/dev/random

Via MetaFilter: Hilly Kristal has died at age 75. First the club, now the man.

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I found this Topknot, M.I.A. and Cornershop remix at Boing Boing and I’m hooked. I don’t know where it came from originally, but I’d love to hear more like that.

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Elvis wasn’t the only musician who died on August 16th. On this day in 1997, one of the world’s greatest singers, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan died in the prime of his career. That was the same month Fela Kuti died, making it one of the saddest months in world music.
Nusrate Fateh Ali Khan sung a [...]

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Benn loxo du taccu reports that Bialu Makiese, better known as Madilu System, a member of Franco’s TPOK Jazz since 1980, died suddenly on Aug. 11 in Kinshasa from complications of diabetes. He was 57 years old.

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Pixelspread posted this story about how the indie label Victory Labels abused their artists and employees.
Almost all of Victory Records major alternative bands including Hawthorne Heights, Atreyu, Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, and Hatebreed, left them due to disputes. The head of Victory Records, Tony Brummel, is a bully who treats his employees, the label’s artists, [...]

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I’ve added a few new features to My2unz and to my iTunes module.

I’ve enabled Events and allow members to create events.
I’ve enabled the favorites module, which lets members add a track, artist, album, or playlist to their favorites, which appears in their profile.
Track detail view now shows the members who own that [...]

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My new iTunes playlist sharing site, my2unz.com is up. Registration is by invitation only - contact me for an invitation.
I wrote one custom Drupal module that imports an iTunes playlist or library exported as XML and handles specialized nodes for playlists & tracks. The rest of it is mostly standard Drupal modules. I plan to [...]

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This article reminded me that Fela died exactly 10 years ago. No other musician, even his son Femi Kuti, can match his talent and charisma.

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I was so preoccupied with my trip that I forgot that Gogol Bordello’s new album, Super Taranta was released last week. I picked up a copy at HMV last night and listened to it today at the hotel gym. It ventures a bit from their Eastern European “Gypsy Punk” to a more internationalized sound. It’s [...]

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I really love the new album by the White Stripes. I’ve been listening to it on my iPhone and I’ve added the title song to my workout playlist.
Until now I never paid any attention to them, but I see what I’ve been missing. I plan to start catching up on their earlier albums. Jack White [...]

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At first I was a bit disappointed that Apple decided to have their traditional Thursday night WWDC Bash in Yerba Buena Center across from Moscone instead of the Apple Campus as they usually do, but it turned out to be their most awesome bash of any WWDC I’ve attended. Apple usually gets a fairly popular [...]

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My 80GB video iPod just died. I had just finished loading the CD I just bought (Femi Kuti Definitive Collection). When I finished and disconnected it, I couldn’t put it to sleep by holding the play button, so I reset it. It then kept rebooting continuously and wouldn’t appear in iTunes so I couldn’t even [...]

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Mark Shuttleworth gives several reasons why DRM is ineffective. All DRM depends on some kind of encryption, and all encryption will be cracked eventually. All it takes is *one* copy to be broken and it’s all over. They’re only hurting legitimate users who want to watch the movie they bought on their iPod, PSP, [...]

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Guy Kawasaki brings the concept of “framing”, much used in politics, to the music industry debate over DRM & “piracy”:
My goal is to draw lessons from linguistics and apply them to business because it is a very useful marketing technique. For example, “a music-listeners revolt” would imply that record companies are unfairly ruling people who [...]

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Via Engadget:

It’s official: record companies don’t like you. After all that griping about signing up for the Zune music store — and keep in mind that these record companies receive monies for selling songs here — that resulted in Universal Music Group getting some sort of fat royalty check from Microsoft for Zune sales, not [...]

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The Godfather Of Soul has died.

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The full list of grammy nominations was posted at Yahoo Music. I threw up a little bit when I saw that the Black Eyed Peas were nominated for one of the worst songs ever as Best Pop Performance. On the plus side, “Youth” by Matisyahu is nominated for best Reggae album, and Salif Keita, Ladysmith [...]

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Universal Music Group chairman/CEO Doug Morris makes this outrageous statement about iPod owners: “These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it”. As an iPod owner who owns several thousand legally purchased CDs and about 1500 tracks purchased legally from iTunes Music Store and eMusic, I’m offended. Ths page has a [...]

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This is really cool. NiN did something similar with “The Hand That Feeds”. Maybe other artists will start doing the same.
His, Mine, Yours, Ours: “Inspired by comments Brian Eno made in his book A Year with Swollen Appendices, Duncan Sheik released White Limousine with two discs: One, a CD labeled Mine and the other [...]

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Via MetaFilter: Syd Barrett passes on. Pink Floyd founder (paid tribute to by his former bandmates in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond) who had succumbed to mental illness passes away due to complications of diabetes. RIP. Pink Floyd was one of the most influential groups of the 60s & 70s, known for [...]

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