Small Fish, Big Pond

Sorry I’m diverting to the Japanese Idol Pop music world for a bit.

As is popular in Japan among celebrities Erika Miyoshi has her own blog now. Mostly odd “currently doing” type posts right now, I guess she’s learning sign language. Surprisingly she’s not on Ameblog like Yaguchi or Star Blog (oricon) like Satoda. Instead she’s on Gree with Kago Ai , who knows what that means.

80% of the people reading this probably have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s ok, the 4 of you probably came in through one of the tech links I have you can skip to the next post if you want.

For the other person who came in from one of the Japanese links, yes, I admit I like music by Hello! Project. Well some of it, mostly the older stuff. Back in its heyday Hello Project was an immense money making machine and everything about it fascinated me.

There’s not really an American comparison to make for people who don’t know. 5 losers of an American Idol style competition were given the chance to sell 50,000 singles on their own to become a real group. After selling the CDs (I have one! ) they quickly rose up the charts and made a habit of bringing in new members, splitting off side groups, and diversifying to every other type of media they could. Eventually it was a conglomerate that was pulling in billions of dollars(est), had ~50 members, and even had their own football (soccer) team.

Imagine Britney spears, and Beyonce teaming up against Christina Aguilera and Rihanna. It’s about that crazy.

Without going into too much detail and rehashing the arguments the makeup 90% of idol group forums, I don’t really see any appeal of the Project now; about 3 years ago all the life and spirit that made it so fun and interesting left. Back in the day it produced good music, had interesting members, and used them in a way that made for some hilarious entertainment; clips from one of their TV shows made it onto The Colbert Report multiple times, even SMAP hasn’t done that.

Porkchop Hats!

Anyway near the end Biyuuden was the only group left that had any interest to them. Out of all the Hello!Project groups it was probably the one I liked most, and out of the three girls Erika was probably my favorite. She seemed to have a real personality when the rest of the Project was starting to all look like cloned stereotypical idols. She was actually discovered in one of the H!P auditions looking for new members and was going to be a solo artist (similar to Miki Fujimoto before her) but after a year of nothing she was folded into Biyyuden.

Erika was definitely the best actual singer but was in as support for Ishikawa Rika who had plenty of training being an idol from her time in Morning Musume. Okada Yui was also supporting, although her biggest contribution seemed to consist of her… “pair” of talents.

Being made up of actual women (20+) and not the usual pre-teen girls that make up idol groups you could watch them without feeling like a perv. Most of the songs were on the Pop side of normal idol music so they could almost hold their own as a real group and not a manufactured group designed to take money from their fans like Musume and Berryz had evolved into.

Ok, there were some “fan service” songs too but watching hot 20 year olds in bunny costumes is alot better than watching 15 year olds in bunny costumes like AKB48.

Anyway while they were still putting out great music Up Front Agency (their owners) cut the strings and the last good H!P group died. I was actually in Japan at the time and was able to goto the farewell concert in Osaka and actually had a really good time.

Since then Ishikawa has popped up in the occasional TV program, including a recent odd vegetable promotion where it looked like she’d been punched in the eye (maybe the above Rihanna reference was too accurate). And she will be in France playing in Hangry&Angry. Yui does the occasional guest TV host for local TV stations. And Erika was in a few plays but has basically been off the radar.

Here’s hoping that this means her manager has recognized that she actually has some talent and can do something again.

Final Compilation album (yesasia)

Thanks for the heads up.

Last.fm is going to get a FM HD broadcast presence in the US starting with 4 cities. That means more Coldplay and Radiohead than you can shake a stick at! Seriously they’re pretty good with getting a feel for new up and coming artists although the overall charts logically closely resemble a top 40 list.

Unfortunately that means that Ensiferum, The Tossers, and Street Dogs will probably not make an appearance. But it’s still good to have a terrestrial radio station that has music crowd sourced from millions of worldwide listeners rather than a pair of cocaine addled Clear Channel DJ’s playing whatever the recording industry pays them to.

Obviously the radio goes one way so you can’t scrobble your listens so I personally stick with my WM Phone playing music I like and scrobbling it real time over 3G. But it’s good news for normal radio users to at least be able to listen to the overall stream.

However I would still rather they be spending all their time and money getting access to Avex, Universal J, and Sony Music’s catalogs but I know I’m in the minority there.

