Are geek bloggers secretly running the Recording Industry Association of America, making outrageously unpopular decisions so they and compatriots will have easy fodder for blistering criticism? For your consideration: Today's no. 34 top link, an ars technica piece detailing a proposed law that would strongly collar the way people can use and enjoy digital music, is the sort of thing that gives bloggers rage blackouts. (That's happened to us at least a couple times.) This blogger's post is headlined "They Will Take Your Mind," and brings out some decent invective; the volume's a little lower on this screed, but it's got a good sum-up of the whole situation: "This is so wrong, on so many levels it is absurd. Never mind stamping out innovation or the rights of people to make and sell their inventions and products. I think what burns me the most is the idiotic logic." This blogger is miffed that nobody seems too up-in-arms about the proposal, while this one probably has the most sober recap on the entire business. Fellas, fellas — calm yourselves a moment. Ok, now you're angry again.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 09:50 AM

Welcome to 2006! This is going to be the year when PC and Mac users bury the hatchet; when Jennifer Anniston finally rebounds with somebody great; when TomKat's little squab finally enters the world (to Kat's complete silence, we all hope) and when Michael Mann's new movie finally comes out. Some remnants of 2005 — you remember, that year of graft, death, greed, incompetance and broken dreams — are still holding out, however: Our no. 7 top link today reports that the new Coldplay CD comes with some massive and devastating DRM protection, with a photo of the sheet explaning it that comes with every CD. Our favorite sentence from this slip is this: "In order for you to enjoy high quality music, we have added this special technology." It then unhelpfully adds that the CD can't be played "in some players, in some DVD players, in some portable players, etc." Supposedly, of course, it can't be copied to a computer hard drive, and, pointedly, it says the CDs don't work at all with Macs. What do you think bloggers' reactions to this would be, now that it's 2006? Well, surprisingly similar: " It's amazing how the labels always seem to come up with new ways of screwing artists: if they're not cheating them out of royalties, they're systematically alienating their fan-base," writes Cory Doctorow in the BoingBoing post. A more legalistic response, which we find completely sound, available here: "If I were to buy a copy of the CD at my local Borders or Barnes & Noble or WalMart, take it home, open it, discover the “rules” and realize that the CD won’t play on some or all of my playback devices, don’t I have a good contract claim against the store under Section 2-314 of the UCC (implied warranty of merchtability) and maybe even 2-315 (implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose)?" The answer is yes. When somebody finally serves a record company with this lawsuit, it'll be a great day for music listeners.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:19 AM

The gizmo standard-bearers at Engadget are reporting today that Sony is yanking the incompetently realized DRM-protected CDs that we've been railing against in our never-ending campaign to topple the old music industry. Sony says it will replace any of the malware-ridden CDs it sold over the past year — it made about four million of them, and sold 2.1 million — this has satisfied Engadget (and us). The post continues: "Looks like this might pinch ‘em in the pocketbook more than a little, but if this whole fiasco is what it takes to teach the industry a lesson about the pitfalls of poor practices in DRM, then so be it." Elsewhere on the Web, Sony-related statements are getting more extreme and more dire, as has been the case for the last couple Sony-related posts at Slashdot, infamous for the endless flame wars on its discussion boards. Most recently, they're linking to a piece that even predicts the company's downfall. Even the msm, in this Fortune piece, is getting in on the act. Can Sony sell enough Vaios, Playstation 3s and Jagged Edge CDs to stay ahead of this growing discontent?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:21 AM

It's hard not to break into a goofy grin these days when the subject turns to that crazy music industry — those scamps! They're always railling against file-sharing and illegally paying radio stations to play their awful music? Well guess what: as reported by our no. 37 news story today, now Sony is embedding poorly-coded, virus-like programs on listeners' computers! In fact, the BBC quotes one expert as saying "Sony might be inadvertently provoking piracy as consumers irritated by the anti-copying system rip the tracks to get around the restrictions." Ha ha ha! Nice work! At last, we can respect and take the music business seriously again. Now, do you think bloggers will be pleased to learn that new consumer DRM-protected CDs will be installing malware on their computers? Let's ask Angwe: "That's crap-tastic. All the more reason to stop buying CDs from RIAA companies." Writes this blogger: "Because, of course, the best way to fight 'piracy' is to punish the people who paid the fully-bloated MSRP for a CD and thought they could play it on any computer or media player they also rightfully purchased." What next, music industry? Maybe you oughta go back to pressing LPs — those are really hard to upload to Grokster.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:14 PM

