Internet Music Services

Does Free Streaming Help Album Sales? It Worked for Daft Punk, At Least.

On Wednesday, May 29, Steve Knopper of rollingstone.com detailed Daft Punk's domination of the Billboard album chart with the release of its eagerly awaited Random Access Memories. The article moves into territory deeper than simple retail numbers, though. Knopper dug into the number of Spotify spin ... More >>

The Great MP3 Compromise: Credits Where Credits Are Due

Art and life co-habitate, informing, imitating, and enriching each other constantly. Each week in Better Living Through Music, RFT Music writer Ryan Wasoba explores this symbiotic relationship. For the average music listener, Mp3s are a compromise. Sound quality is traded for portability. For the ... More >>

Why Does Spotify Keep Ripping People Off?

By Emily Lundquist Ten dollars a month is a small price to pay for practically every piece of recorded music except The Beatles. Which is why, late last year, I signed up for Spotify. Only two months in, however, I was out, and feeling like I'd been ripped off. Turns out I'm not the only one. See ... More >>

Streaming Services Like Spotify and Pandora are Destroying Music

The law of unintended consequences is far-reaching. It's easy to see how it applies to things like medication, the environment, and Prohibition, but it also applies to the advances in the computerization of music over the past decade. The proliferation of the use of streaming services such as Spotif ... More >>

The Future Is Fine: Streaming music isn't evil, it's just different

For Christmas, What do you Get the Music-Loving Acquaintance who Already has Nothing?

Deep inside Spotify headquarters, at this very moment, some poor marketing team is tasked with the idea of making Spotify gift accounts sound like a good idea for a Christmas present. I know this because I am too cheap to pay to make the Spotify ads go away. So far they've been wise enough not to ... More >>

Does Spotify Mean the End the iPod and Your Music Collection?

When I bought my first iPod--this was the first iPod, when the scroll wheel actually spun around--it was a severe blow to my nerd-cred, which I guarded pretty jealously at the time. (It was the only cred I had.) Relying on iTunes and its untouchable database to maintain my MP3 collection, instead of ... More >>

Illegal Downloading Is Wrong, But I Do It Anyway

Art and life co-habitate, informing, imitating, and enriching each other constantly. Each week in Better Living Through Music, RFT Music writer Ryan Wasoba explores this symbiotic relationship. Question: If you were in the middle of a riot, streets overrun with people freaking out, smashing windows ... More >>

The Beach Boys' New Album Has Leaked; How Do I Be A Good Fan?

I saw it on the message board where I'd followed everything else, from the early interviews to the speculation over the song titles to the release of the 30-second Amazon and (more excitingly) 90-second iTunes samples, and where we'd argued for months over autotune in live performances and which vag ... More >>

Jack White Featuring Pokey LaFarge & the South City Three: Listen Now

Jack White's solo record, Blunderbuss, comes out next week, but it's streaming on iTunes right now. It's his first as a "solo" artist, though he is backed by a litany of past collaborators and friends, including St. Louis' own Pokey LaFarge & the South City Three, who act as White's backing band on ... More >>

The New fun. Fan's Guide to the Format

Statistically speaking, you or some iTunes user you know has, ton-i-i-i-i-ight, confirmed that he and someone else are both young and proceeded to set the world on fire. fun., America's least search-engine-optimizable band--and, somehow, the first rock band since Nickelback to debut on top of the ... More >>

Megaupload Goes Down: Five Lost Music-Stealing Technologies

It's true: Megaupload has been gone an entire week, and for the millions of people who used the site because they like their totally legal for-pay cloud storage to come equipped with fake download links and massive flash banner ads I'm sure things have been difficult. For copyright holders, massiv ... More >>

Google Music: The Future Home of Independent Musicians?

There has never been one place you could go to find out everything you needed about any band anywhere. Imagine: One resource that operates like an instantaneous card catalogue for current music. Among the many that have tried, none has the potential of Google Music Artist Hub. Google Music made it ... More >>

Steve Jobs' Six Best Music Innovations

Apple (the Beatles record label) once sued Apple (the computer corporation). After initial squabbles over the right to name their companies after the same fruit, the two agreed that all was good as long as Steve Jobs and crew never entered the music business. As you can probably guess, as you likely ... More >>

St. Louis' Own Thi'sl, a Christian Rapper, Tops iTunes Hip-Hop chart

Image viaThi'sl: The number one rapper on iTunes right now.​It might be a misnomer to call Thi'sl a Christian Rapper. Like many other artists, he just raps about his life. And God happens to play a big part in his life. Well, Thi'sl is one of the hottest rappers coming out of St. Louis. In ... More >>

The Last Space Shuttle Launch And Obsolete Music-Delivery Systems

​Friday morning's scheduled space shuttle launch, the last of 135 missions flown by the orbiters, marks the exact moment at which a space-travel technology from 1981 finally becomes obsolete. That's right: If you'd just overbuilt your music collection like NASA did with Atlantis, you could s ... More >>

Spotify's US Launch Approaches; Which Music Service Are You?

