Posts Tagged ‘Music’

Posted on September 17, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

The Parlotones make a Giant Mistake

If you haven’t heard the news yet then let me tell you that The Parlotones are now wine makers and last night we were privileged to attend a private, intimate launch party for their new red wine called Giant Mistake.

It is no secret that I’m a Parlotones fan-boy (as is evidenced by this post) and this once in a life time opportunity event was certainly not going to be missed by me and trust me, I had a fantastic time.

If you know me well enough then you’ll know that I am often mature beyond my years but last night I was like a teenager again. Singing, jumping, irritating Mark Bayly, asking the band for special requests, pestering Kahn for signatures and photos and just generally being an absolute nuisance. I had a blast and now have some cool signed memorabilia including a signed bottle of Giant Mistake by all the band members. Check out some of the pics from the night.

But this post isn’t all about the fun. As I mentioned on the Afrigator blog we actually got involved with The Parlotones on this and did some work with them on their new website and there’s some more exciting stuff in the pipeline.

As for the wine? Well if the crowd last night at the event are anything to go by then Giant Mistake is going to be a massive success. There wasn’t a single person who said they didn’t love the wine and if you’re a sceptic then I guess the proof will have to be in the pudding. I mean we are just human after all…

 

Posted on August 31, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Nokia and their disruptive model for the music generation

On Thursday Nokia South Africa announced their new Comes with Music range of mobile phones. This new range is not just a series of sexy mobile phones but rather a new, disruptive model to take on the entire music DRM model.

What’s particularly special about Comes with Music is that with every purchase of a new handset (see supported models) you get 12 months of unlimited access to over 5 million songs on the Nokia Music Store. This translates into 5 million songs, for free, for life.

Yes you heard correct! You can download (potentially) all 5 million songs on the Nokia Music Store free of charge for one year. Once your twelve month subscription is over the songs you’ve downloaded are yours to keep for life. (read the press release for more info).

The caveats to this are that the songs are DRM protected and can not be burned to CD and are additionally linked to your PC and mobile handset. You can share music with other Comes with Music users but you will need an additional DRM license to share or copy your music to another device – which will cost you, naturally.

I’m not entirely sure how Nokia plan to really make money off this offering. You can be assured that people will download as many tracks as humanly possible, or as Telkom bandwidth allows, and that will cost them a pretty penny in licensing rights to the artists and record labels. That said, Nokia can be assured that people will continue to buy their mobile devices as a new phone purchase renews the subscription and who’d want to lose their music collection they’ve spent downloading over the last year?

What’s particularly interesting for me is the gauntlet that has now been set to other suppliers of digital music. In particular I wonder how this model will affect iTunes and in turn iPhone sales. I’m busy using the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic device which is very iPhone-like. It has full touch screen support, a 3.2 megapixel camera, records video and comes with 4GB microSD card which can be expanded to 32GB. Granted it’s not as responsive as the iPhone but did I mention free music, for life?

With iTunes music not being available in South Africa the Comes with Music model is sure to dominate this market and potentially hinder Apple’s ability to penetrate the music crowd if/when iTunes comes to SA. In addition, sites like Amazon etc. also don’t support purchasing of music in SA so I think Nokia have the right model at the right time in this market. I honestly expect this range of mobile phones to be a hit as people will buy them just for the music access.

 

Posted on February 2, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

The Parlotones Concert

I’ve been trying to remember what the defining moment was that got me to listen to The Parlotones for the first time. Initially I thought it was a live performance I had been to but in truth it was actually as a result of a documentary I saw on SABC 3 about the band a year earlier.

The documentary was playing in the background while Colette and I did something else but I do remember telling her that almost every song that they played I really enjoyed. Needless to say a few weeks later I bought their third album A World Next Door To Yours and I’ve been a big fan ever since. I even got their Unplugged album for Christmas!

So yesterday the family and I shipped off to the Kirstenbosch Gardens for the Parlotones leg of the Old Mutual Kirstenbosch Summer Sunset Concerts.

Watching live bands is a special thing but even more so when you know all their songs so I had a fantastic time. It was Luke and Ben’s first concert and while Ben slept through most of it Luke was banging away at a tin cookie drum in tune to all the songs. You really can’t ask for a better setting than to have a family-orientated concert in a place as beautiful as Kirstenbosch Gardens. People have told me how special it is but until you experience it for yourself you really can’t appreciate it.

My only criticism of the band is that they played too much of their new stuff. They’re currently working on their latest album and they tested four of their new songs yesterday. It’s great to do this, and I’m sure many fans liked this, but I felt that during these times they lost the crowd a little because nobody knew the words. I would have limited the new songs to two and played more of the hits like Rock, Paper, Scissors (seen in the video below) which never got aired at the concert.

Apart from a fantastic concert I have to admit I was also extremely impressed with the whole organisation of the event.

We arrived at around 16:00 (gates opened at 15:30) and I was expecting chaos however this was not the case. Parking and entry into the Gardens was simple and efficient and despite being 75% full at the time we had no problem at all with finding a place and relaxing in the 30 degree heat.

Similarly, when the concert ended we experienced very little problems in getting to our car and traffic was slow but moving freely. The concert was sold out and there were allegedly over 5,000 people at the event and I have to take my hats off to the organisers (whomever you are) – you did a fantastic job.

I can’t wait to go to my next concert at the gardens! If you want to see more pics I took have a look here.

 

Posted on August 19, 2008 - by Justin Hartman

Last.fm’s Awesome New Functionality

I have a four year old. He loves music. The only problem is he loves listening to his music on my iPhone. The net result of this has been a complete dominance of kids music on my Last.fm profile. I think the graph below illustrates my point.

Now prior to the new look Last.fm site there was no way to actually ban or remove artists from your profile. I asked other Last.fm connections if this could be done but alas, there was little hope of cleaning my profile up.

The great news is that all thanks to this…

…My Last.fm profile now looks like this:

Thank you Last.fm for giving me this much needed functionality!!!

 

Posted on October 11, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

Is this the end of the Record label era?

This morning I purchased the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows, direct from their website. Lots has been written about Radiohead dumping their record company and offering their music direct to the public so I don’t want to harp on the same old stuff but what I do find interesting is the new model which is changing the music world as we know it.

The beauty of what Radiohead are doing is they’re asking the fans to decide how much they’re prepared to pay for their latest album. This means that you can pay as little as £0.01 for the DRM-free, mp3 album. Brilliance or stupidy – many will argue, but as a huge Radiohead fan I had no problem paying £10 for my digital download.

Since this bold move by Radiohead other big artists have followed suit. Nine Inch Nails, Oasis and Jamiroquai have all dropped their labels and are now offering their latest work direct to the public and I see Madonna has done the same. Each of these artists have different ideas about how this will work but the fact that they’re all fed up with their record companies speaks volumes about this archaic model.

This is the beginning of the end.