Virgin

On the 1^st October 2007, Radiohead shook the music world, adding one more string to the bow of the sale and distribution of music. Prior to In Rainbows, the average consumer either had a physical CD or vinyl release they could buy, or download an MP3 from multiple online retailers.

Every record comes at a set price; visit HMV and you’ll see something around the price of £11.99. Granted, it may be a little more in your local independent record shop, but you can’t barter on the price. If you were looking for music with a dramatic cost reduction, the introduction of iTunes’ store amongst others gives users access to millions of songs. Apart from The Beatles; they’re still being a bit arsey.

Sometimes after paying £10 for a record that might be a slight disappointment, there isn’t any real way of getting your money back. Wouldn’t it be great if we could decide the price of an album based on what we think is a suitable price? Radiohead decided to do this, allowing users to download their album from £0.00 to whatever they decided to give.

It proved to be a success with this simple idea generating enough promotion to land them in the eyes of the world. Not only was the music world reporting on their bold move which could have left them with bugger all if we’d all been tight, but every newspaper and blog had the story covered.

Since then, more and more people have been toying with alternative distribution of their music. In the last few weeks, I’ve noticed a couple of acts who are a lot less commercial than Radiohead, but still wanting to get their music out people. This is where the slight criticism of Radiohead’s model came in. They could afford to do this. Sales of OK Computer could probably tie the Oxford band over for life. Your average bedroom producer can’t slave over an album for a few years and then give it away if it’s his/her main source of income…

First up is Glasgow-based producer Germlin. His blend of noisy electronic with crunchy beats and filthy synths has won him many followers. Other projects see him involved in the utterly brilliant but slightly bonkers act Gay Against You. This album has been in the works for a good few years. When speaking to him at a gig in 2007, the record known as ThrashR was still in construction.

Released just a few weeks ago, the album is only available online here:

http://germlin.bandcamp.com/album/thrashr

It can only be downloaded and won’t be pressed to CD or vinyl. After asking why this was the case, I got the message back: “For total control”. I guess that makes perfect sense. The minimum price to pay is £5 and it goes straight to his bank account via the wonders of Paypal. Looking at Radiohead once more, they didn’t renew a contract with their record label. Consequently, all the rights belong to a man in a suit who can do what he wants with their music, including the repackaging and remarketing of old albums.

The move that both Radiohead and Germlin have done ensures that they are reaping in all the profits from what consumers pay and no industry types are leeching off them. However, Radiohead did cushion the blow for themselves by offering a luxury boxset, crammed with extras including a vinyl/CD pressing and bonus disc thus generating more cash via the hardcore fan base.

Only a few days ago, I got an e-mail from The Longcut promoting their new album Open Hearts. There isn’t a pay as you want option, but there are four ways of purchasing the album. Without going in to that much detail you can:

- Buy an MP3 copy

- Preorder a CD and get an instant MP3

- Preorder vinyl and get an instant MP3

- Preorder CD, vinyl, t-shirt and get an instant MP3

Of course, each one gets progressively more expensive but you’re still buying directly from The Longcut. Come the CD’s official release in October the majority of fans will have purchased some sort of deal. Whilst it’s not total control of the product, it’s interesting to see someone offer their album a good few months before it hits the shops. Any interest in this can be diverted here:

http://thelongcut.melodic.co.uk/

With new media services such as Spotify becoming the latest revolutionary way people consume music, it’s interesting to see where the next wave of distribution comes from.

I feel slightly odd to be babbling on about this, but when venturing out to local clubs and even further afield, it shocks me that there is a lack of vinyl being used by so called “DJ’s”.

When every other kid my age was fascinated by some white boy rapper called Eminem and some nu-metal monkeys called Limp Bizkit, myself and a few other friends would instead be engulfed in drum and base, trance, electronic and gabber style shenanigans. As we badly tried to mix one record together to perfect our craft, I’ll always remember people asking why we bought records on vinyl instead of CD. MP3 was still a few years away.

There was some sort of shared spirit and community amongst ourselves when listening to vinyl. Everyone brought round their collection of freshly bought releases and bootlegs. Evenings and afternoons would be spend listening to them and working out the best song to blend it in to.

Coming to the tedious age of fourteen, it was time to start sneaking out to gigs to witness bands and DJs overload us with noises that you couldn’t get from traditional instruments. The first DJ set I ever really witnessed was when I saw an unknown someone warm up for Orbital. To a couple of kids, it was an amazing experience to see someone control a room of people with a few black discs. People buzzed around the dancefloor, but it could have been down to the pills and strange green liquid that some were drinking.

