The review of Warpaint–the new album by The Black Crowes in the March issue of Maxim. The writer who has not listened to the album since advance CDs were not made available wrote what appears to be an offensive assessment anyway, quoting “it hasn’t left Chris Robinson and the gang much room for growth.”

The magazine gave the album a two and a half star rating although the writer nor the editor could have heard more than one song (the single “Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution”).

When questioned for an explanation, the magazine described the review as “an educated guess preview.” which is pretty poor.

Black Crowes manager Pete Angelus said, “Maxim’s actions seem to completely lack journalistic integrity and intentionally mislead their readership. When confronted with the fact that they never heard the album they are claiming to ‘review’ in their music section–with a star rating, no less–they attempt to explain that it was an ‘educated guess.’ In an email correspondence, Maxim went on to state: ‘Of course, we always prefer to (sic) hearing music, but sometimes there are big albums that we don’t want to ignore that aren’t available to hear, which is what happened with the Crowes. It’s either an educated guess preview or no coverage at all, so in this case we chose the former.’”

Angelus also stated, “It speaks directly to the lack of the publication’s credibility. In my opinion, it’s a disgrace to the arts, journalism, critics, the publication itself and the public. What’s next–Maxim’s concert reviews of shows they never attended, book reviews of books never read and film reviews of films never seen?”

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“The record industry is in such a mess. I called for what it was when college kids first started download music for free — that they were crooks. I told every record label I spoke with that they just lit the fuse to their own bomb that was going to explode from under them and put them on the street.

“There is nothing in me that wants to go in there and do new music. How are you going to deliver it? How are you going to get paid for it if people can just get it for free?

“The record industry doesn’t have a f*cking clue how to make money. It’s only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there’s no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work.”

Kiss Were an American Rock band who farmed in New York. With their trademark face paints and crazy outfits. Sucess became very big in the mid 70’s with many tours and and intense live preformance ranging from breathing fire, blood spitting and pyrotechnics, Kiss got awarded 24 gold albums to date and in total have sold 95 million albums worldwide.

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Radiohead have however been inundated with complaints about the low bit rate of the download, some customers paying over the odds, out of the kindness of their hearts and received the album at 160kbps. The final blow was delivered with rumours that the band will be releasing the album on cd with extra songs! Causing outrage with many fans saying they are being forced to buy the album twice.

Prince’s album release, coinciding perfectly with his 21 date ‘tour’ of one venue in london and the more cynical among us noting the huge amount of dates may have something to do with the pound being particularly strong against the dollar (make a million pounds and you get two million dolars). prince must have made a fortune and not had to share any of it with a record label.

Even though these marketing gimmicks could be seen as a way of battling illegal downloading, ‘In Rainbows’ has been downloaded illegally more times than from the bands site. so other than the band actually giving away their album for free at a high bit rate, there seems little else left they can do and record industry ’suits’ are left wondering what just happened and why didn’t they make any money?

Other Blogs About Radiohead’s In Rainbow:
Mostly Muppet writes:
So yeah, a completely new, professionally-produced album from one of the world’s most innovative and respected bands and you can pay nothing for 10 mp3s (that’s what I did).

We Made This writes:
It’s not often in this media-saturated, webbed up world that someone can pull something off that is (more or less) a complete surprise.

The Parish writes:
Yes, I will be downloading Radiohead’s new project today

Furthermore, the penalty was issued without any hard evidence other than the IP address being used. This will now set a precedent meaning they will be more likely to pursue cases like this in court rather than just settling.

Illegal downloading is growing at an enormous rate, up 60% last year alone. This settlement is just a drop in the ocean compared to the vast sums of lost revenue. So it’s a good bet that after this victory the RIAA will be seeking out more cases to pursue.

