I’ve finally finished ripping my CDs to my file server. I finished yesterday afternoon which makes my estimation of twelve days spot on. The final count: 537 CDs ripped and approximately 56 GB of music, but that’s not all of my CDs. So what gives?

Well, there are three CDs that are missing, meaning that I have the cases but I can’t find the CDs. I’m sure that they are around here somewhere because I recall seeing them recently. So I’m sure that they will turn up. Then there are 17 that were damaged or destroyed during The Dark Times. Unfortunately, I’ll have to replace these. So I’m done for now.

Now that I have everything ripped to my file server, I did the prudent thing and copied all of the music to my external backup drive just in case the main drive of the file server fails.

Now that I have a Linux file server with Samba up and running, I’ve decided to tackle the next project; ripping my 500+ CDs and putting them in a digital archive. I honestly don’t know how many I actually have, but I think it’s somewhere to close to 500.

I had two goals when I started the project. First and foremost, I was tired of not have all my music at the tips of my fingers when I was either at my computer or downstairs. Second, was to liberate my office from the space that two huge CD racks were taking up.

I’m not going to sell them like some people do when they digitize their music, but I fully intend on boxing them all up (maybe with the exception of a few display CDs) and putting them in storage.

It’s certainly a time consuming task and not something that you can do in a weekend but I know the end goal will be worth it. I can now finally see the end of the tunnel. I’ve just completed CD number 376. Only 130 or so to go…

I love the new Battlestar Galactica and I like soundtracks, so it was a no brainer for me to pick up the new soundtrack for season 2.

The composer, Bear McCreary, really outdoes himself and easily tops the season 1 CD.

While I was watching season 2 on TV, I heard two songs that I had to have. After listening to the samples of the soundtrack on Bear’s website and not hearing the two songs I started to worry that they weren’t going to be included. That’s one of my pet peeves with soundtracks; when a song is included in the movie or show but is not on the soundtrack.

I turns out that I had nothing to fear. The two songs (Pegasus (from Pegasus) and Something Dark is Coming (from Lay Down Your Burdens Part One)) are indeed on the soundtrack.

I definitely recommend this to anyone that is a Battlestar fan or a fan of soundtrack music.

We’re all criminals. That’s how the music industry thinks of us. Us, their loyal and paying customers! Guilty until…well, we’re always guilty.

Instead of giving us more choices and competitively priced music, the fat cats in the music industry are trying to give us less choices while still keeping their never ending revenue stream coming.

In the beginning (of online music stores), there was iTunes and it was good, but iTunes has a little gremlin in it. Come on say it with me, it’s the three letters that I love to hate; DRM.

As someone that is staunchly opposed to DRM the inclusion of it in iTunes music files bugs me to no end. I like iTunes, I really do, but is there a better way?

Yes. The model that AllofMP3 has created. After reading a post on Techcrunch about them releasing a music store applications, titled AllTunes, I decided to take a look at their website. I was floored (in a good way) by what I found.

The online music retailer, which is headquarted in Russia, claims to be able to distribute music legally because a loophole in Russian law concerning copyrighted materials.

Not only do they distribute music online but they completely undercut iTunes or any other online store out there. The songs on there vary, but they usually range for 9-15 cents per song. An entire album can cost about a buck thirty.

What’s probably the most innovative thing about their model is consumer choice without DRM. You pick a song that you want to download, pay for it and then choose what encoding you want (sound quality; low, medium and high) and what type of file that you want to download (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, FLAC, etc.)

This is the way it should be! Give customers choice and don’t treat them like criminals by lacing the files with DRM.

Even if their pricing model does seem a bit extreme, I would glady and gleefully pay a higher price (let’s say iTunes’ 99 cents fee) for the flexibility to download in whatever format I want without DRM.

This next piece doesn’t have to do with music, but it’s related to DRM, so I wanted to throw it up here. It’s a blog post on Bink.nu’s site titled Microsoft Announces Investments in DRM to Drive New Multimedia Commerce Solutions for the Wireless Industry.

There is a quote from Kevin Johnson, co-presidenct of the Platforms & Services Division of Microsoft that makes me want to scream:

We want to give consumers what they want seamless experiences with premium content on a wide range of mobile devices.

Um…people please be honest with yourselves and with us. Consumers DON’T want DRM, you do.

Enough consumer advocacy for the night, I’m gonna get some shut eye.

Today was the North American release of David Gilmour’s solo CD On An Island.

