Have you heard of the latest reincarnation of the music siteLala.com? Yeah, me neither, but according to their site Lala is a hub for you to listen to “any song or album once in full for free…Add the web song (unlimited online plays) for 10 cents, or get the MP3 download for 70 cents more.”
According to an EMI press release, they have signed agreements with all the major record labels (EMI Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group) in addition to 170,000+ independent record companies to license the music on the site. In addition to that, according to The Associated Press the site is backed by some BIG money: $35 million in venture capital to be exact, coming from the pockets of Bain Capital LLC, Ignition Partners, and Warner Music Group Corp.
So it’s a cash-flush site that aims to please corporate and independent music entities by allowing people to pay for the music they want to listen to on the internet–and (hopefully) some of that money gets put in the pockets of the artists who create these works.
While Lala seems to be very concerned with the rights of musicians and big corporations, they clearly do not have the same amount of care for the rights of photographers. Yesterday (one day after Lala had their relaunch) it was brought to my attention that a bunch of concert photographers recently discovered that their copyrighted work was being used on the Lala artists page without their permission. I was included in this bunch, as shown above with my Ryan Adams picture (natch).
It seems as though the Lala team had searched through Flickr, downloaded, resized, and cropped photos they liked and decided to re-upload the newly altered images and host them on their own site for the purpose of adding artwork to their artist pages–without contacting most of the photographers whose work they were lifting. Irregardless of the fact that almost all the photos they snatched were NOT marked as Creative Commons allowing commercial usage. So if this is the case, that means countless numbers of artist photos you see on their site ( on landing pages and thumbnails all over site) are actually STOLEN PROPERTY.
So it was rumored on Brooklyn Vegan, the secret Ryan Adams show DID happen around 4:30pm at Cafe Select on Lafayette Street. It was webcast live in the Cardinal Cave, although judging from what could be seen on-site, the laptop that was streaming the show kept crashing and the broadcast probably cut in and out.
The site of the stripped down show was a mid-sized snack/coffee shop, with perhaps no more than 100 people sitting down in the space. Chairs were brought out in the walk-through aisle so people in the front could sit down and folks in the back could see.
Ryan strolled in after 4 wearing a blue windbreaker, a rock t, jeans, dark rimmed glasses, rainbow colored socks, and his signature brown hair all in a tizzy. He and his band strummed out a number of tunes off the new album including “Evergreen” and “Fix It.”
Video of banter and “Fix It” (sorry it’s so dark… there wasn’t a lot of light there):
Before I head off to sleepy land, I had to share this with the rest of the world. Methinks this video is just BEGGING for some kind of video remix action. Seriously… does Chris have ants in his pants? Taken at tonight’s Coldplay show at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, NJ:
Nothing Earth-shattering happened at the show… typical set list, although for some reason “Speed of Sound” really spoke to me today. The entire STADIUM was scary shaking during “Viva La Vida.” Seriously SHAKING because everyone was flipping out over the song. One encore song (“Yellow”, of course).
All the CMJ-ing has been a hazard to my health, as a result I got a horrible sore throat on Friday afternoon which basically put the kibosh on all my CMJ plans this weekend. However, my friends were a bit more fortunate with their health, and they were able to enjoy some of this weekend’s festivities.
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: SORRY, THIS SHOW HAS BEEN CANCELED!!! Bummer, I know… but I guess you can now see High School Musical 3.
So the weather forecast looks bleak for Saturday, putting a kibosh on our ATJ outdoor concert venue, The Yard. Thankfully, there’s a new INDOOR venue for you to head to, The Market Hotel at 1142 Myrtle Ave @ Broadway. It’s in Bushwick, Brooklyn and it starts at 12pm and ends PROMPTLY at 7pm.
Bands playing: Fight Bite, High Places, the Homosexuals, Women, Bearsuit, MBAR, Passion Pit, the Ruby Suns, Crystal Stilts.
It’s an unofficial CMJ show. Admission is $10. HOWEVER, flash your CMJ badge and you will receive a reduced admission (aka “FREE”). But get their early, we’ll only be allowing a limited number of badges in gratis.
Strokes bassist Nikolai Fraiture performed tonight with his new pet project/band, Nickel Eye. They played a number of songs, including “Back from Exile”:
and “Brandy of the Damned”:
Unless I missed something, no other Strokes appeared at the Music Hall tonight.
The first song the band played was my favorite… airy, with beautiful harmonies sung by Joel Cadbury and Jamie McDonald of South. (They flew over from England in order to play the show!)
The crowd was far from packed, but there were a good number of people there—surprisingly the crowd looked pretty young (were all the older-timers out in Manhattan?) with a disproportionate amount of Asian girls up in the front.
One blonde girl, who I think likened herself to being the Brooklyn version of Miley Cyrus was hooting and hollering at Nikolai the whole time, shouting out things like “I LUUUUVVV YOUUUU NIIIKOOOOLAAAIIII!†and “YOU HAVE A GREAT A** NIKOLAIIIIII!†Charming, as you can imagine. Continue reading ‘Nickel Eye’s First US Show @ Music Hall of Williamsburg, CMJ 2008’ »
Want a guide to all the different official/unofficial CMJ parties you can crash this week? (Think free booze, good music, pandemonium, shelter from the cold.)
