Nels Wadycki » Music

Song from Google Nexus S Video

Nels — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:01:33 +0000

It wasn’t all that hard to find, but I bet a lot of people will be looking for the song from the Google Nexus S video since they don’t credit it in the video or on the YouTube page. (And since my wife is a French teacher, I thought maybe I could help other French teachers out here)

It’s called Allo Allo by Les Sans Culottes, which I believe translates to “Those Without Underwear”.

Here’s the song Allo Allo (Hello I Love You) on Amazon, and on YouTube.

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My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Flamingo

Nels — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 04:09:38 +0000

I already learned about 16 years ago that I’ll pretty much buy any album if it’s only $4. In that time, the price of a standard album was anywhere from $18 all the way down to free. But now it seems to be settling ever and ever closer to the $4 price point at which I simply can’t resist using a bit of the disposable income that I now have (as opposed to in high school when I had to decide if I want a new CD or more Magic cards and college when I had to decide if I wanted a new CD or if I could just download it). It doesn’t hurt (or help?) that November always seems like a month when 2-3 albums that I want are released.

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J&J Music Factory

Nels — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 20:39:17 +0000

Justin Timberlake stops by the Jimmy Fallon Show (or whatever its called) to rock a hip-hop medley with Jimmy and the Roots. Awesome.

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Follow Friday

Nels — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 13:42:59 +0000

In this inaugural (and hopefully not singular) edition of Follow Friday, Pigeons and Planes provides us with a song called Cameras by Matt and Kim.

Why should you follow (nee “Subscribe To”) Pigeons and Planes? Because the lead blogger Confusion provides just enough detail about the musical artists and doesn’t throw too much crap in with the cool indie rock and new hip hop. I’d recommend staying away from any post with Nicki Minaj or Li’l Wayne in the title, though. If it’s a band name that you’ve never heard of, though (like Matt and Kim, for example, or King Charles), you’re good to go.

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Apple Shutting Down Lala, Another Great Startup Obliterated

Nels — Sat, 08 May 2010 00:07:16 +0000

First: I Was A Lala User
Second: Why Do Good Companies Ruin Startups?

I Was A Lala User

I’ll give Apple credit for giving a month of advance notice, but on the other hand (that first part was the first hand), why are they shutting down Lala before they launch iTunes.com? I must conclude that it means they’re going to change the business model and neuter features available on Lala.com and they don’t want to have to deal with migrating current users of the outstanding service. How very Apple of them. Not supporting legacy anything is a good deal if you can swing it. And – unfortunately for me – they can get away with it.

Now, I hadn’t bought all that many web songs on Lala, but it was not exactly a trivial investment – especially for someone like me who used to open up multiple BMG accounts to get 10 CDs for the price of 1 and 4 extra for “referring my friend.” I’m happy to give artists money when I feel they deserve it, and that’s precisely why I loved Lala so much. I could listen to every song on there – the full song – and then decide whether I wanted to buy it. For me at least, I think that probably led to more purchases than I’d made in a long time because I got sick of paying for music that I’d never heard and wasn’t sure if I’d ever want to hear again.

Now, I will get an iTunes store credit for the web songs that I’d purchased on Lala… better than nothing, but it kind of feels like buying stock and then having it exchanged for 1/10th of a share in a new company with the same stock price. I’ll use it, because it’s there and I hate losing money… but… then what? Use the new iTunes.com? Or…?

ReadWriteWeb evaluates a few alternatives including MP3tunes, MOG, Napster, and Rhapsody. I’m also going to check out eMusic since I supposedly have 35 free MP3s there… but, in terms of how I use Lala, I think that a combination of Pandora and Amazon will have to fill the gap… With Pandora, I can listen to unlimited full songs for free, and then when I find something I like, I can go over to Amazon and get the MP3. (I could do buy the songs from iTunes as well, since they do sell DRM free MP3s now, but I can’t help but want to avoid Apple since they are the ones who interrupted my music consumption system in the first place) The only issue with my new system is that I can’t just scan new releases, add them to my queue, and then buy the web song for any songs that I want to hear again.

Why Do Good Companies Ruin Startups

I never used Dodgeball so their acquisition and subsequent shuttering by Google didn’t really affect me. But then they took over Jaiku (My posts tagged: Jaiku) and basically shut that down (yeah, it’s still there, but there’s no real support for it any more). Now Apple has bought Lala and is shutting it down. Why?

The obvious answer is: talent grab. Everyone knows that these big companies are basically rewarding the talented developers who started the companies by purchasing their whole company for a significant sum of money. I can’t blame the developers for taking it. And I guess I can’t blame the companies for doing it. That’s just the way the business works. It just sucks for consumers who end up with a crappier end product (eg: Jaiku vs. Google Buzz) because the big company seems to restrict and/or slow the development of the new imitation products. As I mentioned above, the fact that Apple is giving people iTunes store credit for the web songs that they’d purchased on Lala is almost a guarantee that the web songs will not exist on whatever web version of iTunes Apple launches.