I picked up my CD at Best Buy because, well, I’m impatient, but also because the Best Buy CD has an extra track bundled in with it.

The extra track (all instrumental) is on its own separate promotional CD and is 6 minutes and 37 seconds long. For the sale price of $9.99, it’s worth a trip to Best Buy.

Well, I’m not sure that it’s actually David writing in it, but David Gilmour’s site has a blog on it.

Most of the content on the blog site deals with recording sessions of his new album On An Island which is scheduled to drop on March 6th of 2006. This will be his first solo album since the 1984 release of About Face.

Honestly, I’m a bit apprehensive about this album. According to a news source, the title track teams Gilmour with David Crosby and Graham Nash (of Crosby, Stills and Nash).

I’m not sure if they play on other songs but I’ve never been a fan of Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Let’s hope that this album is not a stinker.

I’ve been chronicling my distate for DRM (Digital Rights Management) for a while now (see: Digital Music, DRM Music Madness, Happenings, I’ve Seen the Enemy and the Enemy is DRM, MediaMax DRM, DRM User’s Guide, and Customers and Microsoft) so I thought that I would comment on Sony’s latest DRM woes that’s been burning up the tech headlines.

Record labels, believing that customers that buy CDs are contributing to music piracy, have started implementing DRM schemes that discourage people from ripping the music tracks to their computer.

Sony’s latest attempt (see: Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far by Mark Russinovich) to curtail this behavior comes in the form of surreptitiously installing software (called a Rootkit) on your machine that can cause damage to the operating system (in this case, Microsoft Windows) and has been known to report some information over the Internet without the user’s consent.

This is probably the best thing that’s happened in the fight against DRM so far. You’re probably thinking that I’m nuts, but bear with me.

This is good because Sony’s draconian implementation of DRM has catapulted the issue of DRM into the spotlight. In fact, there have already been two class-action law suits filed against Sony and I’m sure more are on their way. It’s possible, that if a judge rules favorably (against Sony) in this case, that CDs laden with Sony’s DRM will have to be removed from store shelves in California.

The outcome of this is bound to have ripple effect on the music industry for a long time.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a list of the CDs that has Sony’s DRM on it.

This is old news

, but I just had to put in my two cents about it.

I had the displeasure of using Sony’s SonicStage music jukebox and music download application this year and I hated every second of it. I’m glad (and so is Engadget) to see Sony killing this bastard of an application.

The writers of Engadget say it best when they say “…But SonicStage: after you go gently into this good night, please, do not rest in peace. We hope you toss and turn in your grave for all eternity, SonicStage, and then some.”

Found this at the EFF‘s website. This guide, titled The Customer is Always Wrong: A User’s Guide to DRM in Online Music, is a must read for everyone that buys music from online services.

If you bought Velvet Revolver’s CD Contraband, you might be aware of the MediaMax DRM system that comes with the CD.


This site, hosted at Princeton, is a thorough analysis of the MediaMax DRM system including how to disable it.

I should note that the MediaMax DRM system is not the same system that is on the new 30 Seconds to Mars CD.

It’s not a big secret that I’m no fan of DRM. The abbreviation actually stands for Digital Rights Management,
but perhaps more appropriate definitions are Digital Restrictions
Management, The Devil’s Restricting Machinations, or Digital Screw the
Consumers Until the Cows Come Home.

DRM was originally intended to stop people from pirating content and
distribute it over the Internet. Unfortunately, this is completely
ineffective and does nothing except piss off the legitimate customers.
No one, with the exception of the fat cats, likes DRM. I’ll give you
the perfect example.

This Tuesday, I went to Best Buy to get the latest CD from 30 Second to Mars; A Beautiful Lie. Jared Leto‘s
little band seems to have quite a cult following considering that the
first one store that I went to was completely sold out and I had to go
to a second one (I was gonna order it from Amazon, but I couldn’t pass
up the 7.99 sticker price).

Once I got the CD, I noticed something sinister on the package; a
little copy protected symbol that referred to the back of the CD to
read the details of these “features”. Turning the CD over, it was
clearly marked that it would only work on a Mac or a Windows computer
(sorry Linux), you could only burn it 3 times, and you couldn’t
transfer it to an iPod (only a WMA portable device).

I bought the CD anyway all the while wondering if it would really stop me from playing the music that I purchased on the devices of my
choosing. I soon found out, the answer is yes and no. The CD comes with
it’s own version of Windows Media Player and on a Windows PC, plays
DRM’d Windows Media Files. I found it impossible to crack the DRM on
the hidden .wma files on the CD but there is a way to rip the tracks to
mp3 and therefore iTunes and a non-WMA portable media player (my hats off to a fellow on the Internet for showing me the way).

