Slashdot Mirror
Anything Box Releases An Album To Share
cats writes "Anything Box, the synthpop band from the 80's who had a hit with 'Living in Oblivion' have released an introspective albumn in mp3 format under a 'freeware' style license. Anyone who has ever seen these guys perform know they are just a bunch of nice people trying to make ends meet as musicians. I had the opportunity to hang with Claude before his show in NJ at The Pipe back in 1998. He had some interesting asides about how the music business in general operates. They manipulate the artists' work as well as take huge cuts of musicians' profits. The album is available via download as one big zip file including artwork and is in mp3 format. Very cool."
So now does that make them a one download wonder?
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
*stands up and claps*
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
but anonymous login to download the file is denied. Anyone know if this is just temp to deal with the /. effect?
A band from the 80's, just trying to make ends-meat, and you link them to slashdot. Hopefully the publicity will skyrocket whatever profits they can make, instead of just incuring heavy ISP costs.... looked like an independent site.
--
"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
You get what, an extra 1% compression? Sheesh.
Not my kind of music, but if you like it...this is they way we've been hoping thigs would start to go. If there's anyplace on their site where you can donate a couple bucks to help support the band, it would be a good idea.
We DO want to encourage this kind of thing, and the only way to do that is if they can make a little profit from it.
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
I don't know their music to say just how introspective their songs may be, but since this is a collection of previously released songs I think it's fair to say the word you're looking for is "retrospective."
the links for download do not work
There are less than 10 of us on Slashdot, right?
*cough*
Mirror, mirror, who's got the mirror.
But this has been available for 6 months. The first track is probably the best of the lot.
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
There has been some "free anti-war" music recently.
:)
http://www.marchofdeath.com/ & http://www.beastieboys.com/
Dont whine, its free!
hehe...
What an obvious troll!
If someone actually bites, I'm going to laugh my head off.
http://www.sayitaintso.com/sayit0204/march_mad_020 4.html
When I hear the music I'll examine it as well and see how I can use it to create and mix with my own tunes.
This sort of thing much appreciated.
Could do with a few mirrors though eh? If only BITTORRENT/similar came with http/tcp-ip!?
A blog I run for the wealth
So... can I give them money then or do I just download it? Where is their ROI? Despite what many Slashdotters seem to think on these threads you can't make a (good) album just by clicking a mouse over some menus a couple of times, it does take time, skill and talent. Just like coding, even with point-and-clicky IDEs.
So maybe they don't want to make any money but I can just see a whole bunch of people using this as a precedent to force all musicians to give their work away for free.
Put it this way, if they choose to do it, that's great, but if they do it for a full-time job they are not earning money for as long as it takes to the record. Who pays the bills during that time?
This is exactly how software works, I don't see why it should be different for music.
Again, great that we can get this album for free, but that doesn't mean *every* album *must* be free as well.
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
Tar is available on every modern computing platform
Unlike zip, tar is not bundled with Microsoft Windows ME and Microsoft Windows XP operating systems.
and doesn't waste time trying to compress uncompressible files.
Neither does zip -0.
Sometimes it's easy to forget there's more to packaging utilities than ZIP.
What other packaging format is supported by a program that comes bundled with the standard distribution of Microsoft Windows operating systems?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Ok, I just downloaded six of their songs from another source(ends with lite)
Six songs should be enough to pass judgement.
Listening to this makes me feel like I am the loner in a John Hughes movie that has been forsaken by the popular crowd but I am about to become cool and prove that even the geek can get the girl/friends/car/LAID/ scholarship, papal dispensation.
It has the poppy vibe of the Pet Shop boys and the whininess of Morrisey after he has spent a night crying on his 'platonic' male friends shoulder(Michael Stipe, anyone else remember their fling, ewwwwww)
I am an 80s child and love music and went to many concerts(BauHaus, SugarCubes, Cure, Smiths, Escape Club) And Black Flag, Femmes, Dayglow Abortions, Vandals. Did the whole punk thing, and no the Offpsring and Green Day are not punk bands. And the Police were doing ska before most you them were born.
