Black Sweater White Cat is a CC/copy left music radio show coming from WBCR-LP 97.7 FM in Great Barrington, MA.

Looks like, maybe, ccMixter is becoming a useful resource for podcasters and radio shows. How freakin cool is that…

teru contributed probably the best track on my “La Vie Chill” album and wrote some nice things about that experience in his weblog but did you know that he’s been posting “fresh music” links religiously to site? It has turned into a “must visit must hear” site for me.

It’s odd how even music you’ve already heard sounds different when some else is DJ’ing.

And teru: where’s the ‘WebJay this’ button?

I’ve noticed through posting on the web that 100% of the time a non-zero amount of people will take what you say and interpret it EXACTLY the opposite, no matter how forcefully you say it. If I write “my dog is black” I will have at least one link back to me saying “Who knew Stone had a white dog?” In general I’d like to think I make my contribution to those statistics, somewhere, somehow.

Although not in the press release, John did say in the blog entry:

Bottom line: this is an alternative way for people to buy Magnatune music, in a scheme where they can themselves make money by sharing their bought files with other people, in what is typically referred to as an “affiliate network.” We absolutely will continue to sell DRM- free music through the magnatune web site, but for those who wish to make money by sharing their files, that option is now there.

In my defense: If you WERE evil, wouldn’t the best possible strategy be to deny up front that you’re evil !?!?!

In a big splashy fashion Weedshare & Magnatune announced a distribution partnership (that link has the press release, John’s explanation and nice ranting thread growing).

It seems Magnatune music will be made available for sale on a song-by-song basis as part of the Weed share network. Weed is trying to be the pyramid scheme of P2P music sharing. You actually get money for sharing music. The Big Stink is that Weed uses a form of DRM to pull this off. After three listens of a song it “shuts off.”

Lest we forget, Magnatune is the label that says “no DRM ever” prominently on the web site.

John says he thought he would “hit the DRM issue head on” in the press release but a quick perusal of the growing thread makes it pretty obvious that the hammer wasn’t big enough. Nowhere in the press release does it state that Magnatune music will always be available on magnatune.com without DRM before of after purchase (forever).

I’m a little concerned about this because Magnatune has pretty much survived on the ‘good will’ factor — or at least to my mind it has. But the percentage of times that I’ve successfully second guessed John is approximately 0%. (This is just the latest episode I got wrong — if you read the last message in that thread you’ll see he comes out smelling like roses.) So I’m going to continue assuming he knows what he’s doing.

You know, most Magnatune records on are iTunes. Aren’t they all DRM’d up the ass?

A very good of compendium of tips and tricks from hoffman2k on the Live forums.

Today is Dean Gray Tuesday.

Trying to repeat Danger Mouse’s Grey Tuesday success, the guys that did the spectacularly huge Boulevard of Broken Songs released a whole album of Green Day mashups a month ago and promptly got a C&D from the Day’s record company.

Playing off Kanye West Party Ben claims to be “$600,000 in debt on this thing (or thereabouts).” Considering Danger Mouse has since moved on to (just last week) be nominated for a “Song of the Year” Grammy for his work with Gorillaz it’s not insignificant, if wholly intentional, irony when Ben says “so we better win that Grammy, or, um, else.”

By all rights I should have hosted this album but I let the participation deadline pass without even listening to the whole album. I could claim that I was entrenched in my own album release and site redesign of my two web sites. But I’d lying to myself even more than usual. I’m not in the mood to self-analyze my ambivalence but I do support the protest in spirit, if not in hosting practice.

The hot beat maker plugin is Stylus RMX. Professional gurus claim it to be among their favorite synths of all time and the KVR user reviews don’t get much better.

I picked up my copy a few days ago (yes on extended financing — and no, this won’t be the last entry I will post from that shopping spree) and I’ve been playing around with it in a few hosts.

Stylus RMX is a VSTi/AU plugin instrument that you call up in your host to handle the beats and percussion. The best thing RMX does is consolidate a world of stuff under one roof into a very productive environment. A very, very, very productive environment. I want to emphasize that because in the rest of this article it will be easy to forget why to get this plugin in the first place.

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I tried to find a way to say this without sounding ridiculously condescending but I think you’ll agree I failed. (Which, on the face of it, makes me a snobby ridiculous failure. wups.)

Ms. Vybe (kendra)’s history at ccMixter is a story of rebellion, redemption and resurrection. She started out posting some very average instrumental beats (since removed from the site). In reaction to members typically spirited, but never mean, reviews she kind of lost it and went on a flaming rampage in the reviews forums (again, most of which has since been removed with the uploads involved). Reaction to her reaction was what you would expect. Hate with dash of hate, sprinkled with hate. She became known around the site as Ms. Hatey McHatexter (not really, remember: I’m just being condescending).

When she tried it on me I just gave her my usual spiel which goes something like: “Hey, this ain’t no Metafilter.” (Side note: It’s kind of amazing how easy it is to control the tenure of the ad hominem attacks in the forums at Mixter. All you have to do to a flamer is say: “um, look around, we don’t really do that here” and so far, 100% of the time the person says “oh” and everybody moves on. I’m probably too old to appreciate the “freedom of expression” that comes from sites that tolerate or even encourage personal attacks that take place all over the web… wait… listen to me. All of a sudden my shit doesn’t stink. OK, so let’s amend it to snobby ridiculous hypocritical failure.)

Anyway, kendra turned in some downright great samples that I think have been unjustly ignored. She also submitted some cuts with raps (which unfortunately have also been removed) which gave her universal praise and requests for a cappellas — the life force of ccMixter).

Fast forward six months to last week when she uploaded three great rapping pells.

She really is one talented person and I for one am very grateful she decided to put the boasty-bravado-bitch thing aside and post such quality material to ccMixter.

Heres my first of probably many treatments: EMCEE ONE (Treatment)

I finally upgraded my monitors from a consumer stereo system to a real pro system: Event’s Percision 6 monitors. They are pretty expensive (here for $1,000) but Guitar Center is running a 2-year zero interest payment plan and I got over $100 off because I took the floor models. $37.50 a month means I grind a lot more of my own coffee.

I listened to 3 other sets of speakers in the store and they were OK… then we turned on the Events. Fuggetaboutit. You could pitch a tent on my reaction.

They definitely overwhelm my domestic recording space but it’s pretty amazing to actually hear everything. (Here are some reviews of the P8′s, basically the same thing but even louder.)

One completely weird thing: I got them plugged into the monitor outputs of my M-Audio OmniStudio and when I shut them off (they are self-powered) Windows thinks I’ve switched audio devices. I’ll repeat that because it’s that weird: When my speakers, which are attached to the back of my sound unit, get turned off, the OS gets confused about the sound unit. I’ve crashed several remixing hosts and media players simply because I wanted to switch to headphones. Luckily the OmniStudio is USB so I just have to remember to physically disconnect that from the PC, wait a few second then reconnect it.

The Revolution unofficially official Creative Commons and ccMixter podcast is finally back on the air after a deafening silence of too long.

Another Indieish project is also about to get under way: CC:365 in which a CC licensed song will be featured once a day for a year. The song for day 1: (tada!) fourstones’ superego (Larry Mix). This is one of eight remix contest entries to what I believe to be the first CC remix contest. (The contest pages are no longer online.)