As I mentioned in the last Don’t Download These Videos, I have retired the name to avoid any confusion on the quality of the videos featured. I had actually planned on calling this feature I Want My Music Television until the “Weird Al” Yankovic inspired me to go with something different. And I promise that I Want My Music Television will be a Chocolate Rain free zone. I won’t even feature the John Mayer Remix. Even though there is a name change I advise you to watch the videos before you read my reviews if you don’t want me to spoil things. If you are interested in buying the video through iTunes, click the title link (where available, if not the link goes to YouTube where you can watch the video in full screen). If you are interested in buying the song, look for a link in the analysis.
When the nominations for this years VMA’s were released there were very few surprises because MTV in recent years has traded nominations in exchange for the big names to perform, present, or at the very least walk the red carpet. Really the only big shock this year was this video from Justice which after watching it definitely deserved it. Granted I doubt the song will be getting an award anytime soon.
The only other surprise this year, to a less extent was this wacky song and video by Swedes Peter Bjorn and John for Best New Artist. When I first heard the song I though we had this year’s Crazy, but alas the song has yet to catch on despite anyone who has heard it has inevitably found themselves whistling the song including Kanye West who sampled the song on a recent mix tape. Mmm, sounds like a great surpise guest performance at this year’s festivities.
In the two and a half years I have been reviewing albums, there have only been four that have gotten the prestigious Extreme on my Terror Alert Scale. KT Tunstall scored one of them with Eye to the Telescope (see Her Face Is the Map of the World). So she has a lot to live up to with her new disk Dramatic Fantastic coming out in September. Unfortunately the first single really isn’t as good as anything on her first album. Maybe the song will grow on me and there are better songs coming. As for the video, I guess I was too harsh on her choice of wardrobe for Live Earth because it was much better than her futuristic getup here.
During my discussion on the Monster Single of the Year for this year’s VMA’s I mentioned that Rockstar by Nickelback should have been nominated and mentioned I would talk about it later. This was because I was saving my thoughts for this post so I feature the video. Except between then and now Roadrunner Records has taken down all the videos down. Just another case of Record People being Shady. Of course the big irony is Roadrunner Records being all uppity on copyright infringement considering that they stole their name from a cartoon. Hopefully Loony Tunes takes that irony even further by suing the record company. But anyways. If you want to catch out the video you can view it at iFilm (unfortunately they won’t let you embed it) and here are my original thoughts on the video:
Let’s get this out of the way first: Nickelback sucks massively. They are everything that is wrong with rock music today. They pander to bored housewives who at one time tried to get a hand on a member of Poison and now resign to driving their hoodlums to their soccer games but listen to Nickelback now because they are safe enough to listen around those hoodlums or at PTA meetings. With that said, despite being played every time I have turned on the radio for the past two months, I still chuckle every time I hear Rockstar. And the video makes me like the song even more. I don’t know why but whenever band get other people to lip sync their songs it is always entertaining, especially when they thrown in a token old chick, yet the dude from ZZ Top reprises some of his lines. Then the video even throws in random cameos from Wayne Gretzky, Paul Wall, Chuck Liddell, Kid Rock, Nelly Furtado, Grant Hill, Ted Nugent, and even Faith the Vampire Slayer makes an appearance (Eliza, where have you been, we miss you). But the best cameos are the semi-ironic ones with Gene Simmons, who embodies the sarcastic tone of the song as well as Hef’s girlfriends as the song doesn’t put the Playboy bunnies in such a good light.
When scouring the internet for yesterday’s Don’t Download These Videos I planned to show the video for Bubbly by newcomer Colbie Caillat to once again remind you that you can currently download this song for free on iTunes (well as long as the ad to the right still features her) but I couldn’t because, much like all their videos, the Universal Group has chosen the “Embedded Disable by Request.” I have never understood why anyone would utilize that function because it seems like people are saying, “I want you to check this out but please no free publicity.” If you ever check out YouTube’s most viewed videos for the day, if there is a fan loaded videos of the same music video it is always higher than those put up by UMG that don’t let you embed them. Well this is of course before UMG inevitably has YouTube remove the fan uploaded versions.