Blog Posts About This Story
Infoshop News writes:
“A jury of twelve ordinary Americans from the defendant’s home state didn’t think the penalties were excessive.” In fact, they chose the amount of the penalty, given the fact that the record company plaintiffs left it to the jury to decide what was appropriate. Makes it kind of tough for the defendant and certain commentators to argue that the penalties are so excessive as to be unconstitutional, doesn’t it?”

Teresacentric writes:
In the case of Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas, Thomas, a single mother of two, was sued for 220,000 thousand dollars. Does this seem fair to you?

Marcs Opinion writes:
RIAA Bankrupts a SINGLE MOM with a 220,000 dollar fine for sharing 24 songs online makes the RIAA look more like a bully than a helpful particapant that they were initially intended to be in place for

Internet Radio:

Internet radio has been around almost as long as the internet itself. Our favourite player for listening to internet radio is winamp, which also comes with a comprehensive internet radio directory so you can immediately start discovering new music from the huge range of niche stations. another great internet radio resource is Live 365.

Last.fm

A recent addition to the free online music world is Last.fm. after installing their special software you can enjoy your own customised internet radio stations. i hesitate to call it radio as their is no commentator or anything, its really just streaming music. The great thing is that you put in the band or artist you want to listen to and Last.fm will serve it up alongside a load of music that it classes as similar. This is an awesome way to discover new music which you are very likely to enjoy.

The downside of Last.fm is that it can sometimes be a bit patchy, and if you start typing in less well known artists or bands, the selection can sometimes be repetitive or completely unrelated. The reason for this is that Last.fm is built around a system called audioscrobbler which monitors the music that you listen to and creates relationships. so if you listen to The doors and then follow that with some jimi Hendrix, then Last.fm will link these two artists together and if someone else asks for jimi Hendrix, they are likely to be served up a side order of The Doors. (this is possibly an oversimplification, click here for the full power geek version.)

Last.fm was recently sold to CBS for $280 million, so its evidently a powerful platform that is here to stay.

Pandora

Pandora is another very powerful system which serves up customised internet radio. The system is entirely browser based, which is nice as it means you don’t have to install any software to enjoy it. Pandora is arguably more reliable when it comes to serving up related music to the artist or band that you specify. The reason for this is that instead of tracking peoples listening habits, the relations are worked out with an algorithm to determine similarity. click here for the full technical details, but suffice to say it works very well. The only drawback with this system is that it takes time and resources to work out all those relations for all that music, so you may find that Pandora is not able to serve up more esoterical or obscure music. However the stuff it does have is plentiful.

Music Blogs

If you are prepared to be a bit more proactive then the world of mp3 blogs can be a very rewarding place for the online music lover. mp3 Blogs are blogs (just like this one) that also serve up mp3s, usually accompanied with a bit of info and some nice pictures… imagine reading NME, but being able to hear the music that the journo is waxing lyrical about. fun

To best enjoy the world of mp3 blogs we recommend using this new firefox based web browser called songbird. This browser will automatically scan a blog for mp3s and set up a playlist for you to listen to the tracks quickly and easily. It really makes the whole mp3 blog browsing experience very easy and fun.

To find what you are looking for the easiest way to get started is to use an mp3 blog search engine. The most popular of these is Elbows. another great one to check out is Hype Machine. once you have found an mp3 blog that you like, you can start to traverse the mp3 blogosphere by following the links you find in that blog.

Conclusion
There is so much free music out there that its hard to comprehend. We will keep our eyes on the scene and update this story as we discover more great sites. If you know of any particularly good ones that we should try, please post them in the comments.

For less than £100 you get a solid guitar with loads of virtual amps and stomp boxes powered by state-of-the-art modeling software that’s included. Ideal for someone wanting to get into home recording whilst sticking to a tight budget.

I’d like to see more brands doing this as its definitely a way forward, and at such a low price this product is in reach of most budgets.

Check out sonic Lab’s video of the behringer iaxe393 being put to the test

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Tech Digest Writes this Blog
It’s the perfect name for a guitar that connects directly to your computer, when you think about it….