MP3 | Silicon Shecky

Wired that had an article earlier this week about the state of the music industry and how it is slowly starting to embrace online distribution. The most interesting statement made in the article though was how CD’s have overall hurt the industry, “There was this imperative that started to emerge: ‘You must fill up a CD with as much music as possible,’” Mardin says. “The rest was filler. You ended up with albums that were one or two hits and a bunch of wanna-be hits.”. This statement basically said that thanks to CDs and how hard things were pushed, low quality albums were pushed for 1 or 2 songs, which prompted a slow down on the idea of listening to an album all the way through. I have to agree with this assessment.

The other interesting thing I found in the article was about how you are going to see less mega-stars, “The top is going to come down,” says Goldberg, “but the middle class is going to grow.” If you take both those thoughts into account, isn’t that what already happened?

Thanks To Sarah Clemence for her article.

Its the weekend, and while I do mostly Tech blogging, Music is another passion of mine, so I figure why not hit up on music things on the weekend. Seriously, who doesn’t have their favorite music to listen to while working, driving, relaxing, and other things?

I figure we can start off by a couple of places I recommend to get music. We all know of iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, but have you also checked out eMusic?

eMusic has been around for a long time, and uses a monthly subscription fee system. The prices work out to well under $.99 per song, so it isn’t too far off the beaten path. Yes you can pick and choose what songs you want. The tend to lean more toward the lesser known artists, although you can find some main stream or more well known stuff. Some of the areas I feel they really shine are in the Blues, Jazz, and Classical areas. I’ve found artists and albums in those areas that I can’t find anywhere else. Also if you like diddling around with backing tracks, just put Karaoke in front of your search. They have a lot of it. The downloader they supply is nice and simple, and actually will work as a browser through their store. The download technology is similar to Amazon’s downloader. You can get to the at eMusic.com.

The next site is quite different. Garageband.com isn’t what you might expect. Yes it is home to independent artists, but I feel it is the premier site for it. MySpace music I always found confusing, and sites like iLike and Pandora are nice, but garageband is just great.

They site is easy to navigate, has things broken down by genres, and has all sorts of information on it. You can create an account and find out what bands ar eplaying near you, download a lot of different artists, and seriously listen to the up and coming artists. I have heard a number of bands there that eventually made it to the radio, and on the main charts. Not everything there is free, and while there are some issues because bands will put themselves in categories that they don’t belong in just to get more people to check them out, overall the genre listings are pretty good. If you like to check out new music, and get a taste of what is coming, definitely check them out.

So I leave it to you, where do you go to get music?

Music Musings

Saturday Music Musings