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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Starting November With Some Free Music

Here's a round-up of the music I've been recommending this week on Twitter.

For Everyone

• The long-running compilation by Mercedes-Benz has reached edition 29 - Mixed tape.

For US Readers

Amazon US downloads are restricted to verified US account-holders

• Amazon is giving a credit for one free song by any CMA Award nominated artist. Take a look at the details.


• Visqueen: Hand Me Down - Sounds like it ought to be a track from a Suzie Quattro tribute musical, but still pretty good. ****


• Flyleaf: Again - Sounding like Evanescence with Avril Lavigne on vocals, this is actually a pretty good girl-leads-heavy track. ****


• Alberta Cross: Leave Us And Forgive Us - Somewhere between Coldplay and Snow Patrol but without the vocal strength. ***

[Note that these links and offers are highly likely to corrode over time]

Labels: Amazon, Music

posted at 11:42 AM (UK) | Comment? (1 so far) | links to this post | |

The Lily Allen Mentality

Here's my Free MP3 summary for the week.

For UK Readers

I wish there was something to report, but in the UK the Lily Allen mindset (that's the modern, airheaded version of the Metallica mindset for those of you with any history) is so strong among music promoters that the very idea of letting you listen to anything without paying for it first is anathema. This is the real reason they are in trouble. The only people who get to listen to new music are people who are willing to take the risk to download it in the face of the witch-hunt, or pay speculatively based on breathless fanboyism. The rest of us just keep listening to our back catalogue...

For US Readers

Meanwhile, there's no shortage of free tracks and sampler albums over in the US. Clearly promoters over there are discovering that letting people hear an artist can easily lead to selling more of their music.

Amazon US downloads are restricted to verified US account-holders

• Black Whales: Books On Tape - Pretty routine if gritty-ish soft rock, with enough energy to make it worth a try. ***


• Mike Keneally: Inhale - Despite the heavy opening this is actually another ballad. Pace is rather slow and style treacly, lyric delivery a bit strained, not really to my taste but not bad. ***


• The Maldives: Tequila Sunday - The nasal intonation, fiddle riffs and the pedal steel confirm that this scratch-band rock number is from a "country" group, but it's actually quite rocky otherwise. I went to give it 3 stars and surprised myself by wanting to give it a 4th. ****
  


• The Ryko - Flash of Light Sampler is excellent and worth downloading in its entirety. *****
  


• So is the Verve Vault Rhythm, Strings and Cool Breezy Jazz Sample, which has some of my all-time favourite jazz classics on it and is would have been worth paying for (well, apart from the fact I have all of them already!) *****
  


• As a footnote, the Celtic Sampler I warmly recommended a few weeks ago obviously is worth paying for as Amazon is now charging $8.99 for it!

Labels: Amazon, Music

posted at 10:40 PM (UK) | Comment? (2 so far) | links to this post | |

Free Music For Both Sides of the Pond

This week's selection of music fetishes as posted to Twitter, aggregated here for your delectation, delight and convenience. Americans should get the Neko Case track, Brits the David Grey track.

For UK Readers

The Amazon UK store only allows downloads from IP addresses in the UK.

• Chill Pill Speakers - I borrowed a pair of these from Norm Walsh at XML Summer School so people could hear the audio. They are tiny, yet manage to create a huge and complete sound. They have retractable cables and rechargeable batteries. So desirable I instantly ordered a pair.
  

• David Grey: First Chance - sounds just like David Grey, so if you like that you'll probably enjoy this track. I do.


• Animal Kingdom: Silence Summons You- perfectly pleasant band, I'll be watching for other stuff by them.

For US Readers

The Amazon US store only allows downloads by customers with a US-based account.

• Chill Pill Speakers - see above, the reviews give more detail on the US Amazon site and the speakers are substantially cheaper.
  
  
• Rufus Wainright: I Don't Know What It Is - Live performance of a likeable if rather plodding ballad. Rather over-orchestrated so that he gets a bit lost in all the instrumentation, but he has a great voice and this is a worthwhile download. I gather this is a bonus track not on his new CD.
  
