I just signed up for Amie Street after a recommendation from Owen (a recommendation he gave months ago), and the site looked really promising. Lots of my favourite artists were represented, with links to promising sounding stuff I didn't know.

I happened to be chatting about music with Andy C while signing up, recommending The Kills to him (he reciprocated with Brakes). I had a quick look to see if Amie Street had any stuff by The Kills that I don't have yet.

However, I'm in Australia. That means I'm not in the US. And that means, all those little "N/A" flags on most of the music that I was interested in.

I know it's the fault of the record companies rather than the music sites, but for fuck's sake, can't we get past this shit? I'm so sick of not having access to stuff because I'm in Australia. I would have bought a couple of albums right then and there, but instead I have annoyance and a growing sense of hatred aimed at arseholes in suits.

After a short while trying to find music it quickly became obvious that the amount of music marked as unavailable in my region makes Amie Street frustrating and unusable for me.

[Update: I should be absolutely clear that I don't blame Amie Street. I also sent them a note, and they gave a lengthy and reasonable response. Yes, it's the content providers, Amie Street are trying to get more liberal licensing, in the meantime they're working at hiding the content that's not available.]

What is it with me and music sites? First I became a disgruntled ex-emusic customer, and now I'm a refugee from thesixtyone.

How did thesixtyone fall from beginning to fulfill my music wishlist? Not long ago, James and Sam, the guys who run t61, announced that they finally understood the way forward for the site. Last week it launched, and apparently the relaunched site has had positive feedback from sites like TechCrunch. For those on the site, the people in my community, I think the biggest reaction was ... WHAT ... THE ... FUCK?

The biggest attraction of t61, for me at least, turned out to be the community. It was great to chat to people in my group, the Beat Geeks, engage with artists, and talk to other users. On the whole, that was how I found music that I liked. And that's exactly what I feel that the redesign took away.

This is what the Beat Geeks group page (or channel, as it's now called) looks like now.

The background image changes, depending on what music is playing. What used to be on that page was the top five songs the group was playing and the discussion that was going on between members. Can you see the group discussion? If you click on the tiny link 'discussion' in the box on the bottom right, the discussion turns up in the box. That little tiny box down there is all that's left of what was one of the most engaging things about t61.

There are other things that drive me mad about the new site. I find it terribly difficult to navigate, with all the links hidden away. The changing pictures are a distraction too; I'm here to listen to music and engage with people, not watch pseudo video clips. You can no longer browse around the site because going to a new page changes the music. And possibly worst of all from my straight user experience point of view, the new site insists on starting the music again after I've paused it. Finally, it doesn't even seem possible to leave a message on an artist's page any more. That's not a step towards bringing fans and artists together.

I don't feel angry at Sam and James, as I did with the dishonest money-grubbers at emusic, but I feel disappointed. I think they've made a mistake, that they've damaged the thing that made the site engaging and special in the first place. Of course, I may be wrong, and only time will tell, but a whole lot of people I know are abandoning the site, and feeling hurt.

Thankfully, a big bunch of those people have moved to a new place, somewhere that's equally community driven, and growing fast. You can now find me on uvumi. Once I find my way around, I'll probably do a write up. Let's hope my presence doesn't kill it.

A bunch of the (astoundingly awesome) electro freaks are based in Vancouver, where I was sinfully not playing shows.

Bankai kills Vancouver

What was the solution to this conundrum? It's the crowdsource age, so work out a budget and ask for donations. Well, not strictly donations, if you give money you become a shareholder and if there are profits, you profit proportionally to your stake.

I think this is so fantastic, and love the fact that thesixtyone has made it easier for Bankai to get something like this off the ground, because he's talking directly to people who love his music. This is the first time I've heard of anything like this. Does anyone know of other instances where fans have paid an artist directly to tour?

Go to the site and become a shareholder.

Now that I'm a disgruntled ex-eMusic customer, I've been playing around with other music sites. Via the enigmatic Bankai, I was introduced to thesixtyone, and it provides some of the things I dream of in a music economy. Most notably, artists actually get most of the money.

On thesixtyone, artists sell their music directly to their fans. Unlike a record or distribution deal where they only make $1-2 per album (if they ever get paid, that is), artists on thesixtyone make at least $7 per album and are paid every 30 days -- no wait for recoupment and no complex royalty schemes!

The site is attractive, relatively easy to use, under active development, and slightly buggy. They seem very responsive to bug reports, so I'm confident things will get better and better.

As individual artists rather than labels upload music, the music selection is nowhere near as wide as what was available at eMusic (I spits on the Sony deal). But I've still managed to find quite a bit of stuff to enjoy, my current favourite being thecitylights. You can "heart" music you enjoy, and if the song becomes popular (hearted by others) you get reputation. They've also got a clever "Quests" system, things like "listen to recently uploaded music", that earns you hearts and reputation. I'm finding it slightly addictive, though I'm not really sure what you do with reputation.

thesixtyone has a Flash music player, and lets you navigate around the site and the music keeps playing, which is great. Unfortunately, it does this by intercepting clicks, so that the URL doesn't reflect where you are in the site, so you can't bookmark things directly.

Music can be bought with a credit system. I haven't bought any yet, and I'm not sure what the pricing is, so we'll see how that compares to other sites when I do.

Overall, I'm hopeful thesixtyone will be meeting at least some of my music needs for a while to come. Go and sign up and play around, and tell them michaeltwofish sent you.

If the Times and/or Post were to erect a pay wall, I see things playing out as follows: they lose most of their readers; ad revenue declines accordingly; the revenue they make from readers who do pay won’t even make up for the lost ad revenue; and so by switching from free to paid access they’d actually sink further into the red.

Daring Fireball: Pay Walls

This seems so obviously true to me, I find it surprising that it keeps coming up. I wish they'd just do it, and collapse, so that something sensible can take the place of the broken old media. Oh, and if you wouldn't mind taking down the music and film industries while you're there, that would be great, thanks.

First, some PHP stuff.

The e modifier of the preg_replace() function escapes things. It can be round tripped, but it seems silly that you have to do so manually.

It's possible to call a method using preg_regex_callback(), which does not escape things, but you have to pass it array('objectname','methodname').

And, other stuff.

I like Blonde Redhead, Quite Village, and Santogold. Thanks to @turtlepark for the recommendation, and Chris Dahl for seconding.

Lastly, I get grumpy when I haven't had enough sleep.

My niece, T, is staying with us, picking up her new MacBook, and she asked me if she could install LimeWire. I had no idea what LimeWire was and, being distracted with something else, I said sure. When I had a moment, I checked and discovered it's a bit torrent client. And our internet connection was currently being used to download music illegally, something it hasn't done before. I've never had a strong stance against piracy, it was just that it felt like too much of a hassle for me to work out how to find music online, and then came the iTunes music store and the price was worth avoiding the hassle. I think the music companies deserve a huge kick in the arse for burying their collective heads in the sand while there was a revolution going on around them.

So I said to T, more out of interest than anything else, "What you're doing is illegal." She looked at me with utmost shock, aghast. She had absolutely no idea. Her only response, "So why is it there?" A good question to ask the music companies.

Prediction of the day. Within 5 years--let's say by Christmas 2012--it will be possible to search for a song by playing or singing a bit of the song. People will be able to sing into their computer and be taken to search results where they can play and purchase the song. Or they'll be able to hold their phone up to the radio, and get a text message back with information on the song and where to buy it.

Maybe 5 years is even a bit on the long side.