It’s been almost two years since Spotify launched in Europe – why in the hell isn’t it out in the US yet?
Yeah, yeah, the question is rhetorical because what other reason is there for blocking the domestic release of what Lifehacker calls “the best desktop music player we’ve ever used?”
Raise your hand if you guessed right – The reason why Spotify isn’t out yet is because of our old bumbling nemesis, the major record labels!
Before we dig in, I want to reiterate why Spotify is so compelling a product. The excitement of what Spotify offers isn’t so much the actual product it peddles. There are already a handful of music services that offer unlimited music playback for a monthly fee. Its main draw is that it employs a ad-supported freemium model where anyone can listen to music without charge initially. If you like the service you can pay for other compelling perks such as mobile device playback or higher quality playback.
I think the music monetization problem is twofold. The first is finding a means in delivering music to people that isn’t cumbersome and cost-prohibitive to the consumer. This is a problem that is more or less solved by Spotify. It’s easy to use, delivers accurate results, is the right price, and even incorporates innovative features like playlist collaboration/browser based sharing. The service itself appears to be a great product, worthy of people’s time. It’s not a trivial accomplishment, as most other “legitimate” music services have failed miserably at this throughout the years, including the vaunted iTunes.
It just goes to show how accomplished a salesman Steve Jobs is with his introduction of Apple’s iTunes-based social music network, Ping, this past Wednesday. From the way Jobs presented the service, many people felt Ping was the future of music consumption and interaction, calling it a “Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, <insert internet juggernaut here> Killer.” In fact, I believe my initial reaction during the presentation could be paraphrased as “gave me an erection.”
It turns out that all anyone got out of Ping so far was a severe case of blue balls.
If you’re a music fan and you’re wondering if Ping is worth your time, it’s not. You’re much better off with Pandora or last.fm right now. They offer music discovery options that make Ping look like BP of music sites. Don’t bother signing up if you don’t have an iTunes account. If you are already signed up, I guess it couldn’t hurt to opt in to reserve a name/profile just in case Apple improves the service, but no one would blame you if you didn’t care.
In it’s current incarnation, Ping is utterly useless for music consumers and here are ten reasons why:
Ok, I think I’ve figured out this video for Yeasayer’s Madder Red.
It’s got to be part of an ARG promoting Bioshock Infinite. I can’t believe they would spoil the game this early, but you can clearly see that Kristen Bell’s one armed face-monster rules the clouds at the end of this video. There’s no doubt it’s the final boss.
They say that the 21st century belongs to the geeks. If that’s the case, then Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World may just be the film of the century.
Sound absurd? Maybe. But at the very least, this action-romance-comedy is the quintessential film of the geek generation.
Director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) once described this movie as a cross between Say Anything and Kill Bill. It may sound ridiculous, but it’s an apt description for this deliciously fun movie based on Brian Lee O’Malley’s six volume graphic novel series.
Michael Cera plays Scott Pilgrim, a 22 year old Toronto slacker who is currently “in-between jobs.” He’s the bassist of a band with his friends and they have aspirations of signing a record label contract and making it big. On the personal front, Scott’s recently started dating high-schooler, Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), as his way of rebounding from a heart-wrenching breakup he had just gone through. Scott meets the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), at a party and is immediately smitten by her. Unfortunately, Ramona comes with some heavy baggage in the form of “seven evil exes” which Scott must defeat in battle if he is to date her.
Sounds like a reasonable premise for a movie, right? If you can buy into that, you’re going to love this film. (If not, well, you’ll probably feel like this fuddy duddy did.)
What Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World does best is encapsulate all the things I liked about my childhood into one very nostalgic and fun film. References to video games, comic books, television, music, and pop culture naturally pepper the film throughout without seeming forced. Co-Screenwriter Michael Bacall explains the film’s secret in handling references as “…trying to make it punctuation as opposed to prose.”
Did I love every single one of the references the movie makes? Of course not. I didn’t particularly care for the pseudo Dance Dance Revolution-ninja game Scott and Knives play together, but it was a necessary plot device in the film to show a visceral video game rather than a couch/controller based one. There’s also a much ballyhooed Seinfeld reference that I didn’t LOL at personally, but I did respect the fact that they got the rights to Jonathan Wolff’s theme music from the show while also shooting the scene like an authentic Seinfeld scene.