Man, you know who really has it rough in America today? White people. Turn on the TV these days and you see J-Lo representing America's urban Latino community, or Kanye West representing its urban black community — wouldn't it be nice if white people could have someone to call their own? (Other than the president, 87 percent of Congress, 89 percent of the Supreme Court, the majority of the nation's governors, and the overwhelming majority of civic and business leaders?) Well now they can. If you saw BlogPulse's top news story today you already know about the thirteen year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede, who've got one album out already and will be releasing another soon, with songs just for whites! From their press materials, the song topics look like they include not being able to dance or keep up with hip trends, and being the overlord of a vast, impoverished racial underclass. Surprisingly, bloggers aren't taking to the Gaede sisters' message: "What I will do is wish them well and hope the universe dumps a BIG packet of smelly stuff on the mixed-up head of their mother," writes this even-headed blogger. This commentator took the news less well, it seems, and after looking at the piece asks, "Anybody else feel like throwing up?" Yes.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:09 AM

Franz Ferdinand's new record is out — in fact, there are even commercials on TV for it — and the band appears as our no. 16 burstiest name today. It'll be interesting to see how well the record, "You Could Have It So Much Better," does in popularity, because its predecessor, the group's self-titled debut album, figured prominently in the recent Sony payola scandals. (Who'd have thought the record company monsters would have to pay DJ's to play "Take Me Out?" That song had "hit" written all over it!) Early buzz for the new Franz record is positive, as evidenced by things said in blogs: "YES!" said Wendy, and "I cannot wait. Seriously," writes Patrick. A much more thoughtful rundown is here, and it includes this rhetorical question: "After listening to the new Franz Ferdinand album 'You Could Have it So Much Better', I have to ask 'Could I?' Their second major label album, just out today, is absolutley fantastic." Sound good enough?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:23 PM

No word as to why this thing is making its blog rounds now, considering it's inspired by a TV show we could've swore we saw in the summerof 2004, but our no. 23 link today is VH1's 50 most-worstest songs ever — of all time. (Though this isn't the first time annotated lists have had business before this honorable court.) Predictably, blogerati are reacting to the list, but before we get to them, click on the VH1 link and then come back here. We'll wait. Did you take a quick look? Ok. Now explain why Bob Seger's " Kathmandu" isn't on there. Relatedly, why isn't " I'm Real" by J-lo and Ja Rule on there? Those are unquestionably the two worst songs ever recorded, though, admittedly, "Achy-breaky heart" is awfully awful. Dustbury also is griping at the list's incompleteness, complaining that it doesn't reach back far enough. (The reason, of course, is VH1 only wants songs it can pair with video). Sir William has his own list of the 20 worst artists, which naturally includes some overlap with the VH1 list — "To qualify the artist had to have written music that was not only annoying, but technically well executed, catchy, and popular" — and his list does contain some surprises. Most incisive, perhaps, is this dissection by Churn of what VH1 has become: A sort of postmodern media hyper-oroborus, creating "cool" and then destroying it, as the mythical snake perpetually grows and simultaneously consumes its own tail. (Churn calls it "a bizzare mish-mash of reality shows and what I call MST3K-vision.") There you have it. Sometime when we finish our current master's degree, we're totally doing one about VH1.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:00 AM

Album covers: Lots of people talkin' about 'em. What's your favorite? The Fab Four walking across Abbey Road? Bowie with that paint on his face? The bathroom wall with all the graffiti on it? We guarantee you'll have a new one after you check out today's no. 14 link in BlogPulse, The U.K. Sun's 17 top examples of album art. And by top, we mean worst. Mullets, moustaches, jean shorts -- the inimitable MC Pooh -- it's all there. "Should I be embarrassed," asks a poster here, "that I have pictures of five of those albums on my computer?" The answer is yes. "Frickin' funny," says ignaczy.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:45 AM

We're not usually ones to crack wise at serious curtailments of expression, but even our humorless civil-libertarianism must give way to this obviously jape-worthy news story, BlogPulse's no. 20 today. Seems President Saparmurat Niyazov, worried about his nation's artistic integrity — ah yes, Turkmanistan, the cultural powerhouse of the steppes — has added lip-syncing to the ban he's already imposed on opera, the ballet and long hair. This means faux-singer Ashlee Simpson, whose non-vocalizing essentially crashed her career into a concrete wall, must axe her hopes of reviving it by playing the Beet Bowl in Ashgabat. (She actually might go back on Saturday Night Live, but, as we bloggers say, whatev.) This blogger isn't so amused at the lip-sync ban because it's just the latest crackdown by a harsh ruler, but GrinBlog had the same idea we did. Sure it's bad, but anything to keep Ashlee away...

