Sony BMG screws the Emusic indie pooch

Well unless you have been under a rock and not paying attention there has been some wheeling and dealing going on behind the emusic scenes with Sony/BMG. Like gasoline the cost of your online music is "slightly" going up to give you better service. Whaaaaaaaaaat? You mean double right Emusic? Early this year iTunes started charging a premium for some artists (1.28) and slightly less for other. Emusic is raising prices on average of 100% as they bring on the Sony/BMG catalog for releases that are two years or older. Ok fine but do i really care about Stevie Ray Vaughan at this point? Gimme Anti Records or nonesuch releases. If this is part of that plan. cool. If not it sucks.

To put it in perspective. My previous music download subscription account afforded me 65 downloads a month for $14.99 us dollars. Basically 23cents per track. The new plan I'm being forced to subscribe too is the same monthly fee for 37 tracks which is roughly 40.5 cents a track. Which is just about double what I was paying or 100% more!! I think gas prices are somehow related but we have not been able to figure out the connection yet. For albums with 12 or more tracks they are going to offer on select releases only a flat cost of just 12 download credits. The albums that already have this is limited so would be a good move by indies to think Nice Price but time will tell since all of your basic customer service plans details have not been released in full yet. You know I would have been fine with a slight increase but this is pretty harsh just so i can get me some Alicia keys. C'om on! Why not have those pop artists make better music or phase them out entirely. emusic has had over 250 Million downloads since it's launch by mostly independent artists (Remember last year we enjoyed the rolling stones on emusic for a spell).

Basically now you get 3 albums with of an avg 12 songs or more per album for 12 download credits, as opposed to 5.5 albums on old 65 luxurious download plan. Which is a 128% decrease in my subscription service. Bah hum-bug.

I'm also supposedly getting a +15 free booster track. Some legacy user with larger download plans (I imagine) will get a 25 booster pack. i wonder if this is every month or a one time thing? Because that would make it 52 tracks and 28cents a track which would be a fair rent 10% increase landlord. For those not grandfathered in the deal sucks or a least to begin with but still better than the lower 78 cent download price. I'll imagine it's a one time thing and will stick it out but the minute I start to notice the indies start to fall beneath promotion line I'll move on. I'm warning you emusic despite the single thread response the corp strategy has been to shoot the pooch first, watch them holler before responding. The internet is good like that.

Some of the Artists that are part of the Sony catalog will satisfy a lot of the alternative crowd who care about The Clash, Uncle Tupelo (sorry no wilco) and lou reed if you don't already own the damn cds!. For the older crowd you'll get Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke along with some classic rock Jefferson Airplane, Meat Loaf, Stevie Ray Vaughan, foo fighters, ben folds and some forgettable stuff as well, like kings of leon(my pov anyways), Rage against the machine. This of course is a partial list. Emusic is still the best deal out there for legal DRM free music.

What does luck have to do with it?

So the other day I'm about 4 houses away from mine and the front right wheel feels like it has a flat. Sort of turns right really hard so I mandle the steering wheel to bring it on home so I can at least be broken down in front of my home. When I jump out of the car all the wheels have their air except one is turned all crooked as if it's almost detached. Yikes! Now 10 minutes prior I was jamming down the Garden State Parkway going my usual speeds. eh-hem. What is wrong with this picture? Ya 10 minutes prior I could have bit the dust hard. Now for the fun part the guys who had replaced my struts and full front alignment are to blame. They blamed wear and tear from redoing my alignment twice before. BS. I'm very lucky to telling this tale. They didn't charge me for the redo and got it done faster than I've ever got car services. I won't drop names here because they are nice enough guys but luck has not been on my side lately. I suppose though having this incident happen to me so close to home was lucky. So next time you're a little stressed think of this simple story and don't stew over the small stuff. Life is really friggin' short. Timing is everything.

Social networks for Haters and the Karma Police

Totally odd premise for a social network site (based out of Pahrump, NV?) that is attempting to manage social karma called ventma.com by inviting the public to identify whistle blowers, call out sneaks or shall we say liars, cheaters, grifters, rapscallions, scallywags, scoundrels, shysters, sneaks, etc. Really for those folks who walk on water but on the other hand an attempt to socially level the playing field in this new age of transparency. If you're called out there seems to be a option to defend yourself. Booya for the haters and the over conscious social well adjusted individuals who always gotta be right. Some of the counter points for keeping lets say marijuana illegal, idiot managers, and are juvenile so if you're looking to get into a argument this is the place to do it. People can list their un-interests and of course see what Ventma's CEO Ryan Breen's life philosophy which is kind of short dude and not so revealing. Here's their over all premise:

All the social networking sites today are for finding and making friends. But lets be real, not everything in life is honky dory. The economy, the weather, greed, deception are all too real in today’s world. Because of these things, people act out in many ways. Some violent by action, some verbal and some self inflicted. All of these are a result from bottled up emotions. What if these people had an outlet to diffuse their anger before it came to that? We hope that as a result of Ventma.com we can accomplish just that. Even if we help just a few people this way, we will be satisfied.

They are looking PHP and Flash Developers as I guess the Hindi company they hired to do some of their work did not have karma on their side. I did find various bugs for the login and lost pw process which is problematic as could not login (PC/Firefox/Flash10)! I was seriously going to post about U.S. Companies outsourcing work to other countries in these messed economic times. Ahhh, that does feel better see! Support America's work force dummies that site would have been working properly or they should give me buzz and I can have my guys fix this site in a jiffy.



I much preferred hatebook.org when it was still active because there was no privacy at all. Everything you posted or emailed to another individual was open to all users. They say they are coming back but we'll see what happens. On the other hand there is nothing wrong with being straight up hater for everything even things we know are right. There I go being all socially pompous.

Download some hate:
Liar - Built to Spill - mp3 from you in reverse
Cheater - Bubblegum Thunder
Hateful - The Clash - London Calling
Hate Paste - Archers of Loaf