A Long Read But a Good One: New Hope for Music Online

This appeared on Hypebot and was written by Kyle Bylin, the founder and editor of Sidewinder.fm.  It's long but highly worthwhile, especially for those curious about what Trent Reznor is going to do with this new proposed streaming music service codenamed "Daisy" (which, by the way, is set apparently set for a summer launch.)

I.  Invisible Funnel

Industry pundits and executives looked at the file sharing and torrent downloading craze, and saw millions of people who desired unlimited access to music but lacked a legal service to satisfy their needs. Stockpiles of MP3s and bloated iPods evidenced a potential market for an entirely new model where every song on iTunes could be streamed from the cloud for a monthly fee. This fantasy of a “celestial jukebox” has always appealed deeply to fanatic listeners, who dreamed of Santa giving them the entire inventory of Amoeba Music for Christmas. But what about the mainstream market — the millions of casual listeners? Can this jukebox attract their interest?

Click to read more ...

Yet Another List: 40 Movie Soundtracks That Changed Alternative Music

Spin magazine may be dead as a printed entity, but it still lives online.  They've posted this slideshow (sorry; they need the page views.  It's all they've got now.) of the 40 movie soundtracks that changed alternative music.

There are some interesting picks, too.  Make sure you read their reasoning.

Again, How Much Green Day is Too Much?

If this keeps up, the Oxford English Dictionary is going to put a picture of Green Day next to the definitions of "overkill" and "ubiquitous" in the next edition.

First, there were three albums.  Then a documentary entitled ¡Cuatro! based on the making of ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré!  And now there's a second documentary all about the making of the American Idiot stage production on Broadway.  Broadway Idiot will premiere at SXSW next month.

Talk about flooding the market.  And thanks to Billy Joel's stint in rehab, they haven't had a chance to hit the road yet.

Dubstep State of the Union

Of course...

(Thanks to Greggory)

It Looks Like an Old-School Mixtape--But It's Not

An Australian company called Sharetapes wants to bring back the romance of the cassette mixtape with a device that uses QR codes and NFC (near-field communication) technology to load up playlists from various online sources.  From Gizmag:

Sharetapes will send out your blank “tapes” in packs of five retro-styled cards. After registering with Sharetapes, users can then enter a link to their saved playlist from any of the supported sites, while also adding a unique code found on the back of each card. Hit “record,” and your mixtape is created.

Read the whole thing here.