There once was a time before the internet. When getting a new big screen TV meant having to get a Football team to move the monstrosity for you. The days of the walkman, when we couldn’t skip to the next song. And of course the days when MTV and VH1 actually played music videos and not 12 straight hours of Jersey Shore.
In this spirit, which music video is your favorite of all-time? Always has a soft spot for Sabotage by the Beastie Boys
Spotify said it “was extending the honeymoon” for free, unlimited listening on Thursday.
Online streaming services are the medium of today but we all know that things change.
The music streaming service offers pay packages, which reward users with fewer ads, offline listening and other features, but has also offered another option – free. Users can listen to as much music as they like — no restriction on hours or on songs — so long as they don’t mind the ads.
Spotify was planning on phasing that out, capping non-paying users at 10 hours a month and/or five plays of each song. Users who had been using the service for six months would be subject to those limits.
Instead, Spotify has decided to extend the free plan.
“We’ve been so overwhelmed by the U.S. response to Spotify that we’ve extended the honeymoon for unlimited free listening,” the company explained in a blog post Thursday.
Spotify eased restrictions in Europe as well, getting rid of the limits on the number of plays but retaining the 10 hours a month constraint.
Speculators have suggested that Spotify is willing to do this because it is in the middle of a larger funding round. As a result of that, they don’t need the immediate cash.
From sensor-equipped stuffed animals to action figures with companion apps and Barbie dolls boasting built-in digital cameras, Toy Fair 2012 continued to underscore technology’s growing influence in kids’ lives. The showcase wrapped today in New York, and progressive parents will be pleased to note that high-tech music gear for babies, toddlers and tweens were among the annual toy industry conference’s most unique unveilings.
Read between all the LED-lit gizmos and talking plush dolls (among the over 100,000 new children’s products which filled the city’s Javits Convention Center to bursting) and it’s clear: the future belongs to kids that rock. Case in point: Starting at an early age, companies like Lamaze will soon begin offering parents options to soothe screaming newborns using screens, play mats and infant accessories with connectable MP3 player options. Party-starting preschool fun may further extend into early childhood years with the August launch of Fisher-Price and Disney’s Master Moves Mickey (M3) breakdancing plush, readymade for subway performances and priced at $69.99. Re-imagining the cartoon star as a robotic b-boy, the animated doll (which pops, locks and poses to eight built-in songs) even includes self-ironic overtones, spouting jokes when it inevitably stumbles as toddlers dance alongside.
Girls enamored with shimmying robots will also shortly be able to enjoy Fijit Friends Newbies and Yippits droids from Mattel, with lines being extended to include singing and sound-tracking pets that can croon together in harmony. Yippits units in particular will ship with multiple games and three songs pre-included, specifically designed to get sprouts up and shaking their moneymaker. Manufacturer Imperial Toy also plans to launch a full range of Kidz Bop-branded musical accessories by year-end, including keyboards, guitars and fashion tagalongs, which invite kids to play or sing along with sanitized covers of top hits. Arriving in time for fall, plastic instruments and music-inspired sunglasses hope to encourage rock star role-playing, so kids can live out fantasies of appearing on American Idol or The Voice.
Oregon Scientific also hopes to make music part and parcel with its new kid-friendly MEEP! tablet PC, meant for use by tech-savvy tots ages six and up. The company will look to optional microphone, keyboard and drum accessories – meant for use with supporting high-tech activities – to distance itself from competitors like LeapFrog’s Explorer and VTech’s InnoTab. Besieged by a range of app-enabled diversions and electronic accessories like the Apptivity line for iPad and Fruit Ninja plug-and-play plastic sword game system, Hasbro plans to give its toys a hard-rockin’ high-tech upgrade as well. Beyond introducing the application-enhanced zAPPed board game series, which taps into iOS devices’ computing power, it further intends to offer TWISTER Dance, a funky, futuristic spin on the traditional family night favorite. Angling to teach girls new dance moves, the game will include tunes by Willow Smith and Ke$ha, plus an exclusive remix of Britney Spears’ “Till the World Ends” and original track “Caught Up in a Twister.”
