Looking forward to their new album on September 27, 2011.

New BJÖRK Music

As a long time fan of Björk’s music over the years, it’s refreshing to hear something new from her. Give this a listen. Found over on disco naivete.

BJÖRK — CRYSTALLINE

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Weezer Covers The Cars

I love The Cars. I love Weezer. This is like two great bands coming together to recreate a 80′s classic song. Watch and listen and enjoy, like I have many, many times. If you want the song, you can get it via iTunes or Amazon.

Stereogum Top 2011 Albums

I read Stereogum on occasion, but found this link to their top 20 albums of 2011 so far intriguing.

I’ve only got 2 of them [Adele and Fleet Foxes]. That’s a scant 10% of this list. Guess I should go check out some of the other albums. I know Bon Iver is one I’ve heard of, but haven’t heard yet. Anyone recommend any of the other bands and can vouch for their listening quality?

I thought the above cartoon was appropriate in relation to the current news..

Music Media

Over the years, I’ve owned several types of media that music has been stored on:

• 78s
• 45s
• LPs
• 8-Track
• Reel-to-Reel
• Cassette
• Compact Disc
• MiniDisc
• DAT
• MP3/AAC/digital

Yes, I actually did own the above 8-Track portable player
photo used found on the following post on Current TV

CDs have been one of the formats I’ve used the longest, followed closely by the LP and then the cassette. 8-Track albums by Elton John, The Eagles, Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix were played quite often in the car and on my portable.

Minidisc

A favorite format of mine for a good 10 years.

Minidisc was one of my favorites to store and listen to music on. Smaller than CDs, it stored about an albums’ worth of music. My use of it was for not just music. I would record radio shows, voice conversations, interviews and concert bootlegs. I still have an MD recorder that I get out a few times a year. I’d like to update it, but there’s no pressing need to, other than for my own personal love of this format.

45s and 78s

Original photo found at Honolulu Star Advertiser

My collection of 45s and 78s are long gone, but the memories will always be there. As a child, my mom bought Disney records on 78 that I loved to listen to. Then as my musical tastes expanded, I bought 45s, or singles as we all knew them as. At one point, I had amassed a collection of over two-thousand 45s – much more than the few hundred LPs I owned and listened to.

Portable Players

Original photo found at Honolulu Star Advertiser

As media changed over the years, so did my ways of listening to music. Portable cassette boom boxes were very popular outside and in my bedroom. My first CD boom box was equally used a lot. Then came the Walkman, which forever changed how we listen to music, including present day. I’ve owned quite a few Walkmens over the years, as it was a solid media player that kept the tunes going on minimal battery life.

I miss some formats like LPs, playing them a lot on a wide array of different types of turntables, recording each album to cassette for portable listening. Since 1998, I came into the world of MP3 and have increased my usage of it. Today, it’s a mixed format of CD and MP3/AAC/digital with the ratio being 15/85, respectfully.

So what formats have you owned over the years? Have you gone complete digital? A mix of old and new? Any obscure formats that defined a period of time in your life as awesome? Comment away.

iTunes is getting long in the tooth. The interface hasn’t changed in years. Yes, there have been some cosmetic changes here and there and lots of cool and useful features added, but in general, it’s looked and acted the same for many years. I am mostly ok with that, as I’ve learned how to navigate around my music and videos and can make things work for me very easily. I wouldn’t mind seeing some changes, though.

So when I went to Apple’s main site on Monday morning and saw the above, I became curious. I wonder what changes will be announced this morning. Here’s my guesses:

• Streaming and subscription service – We already have last.fm as a decent site for streaming and music discussion. The previous lala site was purchased by Apple. The inevitable would be to see some sort of offering from Apple.
• 90 Second Song Previews – This would be nice for quite a few songs that need more than the 30 seconds currently available.
• Remove DRM from videos – Hey, a boy can dream, can’t he? They did it for music, maybe someday, our video purchases will be liberated, too.

Ladies and Gentlemen…

… The Beatles

None of the above came true. It was the Fab Four that are now on iTunes for the big news this morning.

I celebrated at 7:58am and purchased “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” from The White Album. This is big news since any change in the types of media that music is offered on, getting The Beatles onto that new format is a labor of negotiations, licensing and all sorts of back and forth talks to work it all out. So love them or hate them, The Beatles on iTunes is an important step in the world of music.

As for my other wishes for changes to iTunes, I guess we’ll wait for future announcements and events.

YouTube and Warner Music Group (WMG) have gone through a divorce.

This all stems around WMG’s decision to not continue their license agreement with Google (owner of the YouTube brand), sifting through the millions of YouTube videos and removing songs “belonging to WMG” that were part of user-uploaded video submissions.

This decision has permanently changed any uploaded YouTube video that used a WMG artist’s song for any reason. Such is Warner’s far-reaching efforts to protect any of it’s precious properties that it takes out other label’s artists in the process.

For example, in my video Snowy Sunday Ep. 002, I use clips of three different songs: Dean Martin “Let It Snow”, Crowded House “Four Seasons In One Day” and Van Halen “Dreams”. Of these three artists, two of them are with Warner [Dean Martin and Van Halen]. Crowded House gets crowded out of the YouTube house, at least when their songs are used alongside any WMG artist in the same YouTube video.

