Rock and Pop

Songs: Ohia, 'Farewell': Free MP3 of the Day

This is the last Free MP3 of the Day on Download Music, so we figure "Farewell" by Songs: Ohia would be fitting good-bye song. Tune into Last.fm to keep hearing more great free music!

About Songs: Ohia... Having weathered his frequent comparisons to Will Oldham, Jason Molina (the chief force behind Songs: Ohia) has matured as a writer and also branched out as a musician, shifting between slow-moving moments of melancholy and more vigorous Midwestern guitar-rock anthems, like something off "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere." The latter's what you'll find here, so crank … Read more

Will iTunes kill the CD?

We're getting close to the day when a major artist or group releases a download-only album. Maybe it'll be the next Rolling Stones or Sufjan Stevens album. That'll be a dark day.

Just last week, I went to my local record store to pick up "Hemispheres," the new release of Bill Frisell and Jim Hall, a jazz guitar duo. I left the store empty-handed.

Next, I checked on Amazon.com. It stocked the album in MP3 format only. Great, but I refuse to pay $17.98 for a crappy-sounding MP3.

Next, I checked the record … Read more

CNET Download Music will redirect to Last.fm

Dear friends and fans of CNET Download Music,

We have some important news to share. On Wednesday, March 11, 2009, the CNET Download Music site will begin redirecting all artist pages and category doors to corresponding pages on our sister music site Last.fm.

We're extremely proud of our close association with Last.fm because, like CNET Download Music, the site shares the same spirit of independence and discovery--not to mention ease of use and a large song catalog--that we find so vital to a satisfying online music experience. … Read more

Neil Young: YouTube must respect artists

Update 9:20 p.m. PT: To include YouTube's response.

Neil Young wants to remind YouTube that Rockin' in the Free World isn't free.

The iconic musician, whose hits include "Harvest Moon," "Cinnamon Girl," and "Rockin' in the Free World," says in a blog post that YouTube doesn't fairly compensate acts represented by Warner Music Group.

Young is referring to the spat that erupted in January between Warner Music and YouTube. The two companies couldn't come to terms on a new licensing agreement and Warner Music's content was pulled … Read more

Radiohead, Beck, White Stripes live on DVD

I was never much of a fan of music videos or MTV. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to watch a band act out a silly story or lip-sync to a make-believe "performance." Why not just shoot the band playing for real in a studio?

The geniuses at IFC have done just that with Nigel Godrich's "From the Basement" series, which is now coming to DVD. There's an amazing roster of talent to see and hear.

High points include the White Stripes. Jack's wailing vocal acrobatics and scorching guitar riffs bouncing … Read more

New U2 album makes early debut on P2P networks

Updated February 20 at 10 a.m. PST with alleged source of leak.

Despite extreme measures to prevent U2's new album from appearing prematurely on the Internet, copies of the band's "No Line on the Horizon" have begun circulating on file-swapping networks--a full week before its official release.

CD-quality copies of the band's 12th album, which is slated for release in Ireland on February 27 and worldwide on March 3, started appearing Wednesday on BitTorrent and now reportedly number in the hundreds of thousands. Copies were also found circulating on LimeWire.

The tracks began spreading … Read more

Handsome Furs, 'I'm Confused': Free MP3 of the Day

The side project of Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner, the Furs couch his indie-man's urgency in a starker sonic template. Implosive machine beats are introduced to piercing synths, and by all accounts they agree to disagree. The dirges may end up closer in spirit to Modest Mouse than Boeckner's main band.

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Black Lips, 'Starting Over': Free MP3 of the Day

If you followed all your notions of what being in a band should be--heavy drinking, wailing away on an untuned Strat, generalized debauchery--well, you'd probably never finish a song. But Atlanta's Lips make it work. It's as though their scruffy garage melodies reward the purity of their rockness.

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TV on the Radio suffers from a bad mix

There was all sorts of buzz earlier this week about TV on the Radio's apparently abysmal performance on Saturday Night Live. If you like the band, as I happen to, you have to wonder what happened: their recordings are immaculate, and they have a solid live reputation.

Today, music blog Idolator performs an interesting experiment, embedding the band's performance of "Dancing Choose" on SNL directly above the same song performed on last night's edition of The Colbert Report. The difference is immediately noticeable.

So what the heck happened on SNL? Idolator jokes that they're … Read more

Ticketmaster, Live Nation to merge

After a couple weeks of rumors reported by The Wall Street Journal and other outlets, it's finally happened: concert promoter and venue owner Live Nation and the nation's largest ticket seller, Ticketmaster, have merged in a deal worth approximately $2.5 billion.

Why is this important? Because the combined companies are, in my opinion, dangerously close to building a vertical monopoly. The new company, Live Nation Entertainment, will own concert venues, the ticketing system for those venues, and exclusive rights to certain major acts that play those venues. In other words, if you thought concert prices were high … Read more