Cannot remember this band, I remember Kajagoogoo.
Just when I thought I would never hear another whiney voice like Morrisey, I listen to this and wow, I am back in a dark bar with with everyone all dressed in black eating X and grinding up on each other. Smoking marlboro lights and pretending I am Andrew Macarthy in Less than Zero.
Honestly it is better than the dance music you here in clubs today, it is soft on the ears and you can shake a leg to it. I could see being in a crowd and bopping to it, and maybe putting the moves on the old lady, kindy scmaltzy and sexy at the same time.
As for buying it. Dunno, as I write this and I am listening to it and it grows on me. I might order it, cause it brings back some memories, and every now and then the old krewe and I embark on nights out fueled by memories, music, and other remnants of the 80s, and it would be a good cd to slip in.
I give it an 8, cause you can dance to it. Denny Theriot, theres a man!
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
post a link on slashdot to a FTP site with a 10 user max? I'll be waiting months to download this.
ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved
An FTP authentication failure occurred while trying to retrieve the URL: ftp://ftp.anythingbox.com/pub/album.zip
Squid sent the following FTP command:
USER anonymous
and then received this reply
Sorry, the maximum number of allowed clients (10) already connected.
Your cache administrator is root.
Generated Mon, 24 Mar 2003 00:41:47 GMT by localhost.localdomain (Squid/2.4.STABLE7)
Revolutions are never about freedom or justice. They're about who's going to be top dog. -- Kilgore Trout
tar is far better for that kind of thing than zip
Even if 90 percent of users will see nothing but an error message? "Click the program you want to use to open 'foo.tar'. If the program is not listed, click Other."
Will I retire or break 10K?
make derivitive works as simple as small modifications to morphing the work into a completely different product; ie, the right to build on this music and incorporate it into other music. It would also contain the 'source code', that is, the music tracs in what ever composing softrware they used
as the slashdot title says, this is more 'freeware' than 'free'
1. Release music for free
2. ???
3. Profit!
that the /. editors would be kind enough to provide a mirror of the MP3's, especially since that the music is FREE. But nooo.. instead we must decimate their server instead.
Geek culture and synthpop finding a union on /. - This has gotta be a dream come true. I've dug this group since 89'. Check it out if you can login to the ftp server.
Now that they will be selling their bodily fluids to pay for the ISP charges, I think we can count on other people not following suit with free albums ;-)
MP3 results in very low quality audio. Vorbis yields much better results for lossy audio.
1. Release mp3s -> people want better quality
2. ???
3. Profit!!
They're using mp3s for promotion of their music... what the music industry should be treating low quality mp3s on kazaa as...
I don't know about that, I got on it my 43rd try. Wget is a beautiful thing.
..this is but a fantasy..
album.zip mirror here
...that basically, as I have been led to understand it, the record companies make virtually all of the money on record sales. The money made by the artists truly comes from doing tours and other live performances.
It seems to me that these guys are actually on to something. If they give the music away free, it does NOTHING to discourage anyone from coming to see them live. In fact, it goes a long way to encourage it with all the extra "good will" and generosity the band will be perceived with. THIS is the move bigger artists should experiment with at this point. I think it could at least be educational to test the notion.
Forget about secure digital formats and all that DRM crap, let's share the art and go see their shows if we love'm! Let the band publish their own CDs and sell'm themselves from their web site using paypal as a convenient means of payment.
Independent is the only way to keep the artists from being screwed, I think...
For a minute I thought this article was about an X-Box hack. Maybe one that would allow games from any other vendor to be played on the X-Box.
Guess not.
Huh?
Guitar-Idiot by Foofus
"...feel free to share copies with whomever; I am not in this for the money." -Mr. Rufus Faloofus in an email to me.