  
• Anti- Fall Sampler - pretty variable sampler. There's a splendid Neko Case track, Magpie to the Morning, and The Swell Season are good with In These Arms. The venerable Brazilian band Os Mutantes with Teclar aren't bad and I quite liked Jason Lytle with Rollin' Home Alone. The rest - well, I listened so you didn't have to!
  
  
• The Apples In Stereo: The Bird That You Can't See - bouncy buzzy pop with a retro tinge, as you'd expect from them.
  
  
• Kate Walsh's Acoustic EP is still available free for US download (although curiously the individual tracks aren't). Get it now if you haven't already.
  

[Note that these links may corrode over time. Part of a series]

Labels: Amazon, Music

posted at 8:12 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Good and Free For Back-To-Work Week

Just in time for Labor Day weekend for some of you (and a patch of light at the end of the first week back after the holiday for the rest of us), here's this week's pick of the freebies and goodies. Get them while they are hot, they are sure to go away after a while.

For UK Readers

These are free from the Amazon UK MP3 store. Amazon UK won't let you download unless you are connecting from a UK IP address, regardless of your account status.

• Kate Walsh Acoustic EP - three lovely acoustic versions of tracks from her new album. The charming-näif-style gets wearing after a while so I'll take some convincing I want the album, but this EP is definitely recommended. This just showed up on Amazon US as well.
  


• Thomas Dybdahl I Need Love Baby, Love, Not Trouble is a good track but isn't grabbing me like his earlier stuff.
  


• The Sargent House Sampler is a real mix, with some decent tracks between - uh - less good ones. My highlights were tracks 1, 5, 7 and 12, especially that last Red Sparowes one which brings to mind The Engineers. This selection is also available from Amazon US.

For US Readers

These are all free from Amazon US MP3 store. Amazon will let you download from anywhere, but only people with a US address and credit card can do so.

• Four Quarters 20/20 World Vision world music sampler. Every track has something good to offer, well worth the download.


• Constance Amiot Clash Dans Le Tempo and Ceumar Feliz e Triste from the Putumayo Digital Sampler (which is not bad but is unlikely to get on my playlist).


• Banda da Boca Samba de Bahia (from a sampler that I listened to so you didn't have to) is delightful, made from group vocalisations.
  


• Dolores O'Riorden The Journey (Cranberries lead singer) off her new solo album. I like it, but then I like The Cranberries.


• Kate Walsh Acoustic EP - see above. Very cute.


• Sargent House Sampler - see above. I can see me buying more Red Sparowes...

It's not music but it's too good a deal to ignore - Cory Doctorow's excellent book Little Brother in hardback for the price of a cheap paperback. It's a modern polemic about digital freedoms, set in San Francisco and intended for children but a good read for everyone.

Labels: Amazon, Books, Music

posted at 12:43 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Free Tracks For August

Here are the (legal) free downloads I've recommended this month, roughly in order of preference.

For Americans

1. Celtic Summer Sampler
2. Jeff Beck - Blanket with Imogen Heap on vocals
3. Brazilian Music Sample
4. Eternal Baroque Sampler
5. Ziggy Marley - Walk Tall (featuring Paul Simon)
6. Luaka Bop Orinoco Sampler

For Everyone

• Radiohead - These Are My Twisted Words (single)

No idea how long those links will still lead to free tracks so apologies if you missed them...

Labels: Amazon, Music

posted at 12:23 PM (UK) | Comment? (2 so far) | links to this post | |

Amazon at Christmas

Well, after our biggest Amazon Christmas yet (there's been a delivery every day for the last week thanks to Amazon Prime) the time is finally up and the last package has arrived - we can't get anything else delivered before Christmas now. While the rest of the retailers in the UK are whining about how much people are spending, I have a hunch Amazon will be quietly smiling. Especially since gift vouchers remain instantly available for forgotten gifts...

Labels: Amazon

posted at 12:32 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Moncef Genoud on Amazon

I'm sitting in my splendid room at Keystone listening to Moncef Genoud's brilliant Aqua and idly web surfing. I notice that Amazon MP3 (US only for now sadly) happens to have the album available for DRM-free MP3 download. I have a blazing log fire going, the view out over the mountains is tremendous, and I've been able to take more great animal photos. Another excellent visit to Colorado Software Summit!

