Spotify to limit free streaming accounts

There has been some HUGE news today about Spotify's music service. The company that have delighted consumers by offering ad supported, free music streaming over the past few years are changing the parameters of their this service.

Here’s an overview of  the changes:

• New Spotify users will be able to enjoy our unrivalled free service as it is today for the first 6 months.

• As of May 1st, any user who signed up to the free service on or before November 1st 2010 will be able to play each track for free up to a total of 5 times. Users who signed up after the beginning of November will see these changes applied 6 months after the time they set up their Spotify account.

• Additionally, total listening time for free users will be limited to 10 hours per month after the first 6 months. That’s equivalent to around 200 tracks or 20 albums.

These changes don't come as a surprise to me. Recently I looked into the cost of creating my own online music store (it's expensive) and was told from all of my sources of information that Spotify had been running at a huge loss. That only it's angel investors (which include all the major record labels) had kept it afloat.

The harsh truth that consumers have to face is the music industry IS a business and it DOES need your money to stay afloat. So I'm sure the musician's/record labels around the globe will rejoice at this news. Your average consumer is likely to meet this news with a drastically different view and many have already called it "the death of Spotify".

But for everyone it's a question  of how much you value music. Is £9.99 a month too much to pay to have 10 million songs on tap? It's your decision.

Click here to see the blog post from Spotify

Discovering New Music on the Internet #1

In the summer of 2003, I received a tax rebate. The sum I received was enough to pay for a new pair of glasses, a holiday and a third generation iPod. So I excitedly ordered the Jonathon Ive designed wonder through Apple’s website, downloaded iTunes and set to work digitizing my entire CD collection. A few days later I would be able to jettison my portable discman and carry around my entire back catalogue with me. I became feverishly excited, it was going to be great! In the first few months my fervent enthusiasm meant I convinced myself I loved the iPod experience.

In hindsight I’m not so sure that my feelings of elation were justified as having my entire record collection ‘on tap’ meant that I had too much choice. Whenever I bought a new record that didn’t instantly gratify me I’d quickly revert to my old favourites out of habit. Looking back on it, I ended up ignoring some records that were initially challenging (The Rapture’s ‘Echoes’ comes to mind) but all the more rewarding when they finally clicked.

Fast forward to January 2009 when I started planning the launch of [edit] radio. It was then that I became acutely aware of my own listening habits. As I’d be committing myself to creating fortnightly podcasts I would need a large variety of great songs to share with my listeners. I felt confident that my musical taste was diverse and up to date enough to cope. I was wrong. I found that after planning the tracks for the first four episodes (they were an hour an a half each back then) I was beginning to repeat the bands/albums I wanted to play. It came as a shock. It was apparent to me that 6 years of having any music I wanted had made me less adventurous and even a little indifferent to some of the newer music out there. I decided that a change was required, as not only did I need to find more music that I’d want to share, I needed to find it fast. So what did I do next? I searched the web for answers.

This will be the first in an ongoing series of articles about the best ways to discover site’s featuring music you’ll love on the net (that aren’t [edit] radio). I hope you’ll find it useful.

Last FM

I’m sure most of you have heard of Last FM but I’m not sure how many of you have accounts that you make the most of. For the uninitiated, Last FM is a social network based around music recommendations that uses the music library imported from your computer (or added manually) and offers great suggestions about bands that are similar or related to your favourites that you may be interested in. Based on what you enter, it will create a radio station tailored to your existing tastes that can be accessed via the web or a smart-phone, and it’s suggestions are normally second to none. The service also provides a function called “Scrobbling” which records every track you play on your MP3 player, computer or various other services. This information is then collated into an RSS feed and statistics which can be viewed by your friends or added to personal blogs, or just offer some revealing information about how addicted to certain musicians or albums you are. My love affair with Bon Iver’s first album stretched a lot further than I had imagined!

Best For - Personalised radio stations accessible anywhere, finding new music related to or similar to your tastes, ‘scrobbling’ and seeing what music your friends are listening to.

Hype Machine

Every day, thousands of people around the world write about music they love. The Hype Machine keeps track of what music bloggers write about. They handpick a set of amazing music blogs (that we hope to be part of one day) and via a simple user interface allow you to play (and Scrobble) the tracks directly from the webpage. Once you create an account you can also subscribe to your favourite blogs and create a personalised feed of new music that you’ll enjoy. There’s also a selection of real time charts that show the most talked about songs/remixes/artists from the past few days. Another great aspect is that by navigating directly to the blog post, you often find tracks being given away free. For me its the best tool to find new music that’s best suited to your current tendencies.

Best For - Finding new music that suits your own personal tastes and keeping up to date with the latest music trends.

