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But surely you have visited, say, a product page at Amazon.com, or CDNow...I mean, Amazon.com. Or VirginMega.com...I mean, Amazon.com.

Ok, so every online CD store is now part of Amazon.com, but my original point was just going to be that they all offer the same thing too (the 30-second preview is the most common standard).

But I was mostly kidding around.

Web browser emulates a newspaper.

Web browser emulates a TV.

Web browser emulates a radio.

Web browser emulates a record store.

Web browser emulates a bookstore.

$0.99 per track. I think that's a bit steep unless they have some slick way of giving you album art and liner notes or other bonus materials.

To me, the fact that the good songs on an album are no longer "tied" (by antitrust definition) to the filler more than makes up for that. This service is for people who want singles; this one is for people who want albums.

The RIAA Membership List lists the record labels that are members. You can use CD Now (part of Amazon now) to look up labels that an artist appears on. Or use Google.

I think it's a big mistake at this point to specifically tax internet sales. I purchase goods off the internet because they're cheaper than in retail stores. The prices are usually just barely cheaper after shipping. However, they are cheap enough to more than offset the delay in receiving the product.

Since I'm currently in New York State (which has outrageous taxes, at least compared to Idaho), I am often taxed for internet purchaes. For example, ordering from CDNow (which I did before they were 'swallowed' *cough cough* by Amazon.com it was about the same price ordering from them (after shipping and taxes) as buying the same $18-$20 CD from a retailer. It simply wasn't cost effective. I only continued because I don't have a car to drive to stores :(. If they start taxing internet sales, it won't be worth waiting a week to get a product that I'll end up paying full retail for. It will destroy online stores. I for one won't buy from them, because it won't be cost-effective for me.

<soapbox>

IMHO, states should think about eliminating unnecessary government programs instead of looking for more revenue. That's the best in the long run. It ensures a fiscially responsible government that isn't bloated. It also allows private companies (who can do the jobs for cheaper) to save money and provide better services.

</soapbox>

Would that be Michael Meyers? ... Where's the theme music?

Mike Myers? Theme song? Try here, here, here, and here. Then look here and here.

Would that be Michael Meyers? ... Where's the theme music?

Mike Myers? Theme song? Try here, here, here, and here. Then look here and here.

Would that be Michael Meyers? ... Where's the theme music?

Mike Myers? Theme song? Try here, here, here, and here. Then look here and here.

Would that be Michael Meyers? ... Where's the theme music?

Mike Myers? Theme song? Try here, here, here, and here. Then look here and here.

Would that be Michael Meyers? ... Where's the theme music?

Mike Myers? Theme song? Try here, here, here, and here. Then look here and here.

Would that be Michael Meyers? ... Where's the theme music?

Mike Myers? Theme song? Try here, here, here, and here. Then look here and here.

I heard a song the other day by someone named Norah Jones which I very much liked. I decided to stop by Best Buy and buy it. The CD cost me $11.99.

Then I was looking at the list of upcoming releases, and thought I'd stop back next week and buy the new Tori Amos album. It too is only $11.99.

Then I thought of a couple of other albums I didn't yet have I wanted. For instance "Heart Shaped World" by Chris Isaak, I checked and it is $9.99. Also "Warning:" by Green Day, I checked and it is $15.99.(Wow that's the first one I've seen close to your price range)

Then I thought... You know, I really need to broaden my horizons and stop listening to off beat music and pick up some top-40. So I looked up the latest album from Eminem. I found it for $12.99. Then I decided to find Pink, her album is $13.99.

I've been buying music since 1987 when I purchased my first CD player. Back then the first CD I bought was the Top Gun Soundtrack, and I paid $16.99 for it. Now if you go look at the historical value of the dollar, you'd find that $16.99 in 1987 is worth $26.48 today. But I'm not paying $26 for my music, I'm paying an average $12-14 for it, or about half the price. You should also note that in 1987 I could buy a Cassette for about $6-7, today they are $10.

Basically it seems like you have two problems.

First, you don't understand what the value of money really means. In 1987 I was working as a student and receiving $4/hour. Want to take a guess as to how much students receive now for working on campus?(Try $8-10/hour) It's called inflation, go look it up.

Second, if you are paying $16-20 for your CDs, then you are a really really stupid consumer and PT Barnum was correct. There are many places to buy music cheaper than that.

