New Sound Now // An online music show and blog

This week on New Sound Now, we talk about web streaming for music videos and concerts, sites that say they work in Canada but don’t, Bento boxes of food that looks like album covers, Phreak615’s “hack” on Much Music, and national record store day. Plus, videos by Death Cab, Lykke Li, and American Princes.

Links
Watch the entirety of the Coachella music and arts festival from here.
Pitchfork.tv, an indie video lovers’ dream so far
Pluggedin.com, Will Smith’s new venture to get mainstream music to everyone except everyone outside of America
Edible album art in the form of Bento box designs
Phreak615 “hacks” into Much Music to promote…?

Videos
Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Possess Your Heart
Lykke Li - I’m Good, I’m Gone
American Princes - Real Love

Spotlight
Greg Wind on National Record Store Day. It’s a great article.
The Record Store Day website.

This week, K Sawyer Paul rants at length about the 2008 Junos awards. Plus, videos by Juno nominees and winners, including Wintersleep, Holy Fuck, Serena Ryder, and Jully Black.

Links
The Juno Awards
Jully Black live from the Junos
Hayden live from the Much Music Video Awards 1997

Videos
Wintersleep - “Weighty Ghost”
Holy Fuck - Lovely Alien
Serena Ryder - “Told You In a Whispered Song”

MTV had a bit of fun with this one, I’ll give them that. I mean, many musicians do end up working for record labels. This is kind of a natural sequel to Rock Band.

But let’s think about this for a minute. Take MTV’s description of what the game would actually entail: “So whether you’re paying off DJs under the table for additional radio play, faking your own artists’ album reviews, or simply determining what private information you want the spyware on their CDs to collect for you… we guarantee that you’ll be able to experience all the pleasure, satisfaction and unaccountability of being a real-life Sony BMG executive.”

I kind of think that would be a fun game to play, all truth be told. It would be somewhat akin to playing the manager mode in sports games, except far, far more corrupt (isn’t that the one thing really missing from those manager modes anyway?)

It comes down, ultimately, to wanting to play as the bad guy. And since we live in an age where major record labels are really the biggest villain any of us may ever have to face (unless you enlist or are forced to be in an army or cult summer camp), wouldn’t we all secretly desire this role? And isn’t that what video games are all about?

The RIAA is like a recurring villain in a saturday morning cartoon; they’re full of evil, but after a while it almost becomes endearing watching them try to destroy our lives.

Take this newest right-hook to the solar plexus: Universal Music Group believes that throwing out a promotional CD is unauthorized distribution. This is direct disregard for the right-of-first-sale, which is a law that allows you, as an owner of copyrighted material, to sell it to other people and not have to pay the original owner. If you did, nobody would have garage sales and ebay wouldn’t exist.

Now, some people are going to take this out of context and assume that “promotional” discs mean “discs.” They don’t. Most music buyers never see a promotional disc. They’re largely given to radio stations, cd reviewers (I have a pretty respectable stack), and to people who give CDs away in contests and other promotions, thereby making them “promotional.” They’re not really meant to be shared, given away (by people other than those “giving them away”), or resold. Now, that’s of course the ideal world where the RIAA and the major music company’s live. Go to any used CD store and you’ll come across plenty of them. You can buy them, and you can listen to them, and this is legal.

What Universal is claiming is that because they own the copyright to these promotional discs (because they didn’t sell them to you), that by giving away, selling, or sharing these discs, you are doing so with music that doesn’t actually belong to you (because they still hold the copyright).

So, while the basic rules the RIAA set down on what you can do with a CD you actually pay for seem awfully stingy (you can’t, according to them, play CDs loudly from your car, transfer them to an mp3 player, or loan them to friends), the number of things you can do with a promotional CD is limiting them to use in a portable CD player (I wonder if my Panasonic 15-second no-skip player still works?) and keeping your coffee table coffee-strain free.

