Showing posts with label music streaming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music streaming. Show all posts

Friday, October 21, 2011

Music Notes: Stream Wild Flag & Zola Jesus Concerts; CMJ's Last Hurrah; Dum Dum Girls Play Maxwell's

Stream Wild Flag's Washingotn, D.C. concert at NPR Music (below).

Intrepid rock fans are preparing for the final day (and night) of CMJ 2011, but in the New York area the live music continues every day. A few CMJ-related items of note...
  • If you missed Wild Flag at CMJ or their other NYC appearances, you can still get a feel for what their live show is like because NPR Music has posted a stream of the gig they played in Washington, D.C. earlier this week (it was webcast live).

    The setlist is pretty similar to the one from Tuesday's CMJ show at Bowery Ballroom, including one of their cover tunes (Television's "See No Evil"). The web page for the Wild Flag concert stream has the setlist as well. It doesn't appear than you can download this show, however.

  • The singer known as Zola Jesus performed at Le Poisson Rouge on Wednesday as part of CMJ, and you can stream or download the set here from NPR Music.

  • The Dum Dum Girls show at CMJ last night sold out well in advance, but the good news is that they're playing at Maxwell's in Hoboken on Monday night the 24th, and as of this writing there are still some tickets left. Crocodiles and Royal Baths are also on the bill. (Link to Dum Dum Girls tickets at Maxwell's.) You can stream "Only in Dreams" by the Dum Dum Girls here at TheFader.com.

  • CMJ 2011 is going out with a bang on Saturday, with more than 12 hours of live music at venues all over the City. Check the CMJ Music schedule for listings by time, or search CMJ gigs by artist, venue, etc.

    And don't forget, a lot of the CMJ shows won't cost you a thing (see the Oh My Rockness listing of free gigs, CMJ and otherwise). Bands performing on Saturday include DOM, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Shonen Knife, Givers, Wavves, Purity Ring, Nicole Atkins, Wise Blood, Casiokids, Memoryhouse, Cold War Kids, and a couple of bands with two of the more inventive names, Diarrhea Planet and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Music Notes: Google Music Beta Announced; Groupon & Live Nation to Offer Discount Concert Tickets

Google Music is now in beta, and you can apply to be part of it.

The music landscape continues to shift and change, the last couple of days have seen several big companies jockeying for position.

* Google announced its music streaming service today at the Google I/O conference (a meeting of Google software developers). The service, currently called Google Music beta, is in limited use now, but when it goes live it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against Amazon's cloud player and cloud drive, which the online store launched last month. Ironically Apple, which is the 800-pound gorilla in selling music online, has yet to stake its claim in the streaming/music cloud turf.

The Google music service is similar in some ways to Amazon's cloud player. It will let users stream music and rent movies over their Android devices. According to the L.A. Times, users will be able to upload up to 20,000 songs to their computers and mobile devices. Unlike Amazon, however, users will not be able to buy music from Google's service. Amazon allows customers to buy music and other digital content and immediately store it on their cloud account. Users of Google Music beta will have to manually upload the music they already own to the service.

An interesting note is that Google, like Amazon, does not have licensing deals with the music labels for streaming the content, and decided to proceed without it. This could raise certainly some legal issues. You can sign up for the Google Music beta at music.google.com/about.

The Times article says that at first the Google music service will be available by invitation and only in the U.S., and will be free in beta. It's not clear what charges there may be when the service comes out of beta.



* Groupon and Live Nation are teaming up for discount concert tickets. The group-buying concept of Groupon and LivingSocial has been a huge hit for all kinds of products and services, and now it's coming to concert tickets. The service, called GrouponLive, was rolled out on Monday, and will officially launch in the summer, according to an article in the L.A. Times — just in time for the outdoor concert season. "GrouponLive will sell tickets to Live Nation concerts, as well as for companies that sell tickets for concerts, sports, plays and other events through the Live Nation-owned Ticketmaster," the article says.

You can sign up for GrouponLive at www.groupon.com/live.

The live music industry has been clobbered the last few years. While some big-name acts have done well, many others have had to pare back or cancel their tours. Live Nation is no doubt hoping to use discounts to boost sales that have slowed in part due to what's perceived as ticket prices that are too high in a soft economy. There was widespread discounting at outdoor venue shows last summer, with places such as New Jersey's PNC Arts Center offering $40 lawn tickets for $10 for some shows.