Labels: Amazon, Music, travel

posted at 2:27 AM (UK) | Comment? (1 so far) | links to this post | |

More Feist

Still enjoying using Amazon MP3 (you'll need to use a US delivery address to buy stuff). Today I finally got round to buying Leslie Feist's The Reminder. I'm not sure that the single, 1234, is the best track on the album. It all sounds rather like Let It Die (try Secret Heart or Mushaboom), which in my view is a good thing, but if you're trying her out for the first time you'll only want one of those albums.

Labels: Amazon, Music

posted at 12:29 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Amazon to Apple: Stop the Lock-In

The war has started between the two As - Apple and Amazon. I just gave Amazon MP3 a try and it works splendidly.

They are selling current chart music in the US at 89¢ per track (cheaper albums too), and delivering it directly into iTunes in MP3 format. And just to add insult to injury, they let me test the service with a free track from "The Apples in Stereo", as if to ask why iTMS is still in mono and offering less for more.

A very welcome challenge timed just around the point when lots of us are asking whether Apple has turned out to me one of the bad guys instead of just exploiting them. Let's hope it's the competitive force that finally wipes out DRM.

Labels: Amazon, iTunes, Music

posted at 3:42 PM (UK) | Comment? (2 so far) | links to this post | |

Amazon Is Parochial

I find Amazon something of a paradox. They have some very innovative thinking in their retail business, and I find the "associates" scheme very effective (I am now using their AStore to manage three of my interests lists, on photography, books and music). Yet they have an amazing blind spot when it comes to geography.

The problem is this; the Associates schemes for each country are distinct. They have stores in many different countries and they expect me to maintain totally separate accounts on each of them. I could live with that, but it gets worse. To earn credit for a sale delivered in a country, I have to have an account in that country and I have to use the unique ID for that country in the referral. To do that, I would have to know which country the reader resides in. Amazon provides no assistance in doing this. The result is that, in the case of AStore, I need to have completely separate stores for each country. I don't bother, the return on the effort isn't worth it since my primary motivation is actually having a simple CMS rather than driving revenue anyway.

How can such an advanced company have such a huge blind-spot when it comes to the international nature of the Internet? I have readers in every country where Amazon does business, and from one page I could be gathering attention for their products in all those countries. As it is, they pretty much force me to focus just on the readers in the UK and the US. How myopic and reactionary. Come on, Amazon, get with the Web on this one.

Labels: Amazon, Books, Music, website

posted at 1:56 PM (UK) | Comment? (3 so far) | links to this post | |

New Booklist for a New Year

I decided that my old book-list page on Webmink was looking a bit freyed around the edges, so I have been meaning to rework it for some time. The problem is that editing HTML takes a repeated investment in time. That's the reason I use an aggregator to build my home page - it simply gathers the work I've already done elsewhere automatically rather than requiring an additional process step.

This, by the way, is the reason most club, small business and church web sites fail - because people don't factor in the effort involved in working regularly to keep things fresh. All they look at is the up-front effort and cost, cover that and then fail to budget for upkeep. It's also the reason gathering metrics for driving quality improvement in an organisation fails if the data-gathering is an additional process step. If you need a metric, measure something people have to do in order to achieve the goal, don't ask them to fill in an extra form or visit an extra web site because when the going gets tough they just won't.

This is all by way of saying that I may have found the perfect tool in Amazon AStore. You'll remember I have been using it to document my camera system - well, I think it may be the perfect mechanism for creating an attractive and useful book list as well. Take a look and let me know what you think of that and the new music list, both with comments of the length I use on del.icio.us for links.

Labels: Amazon, Books, Music

posted at 7:42 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

A-mazing

I set up an Amazon AStore in the Autumn just to see what was involved and thought nothing more of it. I linked to it from my home page (see the Cameras link on the left) and it seems people have been clicking it.

Lots of people. I just found there was over $170 in commissions waiting from the last quarter, on $4000 of sales. Now, compared with Guy Kawasaki's AdSense income that's pennies, but it's more than paid for my web hosting, so thank-you to all of you who clicked through to Amazon that way!

Labels: Amazon, website

posted at 1:25 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |