Williamsburg Music Scene Massacre! (On Law and Order: Criminal Intent) [Prefix]
MGMT Forgives the French [NME]
Imogen Heap Gives Preview Performance in Gramercy Park Hotel [SPIN]
Mika Miko’s Kate Hall Directs New Deerhoof Video [The Tripwire]
New Passion Pit “Moth’s Wings” MP3 [Prefix]
Creed’s Comeback [Rolling Stone]
Vampire Weekend Hard at Work on New LP [Pitchfork]
Hulu Ousting YouTube? [The Tripwire]
compiled by Elana Jacobs
March 16, 2009
Music Mashups Move Media
IN THE TUBE
Move over, Girl Talk. Kutiman’s the new “it boy” on the mashup scene. Ophir Kutiel, the man behind the moniker, is an Israeli-born musician and producer who has spliced together bits of material from the glut of YouTube videos available on the web to create ThruYOU. The end result is pretty fantastic, both musically and visually, and in the two or so short weeks that the site has been up, has taken the internet and social media spheres by storm. What’s most impressive about the project is that, unlike most melange masters that have come before, Kutiman’s compositions are made entirely of amateur material. No Kanye or Queen samples here. But I guess in today’s media democracy, it was only a matter of time before “Leon Trumpet High Scale” received it’s fair share of time in the limelight.
by Elana Jacobs
March 15, 2009
Do You Use YouTube for Music? Try Muziic.
VIRTUAL JUNGLE
Last year, my roommate’s hard drive crashed and he lost his entire music library. Besides re-ripping the few CDs he owned, he started to rely upon YouTube for his tunes. So regardless of his wiped hard drive, 90s-era rock was still the backdrop to him slaying ogres in the World of Warcraft.
Today, he would have a better option: Muziic.
Muziic is a new streaming program that acts as a front-end music player for all of the songs uploaded onto YouTube. As long as you have a reliable broadband connection, the downloadable program allows you to queue up any YouTube song and play it. The remarkable part is that 15-year-old David Nelson designed the program, his dad running the overall business operations.
Although the program focuses on audio playback, Muziic also streams thumbnail video feeds. In addition, it lets you create playlists out of YouTube songs, which can then be saved to your computer. More importantly, the program is unique in that it allows users to play licensing-strict artists like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Additionally, the program can be used to play all of the various live tracks on YouTube that are unavailable anywhere else.
Nelson and his father claim the program is legal, but this could change. Muziic circumvents the advertising found on YouTube, which could tick off Google. Additionally, by playing The Beatles and other similar artists, Muziic is making itself an easy target for lawsuits brought on by the music industry.
by Ben Benson
July 28, 2008
Devendra Banhart Posts New Music Video
Devendra Banhart posted a hilarious new video for the song “Carmensita” on his YouTube page. Shot in low-budget Bollywood style, Banhart plays the part of a prince who has to rescue his princess (played by real life girlfriend Natalie Portman) from an evil king. Video is after the jump.
