New Ways to Find and Enjoy Music Online

Judging by the 6 billion songs that have been downloaded though Apple's iTunes Store and the more than 173 million iPods the company has sold, it is clear that many people embrace digital music. And it's a safe bet that digital music will continue to grow in popularity as the internet makes it progressively easier and cheaper to discover and listen to music.

In this post, I'd like to highlight and compare some of the online music services that I have used over the past several years: the iTunes Store, Amazon's MP3 store, eMusic, and Lala.



The iTunes Store: For a while, iTunes was my clear choice for purchasing digital music. Their selection is pretty comprehensive, their prices are cheaper than buying CDs, and it's easy to sync iTunes music with an iPod. The only drawback is that much of their catalog is DRM-protected, meaning there are restrictions to how many computers the music can play on and how many CDs it can be burned onto. Apple is fazing DRM-protection out of the iTunes Store, but I bought quite a few songs with DRM-protection that Apple is now asking me to pay for again in order to get DRM-free versions, which annoys me, so I've chosen to boycot the iTunes Store whenever possible.


Amazon MP3: Amazon's selling point is that (1) they offer their entire catalog of MP3s without DRM-protection, (2) the bit rate (i.e., sound quality) of the songs is higher than the average song in the iTunes store, and (3) their prices are slightly lower than in the iTunes Store. The experience on the Amazon website isn't quite as nice as that in the iTunes store, but that's not important to me.


eMusic: I recently joined eMusic, and I love it. The service is subscription-based, so you pay for a package that allows you a specific number of downloads each month. Depending on the package you choose, the average cost of a song ranges from $.25 to $.60, significantly less than songs from iTunes or Amazon. Glaringly absent, however, is music from the "Big Four" record labels, so a lot of mainstream music isn't available. This means it's probably not possible to rely completely on eMusic to get all the music you want, though it sure has a lot of good stuff. The site features interesting editorial content and a music recommendation service through which I've found a lot of good, eclectic music that I might never have discovered (or been able to afford) otherwise -- jazz from the early 1900s, old Hawaiian music, minimal electronic, and lots of "indie" music.


Lala: I only signed up for Lala yesterday, but so far I'm blown away. Lala's model is certainly going to cause a stir, and it wouldn't surprise me if they give the above-listed incumbents a run for their money. By far the coolest feature is the fact that Lala automatically syncs your current music library with their catalog of 6 million songs, allowing you to listen to any song in your library as many times as you want through their site. Even better, any song in your library that's not in the Lala catalog is uploaded and stored in "the cloud", meaning you can listen to any song in your library on any computer through the Lala site. They also allow you to hear any song in their catalog once -- all the way through -- while iTunes, Amazon, and eMusic only allow you a 30-second preview. Then, if you like what you heard, you can pay $.10 for a "web song", which you can listen to as many times as you want through the Lala site. If you decide you really like the song/album, you can download the MP3, and what you paid for the web song counts towards the purchase price, which is competitive with Amazon and iTunes. If this doesn't seem revolutionary to you, consider the fact that Lala makes it possible to listen to your music library on any computer anywhere there's internet. The day when the internet is everywhere and available on every device is probably not far off, which means that it won't be long before you can listen to any music you want, whenever and wherever. I expect Lala to have an iPhone app out at some point (that is, unless Apple decides to nix it in order to reduce the threat Lala poses), and then maybe I won't even have to put MP3s on my iPhone anymore.

Another cool thing about Lala is that you can embed songs in blogs! Check out this song, which I actually discovered thanks to eMusic, but it's now also available to me wherever I have a computer and internet (I think you can only listen to it once, but hey, if you like it you might be willing to pay $.10 to be able to hear it as many times as you want):

Tunnelvision - Here We Go Magi...

Yes, these online music stores sure do make it easy and cheap to find and obtain new music. Technology can be great! But sometimes I feel the urge to sit by the fire and listen to an album on a record player. Eh, nevermind -- I'm too lazy to get off the couch.

Bon Iver Video

If you like Bon Iver, you'll probably appreciate the video below. I'm not sure how impromptu this actually is, but it's a really good acappella version of the song "For Emma".

Hip-hop/Electronic Beats Podcast

This week's episode of the EconoMix podcast (available here) features hip-hop/electronic beats. In hip-hop, the "beat" is the non-vocal portion of the song (it would be would be less-than-accurate to say it's the instrumental portion of the song, since the beats are usually produced using samples and electronically-created sounds rather than conventional instruments), which is often interesting and complex enough to be consumed without a vocal track.