And as far as DVDs go... You know what, just quit yer whining and go back to playing Nintendo. (BTW, want to take a guess as to what I paid for Atari 2600 video cartridges?)

Just One Example:
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me DVD - $14.99(dvd.com)
Total DVD Cost: $14.99
VERSUS
Austin Powers:The Spy Who Shagged Me (Soundtrack)-Vol. 1 - $17.97(cdnow.com)
+PLUS+
Austin Powers:The Spy Who Shagged Me (Soundtrack)-Vol. 2 - $17.97(cdnow.com)
Total CD Soundtrack Cost: $35.94 (just for the soundtrack on CD!)

Just One Example:
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me DVD - $14.99(dvd.com)
Total DVD Cost: $14.99
VERSUS
Austin Powers:The Spy Who Shagged Me (Soundtrack)-Vol. 1 - $17.97(cdnow.com)
+PLUS+
Austin Powers:The Spy Who Shagged Me (Soundtrack)-Vol. 2 - $17.97(cdnow.com)
Total CD Soundtrack Cost: $35.94 (just for the soundtrack on CD!)

Well give your ID card to the border guard
Now your alias says you're Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Of the United Federation of Planets
'Cause he won't speak English anyway

Can't remember if the video actually used Jean-Luc's picture or not.

-- grummerX

Well give your ID card to the border guard
Now your alias says you're Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Of the United Federation of Planets
'Cause he won't speak English anyway

Can't remember if the video actually used Jean-Luc's picture or not.

-- grummerX

If I listen to your song on the radio and don't buy the album, you lost a sale.

Not quite. That's analogous to normal advertising vs. online ads. In the first case, they're just advertising to create a brand (or playing a song to create a band). In the second, if they don't get a click through, then the ad "failed". You're trying to equate playing a song on the radio to the latter, which is wrong -- radio play is designed to just get the songs out there so you know them. Maybe you buy the CD, maybe not, but that's not the immediate goal.

If I walk past your CD in the record store, you lost a sale.

No, if you you walk past a CD in the record store, then you weren't interested in it. If you stop, pick up the CD, look it over, really consider buying it, but then put it back because you can get a copy from your friend or the internet, then a sale is lost.

If my friend tells me the album sucks, you lost a sale too.

Only if you were seriously considering buying it in the first place.

My point was not that downloading a song or two was causing the labels to lose sales. The point is that if you download a number of songs from an album, and keep them around and listen to them a fair amount, but you don't then buy the album, then a sale was lost -- you're obviously interested in the album, and you're listening to the music, but you didn't buy the album.

Last week I bought Deltron 3030 after being entranced by the MP3...an album that my loser friends have been trying to get me to buy for years.

That's cool. That's what mp3 sharing should be about, finding new stuff that you may or may not like (or finding a couple more songs by an artist when you already like one song, to see if buying the album is worth it, or if there's only that one good song). That's cool, and you're not going to get busted (remember, there's a monetary minimum here, too, and downloading a couple songs for previewing purposes won't get anywhere near that). The problem is the people that, rather than buying the album when they like some of the songs, just download all the songs from the album and burn it themselves. A similar example would be the people that rent DVDs from Blockbuster, rip them to their PC, and burn them down to VCDs (or burn them onto DVD-Rs, if they have them). They apparently like the movie enough to want to have it, but don't actually buy the movie. That's theft, in my book, though I'm fine with calling it a "lost sale".

As far as previewing music goes, more and more places are getting the clue. Most online music stores (CDNow.com, Tower Records, etc) allow you to preview tracks from CDs you're considering, so that you can get an idea of what some of the tracks on the CD sound like before you buy. A number of brick&mortar stores will let you listen to a couple CDs as well (not just the "listening station" things, either -- many stores let you actually open up a CD or already have one open you can listen to). Because of that, it seems to me that filesharing is becoming more and more the domain of people that just want the music for free, rather than those that just want to preview some stuff before they buy.

Wherever will I download "Songs of Ocarina" and soundtrack to "Legends of the Fall" if they shut off access to this great site!!!!!

Here. Of course, you'll need a postal network address, a modem for the connection medium, and some client software.

...Toho has withdrawn its suit in federal court against Blue Oyster Cult over their use of the trademark "Godzilla" due to the fact that no one can actually recall how the song went.

Are the Italian police sure the web site was talking about the Virgin Mary and not the Material Girl?

A decent amount of webspace with almost unlimited bandwidth can be had for next to NOTHING!

And I'd like to recommend BinaryBlocks. You get 100 megabytes of space, with unmetered data transfer, Perl and PHP support, and a MySQL database, for only $7 per month.

No time to rip a cd I already own?

When I first started out on the MP3 scene, good ripping and encoding tools were hard to come by. My Lite-On 32x CD-ROM had a bug that would corrupt the last two seconds of any ripped CD Digital Audio track no matter which tool I used. (Then I bought a Plextor burner, which rips audio perfectly.) In addition, it was tough to find Windows binaries of a free(beer) MP3 encoder that went above 96 kbps (RealJukebox's limit) until the developers of the LAME encoder replaced the last of the ISO example code.

I buy many cd's and I leech many too.

$32 for an album? I'll pay $15 for an album at Best Buy, but this is ridiculous.

Don't forget Vangelis. Albedo 0.39 is a masterpiece. And then there's Klaus Schulze. It looks like people are focusing mainly on schmaltzy dance music instead of real synthesizer compositions. But then, this is Slashdot. :-)

Don't forget Vangelis. Albedo 0.39 is a masterpiece. And then there's Klaus Schulze. It looks like people are focusing mainly on schmaltzy dance music instead of real synthesizer compositions. But then, this is Slashdot. :-)

A quick glance at the (hundreds) of posts in this thread didn't give up this name, so:

Amon Tobin.

Seriously. The guy can wrap a breakbeat around your head that will leave you wondering if your skull is still in one piece. And they're melodically interesting, too - if your tastes run to jazz, I recommend checking out his album Bricolage: otherwise, start with the more conventionally techno (but still excellent) Supermodified.

Anecdote: I once described the second track on Supermodified, "Four Ton Mantis," as the soundtrack to my nightmares. (if you're interested, the web site for a club called The Spy Bar used to use that song as the background music to a flash movie... anyway.)

A quick glance at the (hundreds) of posts in this thread didn't give up this name, so:

Amon Tobin.

Seriously. The guy can wrap a breakbeat around your head that will leave you wondering if your skull is still in one piece. And they're melodically interesting, too - if your tastes run to jazz, I recommend checking out his album Bricolage: otherwise, start with the more conventionally techno (but still excellent) Supermodified.

Anecdote: I once described the second track on Supermodified, "Four Ton Mantis," as the soundtrack to my nightmares. (if you're interested, the web site for a club called The Spy Bar used to use that song as the background music to a flash movie... anyway.)

... for a few reasons. First, he is widely considered one of the founding fathers of modern electronica. Second, his music runs a wide gamut, from soft to not-so-hard to very hard and experimental. Last, because most of his music is quite good.

The videos are rather odd though; he has this motif of sticking his own face (in a somewhat disturbing leer) on other bodies -- children, teddy bears, women) and it's can be really strange and not a little unsettling (take a look at the cover of Windowlicker for an example). But they're certainly inventive and interesting.

Actually you can buy them from Amazon.com or CDNow

Sorry.

Second, many of the artists mentioned also release DJ mixes of other people's music. Indeed several of these artists only release DJ mixes and write just the occasional track. Read the tracklistings closely and also note who may have remixed the tracks you like. Some of these artists may be hard to find (DJs like to pick that great rare track only they have), so try online auction sites. Many of these artists would love to sell their own releases rather than just rely on the royalties from others' DJ mixes they're featured on!

Third, figure out which subgenres you like. Maybe you love Techno (yes this is a subgenre, not an all-encompassing term) but hate Speed Garage. Maybe Hard House is great but Acid House isn't. Look for the words that keep popping up on your favorite mixes. There are tons of electronic music history sites on the internet that can help you understand what sets these very different styles apart.

Finally, buy something random that you're not sure if you will like that is in the cheapo used section of the store. I've found some duds for sure, but I've also found wonderful albums for 3 bucks that either didn't do that great in the States or just never found its audience. Online radio sites are great too, especially since they show artist and track information. Go to Shoutcast and listen to many different electronic stations.

for those of you interested in bands that promote the distribution of their live material try FurthurNet It's very similar to Limewire in look/feel but only allows the trading of music by artists that allow the taping of their shows (and videotaping as well).

