Dear record labels,

Please read this. All of it. Then kindly quit complaining about sagging revenues and scapegoating music piracy. You’re leaving money on the table.

Love,
Vince Neilstein

From AVC via The Guardian, written by Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist who spends upwards of $60 per month – and by his estimate around $2,000 annually – on music and music subscriptions:

I like to buy music. I buy it from emusic (where I pay $23/month for use it or lose it credits for music downloads), Amazon, and when in a pinch, iTunes. I also have two Rhapsody music subscriptions that cost an additional $20/month. My kids also regularly spend money on iTunes for music (often for tracks we already own somewhere else in the house). I suspect between all of this, our family spends well over $1000/year on mp3s, probably closer to $2000/year.

And yet, today I find myself pirating an album on the Internet. I thought I’d outline how this happened to showcase what a fucked up system we have for content sales on the web.

Click to read more…

Amazon’s MP3 store — my personal online music retailer of choice* — is having an August sale in which they’re selling 1,000 albums for only $5 each. And no longer is metal getting the shit end of the stick; 100 of the 1,000 albums are metal!

With records by Mastodon, Baroness, Misery Index, High on Fire, Intronaut, Suicide Silence, Halford, Portal, Nachtmystium and SO MANY MORE available for only $5 each, there’s really no excuse not to fill in a few holes in your collection or try something new that you’ve been hearing about. And since it’s all digital you won’t end up cluttering your bedroom or having to pay shipping. I can’t think of a sweeter deal.

Check it out on Amazon here to see what tickles your fancy. If you’re feeling adventurous and want some normal music mixed in with your br00tal-O’s, check out the rest of the full 1,000 non-metal (and metal) titles available for $5 here.

-VN

*No, Amazon did not pay me to say that. I prefer Amazon over iTunes because of the MP3 format (instead of AAC) and comparable ease of use.

While reading through the comments of my Apple / LaLa post yesterday, I was shocked. Shocked at the amount of ignorance and misinformation that’s floating around out there, and that our readership is so easily gullible by said inaccuracies. Though I never do this, today I feel inclined to directly address a number of comments and dispel some of the idiocy that took place on this site yesterday.

• builtforsin says: “Anyone with lack of internet access 100% of the time, and if you have an Iphone like me, this is already a bad start….” Presumably there’s also be a download option, where you have access to a certain number of tracks locally (on your device or hard drive) if there is no Internet available. and “I guess if you only used Apple manufactured devices that would be great, but Apple doesn’t play nice with hardware not purchased from Apple.” I can’t speak to this issue as I use a Mac, but my PC-using friends don’t complain about iTunes/iPod on their PCs. I’m sure iPhone campatibility will only get better, especially if this type of service necessitates it.
• Tim says: “Digital still doesn’t have the same fidelity as a CD, unless you use wav files, which are huge and would eat memory.” True. But as Internet connections get better so will audio quality. No one is trying to scheme you with crappy audio… it’s just a bandwidth issue. Honestly, while I was initially a skeptic too and subscribed to the “audio quality” argument, it’s really hard to notice the difference between a 192 AAC and a full WAV/AIFF rip.
• Viking-Shredder: “I don’t know man. I’m still a fan of actually owning a physical copy of the music. Just something about having the physical copy makes me feel safer than confiding in computer files.” Also, you must like riding a horse and buggy because it’s “safer.”
  

Click to read more…

Our broheims at Metal Insider alerted us to the fact that Apple has a new extortion scheme product called iTunes LP and Extras, which basically amounts to charging money for a product that’s typically free on a band’s website (videos, lyrics, liner notes, etc). Apparently LP and Extras has been available to major labels with existing iTunes deals for a little while already, but Metal Insider is reporting that the platform will be available to everyone else starting in early 2010.

My question to you… is anyone going to give a shit? I can’t see anyone but the die-hardest of the die-hard fans paying extra for this content, and these kinds of fans strike me as people who’d prefer to have a physical copy anyway. Beyond that, why shell out for videos when they’ll end up on YouTube? Why shell out for lyrics when you have Google? Why shell out for digital artwork when you can just visit the band’s website or have a physical copy? Is there something I’m missing here… some kind of extra super-cool features that are going to blow my mind?

I don’t get it. Total waste of money for the consumer, and total waste of time/resources on Apple’s part. This is fuck-tarded. Let’s get Spotify going in the States so all of this crap can end.

-VN

You know how I know things aren’t all terrible in the metal world right now? The people who run iTunes think there’s enough money to be made that they’ve now created an entire metal section.

Click to read more…

AC/DC vocalist Brian Johnson has responded to the Bob Lefsetzs of the world’s complaints about the band making a deal to sell their new album, Black Ice, exclusively through Wal-Mart.

Unfortunately, Johnson’s response makes about as much sense as Sarah Palin’s response to the Troopergate report. After the jump, read Johnson’s comments, with our own thoughts in bold.

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It made headlines recently when AC/DC guitarist Angus Young told the Telegraph that the band’s music isn’t on iTunes because “We don’t make singles, we make albums.” Other bands have expressed a similar attitude towards the single-friendly digital music store – Tool springs to mind – but in this day and age of iPods, creating playlists, illegal downloading, etc., one wonders if this position is even tenable.

Music biz guru Bob Lefsetz apparently feels the same way, as expressed in his latest rant:

“My blood started to boil when I read the quotes. Because these rich motherfuckers, who happen to have made some great music, are living in the nineties and ONLY care about money. There’s this lip service to creating albums that must be heard this way, but if that’s the case, why don’t they put out records that are one giant cut, so we’re FORCED to listen to the whole damn record.”

Click to read more…

To say that Vince and I aren’t Kid Rock fans probably ranks with statements like “Vince and I aren’t Limp Bizkit fans” or “Vince and I aren’t Disturbed fans” in terms of its level of “Well duh”-ness. I once heard some jackass on VH1 says that “Bawitdaba” or whatever the fuck it was called “Sounds like rock re-entering the building,” but to me is always sounded more like dignity taking a nose-dive off the roof.

All of that being said, Kid Rock’s statements in a recent interview with the BBC actually make him sound less like a a rap metal redneck and more like Trent Reznor. When asked why his music isn’t readily available on iTunes, Rock said that “the internet was an opportunity for everyone to be treated fairly, for the consumer to get a fair price, for the artist to be paid fairly, for the record companies to make some money,” but that iTunes stuck to an “old system” whereby everyone gets paid… save for the artist.

Click to read more…