Things that strike me

Every once in a while, you unexpectedly find things you didn’t know you wanted but now…

This turned up while I was exploring imeem this evening. I came across Bliss because I occasionally listen to Radio IO but the ads drive me up the wall and occasionally the songs do as well. This is one of the good songs along with stuff by – for example – the utterly brilliant Home Video. I also know about Bliss because they did what I consider to be a great remix of Bring me to Life by Evanescence but that’s not really indicative of their stuff; just better than the single release of the song. It came as an extra track on the CD single by the way. It’s also thanks to online radio that I know about stuff like Letting the Cables Sleep by Bush and other miscellaneous stuff which scares my family as they thought they had me figured musically now.

Anyway, this – that bit above blew my mind so off I tootled to iTunes and bought the album it came from. See, the music industry really needs to understand that online sales could be the crack cocaine of their industry. I remember when I heard Crucify by Tori Amos on Europe 2 (yeah I listen to the weirdest international radio stations) and went and bought it immediately without having to wait 16 hours to get to an open CD shop. I bought it THERE AND THEN. They really need to realise just how potent that is. It’s probably worse than online gambling. I wouldn’t know. I don’t do online gambling. I do buy music though….and I like the idea of lots of things.

But the music industry isn’t interested in the possibilities, it seems to me. It hasn’t really gone global either – the industry is too tied up in the past and what it needs to prevent happening than what it can create happening. They fought tooth and nail against the free advertising that Youtube effectively is until one of them broke ranks. They have been fighting illegal file sharers by targeting legitimate buyers.

I’m looking at – eventually – getting a subscription to last.fm because I’m ham strung by how they limited radio last year. I’m experimenting with imeem at the moment. I’ve played with BlipFm in the past as well. Of all of them, Last.FM has the most user friendly interface. Imeem has a slightly wider range of music (so far – I may find its limitations over the time to come). All of these have the impact of making me buy more music…not less…and this is something that the music industry needs to wake up to.

Meanwhile, back with the song above, it’s pure Friday night music to me. Candles in the living room, pure chillout. I like things like this.