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I’m neither a massive Beatles fan nor an Apple fan boy but Apple’s announcement yesterday was beautifully done. This stunning (and rare?) photograph was majestically displayed on iTunes and Apple.com home page. Less than 24 hours later, there are no less than 47 Beatles songs in the iTunes chart (thanks to Mark Headley for this stat) and they’re even running Google Ads with the graceful copy ‘John, Paul, George and Ringo. All together now’.

The Beatles, Twickenham, Middlesex, 9th April 1969
Credit: Photo by Bruce McBroom / ©Apple Corps Ltd

Folk Ibiza various mixes (download them all, because they’re awesome) here
Phil Mison, Test Pressin (1hr) here

Friends of Folk Ibiza :

DJ Sergio, recorded in Ibiza July 2010 (1hr) here
Moonboots, recorded for Last Night A DJ Saved My Life here
[please note: this is NOT Cafe Del Mar coffee table rubbish]

Checking of the Guardian’s Mega Awards for digital stuff, and noticed the ACDC album promo via Excel.
It’s really rather smart. One of the challenges in the old viral world is how do you get round firewalls which routinely strip out any non-work attachments. Not only does embedding the music within Excel get round this but given most finance departments in London media companies seem to be full of Aussie Rockers, it’s well targeted too. I note that it’s not produced by a creative agency, so wonder if it was someone in accounts payable at the record company that had the idea?

First spotted at Mutate Britain – and now I think I’m in love with it.  Such a simple idea so well executed by Tom Hogan - a super bright designer-flash progammer-come-artist. This video shows Erin Wilson in full flow
and a beautiful folk-sound-track from Laura Veirs.
<Click the image below>

well, everyone thought the RIAA or majors took them down. Not exactly, but sort of.
Full story here

Just as the news came in that Napster had been sold to Best Buy for $121m, i received this shareholder notice which I have to admit made me chuckle. The description of the dissident group’s experience included Musician (obviously inappropriate experience for a digital music company?), and then Ice Cream Franchisee etc…Hee Hee. On a more serious note, the deal pays $2.65 per share which is twice the closing price but still far below historical positions.

Had a wonderful lunch the other week with Vic Keegan from the Guardian and Mark Headley (too shy to have a professional web presence but can be found in his creative outlet here). Back in 2001 we worked together on Text Message Poetry – which was one of the most interesting projects I’ve ever had the privilege of being involved with. Looking back now and seeing how mobiles have advanced it seems a little primitive (we’re no longer restricted to 160 characters) but it’s still charming on many levels. I still recall bits of the winning poem from the first competition (it was so successful we ended up repeating it the following year).

txtin iz messin,
mi headn’me englis,
try2rite essays,
they all come out txtis.
gran not plsed w/letters shes getn,
swears i wrote better
b4 comin2uni.
&she’s african

This competition was a great example of how ‘restriction breeds creativity’ but this is at odds with the infinite nature of digital media…but I wonder if there restriction can be applied to digital media in other ways?  Perhaps mini sagas could be taken in to the digital world

Vic’s a real enthusiast for mobiles and during the conversation the topic of how do people get music on their mobile and I recalled seeing some research so bit of digging. According to m-Metrics in Jan 2008 a staggering 83% was sideloaded.

“83% of mobile music was sideloaded onto cellphones in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. M:Metrics also found that the second most common way of getting music onto mobile phones was to share it with friends via Blue-Tooth” but this was only at 12% in the most popular market.
Full details here