That’s the key here – authenticity. See, the internet generation can smell a phony a mile away. A lot of the drek Hollywood has put out in the last decade reeks of cashing in (Gamer, anyone?) on what studio executives perceive as the “geek culture.”
One of the reasons why Scott Pilgrim works is because it’s crafted by geeks (Brian Lee O’Malley and Edgar Wright) who grew up with the very same things the film refers to. These people have played those video games, read those comics, watched those television shows, and listened to those bands. They just happen to be accomplished writers and filmmakers with the means and creativity to share highlights from their formative years.
Most of the video game references are general enough that people who aren’t avid video game players will enjoy them. Do you get the concept of receiving points for defeating an enemy? Ok, how about the concept of landing multiple punches in a row on an enemy constituting a “combo”? Not so obscure, right? Now, let’s take it a step further. What if defeating an enemy turns them into a bunch of coins that fall to the floor? I hope you see where the film goes with this.
For people who have played a lot of video games in their childhood, boy are you in for a treat. It starts with a smirk or maybe even a chuckle at the opening Universal logo ditty rendered completely in 8-bit sounds. Your ears will perk up when you hear the “finding a secret” sound from Zelda in the opening scene. You may even fist pump when the ethereal “choose your Zelda file” music plays during an early dream sequence. By the time you hear the announcer from Tekken exclaim “KO!” as Scott defeats the first evil Ex you’ll undoubtedly have a shit-eating grin on your face.
My personal favorite, though, was a scene in which Scott tries to deflect attention away from his girl issues by exclaiming to his band, “Hey guys, I learned the bass line from Final Fantasy II!” He then proceeds to play the battle theme from Final Fantasy II on his bass guitar!
Edgar Wright earns +999 geek credibility!
While Scott Pilgrim Vs The World’s video game references may receive the lion’s share of attention, music also plays a huge role in the film as well. Besides the core love story, the film is also about Scott’s band, Sex Bob-Omb (+200 points if you can name that reference), as it progresses through multiple battle-of-the-bands competitions in its quest to receive a lucrative label deal.
Sex Bob-Omb’s music is actually done by Beck and he hasn’t sounded this lo-fi and raw since 1994’s “Loser.” There’s no shortage of actual musical talent standing in for the other in-film “bands” either. Members of Broken Social Scene play Crash and the Boys’ music while Canadian indie rockers Metric stand in for the heavenly Clash at Demonhead. To top it all off, renowned producer Nigel Godrich (Radiohead’s “sixth member”) composes an 8-bit infused punk score for the film.
Eagle-eyed viewers will notice Scott Pilgrim wearing different band T-shirts throughout the film. Plumtree and The Smashing Pumpkins (with the apropos “SP” logo) come to mind. Hell, there’s even a Tragically Hip acknowledgement in the movie! (The movie is set in Canada, after all)
The film itself is a fantastic concert of grin-inducing visual and audio effects, endearing acting, and witty repartee. Edgar Wright’s previous two films have shown that he’s a master of quick edits, scene transitions, and comedic timing. These skills allow him take Scott Pilgrim’s visual panache to dizzying heights.
It may sound trite at this point to declare that a movie is like a comic book brought to life, but it’s truly appropriate for this film. This movie is like a comic book brought to life.
Seriously, no other film this side of Sin City has come this close to imagining what a comic book would look like with live on-screen characters. Verbs and phrases in stylized lettering slickly animate onto the screen when the action calls for it. Multiple split screens capture character reactions, evoking images of split comic panels. Scenes quickly cut from one to another seamlessly, giving the feeling of hurriedly flipping to find out what’s on the next page. The film’s style is just as much of a star as any of the actors and will quite probably be the focus of word-of-mouth buzz.
image courtesy of entertainment weekly
Scott Pilgrim’s cast is a veritable who’s who of a new generation of talented Hollywood actors. Many will talk about Kieran Culkin stealing the show as Scott’s gay roommate, Wallace, and deservedly so. His grounded wisdom and comedic chops would make even a straight man want to sleep in the same bed with him. Ellen Wong is an adorable manga character come to life as Knives Chau. It’s hard to imagine that this is her film debut, as she nails every scene she’s in.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays a confident and cool Ramona Flowers – I just wish there was more time to fall in love with her. The film clocks in at just about 2 hours, but between squeezing in 7 epic fight scenes and establishing Scott’s world, there’s not much time for Ramona’s character to breathe and develop fully. Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, Mark Webber, Alison Pill, and Johnny Webber round out Scott’s group of friends and they all lend their own charm to the film.
