Slightly Remarkable

I am sick and tired of the greedy label companies and their bull crap. These people just do not have any common sense whatsoever! What gives!?

Think about this: Label companies are suffering. Why? Because people are pirating (illegaly distributing) the music they’ve published. Now, more people are actually paying for their music at the very decent price of $0.99 per song, rather than pirating it. But now that they know they can make money off of it, the labeling companies want to make more money from it? Shouldn’t they be satisfied with the fact that they are getting any money at all?

Personally, I completely disagree with pirating music. It is outright stealing. However, if the iTunes store were actually closed because the labels are greedy, I would highly recommend that EVERYONE AND THEIR PARENTS DISTRIBUTE ALL OF THEIR MUSIC! Never buy an album again, until they realize how freaking stupid they are. It’s one thing to be against the illegal downloading of music; it’s another thing to be against another company’s store paying you!.

Really, what’s worth more, a smaller size or 2GB that are practically free considering the price difference? While I can see that a smaller size would make it cost more for Apple to make the iPod Nano, I can’t see what Apple has given us for the additional $50. I’d have to say that getting an iPod Mini would be the better deal, but maybe I don’t really know what’s new…

On a slightly off-topic note, what happened to the iPod Mini page? Looks like Apple won’t be selling Minis anymore, in favour of the Nano. That can’t be good. If you want an iPod Mini, I suppose now would be the best time to get it…

What makes the iPod Nano better than the iPod Mini?

Okay, you have super-sized Sony who owns a music distribution company called BMG Music. This is supposedly a large company, right? I mean, think about it. It’s owned by Sony. Wow, okay, now besides the fact that they lack a large amount of music that they should have (I can literally list about 15 bands they don’t have music from including Breaking Benjamin and Muse, and there are other bands that they do have, but only have their oldest albums, and these include Cold and Jimmy Eat World), this large music service sends (gasp) the wrong CD’s in the mail!? I got someone else’s order in the mail yesterday — talk about disappointment. Instead of the Coldplay (Parachutes) and Matchbox Twenty CD’s I ordered, I found The Game and two John Mayer CD’s in the package. What is going on? I had to email them and tell them to send me a shipping label so that I could send the CD’s back at no cost to me, but I am frustrated that it will be possibly two more weeks before I get my CD’s. I hope this mistake doesn’t occur often. I like their deals, but if it takes a month to get my CD’s, I may as well stop at my local retail store and pick the music up there. Good grief, I hope this doesn’t happen again. Anyone recommend any other music service similar to BMG’s but better?

Update: after contacting BMG Music, they said that the CD’s I ordered are on the way and that I can keep the CD’s that were accidentally sent to me at no extra charge. Okay, great, but… What do I do with three unopened CD’s that I don’t want to listen to? I don’t like John Mayer or The Game — is there somewhere I can trade these CD’s for other ones, or perhaps resell them somehow?

But they’ve redesigned and added all kinds of functionality — the site looks great now, and while pages don’t load a lot faster, it seems to be recording the music I’m currently listening to without flaw. I was often frustrated that it didn’t record what I listened to accurately. In fact, I was frustrated to the point where I began writing my own Java plugin for iTunes to upload data to my web site, and build my own personal version of Audioscrobbler. It’s easier to use the service, though, and I haven’t had time to do it. I’m going to put off writing that plugin for awhile, possibly forever, providing Audioscrobbler is consistantly online from this point forward. (Okay, I’ll may ‘em a break — a couple downtimes or skipped songs, no problem.)

I won’t go into detail about the new stuff — you should head over and see it all for yourself — but I will say that the site has gone from ugly/barely functional to beautiful/extremely functional. I’d like to say I was part of it, but alas I don’t live in England with the developers of the service… Ah well, excellent job to the guys who put this thing together!

Hey, maybe it should be “musical button”? That’s the Italian in me speaking, ignore him… He’s cynical.

Total Volume

I’ve got a measly 1.75GB of music on my computer. Yeah, it’s practically nothing — only 420 songs. I have, sitting next to me, a list of some 100+ names of bands (not just albums) whose music I’m interested in buying, but haven’t had a chance to purchase yet. I’m also fairly restricted on my hard drive space, since my laptop (from which I do just about all of my work) only has 40GB of disk space anyway.

Most Recent CD

Well, I ordered three CD’s in the mail a couple months back, so I got all three of them at the same time. I got Kutless (self-titled debut album), Maroon 5 (Songs About Jane), and Skillet (Collide). Kutless is kind of old, and I almost regret getting it. The songs were good at one time, but they’ve lost their effect.

Song Playing Right Now

“Bullets” by Creed from their last and most recent album, “Weathered.” (Incidentally, why isn’t Creed or Linkin Park on iTunes!?)

Five Songs

You have got to be kidding. There are more than five songs that I like a lot/listen to a lot/mean a lot to me! Jeez… Well, in no particular order…

• Clocks — Coldplay
• 45 — Shinedown
• Panama — Van Halen
• Kryptonite — 3 Doors Down
• Papercut — Linkin Park

Notables

In order to be fair to the other bands, here are some more songs that I listen to very often, again in no particular order.

Edit: Know what? You can just have a rough look at what I’ve been listening to. (Note that these stats aren’t very accurate as the Last.FM web site is down from time to time so it doesn’t record all of the songs I listen to, also I had already listened to more than twice the music that’s listed before I registered to the site.)

• Basket Case — Green Day
• Vitamin R (Leading Us Along) — Chevelle
• Bullets — Creed
• Broken — 12 Stones
• Voodoo — Godsmack
• Bring Me Down — Pillar
• So Cold — Breaking Benjamin
• Saviour — Skillet
• No Phone — Cake
• Push — Matchbox Twenty
• Pain — Jimmy Eat World
• Youth of the Nation — P.O.D.
• Self Esteem — The Offspring
• Behind Blue Eyes — Limp Bizkit
• And The Hero Will Drown — Story of the Year
• Thank You — Dido
• Welcome to My Life — Simple Plan
• Lying From You — Linkin Park
• Away From Me — Puddle of Mudd
• One — Creed
• Slither — Velvet Revolver
• Cold — Crossfade
• 88 — Sum 41
• Smooth Criminal — Alient Ant Farm
• Time Is Running Out — Muse
• Silver and Cold — A.F.I.
• Bring Me to Life — Evanescence
• Not Ready to Die — Demon Hunter

Okay, I’m done. Those are just the tip of the iceberg. You might ask how I can listen to that many songs “often”? Well, I may not have a lot of music, but my iTunes player is playing almost all day. In fact, I wake up to it (my computer is my alarm clock — how cool is that?!).

Recently Rediscovered

I’ve rediscovered some really awesome songs recently that I wanted to share as well.

• Inside Out — Eve6
• Counting Blue Cars — Dishwalla
• Sex & Candy — Marcy Playground
• December — Collective Soul
• Black Hole Sun — Soundgarden
• Red, Red Wine — UB40
• Stacy’s Mom — Fountains of Wayne
• Angel — Shaggy

Passing the Stolen Baton

Spare not the little bloggers of the community, I say! I’m partitioning the stolen baton to the following five bloggers:

• David Brent
• Mike Purvis
• Bob
• Matt
• Martin Neczypor (for whenever he gets his blog finished).