Update, 5:00 p.m.: The GnR MySpace page now has full-length versions of 6 songs available. Earlier today, five of them were only 90 seconds long. The change, alas, makes at least part of my post irrelevant. Still, Imeem has songs available that the GnR MySpace page does not.

I never even considered buying this album. I never loved the band, and I've managed to ignore the hype completely until now. Then Chuck Klosterman's review made me curious. I like Klosterman's books. We're about the same age. His musical tastes in high school would have … Read more

Back in August, I noted that the new David Byrne/Brian Eno album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, was available in its entirety as a free streaming audio file.

They also put up a free download of one track, "Strange Overtones." Later, they offered several packages to purchase--from downloads-only for $8.99 to a deluxe package with a hardbound book, screensaver, and extra songs for $69.99.

Turns out that this release and marketing strategy was driven by Topspin Media, which is led by former Yahoo Music Vice President Ian Rogers.

A couple weeks ago, Rogers … Read more

According to the Financial Times, music label EMI is planning to launch its own music portal to sell songs and videos, and offer some free content as well.

My first reaction was similar to that of the anonymous music executive quoted in the FT article: dead on arrival. Listeners don't know and don't care about labels; they want to buy all their music in one place, and so on.

But surely EMI's digital team, led by former Googler Douglas Merrill, is smart enough to realize that it can't take on Apple's iTunes with a label-specific … Read more

Yesterday I was listening to the new TV On The Radio album, Dear Science, with a couple friends. One of them used to be a big music fan, but basically stopped following music in the early 1990s, circa Beck and Pearl Jam. Every time I play him a song by a band I like (Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse), he comes up with a terse response like "fun." If I press him, he can always come up with a reason why the artists of yesteryear are better. He hasn't bought a CD in ages, has never downloaded a … Read more

Truck stop rocker Kid Rock has been one of the poster boys for the "ignore downloads" crowd.

His latest album, Rock and Roll Jesus has not only sold more than 2 million albums, but has continued to sell lots of copies long past its release date--this week, nearly a year after release, it's still at No. 7. That's almost unprecedented in this day and age, when top-selling pop artists (think Mariah Carey) sell hundreds of thousands of albums in their first week then plummet off the charts. Why the staying power? Some argue it's because … Read more

The run-up to the holiday season always begins in September, and while I was overseas with no Internet access, the music and technology industries kept on churning. Fortunately for me, nothing's really changed. To wit:

SanDisk, in collaboration with the four major labels, announced a new physical format for albums called SlotMusic. You'll be able to pay between $7 and $10 and get a full album on a MicroSD card, which you'll then be able to plug into compatible cellphones or MP3 players to begin playing the MP3 files encoded at 320kbps. This one boggles me. If … Read more

R.E.M. fans (like me!) and music-biz folks interested in exploring new ways to use the Web should check out the two-part series on Hypebot.com about the band's online campaign for its latest album, Accelerate.

The posts are written by Ethan Kaplan, the Warner Bros. vice president of technology who worked with the band to design a technology-intensive publicity campaign.

Highlights include:

• Ninetynights.com, which included exclusive short videos of the recording process.

• REMDublin.com, which evolved into a wiki-style collaboration between fans and resulted in fan-created videos scoring top-popularity spots on YouTube.

• Two … Read more

After reading to the end of this Boston Globe article about this weekend's Million DJ March in Washington D.C., I was confused. What are DJs protesting?

One DJ interviewed in the article mentions that he had to fight with a club owner to get paid, and that DJs aren't required to fill out W-2 tax forms. I've got news for him: unless you're a union musician with an airtight contract, being ripped off is an unfortunately frequent part of the performing experience. It's supply and demand--there are more musicians and DJs willing to perform … Read more

Lime Wire LLC (the company) has announced a deal with The Orchard, a large digital distributor for independent artists and small labels. The deal will effectively double the amount of music available in the LimeWire Store to more than 2 million tracks.

I wrote about the store when Lime Wire first announced it a year ago, thinking that it was a possible exit strategy in case the major labels won their lawsuit against Lime Wire and forced the shutdown of its Gnutella-based file-sharing client. But this announcement seems to show that Lime Wire is taking the store seriously as an … Read more