Thanks for the suggestion. I've mostly gone back to listening to my own CD collection, but for a long time I was listening one of the various SomaFM streams, sitting back, coding, and occasionally writing down the name of a new group or album that I had never heard. I have made dozens of CD purchases based on that list. That source is gone now, and the list (along with CD purchasing for the last few months) is frozen with its departure.

Another funny anecdote: While driving (the only time I ever consider subjecting myself to broadcast radio) recently, I actually heard a song I liked. Missed the name of the artist, but I paid close attention to the lyrics to see if I could pick out keywords. Went home, logged in to the nearest P2P network and had that exact song in less than 30 minutes.

If someone would develop a system with that kind of response time, that would allow me to download what I want by the song, I'd pay for that. The RIAA has had at least half a decade to develop such a system, yet instead they have tried to legislate the technology back into Pandora's Box.

This disgusts me to no end, and I think I'm now fed up enough where this will now become a personal crusade for me. These leeches do the public, and the arts no good. They've refused to evolve, so now it's time for their extinction.

This ones nice too, an MTV Rturn of the Rock CD Cover. 00387719.jpg

Sure there is. (Ok, I have may weird tastes in music)

Live's "V" album at 3 different stores had the price at $18.99. At one it was marked down from $19.99. Even at online stores it's about $19. It's not an import, and it's only 13 songs. So yes, $20 is very reasonable for the average price. Unless you want to count singles or something.

From Apple's Knowledgebase Article regarding this it implies that this product (and a couple of others) fall into that category of disks that do not qualify for the CD logo. Therefore they are not CDs.

However, stores are marketing this as if it were a CD:
* CDNow lists it as a "CD"
* Amazon lists the media type as "Audio CD"
* CD Universe lists it as a "CD"

If you have purcased a copy protected disk without the CD logo, and it was marketed as an actual CD, you do have grounds to return the disk. Even more so if you got it online and had no opportunity to examine the logo and see warning labels on the disk. If they give you any problems, report them to the Better Business Bureau and/or your state's Attorney General.

CDnow lists A New Day Has Come as a CD. Since it's not actually a CD, isn't this misleading? If Philips informed them that it's not a CD, and they kept misusing the term, wouldn't that be fraud?

And your point is...?

Let's face it, the overwhelming evidence is that Napster didn't hurt the sales of CDs overall.

Certainly there were cheapskates and penny-pinchers determined to suck down all the music for free without spending a cent on CDs, but the overwhelming evidence shows that most people found music they liked on Napster and then decided to buy some of it. Guess what? The ones who used Napster primarily as a way to avoid paying for music were usually too damn cheap (or broke, or both) to spend money on CDs anyway. The music industry has lost nothing on those people. (As much as the RIAA would like you to believe that an individual listening to an "illegal" copy costs them money, it just isn't so - unless they stole the CD from the store.)

For people who, for whatever reason, spend a lot of time at the computer but little time listening to radio or whatever this was a good way to expose them to music that they might want to buy. (And how convenient - download a song you like through Napster, then click on Second Spin or CDNow.com and buy the album so you can listen to it in the car.

Frankly, I'm not upset that Napster's gone - it's caused a lot of people to stop looking for mainstream music on Napster and to look on MP3.com and other sources for independent music. My music purchases will be 80% to 90% independent in the future. There are a few groups I like that are still on major labels, like XTC and Robyn Hitchcock... but otherwise, I'd rather spend my money with the little guy who isn't sticking it to me.

And you're forgetting that the radio stations are now required to pay back the RIAA and record labels for every song played, per listener . The streaming radio stations are required to pay double the rate. Trust me, the RIAA is well into the black on their outlay for payola to the radio stations.

Very interesting point, which I'd failed to consider. Actually it is perhaps for that very reason that the record labels don't actually pay the radio stations directly for song placement, but instead pay brokers millions and millions of dollars which they then use to pay the radio stations off.

