Something for the long weekend...

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D R O W N E D

I N _ S O U N D 

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Hello,

We hope you're enjoying some fish 'n chips in the liquid sunshine on this so-called "good" "Friday". 

If choice paralysis hits and you can't decide what to listen to this weekend or if you want to discover some new (to you) music, check out our year so far, first quarter digest on DiS. Which includes...

SINGLES of the year (SO FAR!)

http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4139577-singles-of-the-year--1st-quarter-2010

2010 Q1 in a 101 song playlist

http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4139591-drowned-in-2010--q1-in-a-101-song-playlist

NEWSROUND: The Year So far in News

http://drownedinsound.com/news/4139575-newsround--the-first-quarter-of-2010-in-news

PLUS... 

SPOTIFRIDAY

This week on DiS as a playlist featuring: Weezer, Elliott Smith, Jonsi, Chihei Hatakeyama, Three Trapped Tigers, Kelpe, 65daysofstatic, Owen Pallett, Beach House, Bear In Heaven, The Hidden Cameras, Monsters of Folk, Dum Dum Girls, Titus Andronicus, The Vaselines and Kevin Drumm.

http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4139593-spotifriday-40-this-week-on-dis-as-a-playlist

RECOMMENDED RECORDS

New additions: Jonsi, Elliott Smith, Bear in Heaven, Ikonika, To Rococo Rot, Serena Maneesh, Dark Dark Dark and plenty more...

http://drownedinsound.com/lists/recommended-records

AND FINALLY... 

If you've not seen it yet, check out this little audio-only blog we've set-up http://drownedinsoundcloud.com/

Have a great extended weekend,

DiS xo

http://drownedinsound.com

http://twitter.com/drownedinsound

http://facebook.com/DrownedinSound

Posted via email from seaninsound

Looking For Gold: SXSW WHY? by F**ked Up

A [SXSW] festival pass can cost almost $800 a person. A band gets either wristbands or $250, which is enough to buy enough gas to get your van maybe 15 hours away from Austin, one way. Most bands are from outside that radius, and are well within the range of losing a shit ton of money by coming. In exchange, sxsw gets access to the best bands in the world, every club in Austin, and sponsorship money from all the coolest companies on earth. One of the more creatively heinous examples of branding I learned about this year was the Green Label Sound record label, which is a branding exercise of Mountain Dew soda. When my friend was offered to do a record with Green Label Sound for many thousands of dollars, I was happy to concede that it was a great deal for his specific band. Then I saw the giant 4 panel billboard for Green Label Sound right next to Stubbs on Red River St. Great for Chromeo, Neon Indian and the two other bands on the advert I forget ("great" in the sincere and non-facetious sense) and realized how maybe it was a bit more of a serious issue than I'd thought. Think of all the bands that had to blow their wallets apart to get to their one sxsw showcase, and all the partiers who had to pay to fly or hitchhike from Greenpoint or Plymouth to get to Austin in order to create the cultural critical mass that allowed Mountain Dew to greenlight a giant billboard in the epicenter of American indie rock. Think of why there is so much free beer and cigarettes and energy drinks at sxsw, and why every year there is even more, and why every year there are a dozen more huge shows presented by even bigger companies than last year. It's because you paid your money to go there and see these ads...

...Sxsw then can be seen as an economic battle ground. Our first time down there in 2007, the biggest buzz was about how sxsw was shutting down unofficial venues left and right, presumably because the money and the buzz created by those shows was flowing away from the festival, rather than towards it. The shows were mostly free, which made them irresistible to music consumers tired of needing to buy expensive passes from sxsw to check out cool bands. This is a pretty good analogy for what then started to happen to the entire industry - it became possible for fans who had spent most of their lives buying CD's (that they knew cost 50 cents to produce but cost $17.99 to buy) to download them on the internet for free, and record labels, who started seeing CD sales plummet, immediately starting trying to shut these sites down. While sxsw quickly learned to lay off the free parties and start using them to their advantage, the record industry has yet to figure out how to profit from "illegal" downloading. This year the focus of the festival was free parties only tangentially related to sxsw. Sxsw knows that it's never going to shut down every free party, so it makes more sense just to let them happen, and use the initiatives of the bands and labels and companies throwing these parties make sxsw as a whole more appealing.

via lookingforgold.blogspot.com

The above are just two choice paragraphs from a brilliant blog post.