On the dark side of the room, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, and Jason Schwartzman delight in tormenting our precious little Scott Pilgrim. Evans in particular is memorable as an over the top skateboarder/movie star whose voice can be only described as Gob Bluth mixed with Christian Bale’s Batman. Even “unknown” actor, Satya Bhabha, has an epic Bollywood-meets-mystical-internet-humor fight scene as Ramona’s first “Evil Ex,” Matthew Patel.
I realize that the Michael Cera backlash is out in full force, but please don’t let whatever feelings you may have on him stop you from seeing this film. His performance is decidedly Ceran, but he does do the Scott Pilgrim character justice. If you want to, you can even talk yourself into believing that Cera has increased his acting range to include nerd-rage and almost-asshole.
Plus, if you’re an Arrested Development fan you won’t want to miss the George Michael/Ann reunion during the film. Yes, Mae Whitman is in this movie and no, she’s not quite as…homely.
I’m 28 years old. I’ve seen movies in the past that I could partly relate to as a portrait of a generation. Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything comes to mind as a particular highlight. I just wasn’t born in the right era to call it my own.
With Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, my generation finally has its Say Anything. That is, if Lloyd Dobler could wield a flaming sword and inflict a 64-hit air combo on Diane’s dad.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World opens in US theaters on August 13th.
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti is perhaps one of the more “buzzworthy” bands so far this year, garnering a “9.0” review from Pitchfork and landing on many other music blogs’ “Best of 2010 so far” lists. At $15 for a ticket including fees we’re in the impulse zone where there’s not a substantial risk even if you’re not a diehard fan of the band.
I’m all about seeing live music, especially at affordable prices, so I gave it a shot. I had given Before Today a couple of listens and while it didn’t “wow” me as much as the “Indie Blogosphere,” it also didn’t repulse me either. “Round and Round” has some pretty infectious melodies contained within and I will admit to waking up some mornings with the song in my head.
Some bands are just not meant to do live shows.
Ariel Pink cavorted around stage like a lifelong wino in an outfit that can best be described as a cross between Mario’s red overalls and Borat’s one-piece swimsuit. His voice cracked more times than an 18-year old going through puberty. Their set sounded lifeless and amorphous. None of the Before Today’s eclectic lo-fi charm came across on stage.
I stayed through each successive song with hopes of finally hearing the performance that would redeem the band. After about 45 minutes or so, it became apparent that this was never going to happen. I cut my losses and headed up to Two Boots for some delicious pizza.
Hey, for a $15 investment it wasn’t any worse than walking out of another shitty summer movie.
Disclosure: I was about three scotches in by the time Ariel Pink took the stage, so I had the musical equivalent of “beer goggles” going for me. Despite this I could still tell that the band was putting on a forgettable show.
I snapped a video of “Round and Round” in which you can hear this for yourself below:
Dance Central is the killer app for Microsoft’s Kinect.
Now, I know what you might be thinking.”Dance games are for kids and girls! They’re silly and lame!” Hear me out here. You know those choreographed dances in a Lady GaGa or Justin Timberlake music video? Say what you want about the music itself, but you gotta at least admit that the moves are kinda cool to watch, especially when a bunch of people are doing them in unison. What if I told you that there’s a game that would not only teach you and your friends how to dance like that, but would do so even if you had ZERO dancing ability to begin with. Isn’t that something that at least piques your interest?
Harmonix’s Dance Central is that game.
Think of it kinda like Rock Band, only your body is the instrument. (Well, if you want to get technical, the Kinect is actually the plastic instrument you have to buy.)
Dance games have been attempted before, but they were generally confined to sequences of steps on a mat (Dance Dance Revolution) or waving around an input controller (Just Dance). As many people would attest to, this is “dancing” as much as Guitar Hero is “playing the guitar.” Let’s face it, if you walk in on a room of people are playing DDR, they’re going to look pretty silly. However, if you walked into a room of people playing Dance Central, you might think they’re actually training as a real dance crew.