The reason I know that is that it comes from a truly fascinating Wall Street Journal article (unfortunatly not available online to the general public; I'm gonna see if I can't scare up a copy through Lexis-Nexis) about the millions of dollars poured down the drain by one of the big 5 in an effort to make some chick by the name of Carly Hennessy the next Britney Spears. I think in the end they spent something like $4 or $5 million on her and ended up with roughly 1,000 CD sales and a Wall Street Journal article to show for it. (It may go without saying, but her music SUCKED and I mean was AWFUL; here's a link to her album on CDNow where you, like me, can get a taste of how terrible it is. And I actually LIKE Britney Spears, or at least can appreciate what's well crafted about her good songs.)

Ah; OK, so apparently L-N (or at least the academic version) doesn't get the full text of the Journal, but the piece was syndicated out to the Houston Chronicle in abbreviated form. Although...they don't offer free access to archives either, so I'll just exercise that fair use thing and give some excerpts.

First off, I was wrong; they only wasted $2 mil on her, but then again it was only 378 copies of Ultimate High that got sold. Here's the opening of the story (as excerpted by the Chronicle):

MARINA DEL REY, Calif. - Eighteen-year-old recording artist Carly Hennessy is packing up her small apartment. Her promotional posters will go into storage, and the beige rental couch will be returned. A weight-control message that the slender teen scrawled in marker on the refrigerator - "NO, U R FAT" - will be wiped clean.

For two years, Vivendi Universal SA's MCA Records paid the rent while Hennessy prepared for pop stardom. And that's not all: The label so far has spent about $ 2.2 million to make and market her new album, an upbeat pop recording called Ultimate High. "Some people just struggle," she says. "I was very, very lucky."

Not lucky enough. Ultimate High was released in stores nationwide three months ago. So far, it has sold only 378 copies - amounting to about $ 4,900 at its suggested retail price. In many other industries, this would be considered an extraordinary bomb. But in today's troubled music business, it's routine. Of the thousands of albums released in the United States each year by the five major record companies, fewer than 5 percent become profitable, music executives say.

I mostly included that because the "U R FAT" part is funny. Here's the music industry's sob story (notice how it's more sophisticated than the "Napster and CD burning are eating our sales" PR crap that is trotted out for consumer-oriented press):

Music executives also say it is more difficult to launch new acts. Among the reasons: Deregulation of the radio industry in 1996 has led station owners to consolidate into a few big companies, which are under pressure to maximize profits and pull songs off the air that aren't instant nationwide hits.

Superstores such as Wal-Mart, which stock fewer titles than traditional music stores, are the fastest-growing segment of music retailing, making it costlier and more competitive for record companies to secure prime shelf space.

As a result, industry executives estimate that major-label releases must on average sell about 500,000 copies just to break even. Last year, of the 6,455 new albums distributed in the United States by major labels, only 112 have sold at least that many, according to SoundScan, which monitors music sales.

Golly, if only there were some way for those poor big 5 to break the stranglehold on music distribution caused by the Wall-Mart/radio syndicate oligopoly! If only there were a way to reach customers directly, or to encourage the development of new radio stations, or to allow individuals access to more promotional music I'm sure the record labels would jump all over it.

Overall music sales were down 5 percent last year - the steepest decline in a decade.

After the largest yearly increase in a decade the previous year. What happened last year? Napster was shut down. What happened the previous year? Napster ramped from almost 0 users to 80 million registered users. Hmm.

Hennessy, a native of Dublin, Ireland, released her debut musical effort, Carly's Christmas Album, in Ireland at age 10, after performing in Europe as Little Cosette in Les Miserables...

"The most beautiful voice you'd ever heard - and she would have ended up singing in the bath," says her father, Luke Hennessy, a real estate investor.

More local color.

The executives offered her a six-album contract, under which Hennessy would get a $ 100,000 advance for her first album, plus $ 5,000 a month in living expenses while the album was being made. The label would own the recorded music and would front the cost of recording and promotion.

For Hennessy to make any more money, the label would first have to recoup its advance, its recording costs and half the cost of any music videos, as well as her living expenses - meaning the album would have to sell between 500,000 and 700,000 copies, MCA says.

At that point, Hennessy could collect royalties amounting to 15 percent of sales. But she would still owe a cut to a phalanx of producers and managers, as well as other record-company fees - leaving her with at best about 80 cents to $ 1 per album, MCA says.