Of course I’m sure if you were to ask the record executives why they do this they go back to their usual defense is that doing so would hurt record sales. Yeah because I’m sure there are plenty of people out there that decided not to buy a song or record because a very low quality version of the video it is readily available on some dudes MySpace page. What is really bad is that it not at all hard to get around the “Embedded Disable by Request” thing. Granted I just choose not to do so with these music videos because I make a note not to piss off anyone who is litigation happy. So here is my plea to the UMG, please allow your videos to be embedded, not only will this not hurt your record sales; the more visibility of your music videos will undoubtedly increase sales.
Ms. Caillet’s video isn’t the only video recently that I haven’t been able to highlight because of the dreaded “Embedded Disable by Request” thing. High on the list is the video for Ryan Adam’s Halloweenhead that could have become a viral hit with quirky lyrics and old people dancing but lost that chance thanks to the similarly Walk it Out mash-up the floated around the web last week. UMG, you could have had that buzz with Halloweenhead, which came out earlier, but no on saw because people couldn’t be spread around the web because we couldn’t embed it.
Then there is the new Katharine McPhee song Love Story, which I declared the best song from her otherwise lackluster album. Again here is another song that has gotten zero buzz because UMG won’t let use feature it on out blogs. Granted I wanted to show this video so I could talk about how the further into obscurity McPhee falls, the less cloths she wear. Unfortunately she isn’t attractive enough to make the whole sex sells thing to work. Case in point, she is relegated to the cover of the third rate Men’s magazine Stuff the same month the sometimes moderately attractive Hilary Duff gets the cover of Maxim.
So for those of you that aren’t too lazy to click links here are the previously mentioned videos on YouTube that I am not allowed to embed:
On a completely unrelated not, to better understand you my audience, I have wanted to create a survey so I can make the 9th Green a better experience for all. As luck would have it, this past week Mike from Quibblo.com sent me an e-mail about his site that allows you to create surveys, polls, and quizzes. So I created a survey, The 9th Green Readers Poll, and if you subscribe to this blog or just stop by a couple times a month, please take a minute or two to fill it out and thanks to Mike for the heads up on his site.
It was a month ago today when I last posted an album review for Hip Hop Is Dead from Nas, and it will still be a couple of days until I publish my first review of the year with the first album in five years from John Mellencamp, Freedom’s Road sometime next week. As it has been for the last couple years, the record business placed all its eggs in one basket releasing all there big name albums within two months before Christmas while releasing very little in the first quarter of the year. This of course has lead to record lows for record companies including this week where the Dreamgirls Soundtrack broke the record for the least amount sold for a number one album on the Billboard charts with just 66,000 albums sold breaking the low record that is only three years old by Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which was also set in January of that year. And I won’t be surprised if that record is broken next week as there were no big titles released last week.
Of course this is all because the music industry is the worst run industry in America (well, it’s neck and neck with the airlines). All they have to do is look in the past to cure the winter sales blues. Like in January 1992 where Nirvana shot to number one with their debut Nevermind when all the teenagers traded in Michael Jackson’s Dangerous that they got for Christmas for the new band their parents never heard of at the time. But instead, this year in the three Tuesdays since Christmas we have gotten nothing. Luckily things will start to pick up a little nest week with Mellencamp’s album as well a new album from the band that was supposed to change my life (but didn’t), The Shins.
The record sales will get a big boost at the end of the month with the latest from Norah Jones who has already sold 24 million albums in her career. Also out that week will be the debut of karaoke loser Katharine McPhee who will most likely have a decent first week before heading of to obscurity or The Surreal Life house. But while moms across the country will be picking up those two albums all us cool hipsters will be picking up British sensation Lily Allen’s first album, Alright, Still. Here a complete run down of winter releases (dates subject to change):
January 23 Freedom’s Road - John Mellencamp Wincing the Night Away - The Shins
January 31 Alright, Still - Lily Allen Never Too Late - Norah Jones Katherine McPhee - Katherine McPhee Oh, My Nola - Harry Connick Jr.