Each a Separate World is probably the better track in that compilation. Many of them were actually written by others. I also really enjoy Even Here We Are, originally written by Paul Westerberg. Somewhere Over the Rainbow is a little painful to listen to, though. The tough notes and the crappy encoding are most of the problem.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
Rather than trying to make their album available on their own site, they should have been led by their chief techie to the P2P networks. In fact, I suspect the folks at Sherman Networks would have loved to help promote this as another Legal use of Kazaa.
So, anyone who's already posted this around and has the song list to look for?
Windows utils can extract tars as well.
Are you sure that the utility built into Windows ME and Windows XP can extract .tar files in addition to .zip files? Or are you talking about those WinZip/WinRAR/WinACE programs that cost $30?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I don't believe windows come with a zip utility.
I have used a computer with a stock installation of Microsoft Windows ME, and it came with "Microsoft Compressed Folders" integrated into the shell.
I have used a computer with a stock installation of Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, and it also came with "Microsoft Compressed Folders" integrated into the shell.
Granted, Windows 98 and Windows 2000 don't come with those tools, but virtually all x86 computers sold today through major channels to home users come with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition operating system software.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Well, kinda anyway. It was called Revolverlution. They put some tracks out, including the title track and a lot of other old loop tracks that you could sample and mix. There was some deadline, and at the end, Chuck D. and Flav listened to all the tracks and took a couple of them on the album. Not a bad disk, worth getting. If for no other reason the track "Gotta Give The Peeps What They Need" was banned from MTV for the the words "free Mumia and H. Rap Brown". MTV said no, too political. PE said no editing, it goes out as is. Then MTV said "well, if you cut out the word 'free' then it's cool". Chuck said you gotta be crazy telling a black man he can't use the word free, and it never will get aired.
They're very comfortable with the online stuff. They released their previous 2 albums online. They had a remix album called "Bring the Noise 2000". Def Jam didn't want to release it, didn't think there was a market. So Chuck and Flav said "hey we did the work already, let them hear the music" and released it on MP3, some server somewhere. Def Jam said no, said "even though we're not gonna release it, we OWN you, and you can't release it". Chuck got pissed, didn't like being owned by anyone, pulled the tracks (though a lot of people including me already had the tracks) and released the song "Swindler's Lust" with some pretty harsh elbows thrown at Russel Simmon's chest. This track and a few others got compiled to "There's a Poison Going On" which was released on MP3. Was $8 for a download, $10 if you wanted them to send you a disk - Chuck autographed those. Problem is, this was released on AtomicPop.com, which has since gone under. Was weird having an album you could get from Chuck and Flav for $8 (or like mine, for $10 with autograph) with all the money going to the artists, being sold at Virgin Megastore for $17.99, with maybe a buck going to them. No autograph even, such a gyp.
Check out http://www.BringTheNoise.com/ for some of the history and some live rap feeds. http://www.PublicEnemy.com/ well, for Public Enemy.
Hang them.
He wasn't talking about Nico Mak WinZip but rather about Microsoft Compressed Folders, which is built into Windows ME and XP.
Re-read that again.... he said modern computing platform
In that case, if you claim that the operating system in use on 95+ percent of the audience's computers is not a "modern computing platform", then whether or not tar is bundled with a "modern computing platform" is not all that relevant now, is it?
Not legacy crap with 16-bit thunking code, self-corupting filesystems
You're talking about Windows Millennium Edition. Microsoft has since released Windows XP Home Edition based on the NT kernel, which has fixed many of these issues. It is bundled with a zip utility but apparently not with a tar utility.
and NetBIOS over TCP/IP for file-sharing.
More like KaZaA over TCP/IP for file-sharing.
Evry decent OS has tar
What percent of the band's audience uses a "decent OS" by your definition?
Will I retire or break 10K?
The mirror works! If there's something nasty about the zip I'll reply to this. Otherwise, it looks good!
MOD UP!
Didn't Information Society (Kurt Harland, et al) get them signed? I saw them open up for IS back in the mid 90's; and they were a really great band/show.