​Music fans in the United States don't have a lot to envy of their European brothers and sisters, at least unless they're big fans of Abba or the kind of sticky, glitter-covered dance-pop that usually just makes me really want to leave the youth hostel and brush my teeth. One exception: Spotif ... More >>

Yeah, Pomplamoose sold out to Hyundai, but this indie duo just might revolutionize the music business

Wheatus

7 p.m. Wednesday, September 29. Fubar, 3108 Locust Street.

Vandalyzm's Megatron Majorz Redux Hits iTunes Hip-Hop Charts

Vandalyzm is now gunning for Dr. Dre.​One of St. Louis' finest is currently sandwiched between 50 Cent and Notorious B.I.G. on the iTunes top 200 hip-hop albums chart. No, it's not Nelly (though his new single "Tippin' in da Club" is at a respectable 34 on the singles chart) -- it's Vandalyzm.The ... More >>

Last Collector Standing: Carlos Ruiz Isn't a Pretentious Record Store Guy -- He Just Draws a Comic About One

Jon Scorfina​The "pretentious record store guy" has long been the bane of the record shop. Despite their wealth of archaic knowledge, music lovers were never sure whether these pompous clerks were an asset or a plague to their shopping experience. Local comic artist and graphic designer Carlos ... More >>

Thomas Lowery: East Alton Man Guilty of Sharing Heinous Porn Collection on Limewire

Limewire: The least disgusting Google image search related to this story.​Heaven knows there's been an epically disgusting porn collection or two (or two million) shared on the old Interwebz but it's hard to imagine anything more repulsive than the horde of filth accumulated and offered up for fre ... More >>

Last Collector Standing: Michael Allen Has a Radiohead License Plate, a Cat Named Gibby Haynes and a Thing for Weird Vinyl

Jon Scorfina​The cultural sea change of downloading has not stopped Michael Allen's quest for vinyl LPs. A collector since childhood, Allen showed an early interest in this column and emailed us to be profiled. Though he is a self-proclaimed vinyl "junkie," it hasn't stopped him from taking ad ... More >>

Pokey LaFarge on Daytrotter Today

Head on over to Daytrotter today, where the featured spotlight artist is Pokey LaFarge & the South City Three. LaFarge dropped by the Rock Island studios and performed *four* unreleased songs. Congrats! His latest album, Riverboat Soul, is also available -- but for now, only if you buy one at a ... More >>

Apple Announcement a Big YAWNER

​So, my guess was wrong about Apple releasing the Beatles catalog on iTunes. I'm not ashamed of that. It was a long shot. But I did get some things right about the Apple announcement and I was surprised by quite a few things, too. I was right about iTunes 9. That wasn't hard to guess. I haven't ha ... More >>

Revolution 9.9.9: Will New Media Formats Bring the LP and The Beatles into Digital Age?

Photo by Crabchick via Flickr​Record companies have been dragged kicking and screaming by consumers (and Apple) into the digital age in the last ten years. And predictions are that 2010 will mark a tipping point where music purchased digitally via download will account for more than half of all mu ... More >>

Mizzou to J-School Class of 2013: Be Prepared, Buy an iPhone!

flickr.com/photos/ryanmftLet nobody say the administration of University of Missouri School of Journalism is out of touch with its students. These profs understand that lectures, the scourge of college students since the Middle Ages, are so, like, boring. Especially when they're at the ungodly hour ... More >>

Video: National Record Store Day, Vintage Vinyl, St. Louis, April 19, 2008

National Record Store Day at Vintage Vinyl: Video from Saturday, April 19

The Raconteurs at the Pageant, Thursday, June 12

Napster Drops DRM -- With a Catch; Sony BMG Does as Well

SonyBMG Launches Platinum MusicPass Album Download Cards

Smashing Pumpkins Release American Gothic EP January 2

New Bruce Springsteen single on iTunes -- for FREE!

I Want My MP3

Digital music just gets better. See ya later, major labels.

Download Mozart

The Saint Louis Symphony is ready to hit the high-tech notes.

Shiny Toy Guns

7 p.m. Wednesday, January 31. Creepy Crawl (3524 Washington Boulevard).

Letters Column

Week of June 22, 2006

Last Year's Model

It might be the last dance for St. Louis' independent record stores.

Local Motion: DJ Mike Gow

Thursday, March 9, at 9:30 p.m. Miso on Meramec (16 North Meramec Avenue, Clayton)

ROCK

Saturday, December 10; Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center (3301 Lemp Avenue)

The Fags

Wednesday, October 12; the Creepy Crawl (412 North Tucker Boulevard)

Various Artists

Beatwave Presents Argentina (Sonic360)

Best CD Store (Used)

Euclid Records

Air Piracy

Internet-only radio faces a shaky future thanks to the grasping hands of the Recording Industry Association of America

When Online Got Off Base

Or: How Mark Cuban would have -- and could have? -- saved the music biz

Digital Dilemma

Wave bye-bye to the bootleg -- in the MP3 domain, a digital file is replacing an artifact

Ransom Notes

Can one man convince millions of people to pay for their "free" music?