Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: Friday Music: Criminal Life

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  • Robyn Gallagher,

    BTW, for those worried that New Zealand music isn't selling (or whatever), the No.2 album this week is the brilliantly titled Give Up Your Dreams by the Phoenix Foundation, only kept from No.1 by Dr Dre. And there are seven other albums by New Zealand artists in the top 40, which is brilliant.

    It's less encouraging in the singles chart - only two songs by NZ artists, but it's been a surprisingly weak year for local chart hits. Hurry up with your new stuff, Lorde!

    Since Nov 2006 • 1946 posts Report Reply

  • Doug Hood, in reply to Ian Dalziel,

    me and chris, the brains that wouldn't die..well at least not just yet

    Kingsland • Since Oct 2009 • 44 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown, in reply to Doug Hood,

    me and chris, the brains that wouldn’t die..well at least not just yet

    Excellent :-)

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    In other news, another iTunes update popped up, I installed it and Apple Music is kind of working as advertised – as in, I even turned iCloud Music Library back on on my iMac.

    Part of it is actually learning to do do it Apple’s way, rather than the way I’ve been doing using iTunes for years, and there are still some confusing things (the relationship between iTunes Match and Apple Music, still). But I’m cautiously optimistic …

    UPDATE: How the hell do you organise Apple Music albums? The obvious thing to do would be to put them in folders, but I can’t find any way of doing that. Thought: if Apple was determined to merge Apple Music and local files in iTunes, it would have helped a lot if you could handle them the same way.

    UPDATE 2: It appears I'm not alone in wanting a playlist of "liked" songs and albums in Apple Music. But this is not possible. You can only add them to My Music where there's no way of organising them beyond manually making playlists and adding them to those. It's like they're trying to break the user experience.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,

    BTW, for those worried that New Zealand music isn’t selling (or whatever), the No.2 album this week is the brilliantly titled Give Up Your Dreams by the Phoenix Foundation, only kept from No.1 by Dr Dre. And there are seven other albums by New Zealand artists in the top 40, which is brilliant.

    That is good! Still pretty small in absolute numbers, no doubt, but good.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to Doug Hood,

    me and chris, the brains that wouldn't die..well at least not just yet

    So glad to hear you are sounding well. Takes a wee while to feel normal but wes be survivors . Take care Doug. xx

    here and there. • Since Nov 2007 • 6796 posts Report Reply

  • Rich Lock,

    But it turns out we're still way further in the future than the United Kingdom, where the High Court has just ruled that copying music from your personal CD collection to iTunes violates British copyright law.

    That's actually a (very) slight oversimplification. S28(B) still stands, but the associated regulations have been invalidated. Although, yes, effectively it's the same thing, and I am splitting hairs.

    It also only applies to any format-shifting or other copying carried out after 17th July. Anything copied before then has the benefit of a 'fair use' defence (i.e. the law before that date said it wasn't illegal, so users can't be sued for actions carried out before that date).

    There will also probably be a future referral to the European Court for a ruling on this, as the UK now seems to be stuck in a grey area.

    For those who like reading detailed legal analysis, there's more
    here.

    back in the mother countr… • Since Feb 2007 • 2728 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    It appears the Spotify rumours are true. There will be music that's only available to paying subscribers:

    Hits Magazine: “What’s your sense of the streaming landscape right now?”

    Lucian Grainge: “When you cut through all the noise, the potential is enormous, and obviously I remain incredibly optimistic. A lot of the press coverage and industry chatter has been dominated by the ‘freemium’ debate, which has degraded the conversation to the point where you’re cast as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ ad-supported on-demand music consumption. Clearly, it’s not that simplistic.

    As I’ve said before, while ad-supported on-demand music definitely has a place, whether that’s as part of discovery or trials of new products and offerings, freemium alone is inadequate to support our critical ecosystem of artists, labels and the platforms themselves.

    What that means is that we must seek the proper balance between ad-supported and paid subscription. It’s not one or the other.
    With the two approaches in proper relationship, we can continue the level of investment we make in artists who then, in turn, can be fairly compensated for their work. If we get that right, everyone wins. That’s what we’re working towards.”

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Grant McDougall, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,

    BTW, for those worried that New Zealand music isn’t selling (or whatever), the No.2 album this week is the brilliantly titled Give Up Your Dreams by the Phoenix Foundation, only kept from No.1 by Dr Dre. And there are seven other albums by New Zealand artists in the top 40, which is brilliant.

    The chart display at JB Hi-Fi has Phoenix Foundation at #1 !

    Dunedin • Since Dec 2006 • 760 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown, in reply to Grant McDougall,

    The chart display at JB Hi-Fi has Phoenix Foundation at #1 !

    At St Lukes they had the Phoenix Foundation album in a bin underneath the main racks. Pretty crap.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    Baboom has launched tonight.

    It's the music service launched by Kim Dotcom but now with no connection to him.

    And it's actually pretty good. FLAC streaming even for free users, a groundbreaking deal with APRA, some nice back-end stuff for artists ...

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel, in reply to Russell Brown,

    shuffle…
    Baboom looks simple enough -the graphics say to me that after this much progress we are still in the ‘crystal set’
    – everyone at some point in their life, should hand-wind their own mortal coil…

    ps: Russell, nice work on yesterday afternoon’s RNZ cavalcade of delights with Jesse Mulligan
    http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/201766792/music-review-with-russell-brown

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    'Radio Punks' was great viewing.
    #notbiased
    #honest

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Shaun Scott, in reply to Shaun Scott,

    My Friday music last week was a trip to Chicks to see the excellent Strange Harvest and Astro Children supporting the magnificent Opposite Sex at their album release.

    Cant find any streaming tracks as yet, but the really rather good new album "Hamlet" can be bought on CD from Relics in Dunedin and online.

    Fantastic gig, and very cool backdrop as well.

    The album is now up on the Opposite Sex ban camp page .
    Excellent.

    (Not sure about baboon . . . Not finding that easy to explore on the iPad at least)

    Dunedin • Since Dec 2008 • 90 posts Report Reply

  • Shaun Scott, in reply to Shaun Scott,

    Bloody hell- Inattention and autocorrect on the iPad. I mean bandcamp and baboom!!!

    Dunedin • Since Dec 2008 • 90 posts Report Reply

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