eMusic has just launched their new websites and it comes with a few upgrades. Not only has eMusic added 250,000 tracks from Universal, but they have changed their pricing structure.
The new service, which previously charged for plans beginning at $11.99 for 24 tracks per month, will now simply charge users money for each track. Track prices will range from $.49 to $.89 each, depending on the newness and popularity of the songs.
For users who aren’t buying the newest music, the price will stay the same. About 80 percent of the 10 million tracks available on eMusic will be 49 cents each—the same price point as before. And whatever price point users are buying at, eMusic CEO Adam Klein emphasized he will still beat the prices of what he called the “a la carte” music stores by 25 to 50 percent.
eMusic is getting ready to add 250,000 songs from Universal Music Group’s catalogue, however they are losing out on the independents. eMusic are about to launch a major overhaul to its subscription pricing scheme and this hasn’t made a lot of leading independent record labels happy.
eMusic subscribers were notified by e-mail Tuesday that they have two days remaining to purchase music from several independent record labels that are about to stop doing business with eMusic. Those labels include Domino, Merge, and the Beggars Group of labels, which includes 4AD and Matador Records.
Losing those labels means that there will be no Arcade Fire, Spoon, Belle & Sebastian, Cat Power, and Yo La Tengo.
“This is as heartbreaking to us as it is to you,” the company’s email stated. “Please know we have done everything we could to keep them from leaving.” The email includes a large button encouraging recipients to “Add Your Voice” by signing a sort of online petition advising the labels that their music is wanted back on the service.
eMusic thought they needed to change their strategy, as they haven’t grown their 400,000 user base since 2007.
There are a lot of rumours that the Beatles catalogue will be released on iTunes within the next 30 min. While Apple, EMI and the Beatles estate have yet to announce the partnership officially, Billboard has stated that they believe from their own Music industry sources that a deal is in place and ready to come about.
Midem has been suffering recently with lower attendance numbers and decreasing revenues. Thus, Midem though that they would start charging bands to fill the gap in revenues.
So how much does it cost to play at Midem? Well from 500 to 1,000 euros per hour. Thats not including transportation, food, etc.
“I love Midem,” blogged Echo Nest CEO Jim Lucchese. ”But I have a problem spending a week with industry peers in beautiful Cannes discussing how to build a sustainable music industry for artists and fans, while the bands I’ll be seeing that week pay to play for me and the other attendees.”
There’s not much doubt as to the biggest announcement at this year’s AES Show in San Francisco. As widely rumoured, Avid have reversed their long-standing insistence on tying their Pro Tools software to their own proprietary hardware.
Heading the many eyebrow-raising features in Pro Tools 9 is the ability to make full use of third-party interface hardware using its ASIO and Core Audio drivers. In essence, all you now need to run any version of Pro Tools 9 is an iLok licence: any further Avid hardware is just optional.
It part of the effort to simplify the Pro Tools product range, the previous LE and M-Powered versions have ceased to exist, as have some of the earlier add-on Toolkits. There is now but a single Pro Tools 9, with three options available (the URL below provides detailed comparisons of the new and earlier versions). The basic version replaces LE and M-Powered, and runs natively on Intel Macs with Snow Leopard or PCs with Windows 7 (earlier operating systems are no longer supported). This can be augmented by the new Complete Production Toolkit 2, which adds almost all the Pro Tools HD features that are not dependent on HD hardware. Pro Tools HD 9 remains at the top of the tree — but anyone with an HD 9 licence will now be able to install and run the application natively, again excluding only those features that require HD hardware. This opens up a wealth of new possibilities for HD users, most obviously the ability to record, edit and mix Pro Tools sessions on laptop computers with portable Firewire or USB interfaces.
There’s a lot more to the new release than that, however. Even the basic native version of Pro Tools 9 is now significantly more capable than previous LE and M-Powered releases. Many users have been clamouring for the inclusion of automatic compensation for processing delays caused by plug-in lookahead buffers and routing to external hardware and third-party DSP cards, and this is now standard in all versions of Pro Tools 9. And whereas LE and M-Powered offered a maximum of 18 inputs, Pro Tools 9 provides 32, whether using Avid’s own hardware or via ASIO or Core Audio. Basic track count has been doubled to a whopping 96 mono or stereo tracks, or 192 with the Complete Production Toolkit 2, and there are now 256 buses as standard.