Disclosure:
I’m a moderator at last.fm so I’m obviously biased in my opinion, ironically
I’m even wearing my last.fm shirt today (sorry, they don’t sell them, it was a gift from the staff). But my enthusiasm isn’t because I was paid or given a shirt, it’s because it’s a really great site for tracking your music habits and discovering new music.

Simply put, Japan’s attitudes to copyright are baffling.

The news via Ars is that “Japanese RIAA wants server-side music DRM for mobile phones.”
So anytime you listen to music on your phone it checks online with a central repository to see if you have the rights to play the song.

It’s mind blowing on so many levels.

First is the gall of any organization to try to pull this. Second is the massive amount of backend resources to log everybody’s DRM rights. And third the huge potential for failure rendering everybody’s legally purchased music worthless. Even though it’s not addressed I’m going to assume they’re smart enough to ignore tracks ripped from legally purchased CD and played on mobile phones. Otherwise multiply the audaciousness of the above list tenfold.

But what really interests me is how this speaks of the differences between culture in Japan and the US.

That there is even a possibility for RIAJ to suggest this speaks volumes about Japanese culture and the adage “The nail that sticks up is the first to be hammered down.” RIAA in the US would love this kind of thing but they know that the public would eviscerate them the moment they even hint at it as a possibility. In Japan I still don’t think they’ll allow it but nationally people are submissive enough towards authority that it actually makes it on the table. “If it’s the law follow it and change it through low pressure means, don’t make waves.”

Next is the incredibly lax copyright respect given to western music on TV and Japanese media. Watch Japanese TV for 20 minutes and you’ll hear a few music clips from western music; watch another 20 minutes and you’ll hear clips played by bands that most definitely did not give permission for the show to play their music. In the US copyright lawyers start circling the waters if you play as small as a three cord riff from a popular song (which speaks volumes of US propensity to litigate). However I think there may be a copyright law that says that you can sample on TV so long as it’s less than 30 seconds, or maybe that only applies to covering another artist’s works. Either way a lot of indie bands get a lot of uncompensated play in Japan.

Another oddity is the fact that piracy in Japan is so much less of a problem than it is in the US. While it’s not non-existent, Japanese people are generally much less inclined to illegally download music. Which is amazing considering how overpriced the music is brand new: $10 for singles, $20 for albums, $30-40 for limited edition albums!
Possibly tempering this is the fact that Japanese youth are less PC oriented and more Mobile Phone savvy. That keeps the act of running torrent servers more in the realm of the tech geeks rather than the everyday Japanese youth. So why in the world would the RIAJ think of such a restrictive process for controlling music?

But the real mind boggler is the fact that even though few people pirate music, when it does happen it’s quite blatant. In Japan they have DVD rental shops just like in the US, but in Japan they also have CDs for rent at the shops. It’s a prime place to get exposure for all the latest releases and will always have new hits the day they drop.

Ok that’s no so shocking but the kicker is that in additional to all your DVD and CD renting needs, the shops also sell all the blank CD, DVD, and MiniDisc’s that you need.

Put two and two together. It’s like one stop shopping for the CD ripping pirate. The icing on the cake is that they have hourly rentals, just enough time to go home, rip, and come back. I took a picture when I was there to prove it because I just couldn’t believe the audacity.

(Sorry the picture is a bit clandestine, I thought I might get in trouble for taking it).

For more check out this interesting article about why RIAJ looks the other way over CD Rental ripping.

So why, with all things considered, is RIAJ thinking of such a draconian scheme as locking down all digital music copies on Mobile Phones?

The digital world opens up some awesome potential for making a simple format like audio into a more interactive and dynamic format. The iTunes LP is an idea that while honorable, falls flat. First off if you’re like me and you think iTunes needs to die by fire, here’s a rundown primer of how it works.

The good:

1. DRM free, high quality tracks.

2. Music videos (however, not sure how many).

The Bad:

1. No DRM but iTunes only. It might as well be DRM if you can’t play with anything but iTunes.

2. 256kbps AAC is good but not lossless. If it costs more and its meant to be a full LP it should have all the same benefits as buying a physical LP.
3. Costs more for the same things you get free through other sources like last.fm.
4. Not portable.
5. Bad implementation. Hijacks your iTunes.

While the digital world opens a lot of doors almost nobody listening to music ever bothers to invest this much time into music ONLY. Let’s face it; music is basically a background soundtrack to our lives. We listen in the car while driving or have music play while we surf the net, play video games, while you cook, clean house, or run in the park. Apart from watching music videos on youtube, people rarely stare at the screen watching music related videos and music related pictures while you listen to said music. You may listen to a lot of music but how much time do you spend listening and watching the virtualizer make pretty images on your screen?