Tellingly, even gadget and consumer electronics companies felt compelled to weigh in at the event, traditionally oriented towards toy and board game manufacturers. See offerings such as the Vibe It Bullet portable speaker, which attaches to iPods and MP3 players or gaming systems like the PlayStation Vita to provide high-volume sound. ThinkGeek was also on-hand promoting its line of wearable musical t-shirts and bags, which let you play guitars or keyboards by strumming what appear to be innocent drawings.
Other major themes this year included glow-in-the-dark gizmos, educational toys for all ages and a retrenchment around high-priced, licensed outings with high wow factor meant to loosen parents’ purse strings on sight. Accordingly, this year’s advancements extend from innovative offerings like Crayola’s Digital Light Designer (kids can use a stylus to sketch computerized designs on a glowing dome) to modern-day updates of even the lowest-tech toys such as PlayMobil sets featuring farms fueled by solar energy panels. But from Dr. Seuss’-branded iOS and Android board games to app-powered Lazer Tag Blasters and futuristic Nukotoys’ trading cards, whose monsters and animals transfer to smartphone and tablet screens, make no mistake. The real story here isn’t actual play options themselves: it’s what these electronically-informed arrivals portend for today’s family.
Technology isn’t just preparing to invade the toy industry en masse this fall, and bring a growing tidal wave of new acoustically-inclined outings along with it. With even the littlest ones’ potential play options now including faux plastic cell phones, portable media players and tablets, parents are clearly being forewarned. The high-tech field’s inevitable impact on today’s household is now a foregone conclusion, with big questions no longer surrounding if, but simply when, and to what profound degree, it will soon infiltrate modern household life.
After declaring a daylong blackout of some of the Web’s most popular and influential sites to protest the proposed SOPA and PIPA antipiracy bills, including Wikipedia and Wired magazine, momentum has largely shifted away from the legislation. Several key legislators have backed off (the House has tabled it, the Senate is mulling a later re-visit and the White House announced major opposition) and Internet activists are celebrating a victory.
But the dust hasn’t entirely settled yet. Some key provisions of the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act could potentially re-make the ways music is listened to, watched and traded online should Congress re-visit the legislation, or even pieces of it. The bills could fundamentally re-make the Internet in myriad ways, but here are a few things specifically pertaining to music:
1. YouTube as town sheriff
Right now, the burden is on copyright holders to flag illegally uploaded content on YouTube, which then removes it. But under the bills, it’s argued, domestic sites such as YouTube and Facebook could be liable to do their own policing for illegal content. It’s uncertain what this might mean in practice — from wholesale blocking of vast amounts of music to a simply more-aggressive status quo. YouTube already uses its Content ID software to preemptiveloy screen for violating videos. But the task of policing is a complex and demanding one, and smaller sites without Google’s financial and algorhythmic resources — both to scour their own sites and to be legally accountable if unsuccessful – could be heavily burdened.
2. They could silence rightfully owned material
Under the bills, ISP companies would be given almost total leeway to act preemptively to block sites accused of piracy. ISP companies respond to political and legal pressure from government and entertainment businesses (and, under SOPA and PIPA, would feel more pressure), so there’s a real chance that plenty of rightfully owned or shared music could be drag-netted into a legal abyss. Fair use laws aren’t precise on a lot of these disputes (a gray area where Girl Talk made his career), and powerful industry lobbies could, theoretically, draw up a blacklist on content sharers they disapproved of, and put the expensive and legally byzantine burden of proof on the user (it sounds Owrellian, but ithas happened).
3. It creates a legal circular firing squad
Right now, under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, a content owner’s main recourse against piracy is to either flag it and report it to the hosting site or to pressure the Justice Department to start legal proceedings. But under SOPA’s and PIPA’s “private right of action” principle, it wouldn’t just be the Justice Department that could start lawsuits against sites with allegedly pirated material — competing media companies could as well. Big players such as Viacom could instantly file a flurry of suits against sharing platforms, some of which (like YouTube) would be well equipped to defend themselves in court. But plenty of smaller sharing platforms (such as Soundcloud or mixtape hosting sites such asDatPiff.com) without a vast legal team might not be able to compete with a hypothetical legal onslaught, and could throw in the towel just to avoid the wrangling.
Jim Donio (right), president of a group representing music retailers, cheered the first increase in music sales since 2004.
(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)
Music retailers sound ready to uncork the champagne on the news that overall sales for the music industry rose for the first time in seven years.