Using the full body tracking abilities of Microsoft’s Kinect, Dance Central lets you do a full range of motions with your body and hands free while scoring you on how accurately you perform the routine presented to you during each song. Honestly, I couldn’t have cared less about my score. It was just so much fun performing the moves that I found myself ignoring the score tally and just losing myself in the music and figuring out the moves. If the game didn’t even have a scoring system, I doubt a lot of casual players would notice. Nevertheless, I imagine once the novelty wears off, scoring highly will be a strong motivator to perform better as a dancer. As a gaming connoisseur, this excites me because it’s a game genre that has heretofore been impossible to fully replicate in a home environment. As a human being, this will excite you because its so intuitive and easy to get into.
All the songs in the game are original, licensed music. I had a hands on demonstration with Lady GaGa’s “Just Dance“ and Lipps Inc’s “Funkytown.” Other tracks I saw on the menu screen included Beastie Boys’ “Body Movin’,” No Doubt’s “Hella Good” and Bel Biv Devoe’s “Poison.” Harmonix promises a song selection that spans a diverse set of genres from hip-hop, to funk, reggae, pop, and more. The Harmonix producer I spoke with also touted the fact that many of the dance routines include the same moves from songs’ original music videos.
Now, I couldn’t dance my way out of a box, but after my hands on with Dance Central at the Harmonix booth, I felt I had a decent shot within seconds after starting up “Just Dance.” The dance moves are intuitive and generally easy to understand. Granted, I was on “easy” difficulty, but I’ve also never danced a step in my life that didn’t involve the number “two.” Gameplay involves a sequence of dance moves that scroll on the right side, kind of like the wheel on The Price Is Right. Your goal is to duplicate the highlighted move in the center, while preparing for upcoming moves by looking further down the wheel. The game will give you feedback in the form of red highlights on your on screen avatar’s body depending on where you’re messing up. Perform moves accurately and your score will go up along with Harmonix’s standard 5-star rating system. Many songs also incorporate a “freestyle” section as well, where everyone dancing just kinda does their own thing, as a psychedelic background plays on screen. The Kinect camera records all the action and shows you on screen. It felt a little gimmicky, but was still a neat feature.
I ran into a couple of instances where I couldn’t really tell what a particular dance move entailed. While a friendly Harmonix dancer was there at E3 to coach me on what to do, there clearly won’t be a bundled dancer when the game ships this holiday. Fortunately there’s a practice mode called “Break It Down” where you can practice each individual dance move more slowly and in detail. These instances are few and far between, especially in easier difficulty settings, so I wouldn’t worry too much about difficulty putting a crimp in your dance party gatherings. Most of the moves are very intuitive and easy to perform.
My only other concern was with the menu system, namely the fact that it took multiple confirmations and long, methodical hand swipes to pick a song and difficulty. This may be more of an issue with the Kinect in general as I noticed similar issues with other titles as well. It’s not a dealbreaker; it’s just kind of annoying because using a controller to pick options would just be plain faster. Hopefully this is something Microsoft and Harmonix work on before the Kinect launch.
While many people were on stage dancing at the same time, the E3 demo of Dance Central only tracked one player for the game. It was able to track a person behind in silhouette form as well, but only the first player was scored. Harmonix mentioned that there would be “multiplayer dance battles,” but it sounded as if this would be limited to two scored players. It’s kind of a bummer, but not as much of a deal breaker as you would think. You can still have a group of friends do a routine with you in front of the camera, they just won’t be scored. Think of them as your backup dancer crew. It’ll probably be a good thing at parties, too, as it’ll be more welcoming for some of the more shy people to get involved.
Add all of it up and you have a strongly compelling game experience if you have any interest in music or dancing. The only thing that might keep you away is the $150 Kinect device buy-in price or if you really have no desire to move your body under any circumstance. If you’re at all intrigued by Kinect, though, you owe it to yourself to take a good long look at Harmonix’s Dance Central.
Oh, another Rock Band game coming out this year? What’s next, are you going to tell me that they’re releasing a new Madden title too? hi2u Captain Obvious!
If I didn’t know any better, those would be my first thoughts about Rock Band 3. While a new entry in the franchise may not be the most surprising piece of news to someone, the number of tangible improvements Harmonix has brought to the series is.
Before E3, it was announced that Rock Band 3 would contain a “Pro” mode where players could essentially play the real notes of a particular song on updated guitar controllers. On top of that, the new plastic “pro” instruments would double as functional MIDI instruments for actual music creation.
