Mainly Rock

Greg Kot, not only has written a great book about Wilco, but has also written a recent series of articles about the vinyl “revival” (Vinyl revival: How a dead format came back for another spin).

On top of all the reasons for buying vinyls mentioned in the article, such as the attractiveness of the physical object and the potentially superior sound quality, I would add that my personal listening habits are better matched with the two (or more) sided LP than with a single 60+ minutes CD.

I often find it hard to actually sit down on the sofa and listen to a whole CD in one go, but one side of an LP is just the right amount of time for a nice glass of wine or a bottle of beer. It maybe just be a mild case of Attention Deficit Disorder, but there are many CDs on which I know the first couple of songs so much better than the second half for exactly this reason.

via: Largehearted Boy

The combination of Wilco and legal mp3 downloads is probably as close to an ideal subject for this blog as it gets.

W I L C O have put up an “audio postcard of sorts from a summer’s night in Oregon with our friends the Fleet Foxes & a lovely Bob Dylan tune”. It’s a free download, if you “pledge to vote in the 2008 Election”.

This brings up the question, if it’s morally acceptable to download the song, if you’re not a US citizen…

They do give you the opportunity to download the song without providing any information, so at least it’s not a legal problem.

If you bought DRM protected music from WallMart you’re screwed…

WalMart shutting down DRM server, nuking your music collection — only people who pay for music risk losing it to DRM shenanigans – Boing Boing.

People might not be attached to physical objects anymore and they might not care about sound quality, but this must be the number one reason why DRM-protected downloads is not a good idea.

Last week I bought Beck’s Modern Guilt, which is, by the way, the best album he has made in a while. At Ground Zero it was available in vinyl with a free mp3 download voucher, so how could I resist?

Using the download voucher was a total failure, because the downloads were only available in the US. It’s perfectly fine to buy an import LP in France, but you don’t get the free download…

This has never happened to my with an Indie label, but clearly the majors still need some time to catch up with consumer expectations.

Muxtape has been shut down, but now we can all be DJ’s at blip.fm.

For some people this is more important than the line-up, and it is true that Carling really isn’t all that great…

Reading & Leeds get Tuborg Lager – Music-News.com

This and lots of more stuff can be found in this pdf: THE GREATEST ROCK N ROLL SHOW ON EARTH RETURNS

The latest music-sensation on the Internet is muxtape.

You should go and check out Mainlyrock.

The Rock is back at Reading…

That’s a good first announcement, with some solid Headliners (except The Killers, maybe).

It doesn’t look like Babyshambles and The Dirty Pretty Things will play on the same day, too bad, that would have been fun…

I’m somehow most excited about QOTSA, because I have never seen them before…

On the smaller stages, it’s worth noting Conor Oberst aka Bright Eyes and Justice, I wonder how the latter will fare without a big light show and all.

The lineup so far:
Rage Against The Machine, The Killers, Metallica, Queens of the Stone Age, Bloc Party, Tenacious D, The Fratellis, The Raconteurs, Slipknot, The Enemy, Editors, Feeder, Biffy Clyro, We Are Scientists, Avenged Sevenfold, Serj Tankian, Dirty Pretty Things, Dropkick Murphys, Taking Back Sunday, The Subways, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, Anti-Flag…..plus many more to be announced on the Main Stage.

On the NME / Radio 1 stage:
Babyshambles, Manic Street Preachers, The Cribs, The Wombats, Bullet For My Valentine, Conor Oberst, Vampire Weekend, Justice, Pendulum, MGMT and Foals.

Reading And Leeds Festivals to have three American headliners | News | NME.COM

Foo Fighters? Metallica?

I don’t understand the last sentence…

The end of DRM for music files on the Internet is near. It’s all over the web, and the original source seems to be Business Week.

This was of course to be expected, as I already wrote last May…