Another example: One of my favorite features of Jaiku was the ability to unsubscribe from specific feeds from specific people. So, if I follow someone on Twitter and don’t want to see their imported Twitter feed duplicated in my stream, I could unsubscribe from that and only get their other updates. I have not yet seen that in Google Buzz, and if it’s there, I haven’t seen a place to do it.

It’s tough because, on the one hand, I am very happy for the developers and I do think that they deserve to be rewarded for their hard work. I just don’t understand why, if a site is so successful that it warrants being bought out, it doesn’t continue to be run in that successful manner. Okay, I actually do understand why. I already said it in the second paragraph of this section. The big companies want to pull the talented developers off the successful site to recreate the site for them. So really, what I don’t understand is why the big companies don’t continue to run the successful site and do a better job of integrating it and turning it into what they want instead of just shutting it down and rebuilding.

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Lala Bought by Apple: Please Let This Be Good

Nels — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:46:37 +0000

According to MacDailyNews:

“Apple Inc. acquired online music company Lala Media Inc., possibly signaling an expansion of the computer giant’s music strategy,” Ethan Smith and Yukari Iwatani Kane report for The Wall Street Journal.

Terms of the deal were not available, but there’s this:

“One person with knowledge of the deal, but who was not authorized to discuss it, said that the negotiations originated when Lala executives concluded that their prospects for turning a profit in the short term were dim and initiated discussions with Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president in charge of iTunes,” Brad Stone reports for the New York Times. “This person said Apple would primarily be buying Lala’s engineers, including its energetic co-founder Bill Nguyen, and their experience with cloud-based music services.“

(Emphasis mine)

Great.

This Could Be Good If

1) Apple uses it to start their own cloud-based music streaming service complete with iPhone app and allows Lala.com users (like me) to transfer all their purchases to the new service. This scenario seems most likely if Apple is indeed basically just buying Lala’s engineers. Of course, the “be good” part of this hinges on Apple letting people move their purchases to the new service. Of course, people who don’t already use Lala won’t give a shit, and Apply might not care enough about the current users of Lala (who are probably a tiny minority of music listeners) to make this sort of transfer available.

2) Apple starts adding their branding muscle to Lala.com, and adds integration with Lala to iTunes. I mean, the service is already set up and seems to be working pretty well. The music syncing app could use some work, but that seems like something that Apply could do pretty well. Then they could add their Genius power to Lala to make it even awesomer (and get people to buy even more music, since the web songs are only 10 cents).

3) Apple does anything as good as Lala without Effing it up. I’m sure there are other possible roadmaps that my feeble mind has yet to conjure into being. As long as Apple doesn’t rip the still beating heart from Lala and stomp on it (as Google has done with Oh So Many Startups), then, it should be okay.

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The Album Is Dying A Slow Death

Nels — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:58:43 +0000

It’s like The Internet is a disease and it’s slowly damaging the organs of the album. One by one it goes through the body of the album, taking a chunk here and there. The album isn’t on life support yet, but it will be soon enough.

From Read/WriteWeb:

Radiohead’s frontman Thom Yorke announced that the band will no longer release full-length studio albums and instead focus on downloadable singles.

Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins aren’t quite ready to go all the way there, but instead they’re breaking the album into 11 EP’s of 4 songs each. That way Billy can still fulfill his artwork and concept fetish by including pictures, paintings, etc. with the EPs while making the music available to people who don’t share his proclivity for the visual aspect of the theme.

While The Smashing Pumpkins method is already familiar to them (see also: The Aeroplane Flies High), Radiohead’s declaration shows an awareness of changing methods of distribution as compared with the “old world” ways. The reason we have albums in the first place is because records (and tapes, and CDs) only held a finite amount of material before their storage space was exhausted. Today, even fairly low end computers come with 80-90GB of storage, which is enough for several albums even for loss-less quality distribution. We no longer have the limitations that made the album a necessity in the first place, so why continue on with the tradition?

If you say “because of the recording industry” then it really only further serves to show how far the industry’s head is under the sand. Here’s a great example: Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3 (which I like) is $10.99 on iTunes. But each of the individual tracks is $1.29. So, to buy the album as singles (with the Radiohead model) you’d pay $19.35. Yes, I realize that by releasing singles, labels run the risk of not having people buy all of the singles, but since The Blueprint 3 has 15 songs on it, each person would only have to buy 57% of the songs (8-9 of the 15 songs) to get the same amount of money.

If you’re a ruthless music company exec, why are you basically giving people 6-7 songs for free?

Do you really think that people who might otherwise download the entire thing for free are going to instead pay $10.99 because it’s a better deal than buying each song individually? No. They’re still going to download the whole thing and pay nothing. But the people who would pay $10.99 for the album, I’m guessing they’d also pay $10.32 to buy 8 of the songs individually. Especially if you release one single a month for 15 months, I bet you get a pretty high conversion rate. Then it’s only $1.29 a month. That’s not a big deal. Seems like a much easier sell than trying to convert an entire $10.99 (or $19.35) all at once.

