2 posts tagged “music”

Arguments for streaming/downloading music vs. buying vinyl/cds etc

1)  Better for the planet.
2)  More room in the house.
3)  More cost effective
4)  Easier to get rid of embarrassing tracks/bands you used to love and now make you cringe.

So, check out Rhapsody - you can listen to 25 tracks for free every month, or sign up for $13/month for completely unlimited listens.  I've streamed close to 250 tracks since I signed up on Monday.  Very good value.

Last year, Mr. Jaq and I just happened to be visiting Seattle during the annual EMP Pop music conference and were able to attend a few sessions.  As an outsider to the industry but both a lover and sometime performer of music, I found most of the papers great fun (some were far too academic for my attention span).  Mr. Jaq used to write about music a lot and currently reviews the Billboard top 10 singles every week over on The Illiterate (as well as a week of 1966 top 10 hits).  I participate in the various forums of ILX, particularly I Love Cooking, I Love Books, and I Love Everything and multitudes of these muso-types hang out over in I Love Music and ever so many were in town for this year's conference.  So, we went and spent the past 3 days listening to music and listening to people talk about music and thinking about music and listening to people talking about thinking about music and it was GREAT.

It was also free, sponsored by Rhapsody, an interesting on-line music subscription service I need to take a further look at.

But now, after 3 full days and several late nights (okay, late for me means after 10 pm - I have absolutely no partying endurance anymore), my brain is full.  Layers of sound, information, ideas, questions - everything is packed in there and starting to leak out my ears.  Some random bits:  Jonathan Lethem and trickster and neoteny and head-led dancing; "music as listener"; "hip-nop" (!); the drama and tragedy and hope of freestyle; the ever-subtle dance/techno variants;  was it "Olver"? (wolves in Norwegian?); why was there no VERA project involvement? (don't forget to send that email!); the look on Cosmo's face when I was talking about seeing Barbara Morgenstern open for the Mountain Goats at Neumo's; the graciousness of the owners of Roti on lower Queen Anne when 20 hungry stormed their door; "hip-hop is more pure here" (that would be eastern Iowa); talking with Angela and Jill about the advantages of not being involved in the industry but attending nevertheless and neveryoumind; fundamental structural and necessary changes in the distribution of music and payment of performers pushed and pulled and squeezed and shaped by technology; Woody Guthrie's love of dams; must hear some Magic Slim and the Teardrops.

I'm taking tomorrow off work, to process some of this.  Or maybe just to do some laundry and bake some banana/ginger muffins.