Nothing really worth mentioning past early February that this set in stone but you also expect albums to be released by spring from Joss Stone, The White Stripes, Maroon 5, Arctic Monkeys, Avril Lavigne, as well as a solo outing from Chris Cornell which I hear will feature a cover of Billie Jean. Oh and Chinese Democracy by Guns n’ Roses is supposedly going to be released March 6th. But don’t expect new albums from marquee names like Dr. Dre, Green Day, Kanye West, and U2 until late 2007. Feel free to drop me a line in the comment section if there is anything I missed that you are looking forward to coming out this winter.
A couple days ago I mentioned how it was reported that Sony was putting in spyware embedded into their CD that would be transferred to anyone who put it into their computer’s CD drive (see Record People Are Shady V). I mentioned that that a layer should write up a class action lawsuit and apparently the Attorney General of Texas Greg Abbott was reading because of a new Texas law forbidding hidden tracking tools like the ones found on Sony’s CD’s. Says Abbott:
“Consumers who purchased a Sony CD thought they were buying music. Instead, they received spyware that can damage a computer, subject it to viruses and expose the consumer to possible identity crime.”
Now Sony claims to recall the affected CD’s last Friday but according to the Houston Chronicle they could still find the CD’s in question in local record stores. But that still doesn’t account for the 2 million CD’s that have already been sold. Abbott is seeking $100,000 for each infraction and if that includes all 4.9 million CD’s that were made, that would be (where’s my handy calculator) $490,000,000,000. God bless Texas. And if Ohio, or any other state for that matter, law makers need some quick cash, start up your lawsuits now.
Texas isn’t the only people getting in on the action, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit-free speech advocate, has joined in with a class-action suit. The EFF claims that the CD’s,
“degrades the performance of the (computer), opens new security vulnerabilities, and installs updates through an Internet connection to Sony BMG's servers. The software transmits data about users to [the software's maker] SunnComm through an Internet connection whenever purchasers listen to CDs, allowing the company to track listening habits — even though the [user agreement] states that the software will not be used to collect personal information and SunnComm's Web site says 'no information is ever collected about you or your computer”
And this lawsuit also includes not just the previously mentioned spyware but also includes CD’s with the anti-piracy software, MediaMax, which disallows the ability to rip your songs onto your iPod and most notable on the Dave Matthews Band’s Stand Up (and started my Record People Are Shady rants) and affects 20 million other CD’s.
To add insult to injury, their was a Newsweek article out this week decrying everything surrounding the Song debacle and essentially called the record people morons, “Punishing paying customers by giving them broken product is… insanity.”
Speaking of insanity, I happened to catch bits and pieces of the American Music Awards during the commercials of My Name Is Earl. Going into it I had no desire to watch the show because typically no one shows up to the AMA's (MIA this year were winners Green Day, Kelly Clarkson, Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay, Eminem, 50 Cent, and 2/3rds of Destiny’s Child) and there are no good performances because of the Grammys long standing rule that anyone who performs at the AMA’s won’t be asked to do so on the Grammys. At this point the AMA’s need to pack it up, back thirty years ago they may have been relevant being number two behind the Grammys but not they have slipped behind the Video Music Awards, Billboard Awards, Teen Choice Awards, Kids Choice Awards, and are barely above VH1’s Big in (insert year) Awards in terms of relevance.
I did seem to catch the worst of the worst with Lindsay Lohan’s performance of her new song that made Ashlee Simpson’s performance at the Orange Bowl last year sound like Pavarotti. Then inexplicably, she started to go into Stevie Nicks' Edge of Seventeen which was only listenable because Lohan was drowned out by her backing choir. But at least he went red again and is starting to get her breasts back. Maybe Lohan should have went the Hilary Duff root and just lip-sync. At least I think she was lip-syncing because I was unaware that someone was able to layer their voice live. The Grammy Awards can’t come soon enough. At least they have a ban on lip-syncing and piss-poor singing.