Even with physical media I only look at the liner notes and read lyrics the first time I listen to an album. I’m not against add-ons to albums, I think it’s a great way to enrich the music purchase but this is a poor way of doing it. The problems is that digitally people aren’t as interested in the add-ons.

In the physical realm I like that I can get a limited edition CD with bonus features the normal CD doesn’t have (actually this is still uncommon in the US market but common overseas). In most cases the bonus consists of more tracks, and usually a companion DVD. To total package of a physical “Limited Edition” is: music, lyrics, liner notes, pictures, music videos, “making of” videos, bonus tracks, and often posters or even t-shirts in some cases.

For this Digital version they’re treating the lyrics and pictures like they’re bonus material even though they’re standard on a normal CD. The addition of music videos is good. But the visualizers and flashy screens are just fluff. And we still don’t get bonus tracks. Plus it’s not a lossless copy, if it was FLAC I could buy the LP online and burn it to Disc for those times I do want a physical copy. We can go Physical -> Digital without loss, why not Digital -> Physical?

Then there is the portability issue. If I buy tracks on iTunes I can take them on the bus with an iPod, but the fancy additions stay on the computer. While the tracks are DRM free and can be converted to non-apple formats for other players the additional features are locked to iTunes or Safari (no WMP WinAmp, Firefox, or Amarok). Although Jay says you can hack the videos out, that shouldn’t be necessary. The labels should sell the tracks so that I can play them on any player, the videos should be a standard file type that can be played on any player as well. Then all of our video capable media players can be filled with a video playlist, not just an audio playlist. So long as everything is Apple proprietary this isn’t possible.

The final reason this won’t work is that it doesn’t solve the core reason that people online only buy music a track at a time. People are sick of 2-3 good tracks and 10 “filler tracks” that are unwanted.

For getting people to buy LP’s instead of individual tracks EVERY full album purchase on iTunes should come like this by default at the normal album price. This is what iTunes should have been doing from the get-go to entice us into putting up with those 10 filler tracks. As a more expensive version of an normal track only album it’s not worth it.

6 months from now I’m sure Apple will tout how this has revolutionized music and now the new tablet will make more use of it; and people will eat it up. But in reality labels will be rumbling that it’s not making a noticeable difference and while many iTunes LPs will have been sold it will still pale in comparison to normal track sales. 2-3 years from now they will fade away and be forgotten as another failed experiment to change with the times.

Yes, another collaboration “Youth on the Road” to be released 10/21. This time with “The Collectors”. Here’s a translation from Google (I’d clean it up but my Japanese isn’t great and you can get the gist).

“Rock plan titled” BEAT CRUSADERS, New Rote’ka, the first anniversary activities Mellon has collaborated with artists Midori 4 has decided to collaborate Collector’s series.
Single “Youth on the Road” to 10/21 (Wed) will be released nationwide at Tower Records. Lyrics / Music: Hisashi Kato, produced: Hitoshi Yoshida, music: THE COLLECTORS by Pre-one songs.
Melon Kinenbi’s official blog, click here.
Melon Day Event hosted by the conjunction “MELON LONGE” also appeared in the decision. 10/17 (Sat) will be held at Harajuku Astro Hall. See “SCHEDULE” Please see the page.

The last few collabs have been with Punk bands and I’ve loved them, The Collectors (not the 60’s Canadian psychedelic group) are more of a Mod-Rock group that has been playing in Japan since the late 80’s. I’ve never heard the The Collectors so it will be interesting to see if it appeals to me as much as the recent Punk bands.

I’m just really shocked how Mellon Kinenbi has gone from being a part of one of the most over produced organization in Japanese music to jumping with both feet into more independent rock scene. It’s hard to think of an American example that would be as drastic of a change. Maybe if Justin Timberlake started touring with Iron and Wine or something like that.

Check out the Previous Collaborations here and here.

I’ve been listening to the last few singles and album of the new Avex artist “Girl Next Door” at first they really seem similar to the upbeat (non ballad) songs and remixes by “Every Little Thing” that I like with an upbeat dance pop sound. These dance/eurobeat style songs are the easiest Japanese pop music to get into since you can still tap your foot to the beat even if you can’t understand all (or any) of the words.

