industry

by Cosmo Lee Sometimes “not good” is not only good enough, it’s preferable. Jonathan Berger, a Stanford music professor, conducted tests in which students listened to the same music in different audio formats. Each year, students increasingly preferred the sound of MP3’s. (Story here and here.) He attributed this to familiarity. Older generations prefer the […]

Click to enlargeby Cosmo Lee Metal-archives.com, metal’s great database, has interesting search capabilities. I did searches for the total number of metal releases, full-lengths, and demos per year for the past 30 years. “Releases” constitute all media formats: full-lengths, demos, box sets, DVD’s, and so on. Above are the results as a graph (click to […]

Gama Bomb‘s new album, Tales from the Grave in Space, is OK. It’s well-played and well-recorded. I don’t remember any of the songs, except for one that had a cool robot voice. Like most retro thrash, it just makes me want to listen to Slayer or Exodus. Skeletron The real story is that yesterday Earache […]

Until this month, Death Metal Invasion was just another illegal download blog, with traffic far in excess of that of this site. Then it admirably switched to featuring only legal, band/label-approved downloads. Its readers revolted. People up in arms over not being able to download illegally — when the rest of the Internet is available […]

Invisible Oranges now has a Twitter presence as invisoranges. It will be a light one, a supplement to the site. For now, it will consist of useful information that doesn’t rise to the level of a blog post. Information with a time element (such as distro sales) should suit the format. (See the Twitter page […]

Bindrune Recordings is now offering downloads on a “pay what you want” basis. The label, which is affiliated with the Worm Gear zine/distro and Crionic Mind label, favors doom and black metal with a deep, ritualistic bent. I tested out its downloads store by buying Celestiial’s Desolate North. (Thanks to Dave of Metal Flows in […]

Bands should give away their first recordings for free. This idea is not new. First recordings used to be called “demos.” Bands gave away demos. People tape-traded them. They were meant to be distributed freely. If bands charged money for demos, it wasn’t much. Demos weren’t albums, and were priced accordingly. In this age of […]

Retch-ed Apple is going to start bundling interactive content with albums on iTunes. The hope is to stimulate album sales. Last year, I was on an animated album artwork kick — see here and here. At that point, I wondered why more people didn’t do it. Now the answer is obvious. It’s expensive and difficult. […]

“Music was better in the old days” is a common refrain. This is due to several reasons. Music subcultures like metal are often territorial. Old-timers are suspicious of newcomers. In metal, one must earn one’s stripes. People compete to be “old school.” Also, nostalgia is a powerful force. Every generation laments the music of the […]

Suff O))) Suffocation is the first death metal band with an iPhone app. It’s free from the iPhone App store. I gave it a whirl, and here’s what I found. The app has five sections: Home, Music, Fan Wall, News, and More. Home is a waste of space. It shows the cover to Suffocation’s new […]