I need to make an amendment to the previous Santana review (scroll down for that) much like my post Dave Matthews Band review. And just like that amendment it has to do with copy protection. Now first off, at least the Stand Up CD had a sticker stating so and warned of it glitches and even gave a website for customer support. Of course the support told me, and anyone who asked, how to circumvent the protection rendering it meaningless, and really nothing but a minor pain. But once I put All That I Am, up came a special player for the disk. And when I tried ripping some songs to iTunes, but the songs I chose came out funny making me realize that this was a copied protected. Upon further review, there was a very small box on the back of the CD case talking in computer speak that you an only rip songs into the Windows Media Player. Then they also print that there were “Limited Copies.” How many? It doesn’t say so basically one day you will run out of copies. Granted you can make unlimited copies of your copies so again, this feature is useless and just alienates the people who buy the album, yet still has no deterrent for those who don’t.
Then to add injury to insult, I found this article after trying to rip the Santana CD, Sony unit to distribute software patch. What this article boils down to is that Sony has put spy ware that automatically uploads to your computer when it is put into your computer's CD Drive. And if you try to delete the files, it will disable your CD drive. This has to be illegal. If there any lawyers out there, this may be a good time to fire up a class action lawsuit. This is an easy case of invasion of privacy. You cannot install files on someone’s computer without his or her permission.
So do not put this, or any copy protected music in your computer. In fact, don’t buy the CD's at all and if you are interested in it, buy it through iTunes instead (check my link). So join my boycott of all copy protected music or those communist music companies will win and succeed to destroy music.
Usually I reserve Tuesday for the biggest new album release for the week except all the “new” releases happen to be old. Headlining the new releases this week are greatest hits packages by Destiny’s Child, *NSync, and Angie Stone and live albums by Aerosmith and the re-release 2 CD set of George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh. Also in the old is new philosophy is a Christmas album by Faith Evans. No wonder why the record industry is failing, we are exactly two months away from Christmas and the biggest new album with actual new songs is by Fefe Dobson. That can’t be a good sign of what’s to come.
Next week continues the onslaught of greatest hits with albums by Blink182 and Nivana’s Sliver: Best of the Box slimming last years With the Lights Out into one single disk with a few new unreleased tracks so they can squeeze even more money out of the diehard fans. But next week does have an actual marquee name with the release of Santana’s third all-star outing, All That I Am featuring vocals from Mary J. Blige, Big Boi of Outkast, Will.I.Am, Sean Paul, Joss Stone, Steven Tyler, Anthony Hamilton, Los Lonely Boys, a return appearance of Michelle Branch, and some dude named Bo Bice (didn’t he lose some karaoke contest or something?). There will also generational battle of the guitar virtuosos with Robert Randolph and Kirk Hammett appearing on the same song. But what I’ll be looking forward to next week is a pair a DVD’s that will be released, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet: Chapters 1-12.
Other notable releases in the next couple weeks include more greatest hits Limp Bizkit, Beastie Boys, Motörhead, John Fogerty, Alanis Morissette and even a re-release of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and Mariah Carey’s The Emancipation of Mimi which I did a decent job ignoring the last time around hopefully I’ll do the same this time around. Also expect new albums with actual new songs by Neil Diamond, Madonna, Shakira, 50 Cent, a live album from the newly minted John Mayer Trio, and the debut of Jamie Foxx. And just when you think things can’t get any worse, the dude from Creed is releasing a solo album. God help us all.