Now, I could post the secret of my success on my blog, but I have a feeling that if the jailers of our fair use rights got wind of it, I would get hit with cease and desist citing the other tool of the devil, the DMCA. So if you want to know, you know how to get a hold of me.

That’s the perfect example of how DRM sucks. I never use Windows Media Player and making me use it to play the music that I purchased legally,
in my opinion, is vendor lock-in and flat out illegal. When I buy a
DVD, I expect it to work in any DVD player (the whole region encoding
issue aside), not just Sony DVD players or JVC players.

Luckily there are heroes out there like DVDJon that stand up to the big companies that are working to restrict our media rights.

Just got done watching Pink Floyd reunited (Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright) on MTV (also shown on VH1) as they took the stage in Hyde Park in London.

I can say that I’m a bit irritated about the whole thing. Not with Pink Floyd’s performance. As a fan, I found their performance excellent, powerful and emotionally moving. These guys haven’t been together on stage since 1981. What I am irritated with is not knowing when Pink Floyd was going to play. I scoured the ‘net looking for this information and couldn’t find anything. You would think that out of the 3,000 people plus blogging Live 8 one of them would have a general estimate on when the bands would be playing. Because of this lack of information, I missed the first song of their set, Breathe, but managed to catch the others (Money, Wish You Were Here and Comfortably Numb).

As Pink Floyd’s last song was winding down, MTV and VH1 made a terrible, egregious mistake. While Pink Floyd was still playing, they cut to two fucking yahoos that were covering the event. Then as a final insult, they cut away to commercial while the band members were wrapping up and leaving the stage!

Morons! These guys haven’t been seen together for 20+ years. Why not let them play their damn songs and then talk about it? Apparently, I’m not the only one who that thought this was a horrible mistake by MTV and VH1.

Luckily, AOL is rebroadcasting the London and Philly shows on their website and they promise that they will have the entire show on there song by song, on demand. Or you can simply grab the Torrent. This is good news, considering the bumbling of MTV and VH1.

Regardless of all my bitching, that’s not what Live 8 is all about. If you don’t know what Live 8 is about, go educate yourselves and if you are so inclined, add your name to the list. It would be great if our wants for Live 8 were fulfilled but I think that they missed a few vital elements. No matter how much economic burden we pull off their shoulders or how much economic aid we give them, the men and women of Africa will never be able to emerge out of the desperate hole that they are in if the corrupt elements in their government don’t stop betraying their citizens. In addition to this, the roaming bands of thugs that rape, murder and terrorize must be eliminated.

Looks like the original members of Pink Floyd (David Gilmour, Nick
Mason, Richard Wright, and most notably Roger Waters) are reuniting for
the Live 8 concert. The last time that this quartet was on stage
together was approximately 24 years ago. Does this mean that we’ll see
a new studio album out of the band (their last studio album was The Division Bell (1994)) out of Pink Floyd? As much as I would like it, it’s probably going to be a one time thing.

I read (in the paper no less) that A Perfect Circle is going to release a CD this year that is politically charged (if you love Dubya then this probably isn’t going to be for you). The CD, titled eMOTIVe has 12 tracks on it; 1 of which is new, 1 is a mix of Pet from Thirteenth Step and the other ten are covers of other songs. There is also a flash video for the 10th track available for viewing at their website. The CD is set to drop on election day.

One more thing, I also love the 40’s-50’s propaganda style posters that are on their main page. There are 14 of them and you can see them all (without hitting refresh over and over again on their main page) by going here (I found out that a lot of these have been floating around, and A Perfect Circle just put new words on them, either way, I like them).