Rap beats, in contrast, are usually not intricate or dynamic enough to be appealing without vocals. The beats used in most mainstream rap songs rely on volume and intensity to get the listener's adrenaline pumping, which limits the range of emotions they can convey. Also, the level of musicianship that goes into the production of most rap beats may be limited, and rap often seems to be more about theatrics than music. (I'm On A Boat (Feat. T-Pain), a catchy mock rap song from a recent SNL skit, is a perfect example of this.)

Many people seem to categorize rap and hip-hop together, so hip-hop often isn't given a fair chance. In beats from both genres, each sound -- whether sampled, created electronically, or recorded -- has to be painstakingly manipulated and mixed together to create the final product. Hip-hop simply seems to take full advantage of this production process, and the result is beats that are often far more intelligent, layered, and dynamic than those in rap.

For the record, the intent of this post is not to malign rap music, but rather to simply distinguish it from hip-hop. When listening to the beats in the podcast, try to appreciate the various moods and influences you can hear. Enjoy!

Podcast available here (track information below)

Hip-hop/Electronic Beats

Radiohead Video Taken Down

If you've recently tried viewing the video of Radiohead from the Grammys, you've likely noticed that it has been removed from YouTube "due to a copyright claim by Grammys." The video's removal is emblematic of the struggle that content owners have been having for years in their efforts to figure out how to make money on the internet. Clearly, the internet provides both great opportunities and great challenges for owners of digital content, as the potential to reach a huge audience is counterbalanced by the ease with which such media can be copied and distributed online.

Owners of digital content typically make money either by charging users to buy/view/listen to videos or songs in their catalog, or by offering these items for free and exposing users to ads paid for by third parties. It's not surprising that CBS/The Grammy Foundation doesn't want footage that they "own"--such as that of Radiohead's performance at the Grammys--to show up on YouTube, because they don't benefit when people like you and me view the video there.

A lot of media companies, however, are getting smart about identifying when and where their content is being distributed without authorization, and in many cases the end result is that the content in question remains up on a site like YouTube, but with authorized versions, complete with ads, appearing instead. The good thing about all of this is that a video authorized by, say, CBS is likely to be of higher quality than one uploaded by an average YouTube user.

So, when I noticed that the Radiohead video had been removed, I figured at the very least I'd be able to find a high-quality version on CBS's website. Apparently not. A few Grammy performance recordings are being offered for purchase on iTunes, but not Radiohead.

Now this doesn't make sense to me. I understand content owners wanting to make money, and I'm more than willing to pay for content that I like. But nobody benefits when a video is completely removed from the internet. That's just a waste.

Singer-songwriter Podcast

This week's podcast features the music of various singer-songwriters, including relatively new material from Bon Iver and Andrew Bird. If a certain song jumps out at you, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email and I'd be happy to suggest other songs that might be of interest.

Also, I tried using a lower bit rate for this podcast, so let me know if you notice a big difference in terms of sound quality.

Podcast available here (track information below)

Sufjan Stevens - A Loverless Bed (without remission) (0:09-4:26)
Kaki King - Doing the Wrong Thing (4:27-9:25)
Andrew Bird - Souverian (9:26-16:24)
Hotel Lights - Let Me Be The One (16:25-20:49)
Bon Iver - Beach Baby (20:50-23:19)
Sun Kil Moon - Ocean Breathes Salty (23:20-27:53)
Fleet Foxes - Mykonos (27:53-32:21)
Neil Young - Philadelphia (32:22-36:29)

Radiohead at Grammys

If you didn't catch Radiohead at the Grammys last night, check out the performance:

The USC Marching Band added an element of intricacy and magnitude, and I actually thought it worked well. The only drawback was that it seemed to drown out the guitar work of Jonny Greenwood, and the other three band members were nowhere to be found. Oh well, it's always good to see a live performance from Radiohead.

Grammys Tonight

As a huge fan of Radiohead, I'm excited for the Grammys tonight (8:00pm ET/PT, CBS). Rumor has it that they'll be performing "15 Step" with the USC Marching Band. I'm not sure how excited I am about the marching band part--another interesting musical move by Radiohead--but it'll be great to see them perform.