The record companies are at it again. The executives at Sony BMG Music Entertainment have settled out of court to cease its pay for play practices, otherwise known as payola. Even more proof as to why radio sucks massively. So not only has play lists shrank in recent years, some of the few songs being played on the radio were so lame, the only way the radio program mangers is if they were given lavish gifts in returned. Oddly enough these program managers were not punished for accepting what amounts to a bribe (yet). Some horrible music that the radio listening public were forced to sit through include Jennifer Lopez’s I’m Real, Get Right, and I’m Glad, Good Charlotte’s Hold On and I Just Wanna Live, Jessica Simpson’s Take My Breathe Away. It was also found that the Sony hired people to request these songs and instructed the girls to sound drunk because if they were more excited the more likely their request would make it on air. And Sony’s response:
"Despite federal and state laws prohibiting unacknowledged payment by record labels to radio stations for airing of music, such direct and indirect forms of what has been described generically as 'payola' for spins has continued to be an unfortunately prevalent aspect of radio promotion. Sony BMG acknowledges that various employees pursed some radio promotion practices on behalf of the company that were wrong and improper and apologizes for such conduct. Sony BMG looks forward to defining a new, higher standard in radio promotion."
How nice of Sony to throw their employee under the bus because we all know that the higher up’s encouraged this. For their efforts, Sony has to donate $10 million to local charities fund programs aimed at music education and appreciation. We can look forward for other record companies to be caught doing the same thing as they are currently under investigation. And hopefully we can look forward to no more J-Lo or Good Charlotte on the radio because neither makes music that anyone would listen to without getting paid for it.
I was recently perusing the upcoming releases when I noticed that Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (Unrated Version) is being released on July 12th. Great, now I get to see one of my favorite comedies of recent memory the way is was supposed to be seen. The only problem is that I bought the rated version a couple months ago when it came out. I even got a complementary Dodgeball head band with my purchase. Granted, the headband fits better as a wristband, but anyways. This is a problem that has really irked me for a long time as I buy a DVD only for them to release a better version latter. So now I get to add Dodgeball to the list that already includes Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan, Army of Darkness, Spaceballs, and The Billy Madison/Happy Gilmore Collection (Special Edition). So at $10-$25 the cost will start racking up to repurchase each of the items, none of which I’ve done yet.
And as you can tell by the title, I’m not letting my least favorite industry off the hook either. They too have been known to re-release special albums. On my list of CD I already own but would like to get include Weezer’s The Blue Album, Bob Marley’s Legend, and The Clash’s London Calling. Again I have yet the desire to purchase these items again, but unlike the DVD’s, I do have the options to download the songs in questions. But my main problem with that is when I want a whole album, I want it on CD and they do not sell just the special CD anywhere. And the movie and music companies wonder why people steal their products. I can’t speak for the pirates and Robin Hoods of the world but this might have something to do with it.
An update to my earlier rant. I just recieved this e-mail from the support:
Thank you for contacting us, Scooter. We appreciate your purchase of the Dave Matthews Band CD and will be happy to assist you with the music transfer.
Please follow the instructions below in order to move your content into iTunes and onto an iPod:
If you have a Mac computer you can copy the songs using your iTunes Player as you would normally do.
If you have a PC place the CD into your computer and allow the CD to automatically start. If the CD does not automatically start, open your Windows Explorer, locate the drive letter for your CD drive and double-click on the LaunchCD.exe file located on your CD.
Once the application has been launched and the End User License Agreement has been accepted, you can click the Copy Songs button on the top menu.
Follow the instructions to copy the secure Windows Media Files (WMA) to your PC. Make a note of where you are copying the songs to, you will need to get to these secure Windows Media Files in the next steps.
Once the WMA files are on your PC you can open and listen to the songs with Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher. You may also play them in any compatible player that can play secure Windows Media files, such as MusicMatch, RealPlayer, and Winamp, but it will require that you obtain a license to do so. To obtain this license, from the Welcome Screen of the user interface, click on the link below the album art that says If your music does not play in your preferred player, click here. Follow the instructions to download the alternate license.
Using Windows Media Player only, you can then burn the songs to a CD. Please note that in order to burn the files, you need to upgrade to or already have Windows Media Player 9 or greater.
Once the CD has been burned, place the copied CD back into your computer and open iTunes. iTunes can now rip the songs as you would a normal CD.
