Music News

Are The Beatles finally ready to make a magical mystery tour into the world of online music?

A "lost" track recorded by the band in 1967 and performed only once in public could finally be released, Paul McCartney told the BBC in an interview, according to a report Sunday in The Observer newspaper. The 14-minute "Carnival of Light" was never released because it was considered too "adventurous," McCartney said.

McCartney said he has the master recording and wants the public to hear it.

"I like it because it's The Beatles free, going … Read more

There are a million ways to experience music, but for the purpose of this blog let's just break it down to two categories: live and recorded.

I don't know about you, but if I get to hear live music more than twice a month, that's pretty good. Sure, I can look back and remember some great concerts in my life, like the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden in 1969, Miles Davis in a tiny club in Greenwich Village in the early '70s, and Stevie Ray Vaughan in the '80s. The Pixies in the '90s were definitely a high point.

I recently attended a concert with the Chelsea Symphony at St. Paul's Church in Manhattan. Sitting in the top balcony, the sound was simply awesome; I've never heard anything close to that sound reproduced by even the very best high-end audio systems. The orchestra certainly didn't need amplification; it was definitely loud enough. Not quite rock concert loud, but the Chelsea Symphony's eight percussionists can make a strong impression.

Better yet, the sound never hurt my ears. But the orchestra was far more viscerally dynamic than any rock band, and the sound of strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion filling the acoustic space of the church was a thrill I won't soon forget. That is, you don't so much hear the sound of each instrument, you hear it filling the church. The sound of the entire orchestra floated, like a cloud, above the pews. The sound was beyond what I've ever experienced from an orchestra in a large concert hall.

In those and other experiences, the music connection was stronger than it could ever be from recordings, but for the most part I actually prefer recorded music. First and most obviously because it's a repeatable pleasure I can have any time I want it. Next, recorded music is, after all, perfected and approved by the artist(s)--live music is subject to the vagaries of chance.

Recorded music's production can't necessarily be duplicated in concert. Depending on where you sit, and how good or bad the sound system is, live music is a crap shoot. With a decent hi-fi at home, you can get better sound than most live gigs. Oh, and you can play it at exactly the volume you want.

"Live" recordings fall between the two extremes, and if the band's up for it, may be the best of live and recorded. … Read more

The man accused of copyright violations after posting tracks from Guns N' Roses upcoming album--Chinese Democracy--has agreed to plead guilty, according to a published report.

Dave Kravets over at Wired.com reports that Kevin Cogill, 27, confessed to uploading nine songs last summer to his site, Antiquiet and now faces a misdemeanor charge of copyright infringement.

Los Angeles federal prosecutor Craig Missakian told Kravets that Cogill's guilty plea was part of a plea deal that will be entered on December. 8. Last August, Cogill became the first Californian charged under a 3-year-old federal antipiracy law that makes it a … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. thinks there is still a big place in the world for much-maligned major record labels.

"The value that we have is both on the editorial side, and on the marketing and promotion side," Bronfman said in a panel at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday afternoon. "Those channels are getting harder, not easier." In other words, it was an argument very similar to the one that newspapers and magazines have made in justifying their place in an industry that's getting flooded by scrappy bloggers--big music labels … Read more

Dell on Wednesday began offering bundles of songs on new computers ordered through its Web site.

Just like you can add a copy of Microsoft Office or an extra hard drive, you can pick a bundle of 50 MP3 files for an extra $25 or 100 MP3s for an extra $45--that's about half the price of most download stores. The deal's limited to songs owned by Universal Music Group, one of the big four record labels.

When I first read about this, it seemed an afterthought for newbies too clueless to know how to rip CDs to their … Read more

UPDATE 5:15 p.m. In a move that underscores the waning significance of CDs, the EMI Group has spoken to the other three major music labels about taking over the company's U.S. music distribution, according to two industry sources.

EMI, which represents artists such as The Beatles and Coldplay and makes up about 8.2 percent of U.S. album sales, is looking to outsource distribution to one of its three larger competitors: Universal Music Group, Sony Music, or Warner Music Group, according to two sources familiar with the talks. EMI's representatives met with one of … Read more

As a member of the old-people-who-used-to-play-in-rock-bands demographic, I've never found much appeal in Rock Band or its competitor/predecessor Guitar Hero. But they obviously have a lot of devoted fans, including, apparently, "the only Beatles in the world" (and the others' designated heirs).

On Thursday, Rock Band creators MTV Music-Harmonix teamed up with Apple Corps and announced a forthcoming video game that will let you play along with Beatles songs. The game won't merely be another Rock Band version or Track Pack, but will rather be an entirely new game that will presumably work with the … Read more

Update at 5:10 p.m. PDT: Changes were made based on a draft version of the Windows 7 Reviewers' Guide.

Microsoft took the wraps off the next version of Windows Tuesday at its Professional Developers Conference, and the Web's abuzz with first impressions and previews--most of which are positive.

It looks like Microsoft is making the right moves to counter some of the problems with Vista: application and hardware compatibility are top priorities, and most of the UI tweaks I've seen so far seem helpful rather than arbitrary, as many of the changes in Vista seemed … Read more

Just after it announced a distribution deal with high-profile social music service iLike, digital music distribution company TuneCore has another deal to announce: it's raised $7 million in venture funding from Opus Capital.

The company works like this: musicians upload their music, and TuneCore handles the distribution to digital outlets like iTunes, Amazon MP3, and Rhapsody. TuneCore does not take any cut of the royalties; it makes money from an up-front fee for uploading an album. The funding from Opus will be used for marketing and product development, including a streaming music player that TuneCore plans to launch within … Read more