ThruYou

I recently found this series of musical mash-ups by someone called Kutiman.

Each song is created from a number of YouTube clips, normally of people playing instruments or singing at home on their web cams. These are spliced and mixed together to create new tracks.

There are a range of songs on the his ThruYou site or via YouTube that cover a range of musical styles including Funk and Hip-Hop.

The whole ThruYou project shows what is possible when you don’t have to worry about Copyright restrictions. Had this series of mash-ups been made from music of artists under Big Media contracts the ThruYou site would have been closed down under the massive weight of legal threats in very short time!

Free MP3s. NIN, Janes Addiction & StreetSweeper

Trent Reznor has just announced another set of free MP3s that have been released for free download.

They have been released ahead of the final NIN tour of the USA with support from Janes Addiction and StreetSweeper and the download includes 2 tracks from each artist.

You Can get the files in 320kbps MP3, FLAC, M4A and WAV formats from ninja2009.com.

Enjoy

He put the gun to his face. BANG!

So much blood for such a tiny little hole, Problems do have solutions.

(Nine Inch Nails, The Downward Spiral)

I couldn’t think of a more fitting start to this post about the demise of Nine Inch Nails.

Trent Reznor, front man of NIN has announced that the entity (Its hard to call one man a band) will be no more at the end of this tour. NIN have been around for the past twenty years and in that time have influenced the sounds of many people.

Even the likes of Johnny Cash covered Hurt before his death. A song that is an eeire fit with the life Johnny had lived.

If you somehow managed to miss the music of NIN go visit the NIN site and download some. The follow can be got for free.

• The Slip
• Ghosts

The final leg of the tour is in the USA and will have Janes Addiction appearing. A fitting end as they were the band that helped launch Trent into the lime light all those years ago.

NIN… the passing of an era.

Free album is Amazon best seller!

I know that is a contradiction, how can something that is available for free make more money than something that is only available in a paid for format?

According to Amazon, this is exactly what happened. The Best selling album for 2008 on their MP3 site was Ghosts I-IV by Nine Inch Nails. An album released under the Creative Commons licence, hence free to share. The band even provides the seed for Ghosts I on The Pirate Bay site.

This raises the question, given that the album is effectively free why would anyone pay for it?

Trent Reznor, Mr NIN, is no fan of the record industry and after the famous Steal It speech split with his record company to go it alone. All releases since have been effectivly free yet people still pay because they know any money they pay goes directly to the band, not to line the pockets of fat cats in some faceless record company.

This just shows people are willing to support things they believe in or care about.

This latest blow to the record industry must have left many VERY scared. The ONLY thing record companies actually do is find new bands then publish their music. Both tasks that are now back in the hands of the artists. Will 2009 be the year we see the big 4 ask for a bail out or will Britney and the other plasic made up bands support them for another year?

The joy of the dawn chorus

I have tried a number of media players since leaving the MS fold, trying to find a good replacement for MS Media Player. I like the way it manages your music, library and playlists.

The best of the bunch I found was Amorak, that was until the Debian package became available for Songbird. Songbird’s default appearance is similar to many of the media players  available at the moment with a Genre/Artist/Album list type layout to navigate your media library.

What raises Songbird above the rest are the plug-is. There are already a large selection of plug-is from iPhone cover style list you can navigate by through to lyric tools that display lyrics to your songs while they play.

I have since flushed all other players from my system. I no longer have a need for them, Songbird is the king of the hill. Give it a try and you won’t look back

A.n.K.h

I have always been a fan of the industrial and electronic music that employs industrial and harsh sounds in their sound scapes. I loved the release of Ghosts I-IV by Nine Inch Nails this year, a real departure for Trent Reznor to make a 4 disk instrumental album but a still pure NIN at heart.

If you like the more challenging to listen to forms of electronic music, such as NIN and Aphex Twin then A.n.K.h // are worth a listen to. I found them on Jamendo the other day and they have gone into my playlist for when I am coding at work. They have released three albums to date and their stuff ranges from the more ambient through to full on tracks.

Fresh Body Shop

I found Fresh Body Shop on Jamendo recently. A prolific group for an unsigned band with four albums under their belt already. I liked the tracks I streamed so grabbed all four of their albums and have had them on random at work. I write software for a living and work with a set of headphone on most of the time.

I have really enjoyed their stuff, the Rusty Demo Songs album I think is their best. Hard to pin down really but you can hear influence from as diverse artists as Beck, Radiohead, Clodplay and Nine Inch Nails. While the style varies they do have a sound that is their own.

Well worth the download and under the Creative Commons licence so it is free.

Jamendo

Jamendo is place for bands to make their free music available for download. At time of posting they have just over 13000 albums of free music available in good quality MP3 format.

You can navigate the site via band name, album name or genre tags. When you drill into an area there are all the normal ordering modes you would expect such as most downloaded, most played etc. There is also a tag cloud to let you get a feel of how many albums are available under each tag.

You can preview songs while you navigate so you can listen before you download. I have grabbed a number of albums from the site so far and all have been well recorded and encoded.