‘Cross The Breeze

Once a year I need to talk about the song that made me choose the title for this blog, I just have to :) I think there are 2 types of music listeners out there. Those people for whom the lyrics make or brake the song and those like myself for whom it’s just how the song makes you feel. I hardly ever know what the song is about, even the ones I love… it’s always what feeling I get from listening to them.

‘Cross The Breeze from Sonic Youth (Daydream Nation) is one of these pure rock songs that I like and that unfortunately not that many people know… and heck, because they don’t like it probably. No worries, the next posts will be again about advertising, marketing and the lot but I had to share this one with you. My yearly Sonic Youth post ;) Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: sonic youth, daydream nation, cross the breeze, crossthebreeze, music, blog

I just read the press release of MSN around the streaming of the Live Earth concerts across the globe. These concerts are the most watched entertainment event in online history with more than 8 million people that watched part of the live coverage that was exclusive on MSN. This resulted in more than 15 million streams during the event and with the on demand that you can still watch we’re now already at more than 30 million streams. The event streaming peaked with 237.000 people watching simultaneously at a certain time with is a new record. Now I believe that’s pretty impressive, here’s the full press release… and here’s the link if you want to watch part of the concerts again.

I could have known something bad was coming when Tim Westergren - Founder of Pandora - sent out an email to all Pandora users asking to ‘help save Pandora & internet radio’. It took only 2-3 more weeks before it was finished indeed, well at least for all of us not living in the US. If I try to visit Pandora now, this is what I get:

“Dear Pandora Visitor,

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for most listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

We believe that you are in Belgium (your IP address appears to be xx.xxx.xxx.xx). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com“

That is really some bad news as I enjoyed Pandora very much. I actually met Tom Conrad - CTO of Pandora - very briefly in Vegas at MIX07 and I told him how many people enjoyed Pandora in Europe. That was 2 days before they shut it down so I feel like he should have told me about it then already.

Time to pick up on Last.fm again I guess, I tried to rememeber my account yesterday without much luck so I think I’ll have to set up a new one :( Good news is that Last.fm has just launched video as well, so it’s a good time to look into the service again anyway. For a moment I thought I would try Sonific.com as well since there’s a widget of Sonific for WordPress.com but it couldn’t find any of the first 3 artists I entered so I already gave up on that.

Yeah… I’m gonna miss Pandora.

… or should I say sonic. Pieter just told me on IM this funky little experience he had:

As he was reading on this blog (thanks Pieter) he saw the post about ‘Daydream Nation’ that made him visit Pietel’s post on this. Surfing around there, he notices this post about a house for sale in Antwerp. Looks interesting but pricey, still Pieter decides to visit the house the same day. Looking around in the house, he notices the music albums and what do you know… ‘Daydream Nation’ is on top of the pile.

I love stories like this.

First things first, this really is a great book. I’m not done with it yet, so my review will be for sometime soon. This is more about a curiosity, as the book reminded me of a classic Stones album.

Was it the ’stickiness factor’ of both products? Well, it wasn’t actually. ‘Made to Stick’ reminded me of ‘Sticky Fingers’ because of the 3D effect on both. You probably have to be thirtysomething (or older) to know this so as a reminder for the others, the ‘Sticky Fingers’ vinyl album actually had a real zipper on the front (designed by Warhol). The duct tape on ‘Made to Stick’ is not real (nor is the cover designed by Warhol) but the effect is definitely there.

It’s just a curiosity as I told before, most important, both the album & the book are rocking! Seems like Boing Boing likes the cover of the book as well by the way.

Technorati tags: sticky fingers, stickiness, made to stick, curiosity, warhol

For those who figured out my blog is named after a Sonic Youth classic… you’ll like this: youth sentiment on Youtube by Bart Van Belle - subscribed!

[Via Pietel | Claudia]

Technorati tags: youth, sentiment, sonic youth, youtube

Together with my new PC, I’m finally on the Vista RTM and not on RC1 anymore. This meant that I could install my Zune after it had been lying here for almost a month apart from the occasional FM radio usage. Now I got all my music (ripped CD’s), images and movies on there and I quite like it. One thing is a petty, and that won’t change that soon here in Belgium, that is that there’s not too much music sharing going on… or as Gizmodo called it: I’m so Zunely.

Technorati tags: zune, mp3, vista, music, zunely

The next live concert you can watch for free on MSN (within the recent partnership with Control Room) is the Showgirl Homecoming Tour from Kylie Minogue. Get ready for super sexy Kylie on January 24th!

Yesterday I got an early Xmas present: a Zune. I had the intention to get one anyway to find out how it compares to the iPod, I wanted to know how Microsoft (my employer) is going to compete in this space and you can’t do that only by reading the reviews (at least that’s what I think).

First of all, it compares in no way to the ‘what if Microsoft designed the iPod package‘ opening up the Zune package. It’s quite funky. Something that sort of surprised me as well is that the Zune has some battery power already when you open up the package so you can turn in on right away. It’s no big deal, but if you’re like me you like to start playing with your gadgets right out of the box so I liked that.

One issue I knew I was going to have was the lack of Vista support for the moment. Luckily just yesterday Microsoft pushed out a new firmware update for the Zune that new supports Vista as well. Well that feeling lasted for about 5 minutes, until I found out it only supports the Vista RTM and I’m still on Beta 2. A new pc with the Vista RTM is on it’s way so I guess that I’ll just have to wait a little bit longer then.

Anyway, My iPod is empty since yesterday evening and I can’t upload it here so I’m playing with the Zune radio features to get some music while on the Eurostar and I must say that works quite well. Hopefully my new pc arrives soon so I can discover all of the Zune’s functionalities. I’ll let you know what I think of it ;-)

Tags: zune, microsoft, ipod, vista, xmas, christmas

Gears of War seems to be scoring incredibly good on all fronts. It started with the reviews that gave very high ratings, like the 9.4 on IGN for instance. Then GoW became the fastest selling Xbox 360 title with 1 million copies sold in 2 weeks. And yesterday Joystiq reported that “Mad World”, the song used in the GoW commercial hit the n°1 spot in the iTunes charts.

This is definitely one of those examples where all elements are in place. Great game, great advertising, great buzz, … Meet you in this mad world, my gamertag is krizmaiaz.

Tags: gears of war, gow, xbox 360, mad world, itunes, gamertag