Such contracts have drawbacks for both sides. Artists can be unceremoniously dropped if they don't live up to expectations. But if they blossom into superstars, they can use their new leverage to demand that their contracts be rewritten to pay them much more.

Hennessy says she let her managers, including her father, worry about the financial details. "Pretty much I was like, 'Is this a good contract, or a bad contract? OK, it's a good contract,' " she recalls. She was not even sure how many albums she owed MCA.

Interesting details.

Ok, let's track that $2.2 million, shall we:

Hennessy and her producer, Dorff, spent about three months recording eight songs, including several he had written. The total tab, including studio time, musicians' salaries, producers' fees and Hennessy's living expenses, was about $ 350,000 - typical for a first pop record, MCA says...

In April 2001, MCA decided to try to get Hennessy notice by releasing her first single, a bouncy tune called I'm Gonna Blow Your Mind. Its opening lines:

"I really really, I really really, I really really, I really really, I really really want to kiss you/

But much more than that/

Boy, I'm gonna blow your mind."

It was a risky choice. MCA realized the song's subject matter - oral sex - made it unlikely to get much exposure on youth-oriented outlets deemed important in launching young artists, such as the Radio Disney network of stations.

Tee hee hee.

But executives felt it was Hennessy's catchiest song. MCA spent $ 250,000 on a video that showed Hennessy dancing in a disco and jumping around with pals in their sleepwear...

The label also earmarked about $ 200,000 to hire independent promoters - middlemen who use their influence with radio program directors to secure airplay.

In addition, MCA spent about $ 100,000 on "imaging" for Hennessy, including photos, clothes and makeup artists. It sent Hennessy on a $ 150,000, four-week promotional tour, where she sang at malls over recorded tapes, backed by two dancers, and at station-sponsored concerts.

Um, so so far we're at $1.05 million. Unfortunately, the Chronicle version skips how the other $1.15 mil was wasted. Essentially what happened was they decided to scrap the first cut of the album and bring in all new writers and producers to write and produce her a new one, and that added another $300,000...and the other $800,000, IIRC, were mostly more payoffs for radio brokers (they tried floating a couple different singles) and the like, although a promotional trip to Europe might have been thrown in there too.

Oh wait: the article was also picked up by the Ottawa Citizen, which has a bit more detail. Re-recording the album actually cost another $600,000, meaning almost a million was spend on recording. And $500,000 more was spent trying to buy radio time for the second single, "Beautiful You".

Grand totals:

$1 mil. for recording, throwing away, and re-recording + living expenses
$700,000 to promoters who try to buy radio time (unsuccessfully in this case; the album really sucks)
$500,000 on various promotional tours.

And what's even more amazing than this tremendous tale of industry stupidity and obvious waste is that MCA actually *shared* all this information with the Journal *voluntarily* because they thought it proved their point about how they need to overcharge for CDs and rip off established musicians in order to pay for their flops. The shocking truth is that while the Carly Hennessy story has a few extra funny details, fully 19 out of 20 big 5 releases are complete flops just like hers.

And a huge huge proportion of that lost money, according to record execs, is the lost money they throw at radio stations to play their new single. Except that, as you point out, the record labels actually *make* money from radio, because of licensing on the songs radio *does* play. And, as there's only 5 record labels, it's not like there's any competition for this royalty money. Indeed you might almost think there's something slightly dishonest about spinning this money as losses when it is automatically going to be made up for by royalty gains on other songs.

Ugh. What a sad, sad story, and a sad, sad industry. And the real tragedy is, the way things are going it looks as if the labels will have just enough time before they put themselves out of business to buy laws that will prevent any sustainable models for distributing and creating music in the Internet age from being possible, even after the labels are gone. The end result may just be less music available, *and* the creation of a copyright police state.

I agree.. I'd even be willing to pay a buck a song. I know that from time to time I want a very specific song, and a buck is a fine price to pay. Considering how much it costs to print and ship actual CDS, the labels would be raking it in. I've tried this with a couple of sites (like cdnow.com) that claim to support "downloadable MP3s", but they are always crippled. Getting these MP3s to play, even under Windows (which is always the only OS supported) requires a net connection, a special player, and all sorts of authorization.
In short, let me buy and download MP3s for a buck (real MP3s that will play on any platform) and I'll stop about 75% of my pirating... it's not that I"m not willing to pay, I"m just too lazy to get to the record store, and I don't always want the whole album.

