The not so orange future..?
Thursday, 07 January 2010 21:01 | Written by Dylan 'YouSir' Orchard
News in today that Jamendo, the orange behemoth of the free music movement, isn't doing quite as well as the universe would hope.
'Jamendo, a community of free, legal music published with Creative Commons licenses, is actively looking to sell to or merge with another company, TechCrunch Europe has learned. Jamendo CEO Laurent Kratz has confirmed rumors that had made their way to Twitter earlier this week.' - TechCrunch Blog
Which is rather hard to read as good news. If Jamendo goes then obviously a big blank space is left within both the free music community and within our movement's attempts to gain more mainstream exposure; as a focal point
and as a service provider for fans and artists the Orange One is pretty much the best we've got given the slightly chaotic, unfocused nature of Archive.org and the relative anonymity of LegalTorrents. Their decline could certainly set things back significantly and scare off those who might previously have considered launching their own large scale CC related project. And perhaps worse is the alternative of Jamendo merging with another company, who it's hard to imagine would leave the site to plough it's own relatively simple and largely free furrow. Any merger would, I suspect, result in at the very least a more aggressively commercial model being adopted by the site which I can't imagine doing any good for the community assuming it even retains ties to the initial concept of Creative Commons licensing as opposed to evolving into some gimmicky MySpace-esque morass.
It's too soon to say what, if anything, will come of all this but for now at least it seems that it'll be nothing good. As ever TCUC will report back with any developments.
New NewsMonday, 04 January 2010 07:09 | Written by Dylan 'YouSir' Orchard
If you direct your seeing orbs upwards and a little to the right you should notice the new 'Community News' tab, which is arguably the best invention since the last time I invented something. It's a bit of an experiment given that I'm not sure just how well the technicalities of it will work but the basic gist is that you can check out RSS (news) feeds from some of the top free music sites and Net Labels in one place and as we all know, laziness is a virtue. At the moment it's a limited test run, but if you want your own site/label/artist page included in the updates then This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with the address of your RSS feed and I'll stick it in the rotation. And if you don't see anything there just yet it may be because I finished setting it up at 7am when no decent, honest person should be up posting updates about free music... LeeDVD - First Love ReviewMonday, 04 January 2010 02:22 | Written by Dylan 'YouSir' Orchard
Coming from Poland via the Birdsong NetLabel today we have a slab of seasonal Indie Electronica, with LeeDVD mixing up a Lo-Fi, rather sparse, acoustic element with the sort of experimental flourishes which are often long in the considering but rather short-lived in interest. Not a doomed approach to take I hasten to add, but it's an overcrowded musical world we live in and it takes a lot to rise above the habitual gloom of the innovative/conceptual Electronica morass. So does LeeDVD succeed in moving structured ideas into musical forms worth paying attention to? Mhm, I'm not entirely sure. (READ MORE) Defekt 86 - Ultramarin ReviewSaturday, 02 January 2010 13:26 | Written by Ross McCleary
This is my first proper experience with darkwave and has surprised me by being a particularly enjoyable one. Defekt 86 are German and sing in both German and English, varying from song to song. The vocals are dark and booming and overall the recording quality is actually pretty good although the drums often sound flatter than the rest of the instrumentation. Obviously given that the release is under Creative Commons I’ve been trying to insistently remind myself that an album isn’t going to sound as polished as Led Zeppelin or as perfectly mixed as a Beatles album. Does this seem fair? Please bear in mind that my reviews are reflections of this thinking. (READ MORE) Last Updated (Monday, 04 January 2010 02:13) Titus Twelve - Dig and Delve ReviewWednesday, 30 December 2009 16:31 | Written by Dylan 'YouSir' Orchard
And on todays menu we have a big steaming dollop of heavy, and at times quite lyrical, Dub, which is always a fine dessert course at Christmas time. Titus Twelve has offered up a full length album of very electronic Dub which dwells on the darker side of music, full as it is of sinister, dark beats which send the unwary listener scurrying for a nice warm corner to hide out in for the duration. So, success on that front at least. (READ MORE) Last Updated (Wednesday, 30 December 2009 16:32) |
