklist retrievals. Doing a few random tests, it seems to be universally agreed, that this here British outfit, The Beatles, are worth a listen.

[ Via Boingboing l Comment in our forums ]

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Saul Williams, a pioneering hiphop artist and spoken word poet who is never afraid to cross genres and try new stylings, is hoping to cash in on the recent Radiohead success is bringing his new project straight to you.

The Inevitable Rise and Liberation Of Niggytardust

My Dearest Friends and Fans,

It is my greatest honor to present to you The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!,
my new album produced by Trent Reznor and mixed by Alan Moulder. The wall of sound that we've created is tagged with such graffiti that a passerby would seek out doors and ways to ENTER. Once inside a world defined by dreams come true they'd find aligned with the simplest act of sharing what we treasure. Most people aren't aware of the world of art and commerce where exploitation strips each artist down to nigger. Each label, like apartheid, multiplies us by our divide and whips us 'til we conform to lesser figures. What falls between the cracks is a pile of records stacked to the heights of talents hidden from the sun. Yet the energy they put into popularizing smut makes a star of a shiny polished gun. The ballot or the bullet for Mohawk or the mullet is a choice between new times and dying days. And the only way to choose is to jump ship from old truths and trust dolphins as we swim through changing ways. The ways of middlemen proves to be just a passing trend. We need no priests to talk to God. No phone to call her. And when you click the link below, i think it fair that you should know that your purchase will make middlemen much poorer...

NiggyTardust!

love,

Saul

Album can be obtained for free 192kbps MP3 download, or for $5, full lossless audio and 320kbps MP3. All DRM-Free with artwork and lyrics included as PDF.

http://niggytardust.com/

Watch Saul's techno-clubby song about reparations on the YouTube: List of Demands

Or watch two adorably cute Euro-chickies covering this same song:
Jenny Wilson and Robyn Carlsson Cover List of Demands

This isn't connected to Saul Williams, but Niggytardust obviously gives me the unnecessary excuse to link to a Bowie tune...in this case, all of them combined into one.

[ Via Email | Trent Reznor's The Spiral]

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As is becoming common knowledge in the general blogsphere, Universal Music has decided to join the bandwagon of online sale of downloadable mp3 music without digital rights management (drm) attached. One could claim that by doing this, Universal lives up to it's name, seeing that drm usually restricts the purchased files to be played on one type of player. By going drm-free, the files sold by Universal will now be useable, well, universally on all players that will accept mp3 files as such. That virtually means all players available at all.

Universal starts out by releasing songs from a range of it's top sellers through a range of popular genres as an experiment. The sales will run from later this month till January 2008, and according to Universal itself, the experiment will be used to evaluate aspects such as user demand and piracy.

The files will be available through a host of online retailers, such as Amazon, Walmart and Puretracks. Notably, iTunes Music Store will not be selling these tracks. One can only speculate if excluding the markets leading online music store will make the experiment fruitful.

LInks:
The story from Universal Music.

As mentioned, the story is all over the web. Find some of the blurb on Google.

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Andrew Dubber is the Degree Leader for Music Industries at UCE Birmingham, UK.

Andrew Dubber is a senior lecturer and researcher with a particular interest in online music, radio and new media technology.

Andrew Dubber has a background in radio and the music industry, and has written numerous articles, book chapters and presentations about new strategies and technologies in both of those sectors.

Andrew Dubber also runs a blog at newmusicstrategies.com, which is a must read for anyone interested in the new developments in the music industry. It contains priceless insight and a much needed perspective on items such as online music, globalization, and web 2.0 and it's significance for music publishers worldwide, be it big corporations or single musicians trying to make a modest living.

Luckily, for those who need to read this, but feel that life is too short to subscribe to blogs, Andrew Dubber has now compiled a lot of his messages into a 96 pages book, called "The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online". In here he explores issues such as Connecting to your User Base, Search Engine Optimization, RSS Feeds, and User Accessibility, among many other vital subjects.

