Music Industry 2.0
A good (if a bit nerdy) look at how mastering compression on tracks these days is killing the quality of sound. Everyone wants to have the loudest tune on the radio to catch listeners attention at the expense of the sonic content.
A Muslim musician living in Britain said on Wednesday that two directors at his record label had threatened to resign if he released a new album describing suicide bombers and the West’s immorality.
The threat means Aki Nawaz, who was born in Pakistan but moved to Britain aged three, would have to distribute “All is War (The Benefits of G-Had)” independently, causing delays of around two weeks.
“It won’t get released on July 17th because of the other directors. I have to move it back two weeks,” he told Reuters.
The owner of a record label is in a critical condition after being shot accidentally with an air rifle by her son.
Jill Sinclair, the businesswoman and film producer who set up ZTT Records with her husband, Trevor Horn, 23 years ago, was shot in the neck by her son Aaron who was playing with an air rifle in the garden of their home near Henley, Oxfordshire.
The plight of physically disabled performers in the music industry is explored this week in BBC Radio 2’s I Don’t Need No Doctor.
One man who will weep few tears over the axing of Top of the Pops is songwriter Robert Wyatt. Wyatt was a cult figure in the early 1970s as drummer with alternative band Soft Machine. But a fall from a fourth floor window left him paralysed and in a wheelchair. After leaving hospital, he was scheduled for a Top of the Pops appearance at the height of its popularity. Then a producer asked him if he could get out of his wheelchair for the performance.
“He told me it was not quite the image the programme wanted,” Wyatt explains.
Beijing has banned disco and other dance music in private rooms of nightclubs and karaoke bars to curb the flood of illegal drugs into the capital’s entertainment venues, Chinese newspapers reported Friday.
“Because many drug takers regularly dance and go crazy to upbeat ‘disco’ music in private rooms, police have specially requested karaoke machines not have this music,” the Beijing Times newspaper said.
A newsagent has been told he can’t play a radio in his shop – unless he pays pop stars for the privilege.
Terry Hornby was shocked when he received a letter from the Performing Rights Society saying he needed a £56 licence to listen to songs by artists such as Robbie Williams and Madonna.
The royalty-collecting society said Mr Hornby could be taken to court if he continued to play the radio without a licence.
Research carried out on 63 Genocide orphans in 3 Secondary Schools in the province have revealed that Rwandan music can help reduce the prevailing trauma especially among the genocide survivors.
This was revealed during a presentation of research findings by Beata Shyaka. The research was conducted through national university research centre with the aim of testing the efficacy of Rwandan music in providing psychological security and finding out the negative emotions linked to traumatic experiences.
“Rwandan traditional music can not only reduce trauma within young Genocide orphans but it can be adopted as a remedy for curing trauma within adults. Music is powerful in influencing human psyche,” Shyaka said in her presentation.
Label:Life supposes that once you’ve sold as many “singles” as Gnarls Barkley you can pretty much do what you like… See the video here
The Marine Corps condemned on Tuesday as “clearly inappropriate” a music video purporting to show a Marine strumming a guitar and singing a song about killing Iraqis, to the laughter and cheers of other troops.
“We’re looking into it,” Lt. Col. Scott Fazekas, a U.S. Marine Corps spokesman at the Pentagon, said of the four-minute video posted anonymously in March on a Web site, www.youtube.com, but recently removed.
Asked if the video genuinely showed a Marine, Fazekas said, “I can’t tell. In looking at it, it could be anywhere, it could be anybody.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based civil rights group, urged the military and Congress to investigate who was responsible for the video.
Corgi on Monday introduced iCar, a 1:24 scale replica Cadillac Escalade or Nissan 240SX that moves left to right and back and forth when an iPod, stereo, CD player or other music source is connected. Colored lights illuminate the vehicles’ wheel wells, rims, undercarriage, engine and trunk areas.