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So, mash-up wunderkind Girl Talk released his highly anticipated follow-up to “Night Ripper” today. The album, “Feed The Animals” is available from the Illegal Art website as a “pay-what-you-wish” download.

First off, the album. Girl Talk is the undisputed world champion of the schizophrenic, yet somehow cohesive, mash-up. “Feed The Animals” is, by any standard, more comprehensive, more varied, and more visceral that “Night Ripper.” The samples fly by with such effortless fluidity, that just as you think “Hey, I love that song!” he has moved on to 3 other songs you love. The result is a masterful, hugely satisfying piece of work.

Now, with that out of the way, I need to separate the music lover in me from the music creator, the one who makes a living through licensed music…

Perhaps someone can help me out with this one.

The Hype Machine is an online music blog aggregator that surfs the web for blogs sharing (for the most part) illegal MP3s. Users then listen to the MP3s, and download them if they wish. It is a portal into a world that major labels tend to look the other way on, a world of sharing copy-written material for free in the name of “promotion.” Not that I’m against it, mind you, it’s a tremendously valuable music discovery tool.

Image via WikipediaViacom is a multinational media conglomerate who’s holdings include Paramount, Dreamworks, MTV, VH1, CMT, and Comedy Central. They have reportedly offered to buy The Hype Machine for $10M.

What is the end-game in this crazy time of media moguls snapping up music sites for insane chunks of change? Where are the profits going to come from? And don’t lay that tired “advertising revenue” smack on me. Does nobody remember the first dotcom boom and subsequent bust? Huge corporations don’t make something cool, they co-opt it, suck the cool out, and serve the reheated leftovers.

Your taste can(not) be reduced to an algorithm

Last week brought the news of the relaunch of Peter Gabriel’s TheFilter.com, a service that vows to ‘filter all online media habits… and offer advice about all of their entertainment and information options.’

This got me thinking about what I like…

While perusing my voluminous RSS feed cache, I stumbled upon this article at Coolfer. The gist of it is that Phonopolis, an indie record store in Montreal, is calling for labels and record stores to partner in the sale of “download codes”.

According to Phonopolis:

Stores would stock a larger number of codes than they would CDs (they would of course still stock CDs). They would not immediately pay for these codes, however. The lack of immediate cost, and small amount of space that these codes would take would allow small record stores to carry a wider selection of stock and larger numbers of individual titles. The stores would validate the mp3 codes at the point of sale. During the validation process (which would be on a distributor or label website), the store would pay for the product.

Sure, it sounds all kumbaya and stuff, but it overlooks one very important distinction, in my opinion :

Droppin’ Science Reminds Hip-Hop Producers Of What They Already Knew

Blue Note records just released “Droppin’ Science: Great Samples from the Blue Note Lab,” a collection of cuts that have been sampled by hip-hop producers.

Albums like this have always confused me.

There’s always been a strange disconnect between labels and sampling artists. For the longest time, sampling was seen as a crutch, an easy way out. Perhaps it’s a sea change in attitude, but it strikes me as disingenuous to now celebrate what was once criticized, just because it has become financially viable. Especially when the artists that were criticized and belittled for the sampling (A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul) are now

The age we live in is amazing. In the last week or so, I’ve been introduced to a writer’s work, intensely disliked said writer, written an (admittedly) mean-spirited blog post about the writer, gotten a response from the writer who, for all intents and purposes, shouldn’t even know who I am, received a press release from Gibson telling me about the writer’s new work, and, after reading the article, grudgingly gained a little respect for the writer.

And if I passed him on the street, I would have no idea.

Jonah Bayer’s follow-up to the Top Ten list that fueled my ire is posted at Gibson’s website, and, I have to say, OK, at least he gets what was so pathetic about the first one. There’s still a strange atmosphere of a music snob lampooning music snobs, which creates this sort of irony black hole, but I get the feeling that Jonah actually sat down and wrote this one, instead of leafing through The Great Indie Discography and phoning it in.

And, I have to hand it to the guy, he manned up and actually left a comment on our previous post.

Jonah, if you’re reading this, I take back nothing I said about your first “indie snob” post, but give credit where credit is due for your second. [ms]

A lot of you have probably read or heard about U2 manager Paul McGuinness heaving a charged monologue towards ISPs at MIDEM this week.

Long story short, McGuinness wants ISPs to be held accountable for the data they pass, and wants a cut of the profits they make.

I have to admit, the idealist in me wants to be able to flame every last one of his accusations as bald-faced money-grabs - and some are - but I’m completely torn.

Dear Mr. Dupri,

I just finished reading your exhausting treatise on The Huffington Post for the third time, trying desperately to glean some sort of insight on how you could be so agonizingly out of touch. If ever someone needed to be told to shut up and make music, it is you. Listed below are some of the most embarrassing passages from your diatribe.

Two problems related to Burst in the November issue of Mix Magazine :

1. This month’s Sound For Picture section is titled Creative on Demand : Composers Reap Benefits From Production Music Libraries and, in our not-so-humble opinion, misleads their readers as to who’s responsible for the stature of FirstCom’s Velocity Music Library (through the beginning of this year, that would have been us).

2. The Track Sheet column for the Midwest region falsely credits us with recording “Chester French’s first release.” We did record overdubs for their Star Trak debut, but that’s it.

So Mix gave us credit where we didn’t deserve it, and didn’t credit us where we did (though a case could be made that they were getting their information on Velocity from FirstCom or the new producers of the library, in which case we’ll take this opportunity to set the record straight).

Mercedes-Benz has unveiled their new mnemonic, hoping to follow in the gilded footsteps of other companies with ubiquitous sonic identities such as Intel (the Pentium signature was composed by Musikvergnuegen), NBC’s chimes (their classic three-note audio signature actually started as a live bell performance on their radio broadcasts), and the slightly-more-annoying-but-still-effective Zoom Zoom for Mazda.