Haven't heard anything from InSoc in the past few years, but I'm glad that there are still some 80's synth-pop-pro-techno's still around making good music and advancing the music industry with advanced distribution methods....
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Since the subject of releasing music for free cam up, I couldn't resist mentioning a band and site I just happened to stumble upon that has quite a few really good tunes available for download in MP3 *and* OGG format: http://machinaesupremacy.com/.
Their take on "Giana Sisters" as well as their "Sidology" tunes are great nostalgia as well as great modern versions of the old C=64 classics. There are quite a few other good songs as well. Check them out!
On the topic today I came across a band called "Toasted Heretic".
Irish (IIRC) 80s drinking type band that made four albums. Doing a google search came up with an interview with the lead singer (there were only 400 hits, so it's not hard to find, top ten search hit) who had written a book. In any case, during the interview about his bok, the subject of sharing tunes came up. The lead singer was *extremely critical of the music business and encouraged fans to download his tunes wherever they could be found. I believe that even the lead guitarist had uploaded some to mp3.com.
It was nice to see that non-hit bands felt the same way we do.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
No super-computer runs Windows.
Actually, some personal supercomputers do run emulated Windows.
No large-scale database runs Windows.
No large-scale database runs Windows on the server side (except possibly for a few isolated MS SQL data centers), but most commercial database management systems have a Windows front end available, and a DBA may be listening to MP3s on the same machine he administers the database from.
No militaty flight simulator run Windows.
No "military" or no "United States military"? Rumors have gone around that the terrorists who performed the kamikaze attack on the World Trade Center had practiced the attack using Microsoft Flight Simulator. Who knows what other countries' air forces train on?
No bank runs it's federal transations on Windows.
But a lot of banks run the client side of the online banking applications on Windows. "IE only" anyone? Account holders buy records.
Sure, MS has most the desktop video-game market, most of the simple spread-sheet market and simple document creation market to itself - but nothing really of importance.
Importance? We're talking a band here. A band's job in the market is to produce recordings that a label publishes. The people who buy records are the people who play desktop video games, write spreadsheets, and create simple documents.
Enough, that they should have a .tar .
And rent twice the server space, when almost everybody who has GNU tar probably also has a copy of Info-ZIP's UnZip lying around?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Let's post an ftp site with a 10 user limit to a website known for sending hundreds of thousands of connections per minute.
I'd be willing to bet this link was even unavailable for those TotalSlashdot subscribers.
I'd love to hear this music. if anyone is mirroring the zip file, please let us know.
...and you want to support their work, check out this order form for CDs:
http://www.anythingbox.com/form.htm
(Yes, I realize that you can't then try before you buy, but I'd prefer to take a chance on these guys than a lot of CDs in the store.)
- Created in a boardroom by suits
- Sex symbolism more important than musicianship
- Underdog in engineered, artificial controversy
- Willing to change fundamental values to increase profit
- Cannot write their own music
- Inane, cliché-filled lyrics
- No innovation
What is bad for the music industry is that this makes my purchasing activities as limited as my listening activities. Because so many of today's alleged artists can answer "yes" to one or more of the above points, I simply don't buy very much music. I know many people who feel the same way. Certainly, we are outnumbered by consumers of the "fickle sheep" variety, but I do wonder how much money the industry loses because it refuses to address my wishes as a listener.One of my favorite quotes addresses this subject. It is from the Rush's "The Spirit of Radio" (words by Neal Peart (the drummer)).
I also like what Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar" has to say about the music industry.Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Share the wealth, post the sig2dats for the 6 songs you found if they are good quality. (Can't understand why they wouldn't do that at the website... afraid of appearing to lend legitimacy to Kazaa? Dunno.)
but like most of the other concerts I wanted to go to while in school, I was working that night :)
... at the summer education program I used to go to (and later worked for) we played Living in Oblivion at every dance, so it has sentimental value for me.
;)) the EP called -- I think -- "Dance," with remixes of Where is Love and Happiness, etc. "Worth" is just more depressing than I want in an album ...
