Minami Minegishi, a member of Japan’s ultra popular J-Pop group AKB48, took to YouTube to ask for forgiveness - her head shaved in an act of contrition. So what was her crime? What horrid acts had she committed to justify such an emotional plea to the public: she had a boyfriend. Thats’ right, she had a relationship…..with another human.
In Japan’s wildly popular J-Pop culture scene, singers are held to a disgustingly high standard, especially young women – where even being in a relationship translates to a loss of purity. Sam Byfod over at TheVerge has a great in depth article about Japanese culture, J-Pop, Music and the sad backstory.
Source: The Verge
Ever get a song in your head, that just fuc*ing drives you crazy? It’s never Johnny Cash’s “Walk The Line” – it’s always Haddaway’s “What Is Love.” Well, the boys and girls over at Unhear It have come up with a little website to help you forget that shitty song, that’s stuck in your head.
For all you iPad and Spotify customers, your day has finally arrived. Spotify, the wildly popular streaming music service, has just released their iPad app and from what I can tell, it’s getting good reviews.
Radiohead’s “Creep” is by far one of humanities great achievements and the boys from Oxfordshire have come a long way since their 1992 debut single but along with their massive musical success, comes a billion cover song celebrating their greatness. About 99% of those covers are ass. I think the same can be said about most cover songs in general but “Creep” is one of those songs that shouldn’t even be attempted. Yet, there is always that 1% and when you finally find that 1%, it’s not just great – it’s magical. Case in point: Carrie Manolakos version of “Creep” – Radiohead’s and Carrie’s version can be seen after the break. Get ready for an “Ear-Orgasm!”
This is the official video by Dmitry Zakharov for the track “Micron” by Max Cooper, released on Traum Schallplatten.
“Life comes into being, blooms and vanishes. And where all life is built of smaller parts that form a living whole, in this video I created fractals of human body parts that are born, bloom to form a larger, more coherent whole, then die. They’re abstracted hands, ears, and faces similar to Max’s earlier ‘positive mutation’ visuals – tying a minimalist look in with abstracted shapes. Max often works with ideas around the aesthetics of science, and I wanted to connect the scientific idea of fractals to the experience of life itself.”
Source: ImgClean
The new music video from OK Go, made in partnership with Chevrolet. OK Go set up over 1000 instruments over two miles of desert outside Los Angeles. A Chevy Sonic was outfitted with retractable pneumatic arms designed to play the instruments, and the band recorded this version of Needing/Getting, singing as they played the instrument array with the car. The video took 4 months of preparation and 4 days of shooting and recording. There are no ringers or stand-ins; Damian took stunt driving lessons. Each piano had the lowest octaves tuned to the same note so that they’d play the right note no matter where they were struck. For more information and behind-the-scenes footage, see http://www.LetsDoThis.com and http://www.okgo.net. Many thanks to Chevy for believing in and supporting such an insane and ambitious project, and to Gretsch for providing the guitars.
For all of you out there that have always wanted an iPod Nano w/ camera, you might just get it! The above images appeared on Apple blogging site, Apple.pro and detail what appears to be a iPod Nano with a back side camera. Rumors from last year claimed that Apple was working on a camera equipped Nano but last September, at Apple’s yearly iPod event, nothing was released. While no additional information was released or leaked, it would be interesting to see what Apple does with the Nano line of hardware – a camera would somewhat spice up the dull mini mp3 player player.
Source: AppleInsider
Apple’s iTunes Music Match is rolling out to 19 more countries as of today, bringing the grand total to 37. Music Match is Apple’s cloud music service, which essentially scans your computer/device and makes any song you have there available in the cloud – songs it can’t find or apple doesn’t have, you can upload yourself – all for $24.99/Yr. The new countries include:
Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Guatemala, Honduras, Latvia, Lithuania, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela
For more on Apple’s Music match – Click here and if you’re curious about music match where you live, here is Apple’s page providing information on which countries have it available.
Source: MacRumors
Several months ago, Apple issued a recall on all 1st Generation ipod Nanos because of possible battery issues/explosions and now the replacement units are starting to be delivered to customers. Surprisingly, Apple has replaced the defective 1st gen nanos (pictured above) with current gen hardware (pictured below) – nice little holiday surprise……or they had no old ipods in stock. Wanna know if you’re eligible - click here.
Source: Apple
While the United States got a taste of iTunes Match earlier this year, it looks like Apple is rolling the service out to the rest of the globe as we speak. If you’ve never heard of iTunes Match, here’s the low down:
iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to iCloud. Since there are more than 20 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. Once your music is in iCloud, you can stream and store it on any of your devices. Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality…
For those that want an easier explanation: It allows you to make all the songs you download illegally – legal for $25/Yr (no questions asked) and then access those songs in the cloud, on your iOS devices. Seems to good to be true….