The problem is that beat is horribly repetitive with these guys. I’m not sure who arranges the music but the walking dance beat is identical for 90% of their songs. 1 song at a time it’s not bad at all but listening to their whole album all together is mindlessly repetitive.

So why am I talking about them. They are a produced pop group, they’re basically guaranteed placing on the Oricon just because they’re hand held to the top by big name producers, remixers, and arrangers. So it seems their first few songs have bee kind of a warm-up to get a feel for where they should be positioned musically. Their last single would arguably be considered their breakout single by hitting the #1 slot in the charts (it’s an anime intro, that gives a bigger “bump” than anything in Japan), but I still wasn’t impressed and was about to write them off and quit listening. The latest single on the other hand finally has some variety to it and may be a sign that they’ve found a niche and may be able to carve out a corner of their own in the Avex roster.

Check it out, it’s pretty good stuff. Again it really reminds me of the “Every Little Thing” except the singer Chisa has a more natural sound to her voice unlike Kaori who sounds like she’s doing damage to her vocal chords everytime the performs. Maybe that will a lot Girl Next Door to continue on now that ELT is slowing down.

Ugh, I’m sick again. At least this time it’s a real flu and not from shitty mexican food from a cheap restaurant.

To tell you the truth it’s probably from going to the free Iron & Wine concert at the Galivan on Thursday (after the Rifftrax show, which was awesome!!). The Galivan plaza was packed shoulder to shoulder, the biggest I’ve seen this year and probably ever. I’m not a fan of Iron & Wine and this show confirmed that, but I do like going to big events to do some people watching. However it looks like this time it bit me in the ass, somebody there had a bug and it’s probably spreading like wildfire among the indie-yuppies of Salt Lake City now.

Anyway reading through some news today was an article in the Mainichi News that swine flu is approaching epidemic levels in Japan. The part that got me was this:

Between Aug. 3 and 9, when the average reached 0.99, the total number of infections in Japan was estimated to be over 60,000. There is a high possibility that the figure has been increasing since then.
…
Analysis by public health institutes across Japan has determined that roughly 80 percent of cases are swine flu cases. Most of the remaining cases are infections of the Hong Kong A strain. The National Institute of Infectious Diseases estimates that almost all of the people infected from July onwards have been infected with swine flu.

80% of the cases are swine flu! If that same stat holds true for America that mean I have a 4 in 5 chance of having swine flu!

Although I’m not too worried according to the CDC about 36,000 people in America die every year from flu-related causes. I’m not sure how many people have died nation wide from swine flu but considering how big of a deal the news makes when people become infected with it I think it’s still well below 36 thousand deaths. In which case I’m lucky to have swine flu, it’s less likely to kill me than the regular flu.

Anyway it seems to be hitting pretty hard in Japan too (not surprising how densely packed people are there). Maximum the Hormone had to cancel a few shows because the lead singer caught H1N1 (check’em out, it’s one of my favorite Japanese bands). And six of the thousands of AKB48 members have been stricken with the flu as well (they’re an Idol Group similar to Hello!Project).

Now that I finally have my latest Cisco Certification passed I have more time to get back to recreation related posts so I can focus on some music a bit more. Although I was tipped to this from a tech blog [gizmodo] so I guess it’s a crossover.

4 Years of careful digital re-mastering of the Beatles master tapes is finally coming to fruition (no, not a remix like the Love album).

The albums have been remastered by a team of EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London, using original vintage analog equipment and the latest digital conversion systems. After a long time of initial testing, the digital transfer of the original analogue master tapes was done—one track at a time—using a Prism A-D converter and Pro Tools operating at 24-bit with 192kHz resolution. The tapes didn’t have any defects, but they were covered with dust, which had to be carefully removed from the playback equipment after each theme was digitized.

The teams—Paul Hicks, Sean Magee with Guy Massey and Steve Rooke for the mono albums, and Guy Massey, Steve Rooke, Sam Okell with Paul Hicks and Sean Magee for the stereo ones—put extra care on keeping every single bit of detail from the original tapes intact, including electrical clicks, microphone pops, and even bad edits. The whole process was painfully long, four entire years from start to finish, with the teams obsessed with keeping the spirit and quality of the original recordings intact.