Posted via web from seaninsound

RE: "The Men From The Press" and "DrownedinSound"

Publication packages

Submission fee

NME, Terrorizer, BBC Music, Drowned in Sound, Quietus

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£25.00

via themenfromthepress.com

This IS utter bullshit and we have nothing to do with this site. We do not endorse this.

Only heard about this, this afternoon. Seem the mysterious people (if you know who it is, please let me know) behind this, emailed a bunch of DiS writers saying "would you like to be paid to review some records" for a new project and obvs a bunch of them replied saying "yeah, alright, i'll take your money" and they all ended up named on the site. Site was taken down, and then went back up again but with the publications still on there.

All the DiS contributors who've emailed me back so far asked to be removed, as it wasn't what they had agreed to do.

Hell, I sit around listening to mostly not very good unsigned bands for free. I can kinda see where the 'concept' came from, in terms of greasing the wheels to bring certain CDs to the top of the pile and give bands some feedback... Not all ideas are worth running with tho, especially when they're so poorly executed, give the impression you'll get a leg up but generally seems exploitative and EVIL. If you're in a band, don't do this, just do your research of who will like your stuff. People are easy to communicate with.

Then again, who on earth would hand over their money to a website that looks quite so amateur?

Posted via web from seaninsound

SoundCloud - Our friends over at DrownedInSound just came over...

Click for high-res photo

Our friends over at DrownedInSound just came over with this great equation:

Drowned In Sound + SoundCloud + Tumblr = DrownedInSoundCloud. Total Win and immediate follow!

Featuring some of the great tracks and full albums on SoundCloud, approved by DiS.

Follow it here. Great idea, Sean! Thanks a bunch.

via soundcloud.tumblr.com

Glad you like it. Thanks to Soundcloud and everyone else who has tweeted, facebooked, tumblr’d, blogged, etc about this little mash-up. Glad you like it and there’s plenty more to come.

Posted via web from seaninsound

Play This Playlist. Tracks from our Recommended Records of 2010 (thus far) | @Spotify

Our community do a lot of wonderful things and this thread compiling recent records people recommend has some great bits in it, so I thought I'd turn it into a playlist.

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – The Road

The Besnard Lakes – Albatross

Frightened Rabbit – Swim Until You Can’t See Land

The Ruby Suns – Cranberry

Yeasayer – Ambling Alp

Midlake – Rulers, Ruling All Things

Shearwater – Landscape At Speed

Beach House – Zebra

Liars – Scissor [FYI: LIARS TAKEOVER DIS NEXT WEEK]

These New Puritans – We Want War

Pantha Du Prince – Stick To My Side

Four Tet – Plastic People

Errors – A Rumour In Africa

Jaga Jazzist – Music! Dance! Drama!

Hot Chip – One Life Stand

Nedry – Apples & Pears

Gil Scott-Heron – New York Is Killing Me

Ali Farka Touré – Doudou

Owen Pallett – Lewis Takes Off His Shirt

Oh No Ono – Icicles

Efterklang – Scandinavian Love

Erland And The Carnival – You Don't Have To Be Lonely

Nana Grizol – Blackbox

Gorillaz – Stylo (Album Version) (Feat. Mos Def and Bobby Womack)

Massive Attack – Saturday Come Slow

Charlotte Gainsbourg – Le Chat du Café des Artistes

Holly Miranda – Sweet Dreams

Tunng – It Breaks

Eels – Mansions Of Los Feliz

Basia Bulat – Sugar And Spice

Shining – The Madness And The Damage Done

Mat Riviere – FYH

Motorpsycho – Close Your Eyes

The Irrepressibles – Knife Song

Fredrik – Flax

Field Music – The Rest Noise

Tindersticks – Harmony Around My Table

Robert Curgenven – Gran Coda Andante

Richard Skelton – Of The Last Generation

Los Campesinos! – We've Got Your Back

Kath Bloom – Is This Called Living?

Ellie Goulding – The Writer

Lindstrøm & Christabelle – Baby Can't Stop

Vampire Weekend – California English

Manchester Orchestra – The Only One

Spoon – Is Love Forever?

Local Natives – Airplanes

Play this: Sampler: DrownedinSound Recommended Records of 2010 (thus far)

Posted via email from seaninsound