Track Listing:
1. Annihilation (Matthew Borruso, Christopher Douglas, Sothira Pheng)
               Crucifix – NOT SO QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1982)
2. Imagine (John Lennon)
               John Lennon – IMAGINE (1971)
3. (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding (Nick Lowe)
               Elvis Costello & the Attractions – ARMED FORCES (1979)
4. What’s Going On (Renaldo Benson, Al Cleveland, Marvin Gaye)
               Marvin Gaye – WHAT’S GOING ON (1971)
5. Passive (TK)
               A Perfect Circle – eMOTIVe (2004)
6. Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie (Greg Ginn)
               Black Flag – EVERYTHING WENT BLACK (1983)
7. People Are People (Martin L. Gore)
               Depeche Mode – PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE (1984)=
8. Freedom Of Choice (Gerald V. Casale, Mark Mothersbaugh)
               Devo – FREEDOM OF CHOICE (1980)
9. Let’s Have A War (Philo Cramer, Lee Ving)
               Fear – THE RECORD (1982)
10. Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm Of the War Drums (Billy
         Howerdel, Maynard James Keenan)
               A Perfect Circle – eMOTIVe (2004)
11. When The Levee Breaks (John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Memphis Minnie,
         Jimmy Page, Robert Plant)
               Led Zeppelin – UNTITLED (1971)
12. Fiddle And The Drum (Joni Mitchell)
               Joni Mitchell – CLOUDS (1969)

As you know, on Monday, I started my online hunt for Rubyhorse‘s Fell On Bad Days ever since I heard it on the season finale of Rescue Me. Usually, my search starts and ends on iTunes but this time I came up empty. My next try was a P2P application (note to musicians: put your shit on iTunes or we’ll download via P2P) but that also came up empty which is not really a big surprise as this is relatively an unknown band. Unrelenting, my next try was the MSN music store. I had heard about it on the blogosphere and wanted to see if they had it, and surprisingly enough, they did! After setting up an account, I downloaded some required DRM software and then I started downloading the track for a buck. From here the frustration level started to go skyward.

I donwloaded the file which was a DRM wma file. I use iTunes now as my primary playlist application and of course, a DRM wma file doesn’t play in iTunes (just as I suspect a DRM aac file doesn’t play in WMP). iTunes automatically converts wma files to mp3 files in order to play them, but it can’t convert a DRM wma file. My only option was to burn the wma file to CD and then convert it back to mp3 using iTunes. So I burn the single file to a CD and then iTunes, for some reason, read it as Gaither & Hall; which is some gospel group (here’s a screenshot) although the file was actually Rubyhorse. I’ve never had a problem burning AAC files to CD and haivng them show up with correct information, for some reason, WMP10 completely messed up the mp3 info and labeled it this Gaither & Hall. Thanks WMP!

During this whole frustrating experience that would have sent an everyday PC user’s rage gauge to red, I asked my friend to see if he could download the track from his P2P application that he uses. Before I was done burning the CD, he emailed the song to me and get this, it sounds BETTER than the version that I bought from the MSN music store.

Overall, the MSN music store isn’t really a bad thing if you live and breathe in the Microsoft world, but as soon as you want to step outside of it, then things start to go bad. In reality though, the bigger problem is DRM’d music. It’s a nightmare for the customer, it locks you into using a proprietary format that you have to have a proprietary application to use. Yet another reason why P2P applications aren’t dead.

Robert noticed my Last Samurai post and decided to offer a musical Zen tidbit. The song, Aqueous Transmission from Incubus’ Morning View album, is good Zen stuff despite being on a rock album. If you don’t want the full CD, you can pick up the track on iTunes.

I also watched Hero today and I enjoyed the music in it quite a bit, it might be a nice Zen soundtrack to pick up.

Anyone else out there got more Zen music that they want to share?

You may have noticed that I’m listening to the soundtrack for The Last Samurai…again. This soundtrack, by Hans Zimmer, somehow keeps getting played in my iTunes playlist, my car, and my home stereo. I just can’t get enough of it. The last track, A Small Measure of Peace, is absolutely beautiful. There is no other way to describe it. Just listening to it makes me Zen. If you are a fan of symphonic music you must pick this up.

As I mentioned before, I picked up Iron Maiden’s Dance of Death CD.

It’s been spinning in my CD player for a little while but I’m not all that impressed. Their previous offering was in my opinion much better.

This album seems to suffer from the same affliction that Metallica’s St. Anger suffered from.

It sounds like shit. The sound quality of this CD, for some reason, fell in the gutter. It sounds more like a jam session than a polished studio release. It also suffers from so-so lyrics and uninspired tracks that seem to have no cohesion whatsoever. It’s as if they just showed up at someone’s house and started making up music on the spot.

If you are a Maiden fan then you already have this, if you aren’t and are looking for good hard music pick up Brave New World instead.