Several other key features that were previously available in native systems only as expensive add-ons are now also standard. These include the full multitrack version of Beat Detective, file interchange using the OMF, AAF and MXF formats, MP3 export and the Timecode ruler. Meanwhile, the first fruits of Avid’s recent acquisition of Euphonix are apparent in the inclusion of support for the Eucon control protocol in all versions of Pro Tools 9.
The addition of the Complete Production Toolkit makes for what is undoubtedly the most powerful native version of Pro Tools yet, adding a number of features that have previously been available only in HD systems. The most notable of these are probably VCA groups, advanced automation and up to 192 audio tracks, but there are plenty of other additions, including support for Avid’s ICON range of controllers.
Pro Tools 9 should be available very soon — boxed versions are expected to ship by November 19th — and will cost £504.95 for the basic version and £1679.95 for the Complete Production Toolkit 2. Needless to say we’ll be reviewing it as soon as we possibly can!
If you don’t know what a granular synthesizer is then first of all, there is no need to feel stupid, it’s pretty specialist stuff and you may wish to have a quick read of this wiki article before going any further.
When I first discovered the joy granular synthesis, I became so obsessed with it I didn’t make any music that didn’t involve one for about 5 months, a serious hinderance if you are studying for a degree in music composition.
Well, for £1.19 you can share this joy without having to go through the pain of learning a programming language and making one yourself. All you need as an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
The app is fairly versatile and allows you to load your own samples via a web style drop box. The interface is pretty intuitive too. If you need further convincing of how fun messing around with sound is, then check out the video below.
RouteNote enjoys being involved in all things music, both superb and tragic. I’ve decided to throw out a weekly video (where it can be found) of awful tunes that could arguably be cult favourite’s for a giggle.
This tragic attempt at something to do with signing is from The Hoff. Scouring YouTube and the Hoffs own site, I Couldn’t find the proper video. It Turns out the song has become “Unavailable. Embedding disabled by request”. Probably for the best. One of the best move’s Hoff ever made next to Bay-watch of course.
ooh, jump in my car, I wanna ta-ake you home
jump in my car, it’s too far to walk on your ow-own
jump in my car, I wanna ta-ake you home
C’mon and jump in my car, it’s way too far to walk on your ow-own
Well maybe I wi-ill
Ah, that’s better now, your talkin’ sense
But you best keep still
Well, if you like I’ll just put up a fence
No need to get smart
Well alright we’ll soon be on our way
We better start
What for?
Because it’s such a long way
Why, where d’you live?
I live down south, it’s roughly eighty-four miles
Hey slow down, you must be jokin’ there behind that cute smile
Oh, no I’m not
Well, if you’re not there’s only one thing to say
And what’s that?
Get out the car, get on your way
Get out of my car
But you just said that you’d take me home
it’s just too far
But there’s no way that I can get there alone
I couldn’t care less
Maybe I could see you next week
But you look a mess
But look who’s talkin’, you’ve got no right to speak
Get out of my car
You told me that you were a really nice guy
Well I aint
yeah,Get out of my car
Get out
Get out of my car
Limewire, one of the internets most popular file-sharing websites, has finally been shut down after along dispute with the RIAA.
The US district court has issued an injunction which effectively ends a four-year dispute between Lime Group and the Recording Industry Association of America.
Strictly, its complete closure isn’t quite true, but the company has been told to disable its search, download and upload functions, which for a file-sharing site, is certain doom.
On top of this, the company has finally admitted what we were all thinking and confessed to being illegal. A message on Limewire.com states: “This is an official notice that LimeWire is under a court ordered injunction to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing software. Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorisation is illegal.”
A Lime Group spokeswoman acknowledged that the company was now “out” of the file-sharing business. But she added that they were working on alternative ideas that adhere to copyright laws.
