MTV puts ALL music videos online

In a move near and dear to my heart, MTV is putting their entire catalog of music videos online for users to watch or even embed in their own sites. Freakin' awesome!

MTV Music expands upon the music video offerings already posted to MTV.com by offering an entire back catalogue of videos that go all the way to when music videos were born. The library includes more than 16,000 videos, sprinkled with "exclusive" MTV concert footage and MTV "Unplugged" performances that used to be all the rage. And that's just the beginning. According to a blog post on MTV's Splash Page, more videos are being added by the day, so even if your favorite Paula Abdul selections haven't been posted yet, they probably will make it up eventually.

Judging from Today's most popular videos, including Dire Straights, Duran Duran, Talking Heads, the Buggles, and other classics, it looks like this is really speaking to the generation that misses the MUSIC and not the REAL WORLD and other reality nonsense.

Like YouTube, MTV Music allows users to not only watch videos on the site, but to also leave comment, give ratings, and embed the videos on their blogs or personal websites.

Check it out here: http://www.mtvmusic.com/

And now, for one of my favorite videos of all time:

Radiohead |MTV Music

Making house music with PI

This software is called the “Pi House Generator”, and randomly generates house music using the number π . Much like the number itself, the music stream never repeats and constantly continues to evolve.

From Paul :

“The software progressively calculates the sequence of digits in pi, starting at 3.14 and progressing towards infinity. As the program calculates the digits, it feeds the results into an algorithmic music generator containing my structural criteria for house music. The resulting piece of house music is infinitely long and static and never repeats itself.

The number of processor cycles required to calculate pi increase with the number of digits it is calculated to. After months or years of playing the song, any fixed computer hardware will be unable to calculate the digits fast enough for the song to play continuously.

The rate that the number of processor cycles increase per pi-digits is bound by the formula Z*log(N); however based on Moore’s Law, processor power per dollar increases at an exponential rate - doubling every two years. BY upgrading computers regularly with market trends, the song can be played indefinitely.”

You can listen to a sample of the stream right here (mirror ). There is also a one hour long clip here.

If you want to geek out about π , go here .

Check out the project here.

Death of the Audio CD?

We already knew that album sales have been steadily declining, and digital distribution is increasing everyday. But is the physical album dead? Maybe, maybe not.

With increasing MicroSD card slots in cellphones, car stereos, etc., the music industry unveiled a plan this week to sell complete albums for $7-10 on SanDisk MicroSD cards. So it might just be the CD and Vinyl on it's way out - not the physical album.

Here's the meat of what the article had to say:

• Price: SanDisk won’t say more than that it expects the price at retail to be about the same as a CD. One executive of a major record label told me he expected the albums-on-a-card to sell for $7 to $10. Since Wal-Mart is selling a 1-gigabyte MicroSD card (the size used for SlotMusic) for $15.98 these days, that seems like a fine value. (Yes, you can erase the music and use the storage on the card for something else.)
• What’s on the card: The music will be in the form of MP3 files, with no digital rights management restrictions. It will be encoded at 320 kilobytes per second, a higher quality than most download services. The labels also hope to add value to the cards with liner notes, lyrics, videos and other digital goodies. SanDisk is working on adding other enhancements, like songs that can be played a few times but then must be paid for to be unlocked.
• Easy to use: If you want to get music onto a cellphone that has a MicroSD slot, sticking one of these cards in the slot is easier than trying to download songs and transfer them to the phone. (Sure, you can download songs over the air, but that will cost you $2 a track, thanks to the labels. And lots of people don’t have data plans on their phones.) If you want to listen to music on your PC or on your iPod, downloading it from iTunes may be easier, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another segment that would find the tangible experience of buying the package in a store to be more attractive (particularly if the price and bonus features made it a better proposition than iTunes).

It actually sounds very attractive to me. You gain an extra storage card, pay equal to or less than a CD, and get the music in high-quality MP3 that is DRM free. Could they be onto something with this?

Personally, even as digital as I am, I still buy CDs. I like to rip my own clean copies of music, and I like having a backup that I can rip into the next format when MP3 becomes outdated. This new format wouldn't give me the same flexibility, but if the price was right, I just might be game.

Is the Album Cover dead?

Looks like folks have started transititioning completely to digital music from CDs, tapes, and Vinyl. No surprise here, but it is changing our listening and storage habits, especially when it comes to physical media.

Andy Day at Gigwise.com interviewed Peter Saville, who is questioning if the result of the digital age is the demise of the album cover. Saville is an artist know for creating the iconic artwork of New Order and Joy Division. He has also designed album covers for Pulp, Suede and Roxy Music.

In the interview, Saville states:

“We have a social disaster on our hands,” he said, speaking from his studio this weekend, “The things that pop music was there to do for us have all been done... there's nothing to rail against now.

“When I was 15, in the North-west of England ... the record cover was like a picture window to another world. Seeing an Andy Warhol illustration on a Velvet Underground album was a revelation ... It was the art of our generation ... true pop art.”

I have to strongly disagree with the statement. I've been making sure that my digital music collection of over 10,000 legally obtained MP3s includes all of the original artwork for the past 5 years.
I love to see album artwork displayed on my iPhone or Apple TV, and I can't stand to see a track that is missing the cover. It helps me sort the music, and also helps set the tone for the whole album for me. Album covers are iconic, and help define a place in time that goes with the music.

If anything, I think in the long run services like HD Radio and Satellite radio will be streaming album covers right to your dashboard in the car, just as Pandora streams the album cover to your computer.

So I belive the album cover isn't dead, and it is only the beginning of a generation tuned into the entirely digital album cover. This new frontier will eventually offer more interactivity to album covers and provide a totally immersive experience. More of an album cover movie or game even.

Oh, but how I do miss those giant album covers from my old vinyl records. Those really were true works of art.

Well, except for some of the ones you find over at the CoverBrowser.com collection of worst album covers. Take a look at a few examples from the collection below.

Maybe some album covers deserve to die?

Save the Music, Help Pandora Today

Looks like the world's best streaming radio service, Pandora, is in major trouble.

According to Read Write Web:

Founder Tim Westergren has stated that the service is approaching a "pull-the-plug kind of decision" for the service.

and

Pandora's founder is waiting for a ray of light in a fight being led by Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.). Berman is attempting to arrange a few last-minute deals between web radio stations and SoundExchange, the organization that represents artists and record companies that would reduce the the recent fees.

The original petition has expired, but go to SaveNetRadio.org today to see how you can get involved in saving Pandora and other streaming radio services.

Pandora's life is in your hands dudes, it's life is in your hands!