I had downloaded some tracks from Iron Maiden’s Brave New World a long time ago (the CD was released in 2000). I never really paid all that much attention to them when I downloaded them, I just kinda glanced over them. Last Friday, my Winamp playlist decided to hit one of the songs (Ghost of the Navigator) when my brain wasn’t full of other crap and I actually listened to it. It was damned good. So I went back and listened to all of the other ones that I had downloaded. They were all new tracks (I have all of their old stuff) from the aformentioned Brave New World, so I decided to pick up that CD and their CD released in 2003 titled Dance of Death.

I’m really impressed with Brave New World but the jury is still out on Dance of Death. There are no surprises with New World, it’s just good old school metal from one of the pioneers in the field (BTW, Bruce Dickinson, the lead man from Iron Maiden in the 80’s is back). I’ll give Dance of Death some more air time when I’m tired of New World.

I got Godsmack’s cd The Other Side from Amazon the other day, all I can say is that I am impressed. This cd is not your typical Godsmack offering as it is an acoustic version of their songs and not the heavy rip-roaring sound that one usually equates with their stuff.

Some bands with a heavy sound are not all that musically talented and they overcome such weakness by growling instead of singing and playing harder and louder to overcome their inability how to really make music. This cd allows you to see that Godsmack is not one of those bands. This stripped down offering of their sound allows one to see through the heavy riffs and see that the band is talented vocally and instrumentally.

This is one of those cds that you and your girlfriendwife can both enjoy.

Two software music players made their debut this week. Winamp 5 and iTunes 4.20


Let’s talk about iTunes first. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of new in iTunes, I think it is just an update really. Regardless, I’ve been using iTunes off an on for a while and I think it is ugly. It’s horribly ugly. What’s with the un-inspired gray all over the place? I would like to be able to skin my iTunes interface. The display where it plays songs is lame. I know it’s supposed to be imitating an iPod display, but an iPod is a little device which can’t handle color. This is a PC that can handle millions of colors. Perhaps, Apple, you would like to use some of them. I also cut down the columns that are displayed in the interface. Seeing what genre the songs are is ok, but seriously if you are listening to it, you pretty much know WHAT type of music it is. I don’t think that I need to be reminded of the genre, how many times I’ve played the song, etc. I’ve cut mine to only display Song Title, Time, Artist and Album (I can live without this column too).

One more thing, if you download a song from iTunes Music Store, it downloads it to a protected AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format. The file in this format cannot be converted to an MP3 from iTunes. Why? I just legally paid for it! Why can’t I use it in any manner that I want? I can’t transfer the thing to my MP3 player because it doesn’t accept that format. Thanks DRM. I hate you, leave my life alone. And no, I’m not getting an iPod. I refuse to get something that costs almost as much as the rent to my apartment. I would rather have a place with 4 walls to sleep rather than sleeping under the bridge with my iPod.

On to Winamp. Winamp 5 has several features that I have found. You can rip CDs right to your computer without having to donwload a separate plugin. Unfortunately, unless you want to pay for Winamp 5 Pro, you can only burn to AAC format (there is that fucking format again). That sucks. Of course, updating your player to Pro will eventually be hacked just like everything else. In fact, cursory check of astalavista.com shows that, yeah, it has already been hacked. Some other cool features that I have noticed are opacity and scale. You can scale your player down to 10% its original size or increase the size of it by 300%+. You have similar settings for opacity.


Oh and I just found out that Walmart has started their music download service. You can download tracks for 88 cents. Beware however, you need Windows Media Player 9 with DRM (I hate you DRM) in order to play the wma files. It gets even worse, check out all the restrictions on the files that you buy!

<a href=“http://www.apple.com>Apple has released ”http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/“>iTunes for Windows. The software allows you to interface with their iTunes store (where you can purchase individual tracks for 99 cents a piece), it also allows you to play MP3’s, Rip tracks from CDs, and burn CDs from your digital music files.


I’ve downloaded it and so far it seems pretty cool. However, there are some catches. ”http://arstechnica.com">Ars Technica has an article that has some of the pitfalls of the software. Read that article before installing and running the software.

I picked up A Perfect Circle’s new CD Thirteenth Step (if you want it, get it at Best Buy for $9.99) and after a few listens to it in my car I find myself disappointed with it.

Most of the songs on this CD are really slow and take forever to get absolutely no where. You won’t find songs like The Hollow, Judith, or 3 Libras on this disc (which all made their appearances on APC’s first disc Mer De Noms.

I think that the best tracks on this CD might be track 2 (Weak and Powerless) and track 3 (The Noose) and the latter track takes a while to build up steam and once it does it’s over. I will have to listen to it at home and the office when I’m not driving to see if I warm up to the CD some more.