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When Old Is New Again: From Cassettes To Multicolored Vinyl

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This post is syndicated from Yahoo! Music Stop the Presses!

Monetizing music ain’t what it used to be. In an age where digital music files are easily ripped, downloaded and distributed, the urge to pay for that great new album has steadfastly declined.

Alongside torrents, mixtapes, and social websites like Hype Machine, Exfm and We Are Hunted, streaming services like Rdio, Rhapsody, MOG and Spotify make music discovery easy.  It’s been reported that with an annual growth rate of nearly 95%, subscribers to cloud-based music services will exceed 161 million in 2016.

This makes it easier for an artist to share their work with the masses  – but how can the same artist pay the bills with the concept of free?

When it comes to the actual making money part, bands have no choice but to get creative. And many are doing just that – by inventing new channels and resurrecting familiar ones.

The indie-rock band Radiohead is perhaps the ultimate example of exploring new distribution opportunities in the 21st century. In 2007, they incorporated a “pay what you want” model for the album In Rainbows.

For their recent release The King Of Limbs, the band decided to offer up several options.  The album will come in two digital formats – either 320 kbps MP3s ($9) – or CD-quality, uncompressed WAV files ($14). For the super fan, the third and pricier option is a newspaper album ($48 + $53). It offers  MP3s or WAVs along with vinyl, CD, several large sheets of artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork and a full-color piece of degradable plastic to hold it all together.

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5 Great Film Soundtracks of 2010

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Syndicated from Yahoo! Music Blog: As Heard On…

2010 was a year of many noteworthy film soundtracks, ranging from lush scores to clever collaborations to unique choices in music supervision.

Below, a short list of some of the most notable – and inspiring – collections of the year!

1. The Social Network

One of the most unexpected and captivating soundtracks in 2010, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross teamed up to create music that speaks volumes to the electric energy of the film based on the social networking site Facebook.

The original score integrates seamlessly with the pacing and mood of the film, nearly making it an unseen character in itself.

iTunes: The Social Network (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture) – Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

2. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Starring the quirky and beloved Michael Cera, Scott Pilgrim must battle to the death with seven ex-lovers to win the affection of his latest love interest.

The film features an all-star soundtrack curated by Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. Godrich recruited Beck to create music for fictional band Sex Bob-omb, with tunes for rival band Crash and the Boys penned by Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene with Brendan Canning.

Other music featured in the film comes courtesy of rockers Black Lips, Metric, Plumtree, and T-Rex.

See Metric Perform “Black Sheep” live at the 2010 Comic-Con Conference:

iTunes: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) [Deluxe Version] – Various Artists

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Top 5 Gift Ideas For The Music Geek On Your List

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Syndicated from Yahoo! Music Blog: As Heard On…

When it comes to holiday shopping, many of us freeze at the mere prospect of trolling a mall with hundreds of others in search of that perfect and unique holiday gift. Particularly when it comes to tech toys, why scour the shelves when we can make our purchases online at the last minute instead? I don’t know about you, but I love shopping in my PJs – and have the items delivered directly to my doorstep!

Whether you’re shopping at home or in the mall, for yourself or someone else, here are five ideas guaranteed to satisfy the music lover in all of us.

1. The Portable Player, a.k.a. The Boombox

If you’re looking for a dock for your iPod or iPhone, the On Stage IV from JBL is your match. The portable speaker system plays music from your device while simultaneously charging it. It travels easily and packs a punch for it’s small size.

If you can hold out until January, TDK is back in the game with the TDK Boombox, an excellent reinvention of the classic ghetto blaster. Both a two and three-speaker option will be available (the third speaker hosts a dedicated sub-woofer!). The boombox comes with USB support including input for a USB stick, AM/FM radio, and RCA, minijack, and ¼ inch inputs. Settings have illuminated touch controls with two oversized aluminum knobs for volume and radio tuning support. How cool is that!?

However, if you prefer to keep it real with an authentic ghetto blaster, never fear! EBay has an excellent selection spanning different styles and decades.

For some, it’s more important to ditch those bulky D batteries and play it green. The recycled boombox makes an excellent stocking stuffer or gift exchange item (and it ain’t too shabby at $18 a pop).

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Miro and the Enabling of Community Media

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One of my favorite online video platforms to emerge in the last few years is the open-source service Miro.

Formerly known as the Democracy Player, Miro is an Internet tv application developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation.

I’m a big proponent of open-source.  It drives innovation by allowing developers to build on each others’ work,  and makes creating and sharing content easy for everyone (and to support the service, you can adopt a line of code. How clever is that?!).

You can imagine how stoked I was to find out about  Miro Community, an ancillary service created for publishing videos.

Dubbed “The easiest way to make a video website”, Miro Community provides groups like local media organizations and schools with the templates they need to create their own video-based experience.

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