music

Less than a month after publicly calling executives at his music label unprintable names, rocker Trent Reznor has signaled that his days of working for a record company are over.

The only official member of the band Nine Inch Nails, Reznor announced Monday that the group is now "free of any recording contract with any label." Representatives from Reznor's music label, Universal Music Group, were unavailable for comment.

Reznor provided few details in a note on the band's Web site about how the group plans to proceed, but his announcement raised hopes among fans that he … Read more

Rafat Ali of PaidContent claims to have dug up more details about the mysterious "iTunes Store rival" that Facebook has allegedly been working on in recent weeks. And he says that sources indicate it's not Apple that should be worried, but rather MySpace, the once-formidable social network that Facebook has been gaining on steadily since the launch of its developer platform in May.

Ali calls the new project an "artist platform," and says we'll be seeing it later this year. "The platform will allows (sic) bands and labels to create artists pages," … Read more

Even on a run-of-the-mill day, a debate over the perceived rights and wrongs surrounding digital file swapping gets readers worked up. And I mean really worked up.

But ever since the Recording Industry Association of America prevailed late Thursday in its copyright lawsuit against a 30-year-old single mom with a couple of kids, all hell has broken loose.

I'll leave it to you to debate the relative merits of the case, but there's no denying that the recording industry sometimes can be its own worst enemy. It's almost as if the industry's hired guns were on … Read more

AllFacebook blogger Nick O'Neill wrote on Friday that an "extremely reliable anonymous source" had told him that Facebook is working on an in-house rival to Apple's mighty iTunes Store. According to O'Neill, the company is in the process of looking for an executive to head this division--his source allegedly knew about the whole deal because of an acquaintance interviewing for the position--and is already meeting with record labels.

It's unclear whether this would be strictly a music store or whether it might extend to other forms of media, like TV shows and movies.

This … Read more

Seventies rock-inspired ladies' man Josh Rouse found a few minutes out of his busy tour schedule to stop by Studio C. He treated us to solo acoustic versions of "Hollywood Bass Player" and "Sweetie" from his latest album, Country Mouse City House (which he's currently promoting on his coast to coast tour). Listen to our exclusive Studio C interview with Josh Rouse, along with many more artists such as Matt Nathanson, Lyrics Born, and Stroke 9.

Growing up, my musician brother started out experimenting with music using a four-track tape recorder that he used to blend together guitars, keyboards, and vocals--something that normally requires an entire band, or some advanced audio-mixing equipment. Tjoon is an interesting new Web service, aimed mostly at musicians, that attempts to do the same thing using Webcams. It splits up a video workspace into four quadrants, and lets you, or others, come together to record four 30 second clips, all within the same shot. Instead of trying to do this simultaneously, like eJamming (coverage), Tjoon is completely asynchronous, meaning you can … Read more

Now here's an innovation: "music on demand," in the truest sense of the meaning. Radiohead, the juggernauts of intelligentsia rock, announced that they will give away their new album "In Rainbows" as a download for whatever price consumers are willing to pay. The band is free to sell the new album directly from the official website because it is no longer tied to a record label. So far, the album is only available to pre-order, but it can be downloaded when released on October 10.

It's not the first time that an artist or … Read more

While at Starbucks this morning, I noticed some signs on the tables announcing that the "Now Playing" feature was live. This lets you log onto the iTunes music store from your laptop, iPod touch or iPhone and instantly see what song is playing in-store, plus browse and buy music on iTunes.

After adding two Sugar in the Raws and some half-and-half to my Grande drip, I decided to put that iPhone in my pocket to good use. I fired up the iTunes Wi-Fi music store by clicking the little logo and voila!

If only it was that easy...… Read more