Apologies for the random misspellings and grammar issues. The fact that I wrote the entirety of this report on my cell phone, however, should ease the pain a little. I’d edit it, but then I’d end up with this weird disparity between the Twitter report and the real report, and I’d get criticized for selling out to Doritos.
Anyways, here it is, the Twitter report of the 2008 Juno awards, live from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

-In a cab on the way to the junos party. Apparently feist has already won two awards in the pre show
-Ben Mulroney is my idol, but only hair wise
-Lanny mc fucking Donald just showed up on the red carpet. This show is worth it already.
-hedly watch: giant white sunglasses, fedora as regularly advertised
-Feist is running around giving people free tickets and making nobody care about michael buble
-Everyone in the country that makes music in the room and they open the show with 5 nobody country singers. Terrific.
-Russell simmons is hosting. In front of 30 feet of oil drums. Is stomp performing?
-It took 3 minutes to get a cowboys and Indians joke
-first award: single of the year goes to - no surprise - 1234 - who is totally cuting it up
-She wrote her speech on her arm. Awwww
-Russel is stalking avril backstage. Creepy. Oh and no surprise avril sucks live
-But she has a canadian flag on her ass so its okay
-I’m being told to leave avril alone already
-Country band of the year goes to paul brandt who is wearing a pink shirt. Also had to read the words”thank you jesus’
-And now a montage of all the awards that don’t matter like album of the year
-The 20 kids onstage playing violin end up being an intro for the rainbow butt monkeys
-Pop album of the year goes to feist. Anne murray was wobbed
-I’ve been calling russel peters russel simons this whole time. Damn you mulrooney!
-And now a high school sax player.
-And then an oscar peterson tribute. Suck on that, new episode of family guy three channels over
-Russel is interviewing gay 11 year olds in the crowd now
-Feist is singing sea lion woman and totally rocking out in heart tights. The crowd is finally waking up
-Everybody clap!
-Dorito sponsored fan choice award goes to doritos sponsored michael buble.
-Holy shit he thanked Doritos
-Triumph tribute coming up. Performed most likely by triumph
-Wait, anne murray? View swerved us!
-Ah jan arden! Good god! The contemporary soft pop world is literally standing still
-And then anne stops to make out with both of them. See, people would watch that, i think
-And now the triumph tribute. Montage city!
-The prerequisite suckup calgary hockey jersey. Go flames!
-It might be unfair, but i always confuse triumph and spinal tap
-New group of the year goes to wintersleep, the only good band in the arena. Also, worst dressed
-And now hedley with way too much disco ball. The fedora rules all
-Really uncomfortable scene backstage with peter and arden. She calls him mike bullard. Kind of awesome.
-Michael buble performs, making it painfully clear what to get your mom for mothers day
-You know it’s calgary when even buble wears jeans
-Finally, group of the year goes to blue rodeo. Could have seen that coming twenty arcade fire albums away
-One award left to go. Though the show is only 2 hours, it’s really been going on since last night. We don’t take shortcuts in Canada
-I do believe the shout out to the late jeff healey was sponsored by crest
-Album of the year goes to feist. That makes her now officially done in the eyes of the indieverse
-Finally, jully black belts it and makes every man in the room feel insignificant
-All in all not a bad awards show for something so corporate. Could have used more indie but that’s wishfull thinking.
-Also, doing this by cell phone is easier than i thought
-Just realized that he said “fedora” when he mean to say “pompadour.” As in, Hedley’s “pompadour” could lead us all to the promised land.

This sunday is the annual Juno awards. It’s the Canadian equivalent to the Grammy’s. I haven’t watched the show in years due to it’s incredible mainstream and stale take on Canadian music (Avril Lavigne and Celine Dion are both up for multiple awards, yet Kevin Drew gets none?), but I’ve been invited to a Juno’s party and so here we are. Being somewhat of a new media music journalist, it’s more or less my duty to live-blog the proceedings. I’ll be doing it via Twitter, so bookmark http://twitter.com/ksawyerpaul and check back at 7pm on Sunday, constantly refreshing it to see new posts. Or, subscribe to the RSS and have the updates come to you.

This week on New Sound Now, we discuss the Rick Roll, how the Pirate Bay might get sued, how Sony BMG are pirates themselves, and how the recent physical assaults on emo kids in Mexico. Plus, three videos by Justice, The Acorn, and The Beangrowers.

As I talked about on the show this week, Mixwit lets you put together embedded playlists, and then slathers them in a bevy of nostalgia for the 80s with a mixtape skin. It’s really simple and fast to put them together (it’s basically an extension of Seeqpod, so you don’t upload tracks so much as borrow tracks from the internet) and it looks pretty spiffy.

But my question from the show still boggles me. How do these people make any money?

Update: Apparently it doesn’t work with WordPress blogs. Ha. It’s definitely lost some points from me. Here’s the somewhat less impressive link if you want to still check out my mix.