Now, Harmonix didn’t have playable pro guitars available at their E3 booth this year, but they did provide a live demonstration of them in action:
What really blew my mind was when the guitarist plugged the guitar controller he was using into an amp and played real musical notes while playing a game. It’s one thing to read that these things function as real instruments and another to actually hear it for yourself. It doesn’t sound fake or bee-boo-bop-beep-y, folks. It’s not quite the same as Jack White on stage, but it’s definitely close. The music/tech geek in me had the same childlike feeling of wonderment as it did when I played the first Guitar Hero game.
(You can definitely tell the difference in the video below, but it’s nowhere near the audio fidelity you get from hearing these things played live.)
Bear in mind though, Harmonix dude is an accomplished guitar player. Unless you’re a plastic instrument playing prodigy, you shouldn’t expect to be shredding right out of the box. Nevertheless, the game does have the makings of being the most fun guitar teacher ever. I’m not sure if I’d actually stick with the game long enough to get good at it, but I’ll be damned if coming out of a video game progression cocoon a real guitarist isn’t downright compelling.
I did have the opportunity to try out the new keyboard instrument, though. Of course I picked “pro” mode because I used to play some piano back when I was a wee lad.
I clearly failed as a kid.
I had a hard time even on medium difficulty in a song with a simple keyboard part, “Power of Love.” When i did hit the right notes, though, it was much more gratifying than if I had just hit some colored buttons on a game controller because in the back of my mind I knew that i was playing the real notes of the song. On a related note, I noticed that the keyboard parts in many rock songs are pretty friggin’ simplistic. Unless we get a song like U2 – New Years Day, I wouldn’t expect for keyboard virtuosos to be playing long, complicated solos in this game even on pro-mode.
Ironically enough, the five iconic rhythm game colors are how Harmonix organizes keys on the keyboard controller:
The keyboard section on the game screen will shift from left to right depending on where your fingers should be on the keyboard. For example, if you see blue and green bars on your screen, you’ll want to have your fingers on the right side of the keyboard. If the game needs you to be on the left side, the screen will shift to show red and yellow bars. The colors essentially act as octave markers, if you’re musically trained. Notes will still scroll down towards you in the same way, there’ll just be more button possibilities to deal with. It sounds confusing on paper, but it’s easily picked up in seconds once you jump into playing.
I asked Harmonix whether they designed the keyboard to be played flat or if it was to be worn like a keytar. Both methods of play would work just fine, they answered, although I get the feeling playing it like a keytar is more suited for show than for functionality. It’s definitely a lot easier to play the keyboard “normally,” but hey, nothings stopping you from acting out your Nu-Wave keytar fantasies.
Game Improvements
Most of the talk surrounding Rock Band 3 centers on pro mode on the new hardware instruments and deservedly so. There’s also a ton of little things Harmonix is putting in the game as well. Stuff that will make the game easier to enjoy and make you wonder why they weren’t already there.
Here’s some of the things Harmonix highlighted:
True drop in/drop out functionality – Anytime. No more quitting out of songs or navigating multiple menus to remove/add someone.
Extensive song browsing/filtering capabilities – You can drill down with such detail filters such as song length or family-friendly songs.
Song ratings and recommendations – We’re getting into online music store client features here. You can assign 5 star ratings to all the songs in the library and search/filter by your preferences. The Rock Band music store will even use these to serve up recommended songs of what you may like.
Playlist building/sharing – There’s enough songs playable on the Rock Band platform now that this makes a lot of sense. I mean, shit, there’s even REAL music streaming services that don’t offer playlist sharing functionality yet.
Party Shuffle – Basically a random track shuffler. It’s simple, but makes complete sense for party play when people just want to play with the least amount of menu navigating possible.
Another goal that Harmonix mentioned was to make progress-oriented multiplayer gameplay more self contained. In other words, if you have a regular band that you play with on the campaign mode, you’re probably tired of playing an inordinate amount of sets on a seemingly never-ending world tour. Harmonix’s solution to the problem is to incorporate “tours” that you can reasonably finish in a couple hours of gameplay for the night. In essence, the goal is to make you feel like you’ve “beaten Rock Band for the night.” It’s a legitimate concern that I’ve definitely run into while playing Rock Band with friends. I’m glad to see that attention is being given to making progression oriented players feel like they are completing something significant each session.
The biggest challenge of the music gaming genre is making new products that aren’t just glorified song-packs each year. While I’m definitely for less frequent title releases, it’s hard to argue that Rock Band 3 isn’t shaping up to be worth upgrading to when it ships later this year.
