Free dj mixes generate more downloads?

I was listening on the train to Marcel Woods at Trance Energy 2009. Popped the title into Google and came up with this excellent site called the Liveset Database with the mix I was listening to and I quickly identified the tune I was banging my head to (Art of Trance – Madagascar (Richard Durand remix)) and went to Audiojelly typed in the song title and found it to download and buy right there. Not only did I find that one but I also found many other remixes.

I made reference to the maybe unique ecosystem of Trance music in a previous blog post. I actually thought I heard Armin Van Buuren give a shout out to a large Torrent site called Trancetraffic the other day but I think after hearing it again, it didn't quite sound like that. But I can't work out if trance has come so far that its done away with the idea of selling mixes or just let the tapers just take over. And why not? I mean, like all music, dance music included, it sounds better and more heart felt in a club, rave or outdoors over a heavy driving sound system. Some of the cynical in you will say it sounds better with the drugs, but I wouldn't know anything about that. So generally Live and loud. There's always been this idea of mixtapes being quite disposable but back in the mid 90's gready promoters started to sell tapes and cds of the mixes. However generally most made copies and no one got sued that I know. There's also something about owning the original tune, be it on vinyl or something else, maybe because somewhere deep down everyone liked dance music had a dj inside of them? Funny enough, i've also never heard anyone call someone else a pirate even when another artist does a bootleg remix.

Is sharing mixes one of the cornerstones of trance music? And through the mix, the meme of the music is widely distributed? Interesting….

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Ubuntu 9.04 release and first impressions

Wow who would thought Geeks could drink so much? So The Ubuntu launch party in Manchester supported by BBC Backstage went very well. We had about 60+ people turn up and enjoy the night. Thanks to Lucy for arranging most of the event. There's quite a few photos around the place including Flickr.

ubuntu cake

I decided not to upgrade my laptop at the party, instead I decided to upgrade it when I got back from the party. Upgrading was very straight forward and within one hour I had new Ubuntu login prompt. Unfortunately thats where the start of the problems started.

I've been having problems with the firewall on my machine for a while now but in 9.04 it broke and thankfully got fixed by flushing all iptables. But then I noticed my Dell's wireless isn't connecting to my wireless point, correctly. So its connected but there's no signal for some reason. Interestingly enough, it gives me a 10.x.x.x address while my actual network is based on the simple 192.x.x.x class of addresses.

Finally Compiz Fusion isn't working at the moment, once again this wasn't actually a upgrade issue. It wasn't work a while ago due to a display driver update. For all the moaning and problems, ubuntu 9.04 is faster. Startup times are quicker, login time is quicker and i've noticed Ubuntu is making more use of my vast amount of laptop memory that 8.10. The growl like notifications are very nice and I look forward to seeing applications like Twirl taking advantage of them soon. I've yet to convert the hard drive to the new Filesystem EXT4 but I've already had some experience with it via my brief time with Fedora 10.

I fixed the Wireless problem, I worked it out from a comment left on the picture. Daemon.log.0 pointed out that the wireless was set in Adhoc mode for some reason. So I switched it and its all good now.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]