It's probably just me but I think this is DOPE as hell...

UFFIE - ADD SUV (feat . Pharrell Williams) HD from Uffie on Vimeo.
The video might be positively skewing how much I like this song. I wasn't feeling it so much at the start but wait until Pharell comes on and not only does he kill it but by that time you start appreciating the beat more... filthy track. (I think I would like this better if it was a Pharell/N.E.R.D. song featuring Uffie, but I'll take this)

Before you say/think "this girl rips off Ke$ha" then go back and brush up on your music knowledge. Uffie has had this styled mapped out long before Ke$ha's pathetic self arrived on the scene. Thought "Tik Tok" was something new? Go listen to Justice's "The Party" featuring Uffie. #FuckKesha.
Justice ft. Uffie- The Party (Alternative Version)
Justice ft. Uffie- The Party (Rave/Album Version)

Is Free Music the Future?

I wrote this post today at Havoc's site, sorry I haven't been providing all the links to the articles I write there on this blog like I originally promised. The truth is that I would love to make this blog more lively than I've ever allowed it to be, and I know I could make it awesome, but the Havoc opportunity is simply too great to pass up, and it has consumed all of my creative-internet-energy. You can check out and follow all my blog articles I write there, at this link: http://www.havoc.tv/profiles/blog/list?user=3ifa6mb8yv0uq


Here is the post, it ended up being wayyy longer than I originally intended, when I copied this into Word and made it double spaced, it goes on to the FIFTH PAGE! I am pretty proud of it though, it felt more like a college paper than a blog post, but on a much much more interesting topic. Enjoy:

Is Free Music the Future? If you ask me, the answer is definitely "yes" (and I'm referring to music being legally free, to all you who read that question and snidely thought "um, I haven't dropped a dime on music since the original Napster arose in 1999"). As the music industry continues its downward spiral of record sales, digital sales is the only current system of music distribution that is consistent with today's "on demand" culture, but even legal online stores such as iTunes, Zune, or Amazon compete against the mammoth culture of illegal downloading. In my opinion, too many people have been treated to being able to access all the music they desire for free, for too long now for them to accept going back to a system of having to purchase all of their music. And only more and more people are continuing to jump on the free illegal downloading bandwagon.

Obviously the major music labels are not going to let their huge profit source go down without a fight, and even though they still rake in money by the buckets (like, really really huge buckets), it's a battle they've been slowly losing for more than a decade now. The public opinion of the big labels will only continue to plummet if they try to take criminalizing young teens as a serious means to sew up the hole in their huge pockets. If you are not fully aware of how huge the pockets of major labels are, keep in mind that every single artist or band that is signed to a major label, is a part of one of only 4 major labels, they're just likely signed to a sub-label of one of those four. The "Big Four" consist of Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, and EMI Group. They make up over 80% of the music sales. Here's a more in-depth look at how it's split up:

If I'm sounding bitter towards the music industry (and straying a bit off topic while doing so), I'd like to make it clear that I only hold animosity towards the labels. I feel very grateful and supportive of the artists themselves, but I hate the idea that an artist on a major label only earns 4 to 11 cents per 99 cent download, while the business men in suits sit in their desk and pull in profits that would make even the most successful musicians jealous.

What I'm getting at with all this major label libel, is that ultimately I think major labels will suffer the hardest when music becomes free, but I'm okay with this. It is true, however, that the musicians will not be selling as much as they did when the music industry was in its prime, but I also hold optimism that with whatever is left of the record label system, their control over artists will be reduced and it will grant greater creative control back to artists signed to major labels, similar to what is currently allowed for artists on independent labels (what I mean by this lack of "creative control" is that at least in the genres that make up Top 40, major labels have a tendency to organize or even force upon what the singles will be for an artist, because those are what sells iTunes song downloads and ring tone purchases).

As for the new method of music distribution that will provide free music access to the public, well I can see it going a few ways. I wrote a post earlier today about folk artist Josh Woodward and how he chooses to distribute his music with a Creative Commons license that allows for anyone to download all of his 150+ song library for free, or consumers can name their own price for his albums if they would like to buy physical CDs or download his songs in lossless quality. This is the method that Radiohead chose to distribute their In Rainbows album, and may be the way of the future; giving the public access to all the music for free and if anyone desires a physical copy or a super-high quality download then they can pay for it.