I won’t bother to get into the CD vs LP sound quality debate other than I prefer CDs. Oh hell with it-
It doesn’t matter that LPs are analog, the master tapes themselves are digital so at least one point of the recording process the sound is sampled from its original analog source.
LPs are Analog->Digital->Analog
CDs are Analog->Digital->Digital
Assuming that the CDs are created with the proper standards they can be more true to the original recording than LPs (less conversions of conversions). Which is a moot point because the speakers you play music through can’t react fast enough to reproduce a digital “sawtooth” signal; they naturally blur the digital sample wave back to a smooth analog wave anyway.
And never mind the fact that the LPs is such a delicate format that the very act of listening to an LP slowly destroys the sound quality; even the humidity in the air can affect needle and thus the sound coming from an LP.
On the other hand CD’s digitized info is identical every time it’s played, CDs have error correction algorithms that can remove (to a point) the effect of surface imperfections, environmental effects, and scratches. CDs are the best personal physical music storage medium available now (Let’s leave SACD, DVD, etc. out of this for simplicity).

Sorry. I’ve been through enough arguments with “Audiophiles” that I had to get that off my chest.
These new CD releases are going to be as accurate to the original recordings as possible. Imagine being able to own and listen to the Beatles entire history sounding exactly as they sounded when they were recorded at the studio. Plus the first 4 Beatles albums will be in CD Stereo for the first time! They say they had to do a bit of peak limiting on the stereo versions to keep the volume somewhat consistent but so long as they don’t blow the gain through the roof like most modern CDs I won’t mind a bit of consistency.

I’m also very curious how they will sound when compared to the 1981 MFSL releases that did essentially the same thing. Will the CD versions using 2009 technology compare or surpass LPs using 1980 technology?

Over the years I’ve owned and lost or traded most of the Beatles catalogue, and my parents still own their original LPs of Help! and Abbey Road. I think it’s time to get the complete set to keep for posterity’s sake so I’ll always have the complete works of the #1 most influential, and famous rock band of all time.

Amazon has the Stereo set up for pre-order, I’m sure the Mono version will follow soon.

Toots and the Maytals in Salt Lake City
Originally uploaded by Kerensky97

Another Twilight concert. I need to start putting my attendance for these in last.fm but I never know I’m going till just minutes before. It’s great those few times that SLC starts to show some semblance of a nightlife.

After the show chilling out with the night crew downtown reminds you that any where YOU are is where "the party’s at".

Polishing a turd” sounds like an odd euphemism, like “Pinching a loaf”.

Reuters just published some additional info on “Cocktail” the new music agreement between Apple and the Big record labels. They verify my fears from the end of my previous post, they’re just going to polish the latest Blink182 turd with some pictures and digital content and expect us to think it’s better music. Oh, and charge you more for it than a traditional album, let’s not forget that.

Plus TechCrunch is musing that “Cocktails” may be small apps that are the albums themselves, that create a package of music and album related comment. This is almost exactly like my fears that they will be like those shitty Shockwave apps that are sometimes bundled with CDs as “Interactive content”. The very name makes me think that TechCrunch is onto something; I wouldn’t doubt this all a way to start marketing musical “Cocktails” to people. I can hear Jobs keynote speech already, “First we revolutionized music by making it portable with the iPod. Then we discovered a new feature to help you sort music called “Shuffle”. Then we gave you a way to carry music on your phone and still charge you $0.99 for an additional 30 second ringtone. Now we will revolutionize music again by turning music into an app that can’t use that archaic shuffle feature some moron came up with.”

Anyway, Cocktail smells. Smells bad. Smells real bad.

From Reuters via TechCrunch.

I haven’t been to a Twilight Concert this year but they’re always packed. Today especially with Awesome Color and Sonic Youth playing.

That’s right! Sonic Youth for free at a “chilled out”, outdoor venue suckers!

Although i’m not paying $5 for 6oz of beer. Thats highway robbery, especially when Murphy’s is across the street and there is no more club charges.

I’m loving this song.

It’s upbeat, fun to listen to, fun to watch, simple, and puts you in a good energetic mood. I haven’t listened to Asia Engineer too much but I think I’m going to have to check them out more. It also features Haruna Ai, everybody’s favorite transgender Taranto. Seriously, I didn’t like her when she started with her Aya Matsuura bit but now that she has moved off that she’s funny.

Also looks to be a cross promotion with Fanta. “MOMI MOMI” being the vocalized word to squeeze something but I’ve only heard it used in references to squeezing breasts. But I may be just traveling in the wrong circles as it seems to be used here for a squeeze bottle for a fanta drink.