The Sixty One/Aweditorium

Named after Highway 61, the notorious U.S highway that runs along the Mississippi River and marks the origin of American music culture, The Sixty One is like a musical adventure game, setting it’s users quests to lead you out of your musical comfort zone. It’s interface can be daunting and would benefit from some refinement but it’s an extremely fun way to discover new music. The sites code also powers popular iPad app Aweditorium


Best For - Having some fun whilst discovering new music

Bandcamp

Bandcamp is a net based music store that’s a great place to find unsigned musicians. It’s allowing artists to regain/retain their independence and recoup more of the money from their recordings. The site gives bands their own mini web-site where they can upload and sell all of their albums, EP’s and tracks directly to you. The best part is that you can stream all the music free before you decide to make a purchase. Bandcamp takes 10-15% of every sale to support the platform. As they grow I can see them offering a raft of services to bands and with a few tweaks can imagine it becoming a business model for record labels of the future.

Best For - Finding unsigned/emerging acts before they become famous

Soundcloud

The Soundcloud platform is fast becoming the preferred way to share music/sound on the web. It works in a similar way to You Tube and has the potential to become as ubiquitous. It offers it’s users a virtual space to upload and share music with friends publicly or privately; to embed sound across websites, social networks, blogs and receive comments on the tracks. The service offers free accounts to amateur users with the option to upgrade to a premium account for advanced features like statistics, controlled distribution and custom branding. Lots of music blogs are using the service to reduce their server storage costs and the amount of music they give away for free. This is helping Soundcloud to create a huge library of songs that can be searched for and played from your computer or via a smart-phone application. It’s a service that’s on the rise and one to watch.

Best For - Sharing music with your friends via social networks or on websites

That’s it for now, there are more that I could mention but this article is already excessively long!

Happy listening.

Support Local Music #2 - By Kevin Lawson

The next couple of months will see a lot of releases from act's from or associated with the Reading area and they all NEED YOUR SUPPORT. So I demand that you all go out and buy one or two copies of the following releases:
Pete and the Pirates (Stolen recordings)

Reading's favourite son's are heading backing into your musical lives this May with both a single and album for you to give your generous backing to.

United (Single) - Released on the 16th of May Pre-Order it from the Bands Website - £1.58 and get 3 extra songs thrown in for free!

One Thousand Pictures (album) - Released on the 23rd of May Pre-Order it from iTunes - £9.99
United by Pete And The Pirates

Does it Offend You, Yeah? - Don't Say We Didn't Warn You (Cooking Vinyl)

It's the sophmore record from our local Dance-Punk, Elctro genre bending geniuses. It's been 3 year in the making and it's worth every second of that wait.

Physical Copy - Amazon - £8.93
Digital Copy - 7Digital - £7.99
Does It Offend You, Yeah? - Wrestler by editradio

Ben Marwood - Outside There's A Curse (Xtra Mile Recordings) - Available Now

Another bit of tub thumping for the excellent Mister Ben Marwood, to remind those of you new to [edit] radio to get out there are and buy this today.

Physical Copy - Buy From Amazon £6.99

Digital Copy - Buy From 7Digital £6.99

Ben Marwood - It's Harder Now To Break Your Stupid Heart by editradio

Confessions of a former Headbanger... by Scott Painter

Now I used to be pretty into my Metal - long hair, scraggly beard (I am pleased to say that I have now rectified this) and the outfit to match. However as time passed the thrill of the pit began to wear off and I found myself wondering what else was out there to hear. So without a clue I stumbled into the musical abyss armed with Spotfiy and Wikipedia and have gradually unearthed myself a whole heap of amazing records. Luckily I was blessed with a willful disregard for my traitorous behaviour and the advice of a whole array of super smart geeky music types and I hope to pass this information onto you.

In the following column I will lay out a number of songs to help you take those shaky first steps
that will have some comforting sense of the metal you're used to whilst giving your ears some tasty new aural delights. So without further ado...

David Bowie – Andy Warhol (Hunky Dory)

With a riff that wouldn't sound out of place on any 80's thrash album, this number comes to you
straight from your parents’ record collection. If you love all that is spandex, check this out - it
showed signs of Bowie’s genre defining Ziggy Stardust era that inspired the Crue and all that
followed.

The Pixies – Gouge Away (Doolittle)

Closing out the album this song opens with a suffocating bass line and the hoarse semi-whispered sounds of Frank Black’s voice, before erupting into an abrasive power chord hook-laden chorus. The influence this band have had on all that have followed in their path is too great to ever totally comprehend, with even a certain Seattle-based outfit admitting ripping off their riffs for Nevermind.

The Mars Volta - Wax Simulacra (The Bedlam in Goliath)

Wax Simulacra by the Mars Volta is a manic 2 minutes 38 seconds of drum heroics filled prog
insanity. Featuring a number of former members of 'At the Drive in', this band have continually
pushed the envelope to create some of the most interesting and intense music you may ever hear.

So there you go: 3 tracks to start you off. Have a listen then do some exploring of your own and I'll come back soon with some albums that might float your boat.

