For the month of September only, Line 6 are giving away the Pod Farm guitar amp/fx plug-in free! That’s £65’s worth of plug-in for nowt based on typical UK retail price. The one catch is that you will need to own either an item of compatible Line 6 gear OR an iLok USB key (cost about £30 if you don’t already own one).
Check out the deal at Line 6.
An amazing offer from Dolphin Music - get Native Instruments titles for only £64! These are currently selling elsewhere on the internet for as much as £170, so this is a genuine billy bargain. You get a choice of the B4 II organ, the Pro 53 synth, the market-leading Akoustik Piano or the self-descriptive Electrik Piano. Check them out here.
Stomvi Trumpets are now the choice of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and you can buy them through Quicksound.
You’ve probably heard about the spat between YouTube/Google and the Performing Rights Society (PRS). The PRS have launched a new site - fairplayforcreators.com - which aims to highlight the issues of online earnings. Pete Waterman is quoted as receiving a massive £11 for over 100 million views of ‘Never going to give you up’, while poor old Mark Kelly from Marillion only made 0.6p from 10 million views of his band’s videos. In the meantime, Google continues to make revenue from advertising on the very same pages as these videos. Gone are the days when videos were promotional tools to encourage album or single sales - those sales are through the floor. In the newly-emerging music business these digital channels will all take-on new significance as potential income streams for artists. If music video has value to Google in driving ad revenue then it is a resource that should be rewarded fairly. Without seeing the figures it is difficult to determine what that rate should be, but given some of the headline figures we’re hearing you can’t help but feel that at present music makers are getting a raw deal. If you’re involved in creating music, make sure your voice is heard.
Have you ever wondered why music seems to matter less and less in your life these days? Do you remember the albums you listened to as a kid, and how you knew every lyric and how you’d anticipate one song starting after the last? How you’d hide under the duvet with a crappy radio to get a fix on the latest chart hits? That feeling of emmersion as your favourite song kicked-in on your Dansette record player? Ok, I’m showing my age here, but my latest theory for my own waning interest in music isn’t to do with the rise of MP3, the demise of vinyl or the relatively new distraction of the internet. No, I reckon a lot of it is down to this: it all sounds crap. (more…)