Freebooters, Nostalgics, Renaissants & Media Urchins

Sky Songs – a new music service, in beta naturally, which offers a streaming service similar to Spotify for a little over 6 quid a month, has over 4m tracks AND you get to download 15 tracks to keep. Now that seems like the perfect model – a decent balance of streaming everything, a reasonable monthly charge AND you get a few favourites to keep. So why has Spotify cornered the market as the “plat du jour” of the streaming music services? How did it manage to get the drop on Last.fm and since its adoption of a download costing model (all neatly synched with partner 7Digital) … will it really start being a threat to iTunes music store?

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Tags: drm, media, mp3, music, richmedia, streamingmedia

Livemusic Reviews 2008

A selection of reviews written for livemusic.fm

Long Live Long Insiders – But Don’t Give the Dog a Bone February, 2008

The Long Insiders played a rawer, raucous loud set at Turnmills. Sarah Dodd’s sultry honey vocals were spiked with an unfamiliar untamed edge; while Nick Kenny’s surf guitar cranked up to create an atmospheric wall of sound. The later numbers of the set such as “All the Tears…” were delivered with an energy and passion, which while engaging, was bordering on the manic at times. I have to confess I felt the vocalist had to fight a bit with the tsunami of reverb by that point!

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Tags: copywriting, gigs, livemusic, music, reviews

Livemusic Reviews 2006 – 2007

A selection of reviews written for livemusic.fm

Tom Baxter @ the Amadeus September 2006

This has got to be one of the strangest gigs I’ve ever been to … I’d ‘discovered’ Tom Baxter while I’d been living in New Zealand and found it highly ironic that he was brought to my attention while living 12,000 miles away from my old haunts in Balham (namely the Bedford Arms that had been my local when I lived in South London and where Tom Baxter cut his teeth …) Strange that – when you get to know and like an artist in another hemisphere , but you managed to miss them when you lived round the corner!

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Tags: community, copywriting, gigs, livemusic, music, reviews