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Ignore the damn kid throwing up on your lawn. It's just me.

Sincerely,

Jeff Tweedy

Yankee
Hotel
Foxtrot

A few weeks ago Larry Lessig gave a great talk along with Jeff Tweedy at the New York Public Library. In it Lessig talks a lot about Brazil and how they are totally nuts about open source, and how it isn't only overweight nerds with ponytails who are into it (his words, not mine). Definitely worth watching, there is some great new material that wasn't in his book Free Culture or anywhere else that I know of.

The only job the Labels should have is distrobution of the CD's. The demand for a permanant media is there. Take for example, the CD audio quality is 96KB (that's Kilo BYTES ) per second and a high end MP3 or OGG is only 320Kb (that's Kilo bits ) per second.

There is NO reason for the Labels to own the music that the artists write and create. Think of it as if MS owned all software that ran on their OS. I just don't make sense.

GIVE THE MUSIC BACK TO THE ARTISTS, then watch what they do with it. Much like when the record label didn't like Wilco's album and cancelled the contract. They released the album online, and people paid Wilco directly.

I hope this is the way it all goes in the end.

Many of the reviewers there have vastly different opinions of many artists, and many have the typical indie rock prick mindset of "the more obscure it is the better". And the 10 point and single decimal scale has always irked me. What the fuck is the difference between a 6.7 album and a 7.3 album?

Y'know, Pitchformula is a much more fitting name for Pitchfork. I find that pitchfork reviews aren't so good for any sort of consumer guidance or artistic criticism, but at least give a snapshot of whatever the consenus indie-rock orthodoxy is at the moment. And the oh-so-precious two significant digit ratings serve as a sort of indie-rock orthodoxy stock report.

For example, let's look at Wilco's last few records: Being There, a "a spinoff of a successful band" that with a score of 6.8, "[h]as its moments, but isn't strong"; Summerteeth, which shot right up to a 9.4 (ratings key: "Amazing"), the review getting bonus points for using the innane phrase "Elvis Costello-by-way-of-Phil Spector", and not mentioning already emerging record-label problems (although I can't help but think that those probably nudged the score up a bit); and then we get the much-ballyhooed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, with record-label troubles so severe that they couldn't go unmentioned in the review, and a perhaps not-uncoincidental 10.0 (ratings key: "Essential") rating. There's no review for A Ghost Is Born yet (although those with up-to-date versions of QuickTime can have a listen at that last link), but past market performance suggests that although the review will be good, you probably should have sold at Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's 10.0.

Forget a cheap T-shirt. Let's all chip in and get her an IPOD filled with MP3s of bands who have released their music in MP3 form. We can include major label talent like Wilco and unsigned acts like Phantom Stranger and HEX. Fill it up with your favorites from MP3.com or any other site that you like. Just make sure that they are all legal MP3s.

In fact, let's get two: One for Hillary and one for whoever replaces her. Then they can no longer claim ignorance of all the music out there that is legal to share.

I'm serious -- Wilco is fucking awesome, and their newest album is even better than their previous ones. They are also one of the few bands that allow fans to tape their shows.

I'm serious -- Wilco is fucking awesome, and their newest album is even better than their previous ones. They are also one of the few bands that allow fans to tape their shows.

I'm serious -- Wilco is fucking awesome, and their newest album is even better than their previous ones. They are also one of the few bands that allow fans to tape their shows.

Wilco is proving that the bottom line about sales is the quality of music. They were at 13 on Billboards chart last week. Big lable? not any more, they bought their album back from mr big. Their latest album was available online forever and a day before its market launch. People still bought it, and are still buying it.

I don't see any way to download the new Wilco album from their website and most of the tracks are blocked on Audiogalaxy. If it stops being available for download as soon as it goes on sale, that's not really supporting the 'try before you buy' philosophy.

Okay, after some google searching, I finally found Wilco's site. But WTF? Where the hell can I download the album? I don't even see a place to preview the songs, except for a live show. It says they released it on April 23. What, was it only free for a week? Where are all the informative-link-putting-up karma whores when you need them?

Heh, linux users will love the blurb at the middle left: it says "got quicktime?"

homepage
preorder

i cannot seem to find the mp3's when i do
i'm probably going to pick it up on principle.

homepage
preorder

i cannot seem to find the mp3's when i do
i'm probably going to pick it up on principle.

Once again, my M.O. actually benefits the record industry, but they don't know it or care. I have Wilco's album, and I have every intention of heading to Tower monday night and picking it up at midnight (it helps to have Tower half a mile from my apt).

I buy a lot of CDs, and with very few exceptions, I download some or all of them first. I'm not going to drop $15 on a CD I may or may not like. This practice has expanded my musical tastes extensively, an expansion in purchasing that probably would never have happened without mp3s. The music industry needs to learn not to abuse its customers, because we're fed up with it.

Their sales suck because nobody's buying Britney albums anymore, and they're in between trends. They have to learn to reinvent themselves! Actually, Wilco has some good advice for the music industry (from "War on War", off Yankee Hotel Foxtrot):

You're gonna lose
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die
If you wanna be alive