;)
The first album is the one that made me like AB; I could never understand why they did not achieve the popularity that bands like PSB and Erasure (justly) achieved
"Hope" is a great album -- I got it from a friend whose cousin had ordered several from (I think I remember correctly) Orangewerks. Since then, I've happened upon a few weird AB releases / singles; since you're more knowledgeable about the band than I am, you probably know (and have
I really like (what I perceive at least about) Anything Box's attitude toward their fans, which is to say that they seem really friendly and appreciative toward the people who like their music. It's a refreshing attitude, for some reason
I'm going to finish my email to the band urging them to use Ogg Vorbis instead of (or in addition to) MP3; wonder what they'll say.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
"They manipulate the artists' work as well as take huge cuts of musicians' profits."
holy shit, if they do then that was in the contract you signed. if a musician signs a contract without reading it, or accepts these kinds of clauses as a tradeoff for getting to be a big famous rockstar, then they deserve what they get. it's ridiculous to put the blame on the record companies.
this is how the business works, record company makes contract that is very, very good for them, sends it to band. band is supposed to read it with a lawyer, and then change it so it is overwhelmingly good for them, then send it back to company. company's lawyer reads the contract and accepts a few changes, denies a bunch, and adds in a few clauses that make it better for the company...this continues, it's called negotiation. the band that doesn't negotiate until the contract is to their liking is a band that does not deserve to cry later on.
everyone and their mom knows that record companies are big bad evil businesses that just want money. but if the record company wants you enough, then you can end up with a very decent contract...if you're desperate for fame, and you sign the first piece of paper they send you, then i have no sympathy...
i am constantly blown away by the naive childish attitude that everyone seems to have towards the music industry. of course they want to make money. of course they will give the artists as little as they have to. these are not new thoughts, everyone's known this for a long time. i don't get why you people constantly defend and support these people who were either high as a kite when they signed, or too stupid to get a lawyer, or for whatever reason they signed a bad deal, and now have a bad deal that they're legally bound to. there are so many people out there who have it so bad, and it's not their fault. yet you people spend so much time worrying about the starving artists who made the decision to go this route.
to end on a happy note, it is possible to get a record deal that is very good for the artist, even with a major label. you have to be in a position where the record company wants you, ie. you must be a good band, and have a good image. if you are not in a position where the recording company wants you, then you are not cut out for the big music business, you're SOL, and if you then go and sign a deal with a major, it will not be good for you, so don't do it. but it is possible to get a great contract, to work with good people, and to make a decent living from rock 'n roll, i know first hand...
Too funny... I met the lead singer (virtually) on napster way back when. Nice guy.
cats writes "All your base are belong to us." Server have no chance to survive.
Wow... sounds like they can shred...
I posted this comment as a joke, or a troll even. I can't believe a call to kill people because they are communists is marked as 'insightful', i expected an immediate -1/troll or -1/flaimbait. Just shows you 'nerds' are a bunch of brainwashed fascists.
I agree. That's why I wrote the OSML. It's based on the GPL. Next step is to simplify it and try to make it easier to read. The trickiest part is defining what constitutes the source audio. And before the next revision, I need to decide if I want it to require you to publish binaries (mp3s) for free download, or just make the source available. I'm leaning towards the latter, since that's the way the GPL is, and it'll get more people to use the license. Any thoughts, /.?
c-hack.com |
I've got no teeth, you insensitive clod!
--
I made it through. Just to see if I actually get it and perhaps I will like it. I will not share it, I will not burn it on CD nor sell it. Nope. I will just listen to it to see if it was worth the download. And it will distract me from the shit we see on TV these days.
Well, here it is. I am one of the lucky 10 persons who got to the ftp-server:0 051|
ed2k://|file|Anything Box - Binaural Repeats.zip|40570015|2231120c93f1c5e5ea8a93e3bbe9
Unfortunately turning this into an "a href" html link does not work because of the special characters, so you need to copy-and-paste.
