The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Chinese officials have closed access to Apple’s iTunes Store after getting wind of Olympic athletes downloading Songs For Tibet, which features songs by the likes of Rush, Underworld, and Moby. (Proceeds go to “peace-related projects” that were hand-picked by the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.) The ban came shortly after the Art Of Peace Foundation, which backed the project, sent out a press release saying that “over 40” athletes participating in the 2008 Olympic Games had used download cards they were given to download the album, thus “speaking” their mind about the geopolitical situation when the Games’ rules forced them to remain silent on the issue. This isn’t the first time musical support of Tibet has caused the Chinese government to clamp down, of course, and it’s unlikely to be the last.
Unless you’ve ended up on a truly unfortunate mailing list, you would likely be unfamiliar with the Vision Forum, a web store and catalog with the mission “to rebuild Christian family culture.” Featuring the “All American Boys’ Adventure Catalog” and the “Beautiful Girlhood Collection”, the Vision Forum is moving away from only peddling Creationist videos and replicas of swords from Braveheart, and into the wild world of music retail.
Fortune has an article on Amazon’s MP3 efforts pegged to a possible deal with the long-in-the-works MySpace Music project, in which it would serve as the backend for the social-networking service’s digital download store. Amazon currently holds the title of No. 2 digital-music seller, but its market share remains in the single digits. Fortune posits that the “one-click” access from MySpace might indeed boost those numbers. (Hey, it worked for SnoCap! Oh, wait.) The story also shows that the majors’ willingness to play ball with Amazon on the idea of “dynamic pricing” has resulted in great bargains for the consumer, instead of a world where a single song is almost as expensive as its truncated-to-60-seconds ringtone version:
If you’re a Beatles fan, prepare to be either horrified or economically exploited by the holiday lineup at Bloomingdale’s; the retail chain has gone frantic for the Fab Four. More »
As probably could have been predicted, the folks behind Guitar Hero are looking for ways to make a bit more cash off their massive success catering to frustrated music fans. If people will buy a game dedicated to Aerosmith, surely they’re willing to buy anything with the Guitar Hero brand slapped on. So why not take on the most powerful music retailer in the country?
A front-line act with a months-old album decides to push his most obvious hit-bound song to radio–a song heavily reliant on a prominent sample of a deathless pop hit. But, bucking the day’s prevalent trend, he decides not to release the song on the most popular singles medium, forcing most customers to buy his album.
It’s a risky move, because the Billboard Hot 100 is dominated by songs that scale the chart by amassing sales as well as airplay. But the song is so mindlessly catchy, the act’s people figure it’ll be a big chart hit anyway with radio alone.
I could be talking about M.C. Hammer’s 1990 smash “U Can’t Touch This,” the “Superfreak”-sampling hit that made the Top 10, even as Capitol refused to issue it as a cassingle.
But I could also be talking about Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long,” a mashup of Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” and Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” that debuts on the Hot 100 this week at No. 80 despite his lack of interest in releasing it digitally.
Can the erstwhile Robert Richie pull off in 2008 what one Stanley Kirk Burrell pulled 18 years ago?
How are you going to figure out your best albums of the first half of ’08 if your iTunes Music Folder is completely disorganized? More »
Say goodbye to those days when you could pick up an Adele CD with your Caramel Frappucino: Starbucks will dump almost all of its in-store music offerings over the next three months, according to sources. More »
Say goodbye to those days when you could pick up an Adele CD with your Caramel Frappucino: Starbucks will dump almost all of its in-store music offerings over the next three months, according to sources. More »
Kid Rock must know better than anyone that “All Summer Long” would cross over bigtime if he’d just bounce across our TV singing it while earbud-accessorized silhouettes dance around him, but in the name of Fats Domino he must refuse. “Back in the day, we all know the stories of the Otis Reddings and Chuck Berrys and Fats Dominos who never got paid…I will be on iTunes eventually because I can’t avoid it, but I like to always stick to my guns and prove a point and do something original and because I believe in it.” This might help explain why the song has yet to hit the Hot 100, and has only scraped a few peripheral charts. At least he’s OK with you stealing the fucker so you can sing along at shows–this way, he doesn’t have to suffer the indignity of a weak royalty rate.