Another potential system for free music (and I'm talking about having free music that you can have full control of, not free online streaming of music) has already been tried and failed, but a similar system might spring up in the future. The system that failed was called "TotalMusic", but don't grieve its failure too hard because it wasn't even that great of a method. It was created by Universal Music Group in 2007 and Sony BMG and EMI also jumped on board (leaving just Warner the only of the Big Four that held out). The idea was that consumers would have free access to download as much music as they wanted, but the catch was that major labels were getting a large cut of music devices sold. One model showed the TotalMusic format adding $90 to the price of the device, and exactly how much of the price would have been absorbed by device manufacturers to keep prices reasonable is unknown, but it seems hard to believe that a company would have kept the prices of their devices the same as they currently retail for and let the major labels take a $90 cut out of the sale of their device; so gadget prices surely would have raised at least some. TotalMusic never caught on though, and after an attempt to reemerge in 2008 with a pitch to Facebook for a system of music streaming at free cost both to users and Facebook (but in turn required Facebook to relinquish user data and advertising revenue to the labels) also failed, TotalMusic finally died.

Whatever the method is, and whether consumers pay some kind of extra charge on devices to allow labels to get their payday, I truly believe that the future of music will most likely be legally free at least after some initial fee has been paid. The only other options seem to me to be that people will continue on with widespread illegal downloading of music and the music industry will continue to exist as a hollow shell of its former self. Additionally, the internet could become a much more structured and policed area where people are actually punished for their actions online and therefore unable to easily download music illegally, but I don't see this happening for the same reason I don't see the music industry putting an end to free downloading, because I don't see the public relinquishing any freedoms they've grown accustomed to at anytime soon.

If you're wondering how music could ever be free and think this concept is ridiculous because if music was free then artists would make no money and so stop making music, then I should add that I expect concerts and live music to continue to thrive. Throw in other lucrative sources such as advertising deals or songs being used in TV shows and movies and I still see talented musicians making good money in the future, just not as much from album sales.

The only aspects of the current music industry that I find to be incompatible with this free music system, is all the mega-superstars who sell regardless of hard times in the music industry. I'm talking about artists like Eminem or Jay-Z, who do not do much touring anymore simply because they don't need to spend the time or energy since everyone already knows their name and their albums still sell well (although not nearly as strong as they would have sold a decade ago, going platinum now is roughly equivalent to going many times platinum a decade ago). However, if the rest of the music industry starts jumping aboard the free music system sometime in the future, then I can see these super-superstars eventually joining in on the free distribution and in turn they would make their millions with huge advertising deals.

As for when this ambitious change happens --if it ever does-- I do not have a clue. It all hinges on when the brutal war comes to an end between the major labels trying to stay lucrative, along with being too stubborn to adopt new methods of distribution, against the rotting flesh that subsists on the backside of the music industry which consists of all the free illegal downloading and diminishing record sales as of late. I mean come on, essentially every single album leaks in advance these days, if the focus shifted to embrace digital distribution more kindheartedly, then this problem could likely be eliminated or at least reduced.

In the words of Slug, the MC of hip-hop duo Atmosphere and pioneer of independent rap: "I still say f**k a major label 'til it limps".

P.S. For the record, I buy albums from the artists I enjoy most or that I think could simply use the support, but this honestly is only for about a dozen albums a year. Most alternative/indie music I legally get free from the college radio station I DJ for, KZUU 90.7 FM. And the rest of my music I gather from the wonderful world wide web.

Best Music Video Ever?

 Broken Bells- "The Ghost Inside"
It might not hold as much replay-ability, but I've never seen any music video so compelling for the first watch.

Kobe!

This is staged, but I love it:

Hey Champ's debut album "Star" coming 7/13 (Havoc Post)

Hey Champ Set to Tear Up the Dance Floor

Hit the link above to check out my latest post on Havoc.tv, about Hey Champ and their upcoming album!

Also, you can download Hey Champ's "Cold Dust Girl" and "Neverest" songs immediately below!

 

One more KZUU Promo Image

I get really bored and fill my time with doing simple photoshop tasks like this, since I'm not savvy enough for anything too spectacular.

KZUU Promo Designs

Boredom overtook me today and I got inspired to make a KZUU design based off of MGMT's sophomore album, Congratulations, cover art, and these are the variations I came up with. I might touch up a better version later (I was thinking of adding writing, like the KZUU phone number, onto the surfboard). Enjoy.

First Posts for Havov.tv

I've been hired as an "Independent Contractor" for Havoc Television (a video-on-demand company that offers music and extreme sports video on most digital cable & satellite providers) to blog about Alternative Rock and Electronic music for their website that they're going to try to get established as a community; check it out here.

Anyways, the posts I'll be writing there (10 a month) will be a bit more formal than the stuff I've written here, so I'm likely to keep posting random stuff here, and will also post links to my blog posts I write for Havoc's site.