In keeping with being a web 2.0 personality, Andrew Dubber gives his e-book away for free. You can find it right here:

Andrew Dubber: The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online

At this price, this is a no-brainer. Get it. Read it. Now.

If you feel like it, you could also always go and buy a printed copy. I did.

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In 2003 French woman Cecile Schott released her first album Everyone Alive Wants Answers under the artist name Colleen. An all-electronic albums based on sampled loops, it's organic sounds made heads turn in the world of electronic music lovers worldwide. Here was samples from classical recordings, everyday life, movies and television and more, all of it sampled, looped and warped beyond recognition, yet almost devoid of percussive sounds, cutup techniques or the fancy hallmarks of others using the same toys to produce music. No-one was really prepared for something that processed to sound so much like acoustic music, and Colleen harvested rave reviews and a following eager to witness her next step.

4 years have passed, and Colleen has released another 3 albums, the latest of which Les Ondes Silencieuses is out today. Yours truly witnessed a solo concert with Cecile Schott 2 years ago at a mostly electronic festival. Colleen, being one of the headliners on the festival poster, proved to be the only electronic act that showed up on stage without a computer. Instead, she brought her acoustic guitar, cello, musical box and assorted other toys and acoustic instruments, and ran them all through loopstations, delays and filter pedals, to produce a wholly remarkable soundscape right there on stage. It was an extremely fascinating experience, and also a signpost of the direction that Colleen's music has taken since then, going more and more into recordings of herself playing acoustic instruments, then treated with all sorts of studio equipment to retain the production values of contemporary electronic music.

Les Ondes Silencieuses rounds up that development perfectly. Exclusively played on old european instruments, such as Spinet, Clarinet and Viola da gamba, the compositions and the productions reveal Colleen's roots in loopbased electronic music, as well as almost medieval European music. And no, still no drums ...

I personally recommend this. Anybody interested can preview and buy the album online at iTMS, or through your favourite CD retailer.

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How would you like to buy an album that included a new song, 3 days a week? A few years ago, this would have been impossible, but today things are dfferent. Due to the arrival of the podcast, electronica artist Podington Bear has made it his mission to release a new track every monday, wednesday and friday throughout 2007. A podcast subscription makes sure that the tracks actually reaches his listeners. And, to support him in his efforts, one can buy his album "Meet Podington Bear" online through the iTunes Music Store, but mind you; this is no requirement for getting access to the RSS stream. The podcast is made available free of charge for anyone who wants to listen.

The music of Paddington .. sorry, Podington Bear is best described as modern electronica that is non-intrusive, yet interesting, and by far mostly devoid of vocals. Or, in his own words: "Podington Bear makes songs with love and care".

Perhaps there's new inspiration for the marketing divisions of major music labels here. One can check out Podington Bears blog and find subscription URLs over at www.podingtonbear.com.

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"Filmmakers Andrew Shapter and Joel Rasmussen traveled the country, hoping to understand why mainstream music seems so packaged and repetitive, and whether corporations really had the power to silence musical innovation. The answers they found on this journey–ultimately, the promise that the future holds–are what makes BEFORE THE MUSIC DIES both riveting and exhilarating."

Read more about Before The Music Died at the official website:

http://www.beforethemusicdies.com/

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With detection instruments on NASA's Voyagers, Galileo, Cassini and more than two dozen other spacecraft, University of Iowa physicist Dr. Don Gurnett has been recording waves that course through the thin, electrically-charged gas pervading the near-vacuum of outer space.

Gurnett converted the recorded plasma waves into sounds, much as a receiver turns radio waves into sound waves. "I've got a cardboard box full of cassette tapes of sounds that I've collected over nearly 40 years," he said.

Gurnett's tapes have inspired a 10-movement musical composition called "Sun Rings" commisioned by the Grammy-nominated Kronos Quartet who will premiere "Rings". Composer Terry Riley, selected for the project by Kronos' artistic director, compiled an assortment of melody fragments and ideas from the spacecraft recordings collected near Jupiter, Venus and other planets. "It was a powerful experience to listen to this material and realize it was coming from millions of miles away" Riley said.

Read more on NASA's Webpages...

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