Music Meridian

Extra, extra. The Zune is priced the same as the same sized iPod. Microsoft will have their own Zune music store. Attention holiday shoppers: It will be released on Nov. 14th.

Read all about it here.

Apparently U2 are not the only musicians with their own iPod. There is now a Miles Davis iPod...and you can win it here:

Miles Davis iPod.

I'd still rather have a ZappaPod. Steve Jobs, get working on it!!

(Via Idolator)

"According to new research, IT (Information Technology) staff are twice as likely to wear a heavy metal t-shirt as their non-IT counterparts. The study of 1000 office workers, by Intermedia.NET, the leading Microsoft Exchange host, also found IT types 34% more likely to sport a ponytail."

See the report here.
(Via Blabbermouth!)





Two songs from the upcoming album by The Who ("Endless Wire") are streaming here.

After listening to the tracks, my verdict? No sale. I'll stick to The Who Sell Out and Tommy, thanks.

Also, why is it after Keith Moon passed away, the rest of The Who have seemingly insisted on getting the drummers to play the most boring beats known to man on their songs? Surely there are other wildman drummers who would jump at the chance to put some fire back into the band?

Mike Portnoy comes to mind.....note his recent The Who tribute band, which kicked ass as I can attest first hand after witnessing one of their shows.







Stereogum has the dirt on the upcoming release of Microsoft's answer to the iPod: the Zune.

Check it out here

3 Interesting things I want to point out:

1. Has wi-fi capabilities, so you can transfer songs and pictures to other Zunes. Very cool! However there's some sort of DRM that only allows the reciever to play the songs up to 3 days or 3 times...whichever comes first. Wonder how long it'll take someone to crack that?

2. Surprisingly, it's way more expensive than the iPod. $300 for a 30GB Zune. (You can buy the new 80GB iPod for $350.) Plus 30GB is the only model of Zune that will be offered initally.

3. Has FM radio receiver. Why not Satellite Radio???

Steve Jobs had his big annoucement speech today. Totally crazy what Apple is unleashing all at once. Let's see:

- 80 GB(!!) iPod
- Cheaper pricing on the 60 GB iPod ($250)
- 2 GB nano
- An EVEN SMALLER iPod Shuffle with cheaper price ($79)
- New version of iTunes, including gapless playback (yaaay!) and upgraded iTunes store selling games ($5) and full length movies ($9.99 and up).
- Coming in 2007 - iTV. Some sort of device to hook up to your TV to play your iTunes downloads of movies, tv shows, music etc.

That's like a megaton bomb's worth of new announcements. Get all the gritty details at Apple's offical site. Or check out the breakdown of the announcements over at Engaget.

this is more a question than a statement. who wants to start a ring tone company with me? the idea would be to create hip-sounding ring tones for cell phones, then sell them to people. oh, i know people can make their own at home and put them on their phones themselves, but we'll do it for them. i don't know how to do it, but that's not the point. the point is we make these little twenty second tunes then get people to pay us to put them on their cell phones. if we make the investment in reporting them to the riaa, and for advertising, then we could even chart something. it's not a career, but not a bad hobby if it goes somewhere.

i'm sure i'm not the first to have this idea, and maybe someone's already successful doing it, but surely we could put out something better than lil jon for cell phones. death prog ring tones anyone?

I'm spending the week in Texas (Austin and Houston) for business and/or pleasure. Please send recommendations for "not-to-miss" music-related activities in that area, such as shows, clubs, record stores etc. Send them to phil at drumscoop dot com.

Blogs may be more erratic than usual. I'll be back in 10 days or so....