-- MicAttAck
Religon is an insult to human dignity.
Awwww man, this brings back memories.
"Tell me what's on your mind".
PURE ENERGY!
Da-duh-da-da Duh-da-da-da-da-da
After all why would they otherwise use Windows?
Because they can't just walk into the local electronics store and walk out with a Linux machine perhaps?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Its probably a bit too late to post to this thread but Anything Box actually played the batcave (nyc) not so long ago (2 years or so?).
:)), a LOT of the background music to all the real world shows are clips from these bands (if you were curious as to where the music was coming from). One of the offical VH1 segways is actually fischer spooner's emerge now as well. Anyway there is a ton of good stuff out there all w/ huge active followings w/ club nights in many of the major cities as well.
(speaking synth nostalgia redflag played there right around the same time period)
The synthpop thing has recently been given a revival of sorts lately, especially now w/ its superceded version hip "electroclash" version.
If you do happen to like any of the anything box songs, take a look at the different drum label.
Particularly, take a look at De/vision, Wolfsheim, Cosmicity.. (these still get a lot of "club play" btw).. if you like your synths a bit darker and moody, take a look at metropolis records Bands like And One, Covenant, VNV Nation and Apoptygma Bezerk have HUGE followings even here in america.
Finally, if this synth stuff all seems a bit to cheezy, we can hip you out w/ the electroclash stuff. Most of this is on emperor norton but Fischer spooner, Felix the Housecat, Ladytron, Miss Kitten and the hacker all have pretty big followings currently. (Fischer spooner just got signed to capitol).. Incidentally, and it speaks mostly of where the kids who produce the mtv shows hang out (brooklyn club scene
-bloosqr
I think every post here has missed the point. If they were smart, they would provide "both", ney, all 3 file types.
A trivial 1-liner (in linux) could turn every file on the server into a tarball _and_ create a corresponding "zip" file.
So, obviously the smart server system to use in this application is Linux (IMHO).
http://web.njit.edu/~aslam/abox/album.zip
Hello, I just wanted to let everyone know that Anything Box is still writing and working really hard on new material. Their latest album "The Universe Is Expanding" is lightyears from "Living in Oblivion". The Free album is not a good representation of what the band sounds like right now, unless you focus on the last half of the album. These songs will be posted for 1 week: http://www.knerd.com/~partytricks/ABOX/temp The song "Robotnik" is on Universe is Expanding. "Love is Lo-Fi" is an incomplete, unmastered version from their upcoming album called "The Effects of Stereo TV." PS I know the server sucks but it's not meant for wide-release.. hurry!
...so I can download it.
Not a joke as their FTP server is maxed out.
I've been tryong to download the album since the article was posted, and I've finally gotten onto the FTP server and pulled a copy down /. effect has died down enough that you can now grab a copy, yey!
So, looks like the
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
Supposing I decide the music industry is not wholly beneficial, and choose to play music in my waiting room that is distributed under a free licence of one sort or another.
... or of course setting up or signing up to the sort of organisation that irritated me in the first place by demanding fees to play records, and from various accounts remitting very little of those fees to the bands or artists that make the music.
It'll play on a Linux box that is there for patients to browse for refercnes etc, or on the reception desk computer.
But how do I keep track of what is playing, and most importantly of the licencing conditions that allow it to be played.
As I consider this, I am either faced with writing some sort of licence tracking software, or buying some or hoping it will be all right (it quite likely would be, but...)
Is there a FLOSS appliation or framework that would serve to show the (UK equivalent of) RIAA inspector that due dilligence or reasonable care had been taken to avoid breaching the licence on CDs?
If not, should there be - is there a business model?
FOr a collection of artists, or the universe of artists, maybe there is - shameware, or nagging conscienceware which keeps track of how often you(r staff) play each item, and encourages you to send a donation to where it may do rather more good than to the Sinatra estate or Moody Blues relicts.
http://www.defoam.net/