Over the years, hazy memories recollect nights in sweatbox clubs whilst people roll out everything from hard house, trace, electro, gabber drum and base, glitch, noise and a few others in between that don’t really fit in to any sort of category.  Randomly, the best set I ever saw was a free gig that was hosted in my local train station. DJ Dexter, who was at one point a part of The Avalanches, rolled in to town and defied all the laws that I thought made up DJ’ing.

Long before DJ Yoda came on to the scene, I witnessed every single sort of style being mixed perfectly quickly and efficiently. The highlight of his set had to be when System Of A Down’s Chop Suey was somehow mixed in to Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker. Combining angry metal in to sleazy drill and base didn’t seem possible.

All of these times were good and will remain to be good until something else comes along and blows me away. But will it happen anytime soon? I don’t think so. Over the years the CD deck has come along and pretty much transformed the way that DJs carry out their sets. Armed with a mixer containing a million channels, the creativity of DJing just seems to have died. Well for me anyway.

Sometimes I can’t really be sure that someone I’m seeing is even playing live. Due to the ease of technology it is easy enough for people to record at home, alter the track and make it sound like they are manipulating the song in front of a thousand strong crowd. All I will say is that DJing off CDs’ beats carrying heavy record boxes around. Hooray for cutting back pain!

On a plus, with CDs you can actually see someone hunched over a CD deck as they prepare to mix and match various tracks together. What really annoys me and will destroy DJing as I know it altogether are the evil machines known as laptops.

Like using Wikipedia to copy chunks of an essay, laptops are the lazy way out of performing properly. With so much software out there like Traktor, anyone can pick two songs and let the computer beat match for you. Grr, it makes me slightly annoyed that I’ll be paying £15+ to go to a decent club to see someone sitting over a laptop whilst they’re probably downloading porn or updating their Twitter feed.

Perhaps it’s time to start one of those pointless Facebook groups. Maybe we should all cry out for real DJs to come back and use tools of the trade called vinyl. As long as the turntables are working, we don’t need sixteen track mixers that are essentially the guitar pedals of the clubbing world.

A DJ is not a fat balding man in a pub who can successfully crossfade two tracks together or have the intelligence to select his next song on iTunes when the last one ends. Most people load their laptops with thousands of tracks to unleash on unsuspecting punters. However, with so many songs, you don’t get to know the tracks like you would on a slab of vinyl. So to speak. When purchasing a 12”, you have to listen to it, know when the breakdowns are and when it’s running out! Unlike CD, you can’t simply rewind if you miss the point for mixing in the next song. Everything has to be down on the cuff and without help from a machine.

Hopefully, I won’t be walking round a museum one day and overhear a child say: “Mummy, what are those big shiny black discs? Did people really listen to them in the olden days?”

I’m off to single handily burn my CD collection.

So, Christmas being a time for nostalgia, you’ve got your name down to win a promo of The Kinks’ CD boxset, fingers poised to buy tickets for the Blur Hyde Park gig and you’re all booked in to see the Ian Dury stage show in London. What else can your Christmas stocking hold this year? The first ever official book by the actual real Clash men of course! With unique, never-seen-before content dusted down from The Clash archives comes this very pink and punk book from Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simenon and Topper Headon… called The Clash, of course. Nice. And if there’s still room in Santa’s sack then why not ask him to squeeze in the DVD of The Clash Live - Revolution Rock and the CD of The Clash Live At Shea Stadium? Okay - so has anybody taken the hint? There’s a big empty space underneath my Christmas tree at the moment…

Need some more ideas for Christmas? How about a promo of The Kinks’ CD boxset, tickets to see the Ian Dury play or a place in the queue to see Blur’s comeback gig in Hyde Park next year?

Came across this trailer. For those that aren’t aware, Justice is preparing to release a CD + DVD package. The CD will be a live disc, while the DVD is a documentary that was filmed during an 18 month tour for the LP, †. The dude freestylin’ in the opening bits is off the charts, very ill, better then at least 50% of the rappers out there, guaranteed. Besides the freestyler, other reasons to watch this trailer is cus of the boobies, oh I guess I should say this may be NSFW. I’ve yet been to a Justice concert as I missed them the last few times they rolled through Vancouver. Anyways this is a must cop for any fan out there.

So as Justice were about to tour the USA for the second time, multi-award winning directors and intimate friends of the band, Romain Gavras (“Stress” director) and So-Me (“D.A.N.C.E.”, “DVNO”) taped every second of that 3 week tour that looks like it lasted 3 years. This documentary ain’t about how cool Justice’s live show is (the bonus CD is here for that), but is all about the extraordinary things that can happen when a bunch of frogs gets dropped in dreamy America.

This live CD + DVD release will include recordings of Justice’s signature headbanging live sets along with show footage and various hijinks captured as the band toured the US in March 2008. Screenings of the film will be held in each city around the DJ sets late October.