Amazon is about 3 years behind apple when it comes to selling online music. In order to catch up (quickly), Amazon is changing the game a little by offering users unrestricted DRM (that means no security stuff) MP3 tunes from Universal, EMI and now Warner Music. Whilst this is great news for Amazon people, I’m not sure it’s enough to make iTune users make the jump. I love iTunes store, podcasts and the look n feel of the software, however, I hate the $9.99 movies, $.99 ringtones for my iPhone and crappy music management across my mostly Windows based network…..

Sony BMG is now the only major recording group not signed up with Amazon.

“By removing a barrier to the sale and enjoyment of audio downloads, we bring an energy-sapping debate to a close,” Warner Music chief executive Edgar Bronfman said in an e-mail to Warner employees.

In the late eighties UK broadcaster Channel 4 launched a new program titled Network 7. This was pretty innovative stuff - with short features, news articles served as entertainment and random acts of stupidty served as infotainment. All in all, it was pretty much the same as Fox News, but without the BS or pretense that it was all factual.

The thoughts behind this post came from my iPhone playlist - a bunch of Sigue Sigue Sputnik tracks appeared, so I peeped them out on Wikipedia and found they were presented by Magenta Devine, one of the hosts from the aforementioned show.

So, for all you old(er) school h4×0r5, here’s a couple of youtube clips highlighting the show… Roll on 1988.

Where were you when you heard the news? He’s not quite as famous as JFK, but Antony H Wilson, aka “Tony” or Mr Manchester (blurgh) died a couple of weeks back and the Manchester landscape will never be the same. Not that he’d want it to remain the same, as the co-founder of Factory, the company that brought us Joy Division, New Order, The Happy Mondays and of course A Certain Ratio, and the co-owner of FAC51, quite possibly the most important club in the world during it’s peak years 88-92, Tony Wilson not only embraced change, but created change at every opportunity. Although he generated a great deal of revenue for Factory (only to be sucked up by The Hacienda), he remained, for the most part, a pretty regular guy without the trappings of wealth, probably due to the fact that he didnt have a great deal of wealth. He’ll be missed.

Antony H Wilson and Factory - Related Reading:
The History of Hacienda from Pride of Manchester

Melt into Men, an interview by Phil Edwards, (then) editor for Socialist

CNN’s Coverage of Tony Wilson (I didn’t think anything outside of the US was worth covering?)

Factory Records - Unofficial Blog

YouTube Clips from The Hacienda and other Factory nights

Tour of the Hacienda - FAC51

It’s friday night, time to don Adidas sneakers and semi-flared jeans, push the moppy hair out of your eyes and jump in the car for the weekly pilgramage to the Hacienda, The International, 42nd Street, Sankeys Soap and 5th Avenue to listen to the latest groovy tunes being spun by Dave Haslam and the Ministry of Sound. Ok, so it’s all a bit retro, but a quick look through the interwebs favorite video library YouTube, shows a treasure trove of music to bring back the memories! Plenty of videos to watch after the jump.

Happy Mondays: WFL

James: Sit Down (Live @ GMEX)

Stone Roses Elephant Stone

The Charlatans: The Only One I Know

808 State: Pacific 707

Every man and his dog has heard of the Human Genome project, but let me push another genome project into your little bookmark list - Pandora - the Music Genome project.  Visitors begin by entering a song or artist that they enjoy, and Pandora responds by playing selections that it thinks are musically similar. Vistors can then provide feedback on the individual song choices with a thumbs up or down - which Pandora then uses and takes into account for future music selections.   Over 400 different musical aspects are considered when selecting the next song. Examples of these are rhythm syncopation, key tonality, vocal harmonies and displayed instrumental proficiency.  BTW, another cool thing about Pandora is it’s free never a bad thing.