The album is dead. Long live the single.

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Jay-Z is on fire, and so is Lala.com

Nels — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:54:48 +0000

So, I just got The Blueprint 3. It’s $4.99 on Lala.com, but only $3.99 on Amazon. I got it from Lala to support the little guy. I decided it was worth $5 after only the first 7 songs – two of which I’d already got the “web version” of on Lala. It’s that good.

But, after buying the MP3s, I discovered that there’s a Beta section in Lala, which – among other things – lets you scrobble tracks to Last.fm.

I may never buy another MP3 again! Considering I can open a tab in Firefox, play songs on Lala.com using less RAM than iTunes (with much faster reaction time from the app), AND have them scrobbled to Last.fm… the only advantage that MP3s have is that I can put them on my iPhone… but I don’t really listen to music on my iPhone; I usually listen to audiobooks in the car or when I’m walking or whatever (and the audiobooks come from the Chicago Public Library via Overdrive download or imported Audio CD). Also, I could back up my 15 GB of music on my desktop computer (using Hamachi) and then have an extra 15 GB on my laptop hard drive (which I’m hoping would improve the read/write performance of my computer). And since it’s synced via the Lala Music Mover, I know that those backed up songs are going to be available on Lala.

So, that’s the interesting part of the tech stuff. I’m about to do one of those track-by-track album reviews right now (possibly my first ever, but certainly a copycheated idea; gotta keep up my copycheating cred to hold the belt).

What We Talkin’ Bout [feat Luke Steele]
Not the strongest start to the album, but it’s got a lot of good rhymes, and a kind of nice, relaxed chorus.

Thank You
Coincidence that the album came out on 9/11/09 and there’s a whole verse about how Jay-Z treats other emcees like the World Trade Center towers? Still too soon. But other than that verse, this is kind of a fun song.

D.O.A. [Death of Auto-Tune]
I find it ironic that Jay-Z has Kanye West on the very next song on the album (and on Hate later in the album), considering 808s & Heartbreaks could pretty much be called the Auto-Tune album. It even kind of sounds like Kanye sings the “chorus” part. I like the guitar a lot, though, and there’s some clever rhymes. And the message is certainly true. Kanye (and others) were good rappers, but so much with the singing part. Core competencies. Jay knows his.

Run This Town [feat Kanye West, Rihanna]
This is flat out one of my favorite songs right now – possibly ever. I’ve listened to it 29 times (according to Lala) since I bought the “web version” on August 19th. That’s 1.21 times per day and I don’t even listen to music that much (according to Last.fm, I’ve listened to 30 songs in the past 7 days, aside from this song and Wale’s Chillin).

Empire State of Mind [feat Alicia Keys]
I firmly believe this song was made to get LeBron James to come to the Nets or Knicks in 2010. He even name checks The King, as well as Dwyane Wade (evidently his second choice [ed note: Nooooo! Wade is going to Chicago!]).

Real As It Gets [feat Young Jeezy]
This sounds like it should be an uplifting get-off-the-streets type jam, but Jeezy kind of ruins all that. Too little Jay, too much Jeezy.

On To The Next One [feat Swizz Beatz]
Swizz Beatz is good at making the kind of beats he does. Plenty of Jay-Z with decent to above average rhymes.

Off That [feat Drake]
Fits well with the album as a change of pace song. Jay-Z shows versatility with the speed and nimbleness of his flow.

A Star Is Born [feat J. Cole]
Not a great song, but deserves some recognition as a tribute to the other hip-hop groups.

Venus vs. Mars
I think is supposed to be some kind of love jam or something, but coming that close to Jay-Z’s sex life kind of grosses me out.

Already Home [feat Kid Cudi]
Bragathon. Well done. Not the strongest song but better than a generic filler track on any other album.

Hate [feat Kanye West]
Kanye reaches for some rhymes on this one, but serves to make Jay look better by comparison.

Reminder
Getting back to gangster here. The chorus is pretty annoying, but the rest of the song is good.

So Ambitious [feat Pharrell]
Had to get The Neptunes on there somewhere, right? How long ago was it when they jumped the shark? They were innovative when their first brought out their sound, but now it seems too easy to pick out a Neptunes song because they all sound so similar. Beat seems just a little to slow for Jay’s flow, as he has to double-time on the parts where he sounds good. And I suppose the irony is that the song is So Ambitious but it doesn’t seem that The Neptunes have much ambition at all since their sound essentially hasn’t changed in about 10 years.

Young Forever [feat Mr Hudson]
This is an awesome way to end things. Reminds me a lot of the way he ended Kingdom Come with Beach Chair with Chris Martin. I expect I’ll hear this one in an H&M in Paris the next time I’m there like I heard Beach Chair in one the last time I was there.

In Summary: I like that most of the album is definitely pop-rap, but not in a super-overly-commercialized way. It’s still rap and/or hip-hop, but for the most part, it’s not something that is going to offend people who aren’t the biggest rap fans.