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• The Death of AutoTune

  As I said in my I recently review, the new Kanye West album was a bit disappointing and a little over the top with the use of Autotune. To me, this has always been one of the more annoying trends – it’s ok in small doses, but definitely abused. Roger Riley & Teddy Troutman’s brilliant Death of Autotune ( via ). They basically took a bunch of hip-hop classics and re-envisioned them with AutoTune. If you didn’t find Autotune annoying before, you surely will now.  Download the whole thing here if you dare. Posted Nov 30 2008, 08:58 AM by Tim with Filed under: Music

• More on UrgeMS.exe

  UrgeMS.exe seems to be causing issues for a lot of people. I mentioned previously that you can disable the process via security policy, and someone pointed out a registry setting to disable it a little cleaner. I was hoping they'd fix this in the future, but it looks like all they did was make it worse. A recent update made this process a bit, shall we say, heartier. In previous versions, UrgeMS.exe was launched only when Windows Media Player started up; now it seems to launch the process repeatedly while using URGE. Worse yet, the registry fix mentioned no longer works - whatever launches this process explicitly resets the Enabled registry key to true. A user on the CNET forums posted another workaround : replacing the UrgeMS.exe process with an "empty" executable. So while Windows Media Player will still repeatedly launch this process, at least now it won't thrash your disk and use a significant amount of CPU. I've attached the empty executable I'm using - it's simply a new console application... Posted Jul 01 2007, 05:28 PM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Music, Misbehaving Software, Microsoft, Audio

• Is Apple about to launch a subscription service?

  Rumors of an iTunes subscription service have resurfaced . At first I thought that the DRM-free announcement meant a subscription service was less likely , but perhaps the opposite is true. First of all, album purchases will already be the DRM-free "premium" versions. As for individual tracks, the new "premium" tracks are competing directly with the DRM-protected tracks. That is, no one is going to buy both - and I fully expect the majority to choose DRM-free even with a 30% premium. Furthermore, if everything is encumbered with DRM, a subscription service undermines the very profitable individual track purchases. After all, if you're just renting your music anyway, you might as well get it from an all-you-can-eat service at, say, $10 a month instead of paying $1 for each song. On the other hand, a subscription service with DRM can in fact be complementary to purchasing DRM-free tracks. You rent it and, if you really like it, pay for it and keep it forever. No DRM, no activation, no limitation... Posted Apr 12 2007, 03:27 PM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Music, Business, Apple, Audio, DRM

• The Day DRM Died

  As Mike Arrington put it, April 2nd was "the day DRM died". The big news yesterday was that EMI will begin selling its entire catalog without DRM . Starting in May, EMI will start offering a new "premium" option - for $1.29 (30% more than the base $0.99), you get higher audio quality (encoded at 256kbps vs. 128 kbps) and no DRM. ($0.99 individual song downloads will still be available with DRM and lower bitrate). Perhaps more importantly, entire albums will still cost $9.99 but will be the higher quality, DRM-free versions, and users can "upgrade" their past purchases by paying the 30 cent differential. Perhaps Steve Jobs wasn't lying after all . It is unlikely (perhaps moreso) that we'll get a subscription-based service for the iPod, but this is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. A high quality, DRM-free album for $10 is an enticing proposition for most people who otherwise turn to piracy . Apple is working on similar deals with other labels and Jobs expects that "50% of all their... Posted Apr 03 2007, 01:51 PM by Tim with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Music, Apple, DRM

• Arctic Monkeys show at Hammerstein Ballroom

  I missed out on the presale. I got banned briefly because TicketMaster thought I was a bot after it gave me unreadable CAPTCHAs and took 10 tried to get it right. (Have I mentioned how much I hate Ticketmaster?). But I finally got in, and I got 2 tickets to the Hammerstein Ballroom show in May . Sweet. Anyone else get tickets? Posted Mar 23 2007, 12:11 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Music, Personal, Events, NYC

• More on the Music Industry's Slow Death

  This letter from a former customer further illustrates how the music industry is alienating its customers. While I would like to say I responded with something witty, I must admit to being completely flummoxed. There I sat, a loyal music fan who has shelled out actual money to a business that is supposed to be having financial problems, and the best they can do is tell me to wander the streets of Seattle looking for different internet providers who might allow me to download the music that I have already paid for, music that I have spent the better part of three house trying to listen to, and which is still unusable?” As I said before, sometimes piracy isn't about getting it for free . Given the choice of paying for crippled digital music in two months or downloading free, unrestricted music today, is it really any surprise that they choose the latter? You have record companies paying major labels for airtime, but putting arguably their best promotional vehicle out of business by jacking... Posted Mar 22 2007, 07:48 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Intellectual Property, Rants, Music, Copyright, Law, Audio, Social Behavior, DRM

• Music of Note: The View

  The View is an indie/punk band from Dundee, Scotland. Perhaps the most obvious comparison is to Arctic Monkeys. Their debut album, Hats off to the Buskers , is currently topping the UK charts. Standout tracks for me are Same Jeans , Grans for Tens , and Skag Trendy . I'm not quite ready to put this in the same class as Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not , but it's an excellent record that I've had in heavy rotation lately. If you're a fan of Arctic Monkeys, you should definitely enjoy this album. Posted Mar 14 2007, 12:08 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Music, Recommendations

• Steve Jobs and Apple telling half-truths about DRM

  This has already been covered ad nasuem , but I thought I should mention Apple's denouncement of DRM last week. Steve Jobs summarily dismissed Apple's DRM as a result of demands from the record labels. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices. I have no doubt that the record labels are concerned with putting unprotected music out there, but Apple is also in no rush to do away with DRM... Posted Feb 13 2007, 04:20 AM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Intellectual Property, Rants, Music, Copyright, Business, Apple, Law

• Disabling UrgeMS.exe

  I noticed my machine running slower lately, and UrgeMS.exe (URGE Media Scanner) was thrashing the disk and running up to 50% CPU. Obviously, this is part of MTV's URGE music store, the default store for Windows Media Player 11. It appears that the process is related to the "Auto-Mix" feature, which I don't use enough to justify the serious performance impact. I have a fairly large music collection, but it doesn't seem to ever let up. One forum post suggests disabling this via Local Security Policy. Great idea! My system definitely runs better now. Hopefully this is something they address in the future... Update As John mentioned in the comments, you can also prevent this from running by setting "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MTV Networks\Urge\Scanner\Enabled" to 0. If you don't want to mess around with the registry, simply download the attached registry key and double-click on it. Update #2 This fix no longer works. You can replace the UrgeMS.exe with an "empty" executable though. Posted Feb 05 2007, 07:46 PM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Music, Vista, Microsoft, Audio

• Sometimes piracy isn't about getting it for free

  The old maxim that "you can't compete with free" has been thrown around time and time again in the piracy argument. Sometimes, though, piracy is not just about price. People don't want DRM ( including Bill Gates ), and there are still no legal means to download DRM-free music. ( Ok, I should clarify - eMusic offers DRM-free downloads and is apparently now the second largest online retailer of music - but it doesn't include most mainstream music or most (any?) of the "major" labels.) People also don't want to wait for arbitrary release dates, and retail versions of albums are quite often available on the Internet well before the release. For example, Fred Wilson has an advance copy of the new Arcade Fire album many of us are anxiously awaiting. (That's one thing I definitely miss from my WHCL days). The album doesn't come out until March 6th, but it's already available for download on the filesharing networks. Thing about the choice that the record industry gave the rest of us - download... Posted Jan 30 2007, 06:28 AM by Tim with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Gadgets, Music, Law