Overall sales were up just a modest 3 percent in 2011, Nielsen Soundscan reported yesterday, but from the music industry’s point of view, any increase is manna from heaven. It was common during the 7-year slump to see double-digit declines.
Jim Donio, president of the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, the trade group representing music retailers, called the yearly sales figures “significantly positive.”
According to Nielsen, digital album sales came in at 103 million, up 19 percent, and digital tracks climbed to 1.3 billion, an 8.5 percent increase from last year. Nielsen’s numbers only account for unit sales and not the revenue generated. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) collects that data, but the trade group for the four major record companies hasn’t reported yet.
So what’s driving this? Well first, there’s no doubt that the popularity of “21,” the second album from British vocalist Adele, played a big part. She sold nearly 6 million albums. Adele’s track “Rolling In the Deep” also sold 5.8 million copies.
There’s a laundry list of other possible factors. The RIAA is likely to say that their antipiracy efforts helped. The association won a copyright lawsuit against the company operating file-sharing network Limewire and it was driven out of business in 2010. Last year was the first full year without Limewire in operation–although plenty of services still enable illegal file sharing.
We have more mobile devices than ever that play music, including the new crop of digital tablets. At the same time, it seems that some consumers continue to opt for CDs and vinyl, says NPD.
Retailers also deserve some of the credit. At the same time that Lime Wire was getting clobbered in court, music got easier to sample, discover, and buy. Fans can get a taste of free tracks at YouTube and Pandora and can receive access to deep pools of songs for a monthly fee at such subscription services as Spotify, Rhapsody, and MOG. A big new competitor also jumped into the fray in the form of Google Music.
We can’t forget iTunes, the top retailer in the music landscape, which upgraded by enabling users to store their songs in the cloud and retrieve them via the Web.
It’s important to keep in mind that last year’s uptick might be a blip. There’s nothing to say that sales won’t go back into the dumper this year. That said, it still feels like music has some momentum for the first time in a while.
Digital music album sales in the U.K. climbed 27 percent last year and singer Adele’s “21″ set a new industry record, helping curb a slide in demand for CDs.
While digital album sales surged to 26.6 million units, sales of CDs dropped 12.6 percent to 86.2 million last year, the British Recorded Music Industry group BPI said today. Combined sales of digital and physical albums fell 5.6 percent, less than the year earlier’s 7.5 percent decline.
The music industry, which suffered under the launch of free music-sharing services such as Napster, is taking back some of the market with the help of paid-music services like Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iTunes and Spotify Ltd. Demand for digital albums grew faster than for singles last year, according to BPI.
“The most encouraging news is the strong backing consumers are giving to the digital album format,” Geoff Taylor, BPI chief executive officer, said in the statement. “British music fans understand that the album remains the richest way to connect with an artist’s work.”
Digital music sales now account for 24 percent of all music sales in the U.K., up from 4.7 percent in 2007, BPI’s statement shows. CDs make up most of the remainder. Google Inc. (GOOG) recently introduced a music service for its Android phone and tablet computer, striking deals with 1,000 record labels.
Taylor said the U.K. government is taking too long to fight piracy, one of the reasons Britain’s music market has fallen behind Germany‘s.
“While other countries take positive steps to protect their creative sector, our government is taking too long to act on piracy, while weakening copyright to the benefit of U.S. tech giants,” he said in the statement. “Unless decisive action is taken in 2012, investment in music could fall again — a creative crunch that will destroy jobs and mean the next Adele may not get her chance to shine on the world stage.”
Adele’s single “Someone Like You,” released on Beggars Group’s XL Recordings label, was the top seller in the U.K. with 1.2 million copies and became the biggest-selling album in a single year, according to BPI. Vivendi SA’s (VIV) Universal Music Group had five singles in the top ten sold last year, including Maroon 5, Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez, and Warner Music, owned by billionaire Len Blavatnik, had two singles in the top ten, from Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran.
Sales of vinyl LPs rose 44 percent last year to 337,000, the highest level since 2005, according to BPI.
By Ragnhild Kjetland
For years Drummers World on West 46th Street was a destination for percussionists of all stripes. Numerous jazz drummers made trips there. Roadies for famous touring bands stopped by. People involved with Broadway productions bought instruments. Even members of symphony orchestras traveled to the shop to find equipment.
