Over 300 of the worldsleadingmusicalinstrument distributers and maufacturers will be packed into Londons ExCeL venue on the 14th and 15th of June to inspire you, the consumer with their latest gear.
The show promises all the lastest gear and technology with siminars, conferences and even celebrities of the musicworld. You can expect to see exhibitors from “AcousticGuitar Magazine” through to “YamahaMusic UK”, and instruments from xylaphones to bassoons.
Organiser Emily Eavis commented on the “interesting undercurrent” to some of the blogs and public statements objecting to Jay-Z’s place on the lineup. “I’m not sure what to call it,” she says, “at least not in public, but this is something that causes me some disquiet.”
So should the Glasto lineup be dominated by Guitar acts, or is it time that the lineup had a shakeup?
In a recent interview with RollingStone magazine, BillyBragg commented on the fact that social networking sites are often featuring copyrighted music, but the artists are not getting any royalties. He dismissed the idea though of charging the audience and instead suggested that musicians should target the businessmen behind the sites for royalites in the same way that radio stations pay for royalites, not the listeners.
“How does an artist get some sort of reward for their contribution to a business like Bebo? Now, we can charge the users at that end, or we can talk to the businessmen. How do we get recompense from radio stations? We don’t charge the listeners. We charge the business. So I think before we start beating up on our audiences, which is never a goodidea in my experience, we really should be looking at where the money is and where the money is going.”
Modern Progressive Rockers Muse have announced that they are considering dropping the traditional album format and will instead release songs one at a time. Frontman Matt Bellamy mentioned the bands thinking on their future relases whilst speaking to NME.
“I don’t think we’re going to approach the next album like we’re making an album.”
“I like the idea of releasing a series of songs, every month or every couple of months – just putting songs out there. Almost like making the single a more prominent format, and then every few years doing a best of from that period and that would be the album. So in other words, throw out songs every couple of months and see how people like them.”
There can not be many people on the who use the internet who have not come across Facebook. Now that it has achieved critcal mass in the world of social networking, it is working to expand its business and capitalise on the massive amounts of traffic that it receives.
The next thing that they are bringing in is looking like its going to be some kind of music streaming service to compete with the like of Apple’s iTunes. This would bring in another revenue stream for the site which at the moment relies on advertising.
This Utopian dream was due to be realised a couple of weeks ago, however ‘due to overwhelming response from musiclovers worldwide’ it doesn’t work… yet. One can only assume that in a dank warehouse somewhere in a low rentcountry a hugebank of servers spontaneously set on fire as the entire world tried to download WhamRap at precisely the same time.
Also Qtrax doesn’t actually have the rights to a large amount of the artists they claimed to have at the launch. So legal freedownloading hasn’t quite arrived yet, but we are assured it will be here soon.
Qtrax is built around the excellent open source music blog reader / media player / iTunes copy called Songbird. However they have taken this already developed package and thrown in a few banner adverts. The more cynical internet user might think that this whole free music malarky is a sinister plot to get you to use this adulterated Songbird as your media player so that they can force feed adverts.
How is it that in this day and age Maxim can assign a star rating to it–without actually listening the album?
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 advanceCDs were not made available wrote what appears to be an offensive assessment anyway, quoting “it hasn’t leftChrisRobinson 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 prettypoor.
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) hearingmusic, but sometimes there are bigalbums 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?”
“You know, I haven’t seen Scott in awhile. I wish him the best and there’s no hardfeelings at all. We just kind of moved on and I’m very proud of what we did.”
Alexandra Johnson, Music Marketing Manager at MTV said: “Oxjam is a rare opportunity for unsigned bands to give their own musiccareer a boost whilst doing something charitable.
“Last year, we were thrilled to find a wealth of promising new artists such as Liam amongst the hundreds who performed at Oxjam gigs.
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