Richard Ashcroft: Keys to the world

We´ve just received the new Album of Richard Ashcroft "Keys to the world". Thx to amazon we got it in the postbox today, the official launch day. This is his 3rd solo Album, after "Alone with Everybody (2000)" and "Human Conditions (2002)". As we are now listening to the first tracks, we´re expieriencing a change in the character of the music - it seems much lazier, not as dark and heavy as the ones before. It looks like Richards mastered his crisis - and the music is the mirror of this "new" powerful artist. Great album, great music.

Music everywhere

Now, this is really cool: gnump3d  is an open source streaming server. It automatically detects all the media on your disk, and serves it as mp3-stream on Port 8888 . Since I´ve got a flatrate, I like to have all my music on my linux box at home, serving it for me, so that I can listen to it everywhere I have a internet connection. The quality is brilliant: you even can select between different playlists, or make your own. When you give user/pass to your friend, they are able to listen to your music. (This all somehow reminds me of last.fm ;-)

iTunes germany: 4 out of 5 stars from me!

Some days ago itunes germany started. And due to the fact, that it was raining yesterday, I decided not to go to the music-store, but try my luck finding the new song "Troy" in iTunes. First of all I have top say, that the concept, having an online store in a "local-software" seems to me very good. You always have the latest songs and albums in your well known surrounding. Making an account is simple: you just need to select the right store (in my case iTunes-store germany) and enter your credit-card informations. iTunes germany doesn´t have many songs at the moment - but they are presented in a clear and well designed way. I wasn´t able to find my beloved song, but I chosed to take another one. They all cost 0.99 €, which is quite ok in my opinion. I mean, if you go to the store and buy your song on a single you always have to pay at least 7 €, for a rap, hiphop, metall and no-voice-karaoke-mallorca-mix-additional version of your song. hell, the download was fast: there was no speed-o-meter, but I guess it was at least 150 kBit, cause the 2.30 long Beastie boys song was delivered in less than a minute. So, iTunes gives a very new shopping experience: you get a 30 sec. long prehear of your song, you can see the cd-cover, you can be lead to the interprets-website, and may view their music-vid. The song is delivered very fast, and when iTunes is able to convince even more music-companies to participate with their store, I think, times are getting harder for my music-store next door.

musicians want double money

Due to the fact, that modern anti-copy-piracy technology burns each track twice on one music cd (one to be played in your cd-rom device, and one that is not able to be copied), news.com reports, that musicicians want to get the double amount of money. Well, somehow it`s logically, but it´s even more "chilli" into the the "discussion-soup" about music-piracy...

iPOD`s retail value: $10.000

Did you know that the amount of your 40 gb iPOD is of about 10.000$? Well, check it out

Power of the Internet

As adage.com reports, alloy.com was able to make a MTV-Superstar in less than two month! I tink it`s quite astonishing, how the right marketing-mix is able to push it? Or is it rather frightening...?

Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie

For all of you, who are interested in classic-music: I went to the philharmonie in cologne last friday, and it was a great concert of the "Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen" (Website). We heard pieces of Bach, Muffat and Schütz. It was a very great pleasure to hear the orchester, trying to play in the "old mannor": they use strings made out of intestine instead of steal. This ends in a very soft sound. So check them out, if you can.