At one point in the past decade, there were three drum stores on the block of 46th Street between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue. Soon, that number will be reduced to zero. Wednesday is the last day of business for Drummers World, which opened on West 45th Street in 1979 and moved to 46th Street 11 years later.
On Tuesday morning the store’s founder and owner, Barry Greenspon, sat at his desk talking about its history. Photographs of patrons like Elvin Jones and Paul Motian hung from the walls, as well as a picture of Mr. Greenspon himself, taken more than 40 years ago, showing him sitting at a drum set, wearing a white button-down shirt and swinging a pair of sticks.
“I have a lot of good memories,” he said. “It was more than a business; it was a blessing.”
Mr. Greenspon said he opened the drum store because he knew of no shop in Manhattan at the time that stocked lesser-known instruments along with standard drum kits. So he filled his store with gongs, djembes, vibraphones, marimbas and pandeiros, among other uncommon instruments.
Drummers would show up to buy an item, he said, and sometimes end up enamored with the sound of an instrument they had never heard before.
Bill Bruford, a drummer for the 1970s progressive rock bands Yes and King Crimson who went on to form a jazz band called Earthworks, was among those who stopped by. A photograph of him hangs on the wall next to photos of other visitors, including Mel Lewis, an orchestra leader known for a 23-year run at the Village Vanguard, and Louie Bellson, who played solos with Duke Ellington. Once, Mr. Greenspon said, he received a visit from a roadie for Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones.
Chris Lamb, the head percussionist for the New York Philharmonic, said the store provided a place for drummers to share experiences and knowledge. “A community of drummers would met and hang out and discover new things,” he said. “There are not a lot of places like that.”
There is no single reason the store is closing, Mr. Greenspon said, but there are plenty of contributing factors. For instance, there is the conglomeratization of the instrument business, in which chain retailers with deep pockets have elbowed out smaller competitors. And there is the reality that many people these days prefer to buy their equipment from online merchants.
That’s all well and good, Mr. Greenspon said, but you can’t feel the tension in a snare skin or test the heft of a mallet through a modem connection. And you cannot experience the same sense of discovery gazing at a Web page that you can while browsing through shop shelves, he said.
“It’s kind of a message that a store like this is closing,” Mr. Greenspon said. “It eliminates the possibility of seeing an exotic instrument you’ve never seen before and becoming enthralled by it.”
On top of everything else, Mr. Greenspon said, the faltering economy made it difficult for him to pay his rent, $14,000 a month, and forced his customers to economize.
At one time, he said, people helping to run Broadway musicals like “The Lion King” and “Mamma Mia” would walk from theaters to buy triangles, timpani and other items. But he said newer productions were taking a different tack.
“Now they rent their instruments,” he said. “They don’t know how long the play will last.”
As noon approached on Tuesday, a few customers browsed in the partly emptied shop. Among them was Takashi Inoue, 25, a jazz drummer from Harlem. He said that he had not visited the store often but knew its reputation among musicians.
“This is the last store for professional drummers,” he said. “The others are for kids or hobbyists.”
A few moments later, Mr. Greenspon pointed to an odd-looking item that at first glance appeared to be a cog from a piece of machinery. It featured a circular hollow steel base as well as upright brass prongs of various lengths.
Mr. Greenspon explained that it was called an aquasonic. Water is poured into the base, he said, and the player draws a cello bow across the prongs.
As he demonstrated it, an ethereal sound filled the shop, and a customer standing nearby looked up from the equipment he was examining to smile in appreciation.
By COLIN MOYNIHAN New York Times KickPort.comGuinness World Record Holder Julian Pavone, “The World’s Youngest Professional Drummer®” receives a second patent for his innovative drum gloves. He received his first patent for “Abracadabra®” Stain Cover-up applicator at age 4 – making him the “World’s Youngest Inventor!®”. Julian’s Drum Gloves™ are form-fitting gloves with interchangeable drumstick tips on the four finger extensions, on the palm side of the glove. The glove allows the percussionist to utilize their hands in creating unique rhythms and sound effects not typically made due to the limitations of a traditional drumstick.
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He is currently 7 years-old and plays a 22-piece custom drum set with 17 cymbals. He has full artist endorsements with Vic Firth , Sabian Cymbals, ddrum and Sennheiser Microphones. He also has an endorsement with Ful travel gear, FILA apparel and prefers Remo drum skins.
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