The Beatles are finally available in digital form. However, you need to shell out $279.99 for it. Granted, it comes in an apple-shaped USB stick, both in FLAC and MP3 formats. It seems they are all-together shunning the iTunes music store.
Apple Corps and EMI Music have announced the worldwide release a limited edition of only 30,000 Stereo USB devices. What do you get for that? The same thing the band and EMI Music Group are already selling for $219: All of the band’s music, in a remastered stereo mix — the same just released in a CD set. For all those die-hard fans paying extra yet, you get the same tunes bundled up in a single USB stick. Like so:
On the device there is a specially designed Flash interface that has been installed, and the 16GB USB’s audio and visual contents will be provided in FLAC 44.1 Khz 24 bit and MP3 320 Kbps formats, fully compatible with PC and Mac. This it also includes the 13 mini-documentaries about the studio albums. To be fair, it’s impossible to get such high-quality audio on the free YouTube videos. It’s quite an imposition to ask of the fans to plunk down more than $200 (£200 in the UK) for it, though.
The Gossip new album Music for Men available everywhere 23rd June. Including the iTunes store! Good news for the long awaited album from the band. A little bit about the band:
GOSSIP is a band. Formed 8 years ago. We grew down in Arkansas. We were raised by cassette tapes, wild coyotes and mothers. We are interested in change, fashion, art, dancing + movies. We currently live in Portland, Oregon. We are always on tour. We are currently working on a new record. We only exist to inspire. We encourage you to listen to Nico, Glenn Branca, The Shaggs and Yoko Ono + pick up a guitar and start your own band! Perfection is not real. That is all.
Having been elevated to stadium rock demigods – this generation’s U2, if you will – the members of Coldplay could not be faulted for becoming a tad bored or jaded. They’ve been together for more than 10 years, having formed in 1998 while students at University College London. How have they retained interest in both the band and the music over all these years?
“It’s inherently interesting,” says Will Champion, drummer and unofficial spokesman for the group, which will perform at the Verizon Wireless Virginia Beach Amphitheater on Wednesday. “We have been doing it a long time. Our commitment to music is what keeps it fresh. Every day there are new bands to listen to, something to make you think of music in a slightly different way.”
Champion says the band broke from its usual routines in recording its latest album, “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends,” by working with Brian Eno, a one-time member of Roxy Music. Previously, Champion, lead singer Chris Martin and the other members of the group – guitarist Jonny Buckland and bassist Guy Berryman – would more or less go into a studio and spontaneously create music.
Martin would typically start them off with a melody or parts of a song, and the rest of them would collaborate until a song formed. This time, Eno had them do something drastically different.
“We would come in and pick a (homemade) card from a deck that had different strategies,” he said. “You’d pick one, and then you’d do what it says on the card, and it would yield some very interesting results. It might say ‘percussion’ or ‘guitar’ and force you to do something you weren’t expecting to do. He tried his hardest to knock us off balance a bit and approach things from a different angle.”
Champion has been toying with new technology – specifically new drum software that’s encouraged him to make sounds exponentially different from the (good) plodding of memorable Coldplay songs like, say, “Clocks.”
There’s even been speculation that the band is considering making dance music, which, as any Coldplay fan knows, is a complete turnaround. (People used to joke that if you wanted to put an end to a raucous party in your apartment, put on some Coldplay.)
The four co-founders of website The Pirate Bay have been found guilty of assisting the distribution of illegal content online by a Swedish court today and have been sentenced to a year in jail and a $3.6m (£2.4m) fine.
Charges against the site, which allows web users to access music, movies and TV shows without paying for them and claimed 22 million users during February, were brought by a consortium of media, film and music companies led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
A Stockholm court found the four defendants guilty of making 33 specific files accessible for illegal sharing through The Pirate Bay, which means they will have to pay compensation to 17 different music and media companies including Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Warner, MGM and 20th Century Fox.
Two EPs for the new Pet Shop Boys single “Love etc.” were added to U.S. iTunes yesterday, one containing the regular version of the song plus two B-sides (“Gin And Jag” and “We’re All Criminals Now”), and one that consists of five remixes (the best of which, IMO, being from Gui Borratto and the PSBs themselves). The remix EP is currently at #78 on the iTunes daily Top Albums tally.
“Love etc.” became the duo’s 40th Top 20 hit in their home country last week, as it debuted at #14 on the official U.K. singles chart. Meanwhile, their 10th studio album Yes was released across Europe on Monday, and it’s currently at #1 on British midweek charts, just barely selling over 1,000 copies more than a collection of Mother’s Day ballads by Boyzone frontman Ronan Keating. If Yes does indeed land at the top in England, it’ll be the Pet Shop Boys’ first #1 album since 1993’s Very, and only their second ever.