Once a few more details get sorted out, my posts will start appearing on the main site and their respective genre "channels", but for now you can read my first two posts I've written and posted to my profile over on the site (accounts have customizable "pages" kind of like myspace over there).

Free Energy brings back a strong 70's power-pop rock vibe

90's Rockers Re-release and Hit the Road for a Reunion Tour

This is for all of you that think it does nothing but rain in Seattle and the greater Pacific Northwest

http://www.livescience.com/environment/070518_rainy_cities.html

If you don't want to hit the link to read the article, here are a few key parts:

Do you think Seattle is the rainiest city in the United States? Well, think again.
...
The Southeast dominated the most rainy list, while the Pacific Northwest never enters the list until Olympia, Washington pops up at number 24.

However, the article goes on to say that Olympia, WA actually did indeed average the most annual rainy days at 63, 4 more than Mobile, Alabama which topped off the list as the #1 wettest city in the continental U.S. This shows that while it does rain a lot in the Northwest, it rains much harder in other parts of the country.

Did It Leak? The Death of the Music Industry's Grim Reaper

I recognize that I'm over two and a half months late on this story, but I think it's a story that more should hear.

Albums leaking in advance of their release date has been a plague that spread throughout this last decade, and over the last couple years it can be assured that every notable album would be sure to hit the internet before it hit stores, the question was only if it would leak by days, weeks, or months.

At the forefront of this musical epidemic, was website diditleak.co.uk and twitter account @diditleak. For the last two years, "Did It Leak?" was sure to update and tell when any significant album of any genre had leaked to the internet, almost as soon as the leak itself had been uploaded. No other information was shared by "Did It Leak?", so how the people running the site discovered the links, and exactly who all was behind the website, was left in the dark. The twitter site had built up a modest almost 12,000 followers, and major labels viewed the website as a sort of grim reaper, a publicist for the band Brand New commented that "We watch it like hawks."

I personally found out about this site in the middle of last year, after I had been searching for some kind of central source for information about album leaks, I finally found what I was looking for. I checked the twitter from time to time, and there were always updates about new albums leaking on an average of every few days. I personally am usually pretty up-to-date on music and the internet, and I only beat "Did It Leak?" once, and only by about 90 minutes. I was ecstatic.

If you're wondering where I'm going with this, however, is that on January 4, 2010 there was this update "Vampire Weekend – Contra leaked, due out January 12th." and then there were never any more updates following that. I remember at first being shocked when the leak of the new Spoon album, Transference, was not mentioned by Did It Leak, which happened shortly after the Vampire Weekend leak. But as days turned into weeks turned into months, I continued to check back less and less often, as I was never met with any more updates after Vampire Weekend's album. It was only last night that my curiosity overcame me and I decided to google search to see if I could find out what happened to the site, thinking that maybe somehow the RIAA put a halt to the site (even though the site never did anything illegal because it never linked to the actual leaked files, only informed followers that the albums had leaked, allowing them to seek them out on their own)... This is the article I discovered about the story behind "Did It Leak?":

For two years, the Twitter account @diditleak was the secret weapon of online listeners and music critics alike. In real time, the account, which ultimately garnered over 11,500 followers, announced whenever a digital copy of a particularly desirable record first hit the Internet. For that it became a beloved resource of torrent-hungry music fans and writers angling for first listens. Using email tips and message-board-scouring alchemy, @diditleak seemed to know leaks better than anybody on Earth.

The feed's creator was Alan Carton, a then-21-year-old Vancouver film student who worked on the site in total anonymity. On January 5, @diditleak went dark. Its creator's name is only being revealed now because on January 16th, after a long hospital stay, Alan Carton died. He was 23. In his final days, Carton worked on @diditleak from his hospital bed, posting tips about the new Yeasayer record at a time when doctors were saying he could lapse into a coma at any minute. His story--as told by his mother Jennifer to Voice--is unlikely, to say the least.
When Alan was 18, he put off college to work as an electrician in his hometown of Edmonton, Alberta. At work, he'd drop his hammer into the loop of his overalls, where it would brush against a lump on his leg. He and his mother, Jennifer Carton, assumed that the bump was a cyst. But after six months of work, Carton got a biopsy result that indicated that the lump on his leg was sarcoma soft tissue cancer.
"Whatever" was Alan's first reaction. Canadian hero Terry Fox had jogged across the country after losing his leg to sarcoma. Carton, too, could overcome this. But a full MRI showed that Alan had six cancer spots on one lung and nine on the other. The ensuing eight-hour chemotherapy treatments left him drained and unemployed. In his boredom, Carton taught himself how to play guitar and keyboard with computer programs. He entered a MuchMusic music trivia contest and won a new dirtbike that he never got to ride.