Source: 9To5 Mac
Yesterday, Google held its music even in Los Angeles and unveiled Google Music – a music store to take on Apple’s iTunes but in a slightly different way. Sure, you get the much expected music store, where one can download song (99¢-$1.29 each) - Google has managed to sign 3 of the 4 major music labels, leaving only Warner on the sidelines, plus hundreds or thousands of independent labels. So, what does that give us? Millions of songs and a very strong competition to both Amazon’s music store and Apple’s iTunes.
All the talk has been on Google & Apple as of late, in terms of cloud based audio/video/storage but no one told Amazon that. Today, Amazon unveiled their “Cloud Drive” and “Cloud Player”:
“…Amazon Cloud Drive is your hard drive in the cloud. Store your music, videos, photos, and documents on Amazon’s secure servers. All you need is a web browser to upload, download, and access your files from any computer…”
Details: You open a “Cloud” account with Amazon (Free) and get 5GB for storage to start with, that’s about 1000 songs worth of storage. From there, you can put music, movies, docs or anything else your little heart desires and access it from any computer with web access or you can use Amazon’s Cloud Player (Android) for streaming music to your smart phone. (No mention of video streaming)
Do you buy your music from Amazon? Even better, as Amazon will give you 20GB for free when you buy a full album from their music store! Any music bought through Amazon’s Music Store will be stored automatically in your Cloud Drive, for a secure backup. Did you hear that Apple and Google? You guys better be cooking something good!
Conclusion: Amazon allows anyone to store multiple media types (music/movies/docs/etc) in a private/secure cloud locker for free (5GB limit) and then you can access that data from any web connected computer or stream music from your locker with Amazon’s Android based music app. Want extra storage space – drop some cash and you’re in business. Amazon for the win! Google and Apple, you’ve been put on notice…
Source: Amazon.com
Have Time Warner Cable/internet? Illegally download movies/music/etc? You might want to read this. A U.S. District Court judge in Washington has ordered Time Warner to promptly hand over ISP records from 250 customers, whom are “Supposedly” downloading illegal copies of media. Time Warner has stated, as have other ISP’s, that searching, tracking and identifying customers that are possibly illegally downloading content is both “Expensive” and “Time Consuming.”
This is the same argument several ISP’s have made across the United States and the rest of the world. Not only is it unfair to ask ISP’s to front the cost of such investigations but it is also unjust to hand over private records of customers that are not even involved in such illegal file sharing. Essentially, someone with a wifi router unlocked can be charged with illegally file sharing, even though someone else could be piggybacking on their open network – tons of people have open networks across the world.
In my mind, this accounts to illegal search and seizure!
Source: BGR.com
You’ve heard the rumors – you’ve seen the signs and now you’re reading the rumors and signs about Apple’s MobileMe overhaul. Chatter is pointing towards an April launch of the new MobileMe service, with price ranging from free to $20 a year – fine by me either way. So what do we get for free or $20/Yr? Well, you get the regular goodies like contact, calendar, mail, find my iphone, gallery and iDisk but talk is pointing to a sort of music locker. Yea, locker but not like your high school locker, which was filled with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit pictures – this one is for backing up your music library and then…..streaming it to your iOS devices.
Supposedly, Warner Music is already on board and Apple is leveraging that agreement against other labels – what Apple does best – to get everyone on board by the April launch. Apple has the means (North Carolina Data Center) and the content (iTunes) and the technology (Lala.com) – now it’s just a matter of talking the content creators into joining the club.
P.s. If you sign up to MobileMe free 60 Day Trial now – it will grandfather you into the new service or you can cancel if you don’t like it 
Source: 9To5Mac.com
Days after rumor spread about Microsoft killing all future Zune hardware, Samsung has stepped in and decided to take on Apple’s iPod empire. Sammy announced yesterday two new PMP’s to take on the iPod Touch: the Galaxy S WiFi 4.0 and 5.o – with the major number differentiation being size of the display.
The Galaxy S 4.0 rocks some nice specs: Android 2.2 Froyo (Upgradable), 4-inch touchscreen (WVGA LCD), 1GHz Hummingbird processor, 3.2 MP and also includes a front-facing camera, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0 connectivity, 8GB, 16GB and 32GB memory capacities and also support for external memory with MicroSD card slot and a 1200mAh battery.
The Galaxy S 5.0 outclasses its younger brother by packing: Android 2.2 Froyo (Upgradable), 1GHz processor, 5-inch touchscreen display (WVGA), 5.0 megapixel with a LED flash, VGA camera on the front for video chatting, FM radio, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, accelerometer, voice recorder.
Bottom line: The specs look great, especially on the 5.0 but one thing Sammy didn’t release – Price! Not that many people, especially younger kids, are going to shell out $250+ for a stand alone device. Yea, you can check your email and play games but this is not a logical choice, nor is the iPod Touch, if pricing starts to rocket north of mobile phone price tags. Sure, you don’t have the monthly contract for 2 years but why not just buy a smart phone outright for $600 and go “Pay As You Go” and you get the best of both worlds? Pricing is everything for the PMP market.
Source: Samsung.com