Check out Pompaloose, a California duo that’s making outstanding Video Songs with 2 rules: everything you see is what you hear, and everything you hear will be seen.

In a more serious Kickstarter project, a friend of mine is publishing a solo cello album if you’re interested.

After a long week’s absence, it’s back! This week we discuss AMD’s new branding system, and in a fit of rage, some hardware gets demolished by yours truly. The Icrontic Top 100 Songs Countdown is underway, have you submitted your picks? And of course, what would MIND be without some gaming talk? If you went to Pax, you may have caught something viral, and we’re not talking marketing. Finally, Ten years ago this week the Sega Dreamcast began thinking. Just hit play already, I know you want to.

These haven't been pulled out in years

Today Ars Technica is reporting that Apple may be working alongside the music industry in an attempt to revive interest in complete albums vs. single tunes.

It is no secret to any digital music fan that the convenience of being able to download a small portion of new music on a whim is instantly gratifying.  The days of going to the local Sam Goody to thumb through a rack full of albums are over.  The new model is to go to your favorite digital music download site (which, for the vast majority, is iTunes), proceed to download the latest single for $0.99-$1.29, sync to portable player, and listen to your personal mix of singles.

To illustrate how far this trend has progressed, let’s examine a direct quote from Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan from a December 2008 Chicago Tribune interview. “We’re done with that (making full albums). There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles, and skip over the rest. The listening patterns have changed, so why are we killing ourselves to do albums, to create balance, and do the arty track to set up the single? It’s done.”

Think about this for a moment.  Billy Corgan is the same artist that, just fourteen years ago, gave us the sprawling conceptual double disk titled Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, by far his biggest success to date. Corgan, a man obviously inspired by the great full length conceptual rock masterpieces of the 70’s, has given up.  His plan? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  Corgan says Pumpkins releases henceforth will be singles only to cater to the shortened attention span of the iTunes generation. (more…)

Apple’s iTunes is an undeniable force in music, and the lone repository of digital music for thousands of people. The Cupertino firm takes pride in its isolated microcosm of hardware, software and services that have traditionally rejected outsiders. Palm’s new savior, the Pre, encroaches on the shiny happy universe by offering seamless music sync support with the iTunes application. Uh oh.

Given these truths, we can only assume that a recently published knowledgebase entry is little more than a veiled threat.

Apple designs the hardware and software to provide seamless integration of the iPhone and iPod with iTunes, the iTunes Store, and tens of thousands of apps on the App Store. Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.

Danger Mouse’s next album will be a blank CD-R. He says you’ll know what to do with it.

I know many of you swear by music to be productive at work and at home, and I am definitely one of those people. Let’s face it, though, lugging about a bundle of CDs or even the svelte profile of an MP3 player isn’t terribly efficient in this everything’s-already-on-the-internet era, so why not your music too?

Enter Sockso, the swank little app that will bring your music to any browser of your choosing. Run the app, index your music, forward the port on your router, create your login, and take the address on the UI to work. The program has many more advanced options, but it sure is hard to beat five simple steps that brings your music to you… Anywhere.

Image courtesy of Instantfundas.com

Guitar Hero guitar + Korg Kaossilator = the most awesome home brew instrument ever.

I would like to start off by saying that I am no audiophile. I am an unapologetic bass head and I don’t give a rat’s ass about frequency curves, headphone specs or “natural, balanced sound.” In other words, I’m ignorant, but I know what sound I like.

I think this is an important thing to note, as your mileage with the Bose On-Ear TriPort will likely vary depending on your position on the audiophile ladder (I have found that audiophiles almost unanimously hate Bose). I will say, however, that my personal taste probably pre-qualifies me to become a Bose OE lover.

I managed to grab my pair of OE TriPorts for roughly $160 USD and today I’m going to a review them in a way that avoids jargon and numbers as much as possible. If you’ve been looking for a “plain English” review for these headphones, you’ve come to the right place.
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Trent Reznor gives the DL on TicketMaster’s complicity in scalping. (via Waxy)

A new group known as the Featured Artists Coalition has brought some 140 UK music artists together to develop a charter of musician rights. In addition to specifying that artists should own their own works, the charter also opposes criminal penalties for those accused of downloading music illegally.

The group does contain some fairly notable people: Annie Lennox, Robbie Williams, Dave Rowntree of Blur, and Ed O’Brien of Radiohead. The group, led by Billy Bragg, plans to meet with Lord Canter who has previously supported criminal proceedings for filesharers.

“What I said at the meeting was that the record industry in Britain is still going down the road of criminalising our audience for downloading illegal MP3s,” Bragg told UK press of The Independent.

“If we follow the music industry down that road, we will be doing nothing more than being part of a protectionist effort. It’s like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube.

“Artists should own their own rights and they should decide when their music should be used for free, or when they should have payment.”

The group also takes issue with the recent YouTube/big content row that has seen UK access to YouTube’s volume of music videos almost entirely disappear over night.

The Wall Street Journal has revealed that the RIAA has chosen to abandon individual lawsuits. In exchange for this shift in policy, the RIAA is now pursuing concessions from ISPs to institute “three strikes” policies.

Under the terms of the agreements — which vary slightly from ISP to ISP — users may receive emails of warning based on tips from RIAA enforcers. Users who run afoul of these letters on more than three occasions may have internet access limited or severed entirely.

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