After twelve months of radiation, the spots in his lung and the tumor in his leg were still present. Doctors removed 45% of the muscle in his leg, leaving him with a limp and a scar, though his friends didn't mind--Carton's crutches got them good seats at Oilers games. After further visits, the doctor pulled Alan and his mother aside. Carton's lung spots had grown but if the doctors operated, Alan would have nothing to breathe with, leaving a 20-year-old kid strapped to an oxygen mask forever. The doctor told Alan that they were thinking of surgery the following week, but had decided against it. Alan said, "Well I'm glad you're not because we're all going to Calgary for an outdoor concert." Everyone thought it would be best that Alan go out and enjoy the rest of his life.

While her son was in Calgary, Jennifer took a week off work and cried. "I thought, I can't live like this," she says. "I can't just sit here and wait for this boy to die." So instead, she and her son concocted a plan for Alan to live his dream of going to Vancouver Film School, where he wanted to study sound design. They put their home up for sale a month later, the pair made the 10-hour drive from Edmonton to Vancouver with their Shih Tzu, Snowee, talking the entire way. At college, Carton didn't tell anyone he had cancer--neither the admissions board nor his friends. Every ten weeks he would take a weekend flights back to Edmonton for doctor's appointments, returning to school early on Monday morning. 

In 2007, halfway through his first semester, Carton started Did It Leak--which began life as a blog--with the goal of total anonymity. For a year, he didn't even tell his mother about the site. When he finally confessed, Jennifer asked how he knew that albums were leaking. He replied, "I just know. I can't tell you how I find out, I just know." He showed her a map of where his followers were coming from--Ireland, London, Japan, Australia, Spain. People were sending tips about leaked albums to his anonymous email account. Magazines like the Italian edition of Marie Claire and Canadian newspapers were hankering for interviews. According to Jennifer, his site was valuable enough to working critics that a writer from The Chicago Sun-Times contacted him for his leak-scouring secrets. Carton turned down interviews to help keep the mystery alive.

During his eleventh month of school, Carton began having trouble breathing: a tumor was growing over his windpipe. He finished up school rapidly, returned to Edmonton, and worked part time at a radio station. By the spring of 2008, his tumor had grown and was pushing up against his ribs. Carton was down to 90 pounds and required a hospital visit for dehydration. In the hospital, he got a headache, which the doctor told him was a brain tumor in his right lobe. That meant a seizure or coma could happen at any time. The tumor would have to be radiated immediately.

At the hospital, Carton saw the leak tips arriving on his phone and was clamoring for his laptop. "Oh my God! I gotta get on here, my followers will be wondering what I've got!" he said, according to his mother. He was admitted to the hospital on a Friday and was updating @diditleak by Sunday. "In the hospital, he always had his laptop with him and his cellphone," Jennifer remembers. "Alan would write while he was in bed. People write and say his 'company' was so cool. He said, 'Little do they know I'm just lying in the hospital here with cancer, just bored with nothing to do.'"

He told his mother that if a doctor informed her he was going to die, he'd prefer to remain oblivious--he wanted to go on living. After he got out of the hospital, he went on trips with his friends and mom to New York, California, and Ireland. He got a new tumor on his hip and after October never walked again. By December he was 85 pounds and barely hanging on, but Carton and @diditleak persevered. He fell out of his wheelchair and bloodied his head. He started getting confused, dizzy, antsy and agitated. He started saying things and he didn't know what they meant.
On January 5, Carton added his final post--a notification about the leak of the new Vampire Weekend, currently the number one album in the country. For weeks, he hadn't wanted to go to the hospital unless it was absolutely necessary, but now he looked up at his mother at 2 a.m. and said, "I think it's time." His lung had filled with fluid and his body was going into panic mode. The hospital filled him with morphine and drained his lung. On Saturday, January 16, Adam Carton passed away at the age of 23

Now @diditleak is quiet, stuck on January 5. "I'm sure he said to me Lily Allen sent an email to say that she checks his site," says Jennifer, who allows that it could've been any pop star, really. "He said, 'I wish these people would ask me when their albums were about to leak--I could tell them.'" This article was written by Christopher Weingarten and can be found here.

I originally started out writing my own description of that story, but I realized part way through that I couldn't do it without blatant plagiarism or I would have had to leave out too many details. I don't know about you, but this story really touched me. It's kind of strange in a way that a person that posed so much fear to all those in the music industry, ended up being the greatest victim. Rest in peace Alan Carton, you remind me a lot of me, except obviously much more talented with technology and more relevant than I could ever be. Peace.