This is MP3Monster's blog. The blog covers music, technology, photography and anything else Monster considers worthy of blogging about.More people following Radiohead’s lead…
Posted by monster in Music
Saul Williams is following in Radiohead’s footsteps of have the album for free or buy with a contribution ($5 in this case). Saul, has at least set the free version’s bit rate to be 192kbps and a choice of qualities if you make a contribution. More information at Saul’s website http://niggytardust.com/saulwilliams/
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is also indicating that he is likely to follow the same route next year with a new release.
Working with MS Office documents on N770
Posted by monster in N770
To get Office documents onto my Nokia N770 and make them decently readable I’ve been using a combination of CutePDF which a printer driver that acts as a printer driver but produces PDF files along with FBReader. Admittedly CutePDF has a couple of weaknesses, such as hyperlinks can’t be followed from the PDF document it does produce a good reliable results, and its free as well. As for FBReader, it produces nicely rendered pages and is very easy to work with on the N770.
del.icio.us tags: N770, FBReader, CutePDF, Nokia, Internet Tablet
Scissor Sisters to release fan only single
Posted by monster in Music
The Scissor Sisters have announced that they will be releasing a fans only single of ‘Lights’ available only at scissorsisters.com. The release will only be available for a limited period. so if you want to get the single, then best sign up to their website pronto.
Canadian government choose to tax download purchases
Posted by monster in Music
In a time when all the commercial organisations and law makers the world over are decrying peer to peer networks for copyright theft and critising ISPs for not stopping it. The Canadian government have chosen to impose an additional purchasing tax for downloads with the tax biased against monthly subscriptions (the model that organisations such as the EFF suggest maybe the way forward). For more details go here.
This maybe a shorted sighted move to replace declining tax revenues from physical media, but given that organisations will pass the tax on to the purchaser, it is only likely to encourage people to use peer-to-peer solutions more as the purchase price goes up.
The first Verve material in 10 years released
Posted by monster in Music
The NME have made some previously unavailable recordings by the Verve available for the next seven days. The high quality MP3 download is the first new material from the Verve in 10 years. Go here to down load.
Jesse Malin - New Album
Posted by monster in Music
Jesse Malin is back in the UK touring, along with a new album called ‘Love it to Life’ - as you may guess from the title and cover it is a live album. The album is being released through One Little Indian at the end of the month.
CD-Vinyl Combo the answer to music media sales?
Posted by monster in Music
With CD sales are falling, and Vinyl sales rising (admittedly not at mass market volumes). The music industry has come up with a new format in to try keep sales up and please everyone. Fightstar is releasing its next single on a disc that is vinyl on one side and a CD on the other. Fightstar’s record company, admits the vinyl-disc is a gimmick but hopes it will capture fans’ imagination. Sounds like fun, but I’m not sure I’d risk my turntable cartridge or CD transport with such a disc.
Delays - new EP
Posted by monster in General
The Delays are releasing a new EP on the 12th November called Love Made Visible as prelude to a new album. The EP is a limited release of only 2000 copies, so you might want to preorder on the web from the likes of Amazon or HMV.
To go with the EP there is a video for ‘Love Made Visible’. Click below to see the video.
Amazon.co.uk: Love Made Visible
Amusing quote …
Posted by monster in General, Work
The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.
Robert Frost
An interesting twist on the Tribute Album
Posted by monster in Music
According to At Ease Web, BBC Radio 4 will be airing a play inspired by Radiohead’s OK Computer. The play draws on the themes of the classic album. The play is meant to be broadcast on Friday 19th October in the evening.
Electronic Frontier Foundation - Paper on music licensing in the world of File Sharing
Posted by monster in Music, Technology
The Electronic Frontier Foundation have an interesting paper on possible ways forward in the world of file sharing where file sharer’s pay a levy for the right to file share. The document can be found here.
Yet another free album with a newspaper - this time Ray Davies
Posted by monster in Music
Ray Davies revealed today (October 12) that he is to give away his new solo album ‘Working Man’s Cafe’ with the Sunday Times later this month.
In addition to the album’s release as a giveaway on October 21, the singer is also making an additional track ‘Vietnam Cowboys’ available as a free download from this Sunday (October 14) as a taster.
The album will be available to purchase as well from October 29th.
War Child Single from Keane
Posted by monster in Music
Keane are releasing a single to help raise money for War Child. The single is ‘The Night Sky’ and will be available exclusively from warchildmusic.com from October 22nd, then digitally from iTunes etc from October 26th, and finally hitting the shops in three different formats on October 29th.
Radiohead comment on MP3 Quality
Posted by monster in Music
Radiohead have responded to the criticism of the bit rate quality (something I’ve previously blogged about) of the new album’s download according to the NME. Jonny Greenwood said that the bit rate was better than that offered by iTunes, but not going to be CD quality as that quality is what CDs are for. Which means if you want In Rainbows at a normal quality then you’ve got to fork out £40! An expectation that I would suggest as somewhat outrageous.
liveplasma music, movies, search and discovery engine
Posted by monster in Music
I came across a rather pretty and nicely presented website to music and film fans called liveplasma which provides a rather graphically rich network of associations and style related information (I believe it is exploiting the amazon API for this information). For an example see the network for Moby on LivePlasma.
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Posted by monster in Music
I received my Radiohead download instructions in preparation for tomorrows release. I have to say that I’m gutted that the MP3’s will only 160bpm - not the greatest quality in the world. I hope the quality of the music is greater than that of the MP3s.
iheard Radio Stations - online radio station search engine
Posted by monster in Music
Catching up with my reading and come across a useful site - iheard, which is a specialized search engine for web based radio stations. Although can find your radio stations using the likes of Google and Yahoo - you do have to then filter out the noise. This does all of that for you.
BgInfo - Helping manage your servers
Posted by monster in Work & Technology
In my work roll I’m having to manage more and more machines, particularly with the increasing adoption of Virtualisation. A friend of mine introduced me to a rather helpful little tool which used to be provided freely by SysInternals and now Microsoft (they acquired sysInternals) called BgInfo. BigInfo create a simple wallpaper that provides clear visibility of a machine’s configuration. Below is an example in Vista:
The only shame is that it doesn’t capture the information for Linux based machines as well.
Another Free Album
Posted by monster in Music
The Charlatans have announced that they will make their next album a free download from the UK radio station XFM. Initially it will be just be a single released on Monday October 22 followed by the album early next year.
I would imagine that XFM have parted with a big pot of cash for the privilege, much in the same way as the Sunday Mail earlier in the year paid for the rights to give away the latest Prince album.
More information can be found at the XFM site here.
Radiohead - Digitally Unfriendly to Digital Innovation in two steps
Posted by monster in Music
Radiohead as previously blogged only recently allowed their albums to be purchased online as downloads. But now they’re free of a recording contract with EMI the next album (to be called In Rainbows) will be available almost on a donation basis. You pay what you think the album is worth and they add a delivery(read download) cost on. More about this - Digital Music News and at InRainbows.com.
TheIn Rainbows website allows the pre-ordering of the album in both physical and digital formats.
With this innovation comes a price, the UK official charts company doubts whether the album will qualify for the album charts because of the way Radiohead have priced the album.
