Lunch, rainbows, and the Boss: links, October 9th, 2007
Starting a new ‘links’ headline format (destined to push our CTR1 into the stratosphere) in today’s (somewhat) music themed edition.
Games for Lunch: The Longest Journey: TLJ made the Games for Lunch site! That’s quite awesome, and the minute by minute recap – to the one-hour mark (hey, that’s twice as long as my lunch break – what gives?) – is a fun read. Who knew eight years ago that people would still be reviewing this game in 2007? (Not me.)
R A D I O H E A D: Radiohead’s new album, In Rainbows, is up for pre-sale on their website – they’re not selling it anywhere else – and the price? It’s up to you. No, really, it’s up to you. They’ll accept anything from zero pounds and upwards. That’s correct: zero. That’s how much they trust and respect their fans. Pay what you can afford. It’s a beautiful model; unfortunately, I can’t see it working particularly well in most cases. These guys can afford to experiment, and regardless of whether or not they make any money from this album, they’ll be fine. They won’t starve. Other artists just don’t have the luxury of being so generous, and the sad fact is that it’s too unpredictable a business model to risk on content that’s expensive to produce. A lot of people would not pay anything at all. So no, we won’t be offering the same deal for our games. I don’t think our shareholders would be very happy. And yeah, I do want to get paid for my work. Still, kudos to Radiohead for trying something new, and I’ll definitely be paying more than ‘0′.
Bruce Springsteen: Magic: My musical tastes may ebb and flow as the years pass, but my love (guy love, mind you) for The Boss has never diminished: it remains true and strong. Springsteen’s latest album, Magic, is a return to form for the rock star I spent my formative years listening to (at a parent-annoying volume), and while I appreciate his forays into folk music, and his acoustic experimentations, it’s nice to be able to blast some good old rock-and-roll on the stereo again. Even my daughter likes it…if falling fast asleep is any indication of musical preference.
An awesome flashback to 1997, Sky, and a pre-Boromir Sean Bean. The word is ‘epic’:
- No, not Canadian Thamil Radio. ↩
Wow! Awesome new banner! I just went from post view to comment view and the banner changed. Awesome. That means you just changed it, Ragnar! Hurray!
Btw, Ragnar, would it be ok if I friended you on Facebook?
Yikes, you guys are quick. I tested out a new banner for 0.3 seconds; it won’t go into effect yet, but the plan is to have a new one ready for the end of the week. Unfortunately, no way to preview the banner without actually updating the site, which is a bit inconvenient.
Facebook? Ragnar’s a member of aSmallWorld.net.
I already ordered In Rainbows a few days ago.
No idea how much of this is true, but I’ve been told that artist who go through labels to get their stuff published often end up getting less than 1€ per 16€ you pay for the album. I think Radiohead could potentially make MORE money by selling their stuff this way than they would have if they went through a label. Of course, the only publicity they have is word of mouth and the occasional paper that thinks this could make for a good article. There’s no CDs in stores, no posters, no promotions, but I don’t think that’ll be such a big problem for a big band like Radiohead.
I for one decided to keep my contribution rather small (still way more than they would get through a label, if what I’ve been told is true). I’m not fond of digital albums at all and I’ll be wanting a hardcopy anyway, and the discbox just contains too much stuff I’ll never use (not to mention it’s bloody expensive)…
There’s a restaurant in Melbourne that lets the customer decide how much to pay for the meal. They’re applauded for being generous and community-spirited, but in reality, they’re actually making a lot more money than they normally would with set prices. It’s quite cunning, knowing that most people have a conscience and will generally overpay by a little. Of course, when a customer deals with the restaurant staff face-to-face, they’re more likely to be honest and fair. With the anonymity of online payment, people are lot more usncrupulous. I hope it works out for Radiohead _and_ their fans, ‘tho it’d be better if Radiohead worked with a struggling indie label that promotes real musicians. Major record companies are in league with Satan and must be stopped.
I’ve not ordered In Rainbows yesterday. I’ve been trying to put off deciding whether I’m prepared to pay £40 for an album. Given that the release is tomorrow, and the disc box appears to be the only way of (legitimately) getting half the tracks, it looks like I’m probably going to come down on the side of “yes”, even though I’ll have no way of playing the vinyl. I’m a sucker for collectors editions, and besides, it’s Radiohead.
Will look forward to seeing this banner. Does it contain excellent new and previously unseen TSW images?
I thought I had a memory of Sean Bean being a dedicated Blades supporter. So, Ragnar, who do you support in Tippeligaen? Lyn or Vålerenga? Or do you have time to watch football at all?
Happy 67th birthday, John Lennon. http://www.imaginepeace.com/
Yeah, I got a chain letter from Yoko about that…
And I finally took the plunge and pre-ordered the In Rainbows ‘Diskbox’. I guess I won’t eat for a while or something.
I have my dad’s copy of “The River” by Springsteen and still haven’t listened to it for some reason… I’m gonna go spin it right now.
kebu: I don’t watch football. I used to watch football a long, long time ago, but I don’t anymore. I just recognise the potentially epic nature of the sport, particularly when it’s wrapped around Sean Bean sprouting dialogue like “It is our religion. We do not apologise for it, we do not deny it”.
