Weird Al To Release Songs As He Records Them 333
slapout writes "Weird Al has announced that with the Internet he can now release his songs for sale as he records each one rather than waiting for a whole album to be produced."
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Weird Al To Release Songs As He Records Them
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He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
"physical media" on the way out? (Score:5, Interesting)
It might not be too long before the physical album is like the TV series collectors sets - you only get them if you want the nice boxes and "official" stamp.
Re: "physical media" on the way out? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think my kids (2 and 4 now) will find the whole notion of physical media for consumable media ridiculous.
Once (hopeful here) this silly DRM thing is over and prices are low enough for piracy to be less attractive physical media will simply become impractical.
Sure, there will always be the collectors who keep stuff for whatever reason, but most people are only after the music/video/whatever...
The rise of the "channel" (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't really a surprise and its something that matches well with the podcast & channel concepts that are a major way that people track stuff they are interested in. For "traditional" bands who want a full album around a concept then it doesn't make any sense but for pop bands and satire/comedy it fits perfectly with the sort of instant response and dispose way that people consume the music today. Something like the "Multi-pass" concept on iTunes makes perfect sense for areas where people are interested in a given area and its responsive to current events (The Daily Show for instance).
Its not the death of the album for long term bands but it is the sort of direction that singles chart targeted artists and media companies will want to go after. You can easily see a music company creating a channel around their latest factory bands and having snippets in there to get people to go and buy a single track and keep updating it with the latest "hot" genetically engineered concept band every week, or day.
For someone like Wierd Al who works on parody its ideal to have the parody available while the original is still popular, especially if it could be seen as a counter culture to the manufactured band. Lets face it if there was a piece of crap at the top of the Billboard wouldn't it be funny to see a parody of the piece of crap at number one the following week? Its the sort of thing that short term internet crazes are made of.
Smart move and not at all weird. Now if he'd said he was only going to release his next album on vinyl then THAT would have been genuinely weird.
Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't really a progressive move as you think. (Score:5, Interesting)
So it sounds like a great idea. As soon as a track is mastered zip, out onto the Internet it goes, to an online store like iTunes most likely.
Why is that a problem? Well, for one, when you buy an album (assuming it isn't DRMed to hell), you get a perfect digital copy of the recording. Off iTunes or any of the like you're just not getting the same audio quality.
More importantly, however, the real reason behind this move is obvious -- BitTorrent. BitTorrent works best for large packages of files -- say, full albums in MP3 or FLAC form for the audiophiles :P If he's releasing one song at a time and someone wants to throw it up on The Pirate Bay as they're wont to do, they'll have to create a separate torrent for each single release...typically more people are going to be seeding than leeching, and since it's a small file, it'll very quickly become slower and slower to -get- that small file simply due to the fact that people are closing their clients as soon as they've got it.
It's a nice gesture on his part, but I don't think that people should take it without a grain of salt. If you look carefully enough there's potential financial motivations for making this decision as well, and it may actually -limit- your options as a consumer.
Re:Just because he can... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:first post (Score:4, Interesting)
I got introduced to Weird Al's music in Math camp when I was wee lad nearly 30 years ago. I very much associated him with nerdiness.
And now, I get to introduce it to my kids. Right now, Amish Paradise is their favorite, although my 3-year-old can already sing certain parts of 'Pentiums'.
Re:Just because he can... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Probably will be great for him (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus, if he seeks permission (he used to sometimes) it'd be easier to get when something's no longer hot. Very new, and they won't want it made fun of. Older, and the parody can bring the original back up the chart.
That's an interesting point, but he isn't going to run out of available material to parody any time soon. And as far as I'm aware, he always asks permission from the artist before doing a parody of their song, even though legally he doesn't have to. I've always respected that about his work.
Re:Misleading title. (Score:1, Interesting)
Well played, Mr. Epimenides.
Re: "physical media" on the way out? (Score:3, Interesting)
And because of that, there will no longer be the *need* to make albums that people are likely to listen to for their entire lives.
I sincerely hope you're wrong. Some of my favorite music is stuff I hated as a kid (John Lee Hooker, Little Walter, old jazz from the '30s and '40s), some of the stuff I hated as a kid I hate even more (the Archies, most of the Beach Boys), and most of the stuff I loved as an older teen and young adult I still love (Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Beatles, Van Halen, Ted Nugent).
I fear you may be right, however. The only band formed this century I'd even consider paying for is Buckcherry.
I've bought a lot of CDs from local bands, however. Most of the stuff I like these days they don't play on the radio. Perhaps it's because Clearchannel bought out all the stations?
This is why a lot of youngsters these days have a perception that albums only have one or two good tracks on them - because that is actually the case for the trash that's forced on them by advertising.
It was always pretty much that way. I was seventeen in sixty nine, and learned early to NEVER buy an album on the basis of a song on the radio. I'd buy "best of", "greatest hits", and live albums because I knew that there would usually be an album full of good stuff, whereas if I bought an album because of one song, I was lucky if it had two good songs.
Re:Just because he can... (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>if he just picks two sizes that work out mathematically
We're talking about a *general* concept, not precision. Even if we assume somebody's downloading the 4-floppy Space Ace game to their Commodore Amiga PC, which would require 4 hours at then-common 2400 baud rates, it's still close to how long a game download takes today. It's within an order of magnitude.
This is in direct opposition to what many experts were saying in 1995. They claimed the internet had reached a natural speed-limit of 33k, and would not go any faster. Obviously they were wrong, but if their predictions had been accurate, then downloading a modern DVD game would require 270 hours (almost 12 days)!!!
Clearly the so-called experts of 1995 were wrong.
And I think Comcast's current prognostications of
"running out of internet" are equally wrong. It's just a bunch of FUD.