Music

The Pixies – Bagboy

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The Pixies have released “Bagboy” as a free single for download from their Web site – first new music from them in nine years.

Apple gives labels twice as much as Pandora on iTunes Radio

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During iTunes Radio’s first year, Apple will pay a label 0.13 cents each time a song is played, as well as 15% of net advertising revenue, proportionate to a given label’s share of the music played on iTunes. In the second year, that bumps up to 0.14 cents per listen, plus 19% of ad revenue.

That compares to the 0.12 cents Pandora pays labels per listen on its free service. Apple is also offering music publishers more than twice as much in royalties than Pandora does.

And Pandora is looking to pay less.

Les Paul Postage Stamp

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The Les Paul Foundation submitted formal paperwork requesting a postage stamp for Les Paul. But we need your help. Sign the petition below to show your support for a U.S. stamp issued for Les Paul’s 100th birthday on June 9, 2015. Be a part of our push to convince elected officials that this needs to happen for Les!! Any questions can be sent to [[email protected]](mailto: [email protected]).

People, let’s make this happen.

Six-year-old Metal girl

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If you want to skip the intro, move ahead to 0:43. Then watch this little girl tear it up. Much respect!

Pandora pays songwriter $16.89 for 1 million plays

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Soon you will be hearing from Pandora how they need Congress to change the way royalties are calculated so that they can pay much much less to songwriters and performers. For you civilians webcasting rates are “compulsory” rates. They are set by the government (crazy, right?). Further since they are compulsory royalties, artists can not “opt out” of a service like Pandora even if they think Pandora doesn’t pay them enough. The majority of songwriters have their rates set by the government, too, in the form of the ASCAP and BMI rate courts–a single judge gets to decide the fate of songwriters (technically not a “compulsory” but may as well be). This is already a government mandated subsidy from songwriters and artists to Silicon Valley. Pandora wants to make it even worse.

[Via DF]

Dressing Michael Jackson

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The protectors of his presentation, we, as his personal stylists and exclusive designers for close to twenty-five years, learned through a unique creative process how to channel Michael’s thoughts, wishes, and philosophies to create clothing that would symbolize what he stood for. The King of Style: Dressing Michael Jackson is the first-ever pictorial compilation of the evolution of that process — a visual adventure of our work together.

The book just won a Gold Medal from the Independent Publishers Book Awards.

Learning from ’80s guitar tone

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Whether you liked the tone or not, there were some great players and engineers experimenting in the 1980s that came up with some great tricks.

Avid releases Pro Tools 11

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I have been very impressed with the last few releases of Pro Tools and been using it almost exclusively for recording and audio editing. Pro Tools 11 carries on with some great new features.

I know this may sound silly, but one of my favorite new features is Offline Bounce. In previous versions of Pro Tools, bouncing a track would require the entire track to play in real-time. Offline Bounce outputs the track many times faster than real-time, saving time for the whole project.

It’s hard to say that bouncing is the biggest feature. Pro Tools 11 is also 64-bit and comes with an all new audio engine.

There’s a lot to like about Pro Tools 11. I’ll have a review after I get a copy.

The beard sings the Blues and Voodoo Child at WWDC

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I am the worst singer in the world. I know this, but I still went on stage to sing at The Beard Bash last week at WWDC. If you really want to punish your ears, press play. I’d recommend moving on though.

Jackson releases new Dinky guitars

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The Dinky-style body is my favorite from Jackson. Today they released two 7-string and one 8-string model. Personally, I would have liked to have seen a 6-string too.

Heavy MTL

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Just bought tickets for this. My son and I are going. Megadeth, Godsmack, Black Label Society and many others will be playing over two days.

The Mac Pro from an audio pros perspective

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I really like the new Mac Pro and since I use mostly external rack units and other gear, the lack of expansion slots is fine with me. Many studios won’t be upgrading right away, and when they do, there will be a lot more gear that supports Thunderbolt and other I/O options. Peter Kirn has a nice look at what the audio industry thinks of the Mac Pro.