Love that ad. Loved it back then, love it now.
I’m listening to “In Rainbows” right now. Not ready to comment on it yet. After all, Hail to the Thief took over a year before I realized how awesome an album it was. Sounds good though.
One thing is bothering me big time though: the quality of the files.
) that’s not good enough. At the very least they could have made them variable bitrate files… FLAC instead of MP3 would have been perfect, but hey…
10 160kbps constant bitrate MP3 files. That’s enough if you want to listen to it on the bus, but if you have a decent speaker set and an ear for sound (I hear you saying ‘what else would you use your ears for?’ but you know what I mean
See, this is why I don’t like digital media downloads just yet. In the vast majority of cases, the format and quality gets chosen for you, and 9.5 times out of 10 you end up with a quality that’s much inferior to regular CDs (or DVDs in the case of video).
But what am I whining about, the CD was virtually free.
I’ll be wanting a hardcopy though. This will not do O\__/O
EDIT: I heard rumors a while ago that Radiohead were using a technique called binaural recording on their upcoming album (which should be In Rainbows). Anyone know if they went through with this?
Yes but it’s only because you are afraid that people wouldn’t pay anything that you wouldn’t “give” your things away, for a price that lets the customer decide.
But this fear has nothing to do with reality.
FLAC instead of MP3 would have been perfect, but hey…
I like to take FLAC’s and string them together in Audacity to recreate the two halves of the original vinyl album. Then I insert a minute or two of silence as emulated record flip time. I use them in the car where I can’t take turntables for multiple reasons.
I agree that 160Kbps .MP3 isn’t nearly high enough. If they’re going to use a compressed format, at least max it out for a high profile release. Even 320Kbps .MP3 is still a bit weird sounding.
It’s not the loss that I dislike. My vinyl is probably missing more than CD Audio, though certainly less than MP3s do. I just have a weird taste for the sound that comes out of it. It’s like prefering analog theater to digital theater to TV. (not always the case by the way – I like them all for different things; nobody wants to see Seinfeld on a 30 foot screen without any use for all that space)
How did I get onto this? My apologies.
Oh hey finally someone who agrees with me. I’ve been called a snob in most other places I dropped this kind of argument. You’re right, it’s not so much the loss that’s annoying (you don’t hear what you lose anyway) but the stuff MP3 does with the sound. The higher ranges just gets all ‘bubbly’, I don’t know how to describe it. Other formats like AAC do a much better job at making the music sound right, though lossless is still the best option.
“I don’t know how to describe it. Other formats like AAC do a much better job at making the music sound right, though lossless is still the best option.”
Ogg Vorbis? Flac?
.WMA is okay, and .OGG falls in the same middle ground. I actually use more .WAV files than .FLAC. They’re more compatible and carry the same feel to them.
WMA is actually just as crappy as MP3. It simply messes things up in a slightly different way.
OGG is probably on par with AAC. I prefer AAC, though, because it’s more compatible (iPods and most mobile phones can play it, it’s a deal more difficult to find a player that supports Vorbis).
I much prefer FLAC to WAV. Though WAV is more compatible, to my knowledge you can’t tag wave files. I like to know what I’m listening to :p
In related news, I found this article:
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1571737/20071011/radiohead.jhtml
I would be very much disappointed in the world if the reason why we only got 160kbps was because they want us to buy the actual CD…
I much prefer FLAC to WAV. Though WAV is more compatible, to my knowledge you can’t tag wave files. I like to know what I’m listening to :p
That’s the most superficial reason I’ve ever heard. Just give your music organization by folders for the bands & albums, and name all the files by song title. Hopefully you play your music by album anyway, so you can use a command like “open directory” instead of “open file” with programs like VLC to play the whole thing. It’s also worth noting that in VLC, .FLAC has two slight audio jumps most of the time when you first queue up a new song while .WAV does not, because it’s easier to process.
WMA is actually just as crappy as MP3. It simply messes things up in a slightly different way.
The distortion in .MP3 is unpleasant. The distortion in .WMA I don’t really mind. Obviously I’d prefer something uncompressed if given a choice, but we’re talking about the sound of the sound here, not the quality. (if you take my meaning)
I suppose I don’t really have any experience with high bitrate .OGG, so I probably don’t really know what that sounds like.
All of these, collectively, make up maybe 1% of my listening at best anyway. I’d still take quality analog over anything digital.
No it isn’t. Think of portable music players that display the tags while playing. I don’t have the time or the patience to check the folder structure to find out what exactly I’m listening to. And what about extra info, like date, genre, etc? The only solution would be to use veeeeeery loooong filenames, and then you run the risk that the player either doesn’t support them or that it scrolls through it at such slow speed that you don’t feel like waiting for the info to scroll by.
The only place you can juggle with file structures efficiently is on a computer. And guess what, all computers can play FLAC files just fine…
But I’m going to stop clogging up Ragnar’s intertubes now. We’re probably boring him to tears.