Sam’s Thoughts

Today is the day!  If you haven’t already click on the Bum Rush Now button in the post just below this one.  It’s just 99 cents to tell the RIAA where to go.

March 22nd, 2007 | Category: music, podcasting | Comments

For far too long now the big record labels that comprise the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have abused their customers and their suppliers, the musicians. They charge too much money for product, and provide a lot of crap in return. And not nearly enough of that money gets back to the poeple who created the content that makes the business possible. Now a group of podcasters are trying to organize an effort to show that the RIAA is obsolete and unnecessary. Mark Yoshimoto Nemkoff of Pacific Coast Hellway created Bum Rush the Charts. The idea is to pick one band that has made their music podsafe (available to podcasters to use on their shows free of charge), and get as many people as possible to buy one particular song on one day to try and drive the song to the top of the iTunes chart, ahead of all the stuff that the RIAA is putting out.

The band that was chosen is Black Lab and their song Mine Again. Chrisopher Penn of the Financial Aid Podcast has set up a special iTunes affiliate account and all the commissions from purchases through that link will go to the Student Loan Network iTunes account. Black Lab has also committed half of any money they make to the fund as well. So for $.99 you tell the RIAA that they can take a hike, get a great song and contribute to help some kids education. All of this is going to happen on Thursday March 22, 2007.  I’ll add the appropriate link here on Thursday morning so make sure you come back to this post then and buy the song.  thanks

March 20th, 2007 | Category: music, podcasting | Comments

For the third straight year, the organizers of the South by Southwest Festival are offering up a collection of free music by some of the hundreds of bands that are playing in Austin, TX next week. The first release for this up now, and contains 739 mp3 files of all kinds of music. The files are in one huge zip file and they can be downloaded by via bittorrent. If you haven’t already used bittorrent, head over to Azureus and grab their torrent program. Azureus runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX. Once you install Azureus, download the torrent file from here and drop it onto the Azureus window, and start downloading. It’s a big 3.1 GB file (the zip file with all the mp3s, not the torrent file, that one is small) so it will take a few hours to download if you have a fast net connection. Fortunately the nature of bittorrent is such that the more people share the faster the downloads go. After it’s done please leave Azureus open, and keep sharing with everyone else. After all, we learned in kindergarten that it’s good to share. This is all perfectly legal and the songs are released under a creative commons license so you can pass it along. Go sample the new music, you won’t be sorry!

March 3rd, 2007 | Category: music | Comments

In case you haven’t checked it out yet, Max has recorded a Mewzikcast. If you haven’t listened yet go check it out.

July 17th, 2006 | Category: music, podcasting | Comments

Max recorded MewzikCast 5 and it’s up now. Go check it out and if you like it make sure you subscribe to the feed so you don’t miss any.

July 1st, 2006 | Category: music, podcasting | Comments

In case you haven’t checked it out, Max has a couple more MewzikCast podcasts up. He’s got some really grat music on there.

June 26th, 2006 | Category: music, podcasting | Comments

The second edition of Max’s MewzikCast was posted last night. Go check it out if you want to hear some great new rock that corporate radio seems to have no interest since they cant afford the payola. If you like the show make sure you subscribe to the feed so that you get the new shows automatically when they are published.

June 17th, 2006 | Category: music, podcasting | Comments

My son Max recorded his first podcast night and I just finished posting it. It’s called the MewzikCast and as you might have guessed it’s a music show. Go check it out and subscribe to the feed if you like it. He picked out all the music himself, came up with the name and did all the talking. I just helped with the technical side. This was just his first attempt and I’m sure they will get better as he goes along. Mewzik is Music

June 8th, 2006 | Category: music, podcasting | Comments

My friend Gerry has recorded some his songs and put them up on his Myspace page. He has some great songs and is a really good guitar player. Gerry always brings his guitar along to parties and it’s to L. Ron, Ron. His music has kind of Steve Earle feel to it and I really like it. I particularly like Good of the Country. Head on over and give it a listen.

May 30th, 2006 | Category: Ypsilanti, music | Comments