You could never kiss a Tory boy without wanting to cut off your tongue again!

Los Campesinos! 02/02/2011 – London, Shepherd’s Bush Empire – by Kevin Lawson

I arrived at the venue a good hour and a half later than planned, meaning I had missed most of the support act’s set and wasn’t in the best of moods. The delay was the result of a meeting which had overrun, a taxi strike in Coventry and a cancelled train. I could spew reams of vitriol about each of those things but this is neither the time nor the place. The fact is I did manage to reach the venue in time to watch a performance by Los Campesinos! that left me and everyone else in the audience quaking in a raw throated stupor.

For those of you unfamiliar with their music, they are an eight piece indie pop band formed in Cardiff who write colossal sounding yet intimately articulate songs that brim with youthful energy. There is a knowing self parody in their recordings but they never sound anything less than genuine. Lyrically the band are ultra confessional, each song sounds like it was crafted from the entries of a bleak diary or from a Peep show style inner monologue that you wouldn’t dare utter aloud.

Tonight’s crowd is young enough to make me feel old (I’m 30, does that make me old?) and they all seem to have a dewy eyed loyalty to the band. This connection is more like watching friends play on stage than gawping upon them with star struck reverence. As the band takes the stage the auditorium comes alive. Choruses are roared back at the band with increasing passion, from light hearted party songs like ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ to depression filled break up anthems like ‘We are beautiful, we are doomed’. Circle pits begin to emerge that nearly reach the sound desk and lead singer Gareth is both feeding and feeding off this energy. Eventually diving into the heart of the mob, microphone in hand, before coming back unscathed. With each song being so personal you can see that the performance takes an emotional toll on him, so much so that when he reached set highlight 'The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future’ he was visibly upset and overcome, something that was later confirmed on the bands Twitter feed:

“1,000 people shouting "you could never kiss a Tory Boy without wanting to cut off your tongue again" back at me. Brought to tears onstage.”

It was an amazing moment of catharsis that was a rubber stamp of authenticity, confirming that the bands songs are not contrived notepad fables but are true tales of life, love, loss and misery. As songwriters, they could hold back on the details of their lives and deal in generalisations. But it’s their willingness to share so many intimate details and be vulnerable to the potential opinions of their audience that creates a bond that runs deeper than most bands are able to achieve. Another album is due to be released later this year and I can’t wait to hear the next installment of their lives.

Fleet Foxes Robin Pecknold Gives away new music

Great Big Bushy Beard!!

Last October Kanye West's G.O.O.D friday Twitter posts saw the artist giving away free music. At the time it caused a lot of buzz and inspired other musicians to follow suit. This time it's the turn of Fleet Foxes lead singer Robin Pecknold to use the social networking platform to give us some free goodies. Yesterday via his Twitter feed he gave away three brand new songs stating "These aren't Fleet Foxes songs, but I didn't know where else to disseminate it."

All the songs are stripped-back acoustic solo numbers that aren't really Fleet Foxes tracks, but they are hauntingly beautiful nevertheless. The songs were recorded recently in Los Angeles and Pecknold as added that "One is a duet with my friend Ed Droste from the amazing band Grizzly Bear, one is just a new solo jam, and one is a cover."

It's certainly more than enough to tide over any Fleet Foxes fan until the release of their new album Helplessness Blues which will be in music stores on 3/05/11. Happy Pancake day everyone!

Downloads

I'm Losing Myself (Feat. Ed Droste)
Derwentwater Stones
Where Is My Wild Rose

YOUR LOCAL MUSIC VENUE NEEDS YOU - By Lawrence Piddock

Saturdays... to some they're a bunch of ladies who gamely cover Depeche Mode numbers for charity
(I'll stick my head over the parapet here and admit that I admire their pluck - I look forward to them
tackling "Blasphemous Rumours" or "Flies on the Windscreen"* at some point). It's also the day
when the nation's Dads drag their kids around Homebase and B&Q. It's also the day when many
nervous football managers are preparing for the worst and consider updating their CV.

In my case it's normally means sacrificing my lie-in in order to get to the washing machine before
everyone else, and while I wait a while for the washing to be done, it means listening to the wireless
for a bit.

Funnily enough, they were discussing small venues. A lot of people texted and tweeted about seeing
bands before they were famous in small clubs, pubs etc before they were famous. There was the
inevitable stories about someone's band supporting The Jam or The Police or The Smiths and the
bovine excrement especially the guy who claimed to have seen Oasis play in Portsmouth in 1992 (For
the record Pete in Southsea, if you're reading this, Noel was still a roadie for Inspiral Carpets at that
point! And they didn't play south of the M6 till 1994)

Anyhow, it got on to a discussion of the problems facing small venues at the moment. A lot of
familiar stories about places struggling to keep going. Being involved with the Rising Sun it's
something I know pretty well.