After Radiohead released their Album on this (inrainbows.com) site, full album download available for an amount of your choice (from free - x), they are now making Live video recordings available as well. You will got them on iTunes first but the live recordings also aired on VH1.
It will be bery interesting where they want to take it from here.

Below you’ll find the full email from them:

RADIOHEAD IN RAINBOWS FROM THE BASEMENT

Exclusive Live Videos Set Available on iTunes June 24th
Radiohead are releasing ten live performance videos recorded at The
Hospital studio in Covent Garden, with the team from the band’s
longtime producer Nigel Godrich’s ‘From the Basement’ TV show
(http://www.fromthebasement.tv/).

The collection will debut exclusively through iTunes beginning today,
June 24th. The videos feature live renditions of songs from ‘In
Rainbows’ and its bonus CD included in its deluxe discbox edition.
The full track listing of video performances is:
.
Bodysnatchers
House of Cards
Nude
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
15 Step
Reckoner
Go Slowly
Videotape
Bangers & Mash
All I Need

Captured in a day, with direction by David Barnard and sound by Nigel
Godrich, the videos represent the best recorded representation of
Radiohead’s live performance to date. 

The recordings were also aired on VH1 and the videos are available on the site here: Radiohead - In Rainbows - From the basement
More great artists and recordings (White Stripes, Beck, Sonic Youth, etc.) are available at From the Basement as well. Check ‘em out.

What I find very interesting is the fact that they chose iTunes to publish their recordings and did not make them available on their original site, were they also released the album. What do you think of all this?

—- Update —

And they are now featured on Google Code with their video / making of: RA DIOHEA_D / HOU SE OF_C ARDS

WIRED MAGAZINE has a very interesting and in depth article in ISSUE 16.01, called Secret Websites, Coded Messages: The New World of Immersive Games. Below you will find a short excerpt:

On February 10, 2007, the first night of Nine Inch Nails’ European tour, T-shirts went on sale at a 19th-century Lisbon concert hall with what looked to be a printing error: Random letters in the tour schedule on the back seemed slightly boldfaced. Then a 27-year-old Lisbon photographer named Nuno Foros realized that, strung together, the boldface letters spelled “i am trying to believe.” Foros posted a photo of his T-shirt on the Spiral, the Nine Inch Nails fan forum. People started typing “iamtryingtobelieve.com” into their Web browsers. That led them to a site denouncing something called Parepin, a drug apparently introduced into the US water supply. Ostensibly, Parepin was an antidote to bioterror agents, but in reality, the page declared, it was part of a government plot to confuse and sedate citizens. Email sent to the site’s contact link generated a cryptic auto-response: “I’m drinking the water. So should you.” Online, fans worldwide debated what this had to do with Nine Inch Nails. A setup for the next album? Some kind of interactive game? Or what?

A very interesting read and it shows the new ways used by marketeers to deeply involve the target group in the marketing campaign, make them part “of the story”. The TV show LOST is another example of this, combining many different “media channels”, but all using the Internet to integrate all of them.

Do you have other examples? Leave a comment!

In a recent blog post, Moby is offering some of his music to be used in films for free!
All you need to do is to go to his site and register. This shows another move from a well-known artist to make his music (or at least parts of it) available for film makers. I want to advocate the use of this broadminded offer from Moby to everyone out there working on a non-comercial (short-)film!

Below you find the excerpt from his site:

hi,
i’ll keep this brief.
this portion of moby.com, ‘film music’, is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.
to use the site you log in(or on?) and are then given a password. you can then listen to the available music and download whatever you want to use in your film or video or short.
the music is free as long as it’s being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short.
if you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that’s generated being given to the humane society.
i hope that you find what you’re looking for,
moby

Check out the website here
http://www.mobygratis.com/film-music.html

BTW: His main site is worth a visit for sure: www.moby.com! A really funny front page. I love it!

Marc Andreessen has written a very interesting post about the current writer’s strike in Hollywood.

The writers’ strike, and the studios’ response to the strike, may radically accelerate a structural shift in the media industry — a shift of power from studios and conglomerates towards creators and talent.

We all stay tuned what the outcome will look like and if this really accelerates the shit he describes in his post.

Ze Frank says:

Download Link: Ze Frank on the Hollywood writers’ strike.

Let me know if you find other interesting articles about this topic!

… by Christmas 2006 reports Reuters:

Microsoft will start selling a wireless digital music and video player to compete with Apple’s iPod by Christmas, sources close to the matter said on Wednesday.

The big difference is that it will be wireless enabled. Let’s see what Apple is coming up with to respond to this effort from Microsoft

JupiterResearch Finds That MySpace Music Community Activity Far Outpaces Online Music Sites:

Jupiter says that Communities influence music choice and discovery far more than Online stores or e.g. MTV.com. Take MySpace: it seems more “real” to people searching and discovering music. You also find MySpace band pages through you friends what implies a higher trust.

Have you already used this way to find new “stuff”?

I am now using Songbird for some month to play my music. And wanted to use my blog to maybe add some more people to the user base! Try it out!They are still working on a bug in Mozilla Firefox getting fixed to move on…

Firefox is the base for Songbird and extending it to a music player. And it is open source, too!!

Some call it the iTunes killer… Can you say that with Songbird being version 0.1.1? Let me know!

The music industry is still unsure if they should change anything in their business model or move into completely new territory.
This article in “FAST Company” with statements from the music industry is showing that there is some movement happening: Fast Talk: Sounds of the Future

And new music matching services are coming up and grow in usage: Last.FM or Pandora (Article in FAST Company: Algorhythm and Blues)

But until now mostly the only real change that we have seen remains the added copy protection to the music disc….. Or?