Hello,
Just a warning this blog won't be as hot as "Transformers" Megan Fox. Acutally I think she needs to legally change her name to Megan the Fox. Anyway here is my full review of lala.com. It is pretty cool website. Is it earth shattering, no! One cool thing about the website is you can listen to any song you want once free. If you want to hear that song again you have two options. One, you can add the song as a web song for 10c. What that means is you can listen to that song free any time you want at their website. However you can't load it on to an iPod or any other music device. The second option is you could actually buy the MP3, usually for 89c. Then its yours to do with whatever you want. Some people like lala.com because you only pay when you listen to music, you don't have to pay a monthly fee.
However the recording industry as we know it is desperate, many people claim the subscription system is the recording industries last great hope. In the referenced article Rick Rubin, the famous producer, is even pimping Rhapsody. Even Apple's Steve Jobs privately is talking about the subscription way of business. If you have a little extra money, getting your music via subscription is not a bad way to access music. Also it looks like it is the wave of the future. (Thanks to Rolling Stone magazine, Issue 1041.)
Here are some other interesting facts from that same article. "Only 2.5 percent of Americans are paying for music subscriptions, while 17 percent pay for downloads." In a different story in that same issue of Rolling Stone, amazon.com is biting into Apple's sizable headstart on digital music. " iTunes continues to dominate the digital market, with about seventy five percent of sales...." However amazon.com "currently offers more than 2 million copy-protection-free songs". With amazon.com if you have iTunes, when you download a song from amazon.com it automatically goes into your iTunes library. That is extremely cool. The way amazon.com is doing business has already caused iTunes to lower some of its prices. For instance, they use to charge more for their DRM free music, amazon.com competiveness has made them lower their prices. I love iTunes, but amazon.com is worth checking out. A lot of time when I am looking to buy digital music, I will check both sites and buy from whoever has the lower price.
Also according to rs.com "last.fm has launched a royalty program for unsigned artists". Since announcing the new royalty program more than 450,000 tracks by unsigned or independent artists have been uploaded to the site. The artist will receive royalties if their tracks are either randomly streamed or played free-on-demand". So that is pretty cool, it is still a longshot to launch a successful career. However a longshot is better than no shot. For those of you who don't know what last.fm is, it's an internet radio station. I am not much into internet radio station, but they do have one cool feature I use daily. When I play a song on iTunes, last.fm brings up a page with information about that song and the band. A lot of the time there is a link to buy the music as well. It also keeps track the number of plays each band receives. So far the most listened to band I have seen is 84 million listens for Radiohead. That's a lot more than for The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Def Leppard. To me that is unbelievable.
Here are some miscellaneous tidbits. Taylor Swift and Def Leppard are going to be performing together as part of CMT's Crossroads series. The concert will be shown on November 8th on CMT. That should be interesting. Also there is a Rock Honors The Who special Saturday night. One of the band's performing will be Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder has longed talked about how much he loves The Who and how much positive effect they had on his life. Also many times Pearl Jam performs Who songs in concerts. I only have one of the day. Song of the Day: "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple. That is a great song and the story inspiring it is interesting.
David Cook's debut CD should be out in November. He is still on tour with the other Top 10 finalists of "American Idol". Also here is a record label sponspored music website to check out. The website is rcrdlbl.com. They are trying to get their cut of the money with on-line music. Their website is a good start, that's about all it is at that point. Like most things with the recording industry it is probably too little, too late. Three quick movie reviews. 1) "Domino" starring Keira Knightley. Other than Miss Knightly there is very little to reccomend this movie. 2) "R.V." starring Robin Williams. This is definitely a video movie. It is about as good as you would expect. 3) "Shanghai Noon" starring Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan. This is another video movie. There is about a 20 minute section in the movie that should have been deleted, if it had been the movie would have been much better.
Without any further preamble my 5th all-time favorite artist is the Doors. I would highly reccomend to see Oliver Stone's "The Doors" movie. As with any based on a true story it is not 100% accurate, it might not even be 70% accurate. A warning this movie is not for the squeamish. Val Kilmer plays Jim Morrison so well, it is eerie. It is almost like he became Jim Morrison during filming. However it is good movie. Also Stephen Davis has written a fine biography of Jim Morrison. So I would reccomend both of those, although both accounts conflict a lot.
Now on to their more obscure, but fantastic songs. If you think these songs aren't obscure you must be a big Doors fan. 1) "The End" 2) "When The Music's Over" I like the extended versions of both of those songs. 3) "Love Street" 4) "Ghost Song" 5) "Waiting for The Sun" 6) "Alabama Song" 7) "Backdoor Man" 8) "People Are Strange" and 9) "Five To One". Also Jim Morrison has a cool spoken word track called "The Movie".
I will be back on Sunday with my fourth all-time favorite artist. Just a little hint this band is featured in the new Blender magazine, with Jack Black on the cover. Have a good weekend, the music addict.
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