In addition to Snowy Sunday Episode 011 having the audio removed from it [which I completely removed from YouTube right after I discovered it contained no audio], previous videos of mine that had soundtracks of WMG artists have also suffered the same silent fate. Here is the list, each one linked to their respective blog posts where you can still watch the “un-altered” videos using Vimeo:

• Snowy Sunday Ep. 004 – [Red Hot Chili Peppers "Under The Bridge"]
• Snowy Sunday Ep. 002 – [Van Halen - "Dreams"]
• Scooter Sunday Captured Ep. 009 – [Led Zeppelin "Tangerine"]

I will not be pulling these videos [at least for now], leaving them in their WMG-revised state.

A Better Solution

While WMG play their greedy fucker card, other labels have used better options for finding their licensed songs in a YouTube video. And I think it’s a WIN-WIN situation.

Let’s take Universal Music Group. There’s been a couple of my videos that have been flagged as having Universal-owned tracks in them. But instead of getting all “nose in the air” and greedy, they get smart: they give me the option to add links to legitimate places to legally download the songs.

The orange-circled area shows the iTunes and Amazon.com buttons to purchase music

Now how hard is that? Actually, not that hard at all. And both Universal and myself benefit. I get to keep the song in my video and they make money from additional purchases of the song [I'm sure Google also has a deal with the labels to make more money on the backend]

A pop-up banner comes up while the video plays, showing the title of the song

They also place a pop-up banner while the video is playing, but it’s easy to click away, if so desired.

The Future

So what am I going to do here? This has put me, a blogger that uploads regular videos, in a different place. Sure, I can be creative and make my own songs and music, but I’m trying to generate laughs on a different level.

I will still continue to use YouTube as an alternative viewing option for my regular videos [sorry, but Vimeo kicks ass in all areas], but I will have to come up with different options when confronted with these new rules.

I can use music from artists that are not on any WMG label, which is what I will try to do. But there are some videos where a certain song fits just right. And sometimes that song belongs to a WMG artist.

I respect the position of any person or company that owns the rights to their music and their efforts to protect that. I’m in no way against that. I’m simply suggesting that there are smarter ways of doing that, where both the end-user and the license owner benefit. It’s called “Fair Use” and it appears to be working for Universal. It can also work for Warner, if they want it to. They just have to put the greedy mindset aside and think like a modern and progressive company should.

Yeah, I’m not waiting, either.

Since I started this blog on April 1, 2008, it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve done all sorts of blog posts with subjects covering my car, politics, food I like, my scooter, Top 9 lists, videos with snow and many more. I thought for sure, after 100 blog posts, I’d have thousands of weekly visitors and get regularly featured on TWiT, Digg and have my videos mentioned on an episode of Tekzilla. But alas, none of those popular web sites came calling. But, I must say that I have a nice bunch of regular visitors that I look forward to seeing here and that’s what matters.

So how do I show my appreciation for my readers?

Free Stuff

What’s that you say? You’re giving away free stuff? Fuckin’ Sweet!

um… wait a minute… what’s the catch? What kind of crazy hoops do I have to jump through to win a prize?

Read on.

Only One Thing You Need To Do….

And that’s leave a comment on this post. Pretty simple. For you readers that never leave a comment [you know who you are], this is your chance to make yourself known, even if it’s just this one time. You can leave multiple comments, but only one entry per person will be counted. How will I know it’s really you posting more than once? By email address, of course [also your IP address, which shows up when you post your comment], which is why you need to use a valid email address. How else did you expect me to contact you if you won?

Now I don’t have any of those fancy tools and what have you to check for cheaters multiple entries, so I’m really trusting that everyone will be honest here. I mean, if you really wanted to, you could login under 12 different names with 12 different email addresses and from 12 different locations and that could count as 12 different entries, increasing your odds of winning a prize. But that would just prove what a douche and fraud you are. So be cool and be honest. It’s not like I’m giving away a brand new scooter or the original suit from IRON MAN.

Ok.. enough rambling already…..

… Show Me The Prizes!

• COOL LEAKAGE (3 prizes) – $10 iTunes gift card
• RANDOM LEAKAGE (1 prize) – 8gb SanDisk USB Flash drive
• TOP LEAKAGE – (1 prize) – $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate
• GRAND LEAKAGE – (1 prize) – $50 Visa gift card

I wanted to do something for my readers, both loyal and brand new. For those of you COOL LEAKAGE and TOP LEAKAGE winners that are non-US residents, I can provide an equivalent valued prize. If you are a non-US winner of the GRAND LEAKAGE prize, then let me know where you want your gift certificate to and we’ll make it an equal-valued amount. I won’t leave anyone high and dry here [even though the US dollar sucks in exchange rate value].

DID I WIN???

Sheesh… greedy, are we? I will announce the winners on February 1, 2009. That’s a Sunday – a Snowy Sunday, to be exact, and the video that week will be me announcing the winners. So that gives you time to post a comment [and for me to make sure I have enough cash to purchase the gifts]

How Will I Get My Prize?

Damn, you people really are greedy…

Ok, so if you win one of the $10 iTunes gift cards, the 8gb SanDisk USB Flash drive or the $50 Visa Gift Card, I will mail those out to you, which means you would have to provide me a physical mailing address. For the $25 Amazon Gift Certificate, you can choose to have that redemption code emailed to you. We’ll work out those details when I announce the winners. Are we good? Cool.

Good Luck

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for celebrating 100 blog posts here on Banal Leakage. Leave your comment [where you can ask any pressing questions], cross your fingers and come back on Feb 1st to see if you won…. well, you can come back anytime for new posts and an all new Snowy Sunday this weekend.

UPDATE: Comments are now closed for this entry.