Andrew McMahon shares ‘High Dive,’ opens album pre-orders

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The march towards the release of “Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness” continues, and along with a pre-order of the album on his website and iTunes, we’re also treated the release of a second song from the upcoming album, “High Dive.” Continue reading

Required listening: Swing Out Sister’s ‘Shapes and Patterns’

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Seeing Swing Out Sister live last year was one of the shows I was most excited to get to see; I’ve enjoyed the musicianship and quality of the act for decades, and it was a wish that finally came true (the fact that it happened on my birthday made it even more fun for me). Continue reading

YouTube has everything: ‘Dance Mix USA’ commercials

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When I was first getting into music, I was a fan of WKTU out of New York, and it led me to explore a number of dance compilations.  A big name at the time was the “Dance Mix USA” series from Quality and Radikal Records.  At their peak in the mid-90s, they were the go-to collection of dance hits, well mixed and put together, with a lot of great tracks that I recognized from the radio. Continue reading

Fighting subscription fatigue

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It used to be, maybe 10-20 years ago, subscription fatigue was largely tied to magazine subscriptions.  So many magazines, asking for just a small amount per year, constant deliveries of publications that many didn’t end up reading.  It’s become much more insidious, however, as cort-cutting has led to a lot of “low cost” items that, in aggregate, can end up costing more than what it replaced. Continue reading

A decade later: iTunes and digital downloads

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Somehow in the midst of everything, I failed to post on a subject I had been waiting awhile to because an anniversary was coming.  Well, it passed, but it still was a game changer for me and how I shop for music: The launch of iTunes and the iTunes Store for Windows, which happened in October of 2003. Continue reading

Settling up on eBook pricing

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This has been sitting in my drafts folder for awhile, but it’s worth talking about now, as the topic continues to evolve and settlement money should be arriving soon.

For those not paying attention, lawsuits were filed against the largest book publishers and Apple for colluding to raise the price of eBooks, which had been held down by Amazon holding the line at a $9.99 price on many titles.  The change to what’s called the agency model of pricing put restrictions on pricing that attorneys general in just about every state fought.  The publishers opted to settle, and the result of that is a credit for each book purchased in a roughly two year window, anywhere between $0.30 (the average book by the publishers in question) and $1.32 (New York Times bestseller).

For purchasers from some of the big book sellers, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, the process is frictionless; credits will be placed in purchasers’ accounts for use on other purchases.  For others, the check request deadline has long passed.  Meanwhile, although the settlement was approved in February, a follow-up in March started a six-month clock that will expire in a few weeks, meaning people should finally see their share soon.

Ironically, the reason for the pricing change was to level the playing field, as Amazon was considered to be running away with the eBook market at the time.  Yet Barnes & Noble’s Nook division has long been struggling, and many suspect Apple’s iBooks sales, while certainly decent, haven’t been stellar. Of course, the numbers for most of these companies are shrouded in opaque statements, so it’s hard to know for sure, but at least in Amazon and Apple’s cases, they’re clearly not going anywhere anytime soon.