Well, I suppose it all depends on how one defines "bad pop." :-)

For a change of pace, why not try checking out some actual musicians? You know, the kind that can actually play musical instruments, instead of operating electronic devices?

Check out Dr. Ralph Stanley, to start with. You just might be surprised that there's a whole world of real, down-to-earth acoustic music out there.

It includes a 320 by 480, 16-bit color screen that has virtual Graffiti.
Virtual Graffiti? As opposed to Physical Graffiti ?

"...the majority of folks were into heavy metal..."

But heavy metal wasn't invented until the early '70, pioneered by groups such as Black Sabbath, gaining more acceptance in the mid-to-late-70s with bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and KISS, eventually being brought to the mainstream by Metallica and Megadeth, and finally sold out, combined with the failed Punk movement, and/or integrating elements of Rap and Alternative music into the bands we know & hate today: Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Korn and Godsmack.

"...the majority of folks were into heavy metal..."

But heavy metal wasn't invented until the early '70, pioneered by groups such as Black Sabbath, gaining more acceptance in the mid-to-late-70s with bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and KISS, eventually being brought to the mainstream by Metallica and Megadeth, and finally sold out, combined with the failed Punk movement, and/or integrating elements of Rap and Alternative music into the bands we know & hate today: Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Korn and Godsmack.

"...the majority of folks were into heavy metal..."

But heavy metal wasn't invented until the early '70, pioneered by groups such as Black Sabbath, gaining more acceptance in the mid-to-late-70s with bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and KISS, eventually being brought to the mainstream by Metallica and Megadeth, and finally sold out, combined with the failed Punk movement, and/or integrating elements of Rap and Alternative music into the bands we know & hate today: Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Korn and Godsmack.

"...the majority of folks were into heavy metal..."

But heavy metal wasn't invented until the early '70, pioneered by groups such as Black Sabbath, gaining more acceptance in the mid-to-late-70s with bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and KISS, eventually being brought to the mainstream by Metallica and Megadeth, and finally sold out, combined with the failed Punk movement, and/or integrating elements of Rap and Alternative music into the bands we know & hate today: Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Korn and Godsmack.

"...the majority of folks were into heavy metal..."

But heavy metal wasn't invented until the early '70, pioneered by groups such as Black Sabbath, gaining more acceptance in the mid-to-late-70s with bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and KISS, eventually being brought to the mainstream by Metallica and Megadeth, and finally sold out, combined with the failed Punk movement, and/or integrating elements of Rap and Alternative music into the bands we know & hate today: Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Korn and Godsmack.

"...the majority of folks were into heavy metal..."

But heavy metal wasn't invented until the early '70, pioneered by groups such as Black Sabbath, gaining more acceptance in the mid-to-late-70s with bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and KISS, eventually being brought to the mainstream by Metallica and Megadeth, and finally sold out, combined with the failed Punk movement, and/or integrating elements of Rap and Alternative music into the bands we know & hate today: Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Korn and Godsmack.

"...the majority of folks were into heavy metal..."

But heavy metal wasn't invented until the early '70, pioneered by groups such as Black Sabbath, gaining more acceptance in the mid-to-late-70s with bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and KISS, eventually being brought to the mainstream by Metallica and Megadeth, and finally sold out, combined with the failed Punk movement, and/or integrating elements of Rap and Alternative music into the bands we know & hate today: Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Korn and Godsmack.

"...the majority of folks were into heavy metal..."

But heavy metal wasn't invented until the early '70, pioneered by groups such as Black Sabbath, gaining more acceptance in the mid-to-late-70s with bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and KISS, eventually being brought to the mainstream by Metallica and Megadeth, and finally sold out, combined with the failed Punk movement, and/or integrating elements of Rap and Alternative music into the bands we know & hate today: Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Korn and Godsmack.

"...the majority of folks were into heavy metal..."

But heavy metal wasn't invented until the early '70, pioneered by groups such as Black Sabbath, gaining more acceptance in the mid-to-late-70s with bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and KISS, eventually being brought to the mainstream by Metallica and Megadeth, and finally sold out, combined with the failed Punk movement, and/or integrating elements of Rap and Alternative music into the bands we know & hate today: Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Korn and Godsmack.