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:01 PM

"That's what I've been trying to tell you!" tens of millions of Internet users screamed at their monitors today when they saw this BBC story that says people who use file-sharing services are more likely to buy music legally. Though most monitors just whirred quietly in response, undaunted computer users began mentioning the story on their blogs, making it BlogPulse's no. 16 link. The music industry already has run into some credibility problems this week, and news of this study will probably not endear Sony BMG, Universal or other companies to many people. Jurgen certainly feels that way: "I hesitate to use the words 'paradigm shift,' but something akin to that needs to happen to the music industry. The little guys get it, by and large. It’s the big ones that are still trying to un-invent technology." D4D is guardedly optimistic: "Hallelujah, for the tide may be about to turn," he writes. We'll be keeping half an eye on the blogosphere to see if the Recording Industry Association of America, struck by sudden pangs of guilt, drops all its lawsuits against our nation's adolescents. Yep. We'll keep watchin'...

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:50 AM

During the weeks it played interminably on our nation's radios, Jennifer Lopez's "I'm real" epitomized everything wrong with pop music in the 21st century. Dumb and unoriginal, it included a guest appearance by the Cookie Monster-voiced party rapper Ja Rule and tortured anyone unlucky enough to be hearing it while trapped in a waiting room or college cafeteria. "How," wondered Americans, "does this stuff get on the air?" Only they didn't say "stuff." Well, several years after the fact, BlogPulse's no. 22 link tells us. Sony Music paid DJs to spin songs by J-Lo and others, showing, among other things, why the record industry has precious little credibility when it files enormous lawsuits against 15 year-old boys trading a few Slipknot songs over the Internet. Nobody seems surprised. "...[J]ust in case you think a song gets on the radio because it's good, then you really need to stop sniffing marker pens," writes dub dot dash. "Anyone who's heard Jennifer Lopez 'sing' is shocked that she even has a recording contract," sneered thirdworldcounty. Still, many people might've been fooled over the years by the rocks that she got.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:46 AM

At the intersection of politics, humanitarianism, celebrity and rock was Live 8 last weekend, the summit for pop music's elder statesmen and women to lobby everyone in the world to help debt- disease- and famine-stricken Africa. Organizers used the web to gather signitures and broadcast the concerts, and naturally bloggers joined in the discussion -- Live 8's website is BlogPulse's no. 3 link today. But it's not all peaches and cream, as Lloyd Banks once said, and he ain't Sara Lee. Crowds booed Celine Dion when she performed her Live 8 set via satellite from her Las Vegas headquarters; people complained Africa was underrepresented in the concerts, despite their intentions; and then there were all the other critics, who either said Live 8 wasn't enough -- like blogger shmeen -- or that it was all a bit much, like Mark Steyn, BlogPulse's no. 25 link. Whew. So that's all that. Jezebelee saw some of the shows, though, and she resists cynicsm: "There are many cynical editorials online regarding Live 8," she writes. "Maybe they are all right, that a mega concert is not going to affect the slightest change in politics, but it has in the very least given faces to the ongoing senseless suffering in Africa." Yes it has.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:11 AM

America's highest court apparently knows what's been happnening in the nation's dorm rooms for the past few years, and with its decision Monday in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inv. v. Grokster Ltd, it's putting traders of music and movies on notice. The unanimous ruling, which The New York Times calls "a major victory" for Hollywood and the record business, found that Grokster could be sued for the money that record companies or movie studios say they loose through the swapping of copyrighted material. Bloggers are on the air about this -- Justice David Souter is BlogPulse's no. 5 bursty name today. In a pretty detailed breakdown, Ernest Miller writes that neither side achieved a definitive victory in the ruling, while Barking Moonbat speculates that Grokster and other file-sharing companies will just move out of the country. That seems to be what they're hoping for in all those dorm rooms out there: Sharkblog has the file-sharers' rebuttal.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:03 AM