Please note an easier and more acceptable solution requires cooperation from Apple, who we have already reached out to in hopes of addressing this issue. To help speed this effort, we ask that you use the following link to contact Apple and ask them to provide a solution that would easily allow you to move content from protected CDs into iTunes or onto your iPod rather than having to go through the additional steps above. http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html
Please let us know if we can assist you further.
Thank you.
Rob
SunnComm Tech Support
So they want me to copy my CD, then rip my burned CD onto iTunes? That would take about an hour to do all that. Or it might just be easier just to take the mp3 from my favorite peer to peer client in a matter of seconds. And what are we, the iPod/iTunes users suposed to do with the burned CD? We might as well give away that worthless CD, which in turn will make BMG lose money, the original reason for them to put the copyrighted material on the CD in the first place. So hats off to you, the BMG executive who came up with this idea because, you, my sir, are a moron.
I wrote a little extra to the Dave Matthews Band, Stand Up review (scroll down for that) but I left it out because I thought that my rant would take away from the music. So I saved that rant for today. First of all, I'd like to point out that the title was lifted from A Tribe Called Quest song and I found no bigger example than when I got the DMB CD. So when I got my copy in the mail, the first thing I noticed when I opened the package was a sticker on the CD stating
This CD is protected against unauthorized duplication. It is designed to play on standard playback devices and an appropriately configured computer (see system requirements on back), If you have questions or concerns visit www.sunncomm.com/support/bmg.
And when you flip the CD case over, I literally had to grab a magnifying glass to read the extremely small type. Great, thank for sharing that information with me before I actually bought it.
Eventually I pop the CD into my computer, because I do have the system requirement stated on the back, because I want to put some of the songs on my iPod. First the BMG Digital Content End User License Agreement comes up (and this comes up EVERY time you put the CD into your computer). It tells me "This CD contains digital music files and related content (Digital Content) as a bonus for you, the End User (End User or you)." And after the usual "We will sue you and all known (and some unknown) relatives if you let anyone else even listen to this CD" I clicked the "I accept the terms of this agreement" button. This only led to a caution that read, "Your computer may have problems reading this CD. Please eject and re-insert the CD." After trying this about ten times. Then finally my valuable license was transferred from my CD to my computer (and this happens EVERY time). So now after about of a half an hour, I can finally copy the songs I want. Then I go to transfer the songs into iTunes but it told me that it doesn't read Windows Media Files, do you want to convert them to mp3. Well, duh. Aww, but you can't convert WMF's that are protected.
So it's time to check out to the pre-for mentioned web address that I'm supposed to go to for questions or concerns. And low and behold the page features this:
Wait why should I have to write Apple to change their stuff? You should have remedied the problem BEFORE you released any of the CD's with this embedded into it. But they go on:
Even though there is no direct support on the disc for iTunes or iPod, SONY BMG has worked out a way for consumers to move content into these environments, despite the challenges noted above. If you'd like more information on how to move content to iTunes please CLICK HERE.
So I clicked there and sent a question about how I can get the album onto my iPod. But since I didn't get a response within 30 seconds, I thought I'd do a little research. So I took a look into my favorite former illegal music-transferring program. And wouldn’t you guess, you can easily download the whole album with little fuss. So thanks a lot BMG, you royally pissed off all of your music buying customers to keep people from stealing the music, but you failed miserably. I also have a feeling that it is not a coincidence that this new technology coincides with the first time a Dave Matthews Band album was availably on iTunes. So they want you to buy the album twice, the CD and digitally.
So in closing I'd like to sayscrew you BMG, I will no longer buy any more of your CD's.
Mark Cuban (yes, that Mark Cuban) has a very interesting take on the music industries lawsuits against illegal downloaders. It is a little better argument than my "maybe people would buy music if they released better albums."
And if you look back a post or two, Cuban takes on MGM lawsuit against Grokster where he takes the side of Grokster which is something that directly affects his as a content owner.