TV On The Radio, another band I've been listening to a lot lately, was on SNL last night and will be on the Colbert Report tomorrow (11:30pm/10:30C, Comedy Central). Their most recent album, Dear Science, has gotten great reviews, and both Rolling Stone and Spin declared it the best album of 2008. I'd recommend checking it out. Unfortunately, the band continues to play "Golden Age" and/or "Dancing Choose" in seemingly every television performance, and I don't particularly like either of those songs.

Also, last night I went to a Bob Marley tribute concert put on by the reggae band Groundation. I'm not a big fan of Groundation, mostly because I don't like the voice of singer Harrison Stafford, but it was awesome to hear Bob Marley's music performed with a lot of energy by musicians who really know reggae. With that said, I was slightly annoyed by how Stafford used the stage as a platform to preach his political views. Sure, Bob Marley's music was hugely political, but perhaps Stafford should've kept his preachings for a concert where he performs his own music, if only out of respect for Marley, who may or may not have agreed with Stafford's opinions if he were present. If I'd agreed with Stafford's opinions I might have felt differently, but I'd rather a performer simply focus on putting on a great show and spreading "good vibes", especially at a reggae concert.

Reggae

This episode's podcast available here.
What are the first images that come to mind when you think of reggae music? For me, it’s always been tropical islands, jubilation, and marijuana. Sure, these things are all wonderful in manageable doses--well, I guess it depends on whom you ask--but until recently I’d thought of reggae music as being valuable pretty much exclusively as background music for a summer beach party. It seemed to me that the message of an average reggae song could be paraphrased as, “Look how blissful life is! Isn’t it great that we’re all so happy?!” Call me a negative person (you wouldn’t be the first), but I often couldn’t relate to music that I thought was so uncompromisingly joyful.

On a recent trip to Hawaii, however, my thoughts about reggae were entirely changed, and now it’s a genre that I've incorporate prominently into my music listening rotation. The fact that I’m not sure I heard any other type of music the entire time I was in Hawaii, as that’s pretty much all they play on the radio or in any public space, isn’t what did it for me. I was driving along the coast during a tropical rainstorm when the song “Idren” by BW, a local reggae artist, started playing on the car stereo. The dark, dismal mood the squall had provided allowed me to perceive the ‘vibe’ of the song in a wonderfully different way. Suddenly, it all made sense, and I was completely engrossed in the song in the best possible way, yet……I didn’t feel ecstatically happy! I always knew that reggae had evolved in a world of poverty and misery as a sort of cultural coping mechanism, but I now realized that it was not, as I’d thought, about ignoring life’s hardships. Rather, reggae is about accepting that life can be tough, and striving to mellow out and appreciate its simple pleasures–love, beauty, nature and community. And that I can relate to.

During my trip I discovered two active local Hawaiian bands that blew me away in particular: BW and Ooklah the Moc. Given their talent, it still baffles me to think that these bands are essentially unknown on the mainland.

Since I’ve returned, I’ve discovered a handful of other reggae artists from all over the world whose music I simply can’t believe I’d previously lived without. This episode’s podcast features songs from the above-mentioned Hawaiian groups, and a few other of my favorite reggae songs. Oh, and if you happen to be in Hawaii any time soon, do yourself a favor and check out these bands.

-Greg

Download the podcast here (track information below).

1. Marcia Griffiths - Don't Let me Down (0:06-3:13)
2. BW - Idren (3:14-7:21)
3. Ooklah the Moc - You Light (7:22-12:56)
4. Rebel Souljahz - Long Long Time (12:57-16:42)
5. The Jahlights - Right Road to Dubland (16:42-19:39)

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to EconoMix! My name is Greg Gausewitz and I’ll be providing you each week with a new dose of music and an explanation of why I think the music is exceptional. Who am I to tell you what to listen to? All I’ll claim is that I’ve listened to music almost non-stop for the majority of my life, and I love music. I try to listen to all music with enthusiasm and an open mind, so the fact that I’m particularly excited about the songs featured on EconoMix will hopefully convince you to have a listen. While the individual podcasts I provide may have an underlying theme, EconoMix as a whole does not--you may hear music of any genre from any era--and some of it you’re likely to have heard before, some probably not. With that said, I’ll stop blabbing. Now, sit back and enjoy the music. I hope you like it as much as I do.