Drawback is that it isn’t out until August 19th. But it’s already available for preorder:
target="_blank">
YesAsia

From the CD Catalog number it looks like ASia Engineer is on Rhythm Zone along with

target="_blank">Koda Kumi and Maki Goto.

Yes, it’s probably going to fail just as hard as you think it will. Album sales are sucking in the physical format, how will they survive in the digital format where the individual track is king?

It won’t. This is the same tired dream that has been talked about and failed before.

While I totally support the Album format it just isn’t well balanced for online sales. The problem is that nobody trusts albums anymore; so many years of selling albums with 2 good tracks and 10 filler tracks has lead people to distrust the big labels when it comes to music. The only reason albums still sell in America is that they don’t market singles here.

Too bad too, an album that is 90% filler isn’t the album format’s fault, it’s the fault of the producers and labels that crank out BS. I’ve talked a few times about how physical sales could become more attractive to consumers (that old post reminds me I need to get that “Switch” single.) It’s easy to find good albums that are full of great content from start to finish that even flow from song to create a real musical experience. They usually just come from smaller independent bands who have to rely on good music to make sales. One reason “cocktail” will fail is that it’s a collaboration between Apple and those big labels that crank out crap, only now it will be digital crap.

The main reason this is a bad idea is that online digital liner notes and images don’t have any appeal. I can goto last.fm for all the bios and images I need, and a plugin that feeds lyrics gets the rest of the liner notes. Besides when I’m on my computer listening I don’t want desktop real-estate taken up with static images or text, it’s just a background soundtrack for my actions. And if you cram this stuff into an iPod screen there will be no room to really see anything.
When people listen to music they don’t stare at the album art while they listen; they just queue up the track and pop the iPod back in their pocket while the stare wistfully out the window of the bus.

Digital format can only really be enhanced by adding video, and it can excel at this as I’ve mentioned in other writings I’ve made. But this can be done just as easily with singles, so it’s not really going to help the online album format any more. All the efforts the big labels are working on would work better in the physical format. In fact that YesAsia link I put above for the limited edition of “Switch” proves the point, it already has the lyrics and typical liner notes, adds in additional promotional photo shoot pictures, a DVD with the song’s music video and “making of” video, plus the commercial advertising the song. Suddenly having a physical copy seems a lot more interesting than a song with DRM locked flash programs attached.

Which is another big point, many CDs have been enriched with digital content that comes in the form of a DRM laden, bloated, adobe flash or shockwave piece-o-crap. Or worse some proprietary program that is nothing more than legal malware screwing up your computer. And you know that whatever way they use to display all this additional content it will be locked down with DRM just like those “enhanced content” CDs.

The idea of enriching music is a good one, but big labels aren’t smart enough to make it happen in a meaningful or useful way. Online all the things you can add are usually already available through other sources, the only appeal is to give you something you can keep on your hard-drive for offline use. If the big labels want to revive the album, make albums that aren’t 90% filler; make them so that when listened to as a whole the album becomes more than the sum of their parts. Songs that lead well into other songs, or songs that through the album tell a story or take the listener through a series of emotional experiences. It takes more work and talent but that is what they need to increase sales; don’t just polish the latest Blink182 turd with some pictures and expect us to think it’s better.

Thanks to Ars Technica and the many other blogs reporting this.

BTW: I’m planning on addressing the Apple tablet issue in another post.

One of my gripes at concerts are the people who try to record video with their cell phones. You see them in the crowd holding their iPhones over their heads trying to record a clip so they can post it on MySpace/Facebook/Friendface to show how cool they are to all their friends.

The problem is that the microphone recording the sound is the size of a pencil eraser and the concert already has deafeningly over-amped music to begin with; so you end up with a grainy shaky video that has such distorted sound you can’t make out a single word.

I’m thinking the ?Zoom Q3 Handy Video Recorder was created for these exact circumstances. It focuses in getting good sound sacrificing video to only VGA resolution. But this makes it the perfect camcorder for uploading video to the net and even includes software to assist in Youtube uploads.

If you regularly record concert video and upload it to the net, do us and yourselves a favor and get this camcorder.

Thanks engadget

The Hype Machine…

A music chart where your vote is stronger if you have more twitter followers? Even when it’s not being “Rick Rolled” this is a bad idea. One person, one vote has its flaws but its still light years better than this.

Another plug for my friends at Last.fm where you can get less biased charts and charts that adapt based upon what artist you’re looking at.