DJ Hero gets a bad rap for being another tendril of Uncle Bobby Kotick’s profit machine. While I won’t argue the shamelessness of charging $149.99 for a game with plastic peripheral, the actual gameplay of DJ Hero harkened back to the halcyon days of music gaming before expensive plastic peripherals entered the picture. I’m talking about games like Frequency or Amplitude which were more about good music and good hand-eye coordination skills, rather than cramming in motion captured artists or non-fail gameplay modes so Grandma can strum a plastic guitar with the family.
Activision announced the sequel a couple of days ago, and it’s looking like they’re trying to make it a “party” game. Microphone support and “battle” gameplay modes are the big additions. I’m not too excited about pretending to “outscratch” my friends at social gatherings, but I am excited for some awesome new mixes. The mash-ups in DJ Hero were by and large very cool and stuff I wouldn’t be embarrassed to listen to away from the game.
Case in point: They’re giving away a free Lady GaGa – Let’s Dance vs. Deadmau5 – Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff DLC for owners of the original game until June 14th. I’ve played it and it’s good times. It’s worth dusting off the old plastic turntable for.
So the big news today in the tech world is that AT&T Wireless will be drastically changing their smartphone data plan options on June 7th.
It boils down to the following for smartphone users:
No more $30 “unlimited”(actually 5gb) data plan (if you have one now you can still be on it, even if you buy the new iPhone, but you won’t be able to get it back if you change plans)
Choice 1: “DataPlus” $15 a month for 200mb of data (Overages: $15 for each additional 200mb)
Choice 2: “DataPro” $25 a month for 2gb of data (Overages: $10 for each additional 1gb)
If you want to tether your data, you’ll have to choose the DataPro plan and pay an additional $20. (Shitty, but unsurprising)
Naturally, the first thing that went through my mind when i saw this was, “ZOMG WTF!! FUCK YOU AT&T YOU ARE THE WORST!”
Then, once I was done nerd raging, I thought, “Hmm, how much data do I actually use each month?”
I’ve gone over the hypothetical 200mb plan only twice, and didn’t even come close to a 2gb limit. I can’t remember what I did in November, but I do know that in May I had been streaming more live baseball games using the MLB At Bat app. Using the iPhone for Twitter, Foursquare, and looking random shit up while you are out does not use up a ton of bandwidth. It’s pretty clear streaming media is going to be the deciding factor for a lot of people. Since I’m paying $30 a month for data currently, I could be saving either $15 or $5, depending on how much I want to limit myself to.
That’s the good news. The concerning news is how this will affect rumored features in the new iPhone, such as video calls and a cloud-based iTunes. According to Wired, 200mb is roughly 7 hours of streaming audio. Thats like 2 baseball games, or a few commutes. Live, 2-way video streaming just sounds like it would eat up bandwidth like Brian ate poop in last month’s Family Guy episode. While I don’t see myself using video chat regularly, I’d like the option to, without feeling like I’m wasting precious allocated bits.
Maybe it was just wishful thinking to assume I could save $15 a month on my phone bill. It’s looking pretty tough to get by on only 200mb if you’re looking to stream any sort content. Ideally, Pandora, Spotify, iTunes, or whatever music cloud service ends up winning will over a robust caching feature so I can just preload all of my music at home before heading out into the wild.
Another silver lining in all of this is that AT&T will let you figure out which plan you want without much dicking:
The carrier’s going to be very flexible about changing between the DataPlus and DataPro plans — if you’re on DataPlus, for example, and you discover that you’re blowing past your allotment, you can choose either to start DataPro the following billing cycle, pro-rate it, or apply the higher plan retroactively to the beginning of your current billing cycle.
I look at this whole thing as hey, at least I’ll probably be saving $5 a month at the very least.
Trent Reznor, I love you, but you’re bringing me down. With your music, that is. Honestly, it just isn’t that great.
I’m not trying to hate; I honestly just haven’t really liked anything you’ve put out since Year Zero. Remember that Nine Inch Nails song, “Wish”? That song kicks so much ass, I just want to hear something new like that. But your new stuff’s gotten more experimental, downtempo, inaccessible, and for lack of a better word, “meh.” I gave your new band/project, How To Destroy Angels, a shot because of your pedigree, but I’m sad to report that the underwhelming single “A Drowning” is the best song on it.
That being said, I still love your acceptance and knowledge of how to distribute your wares on the internet. You provide pristinely encoded mp3s for the low, fair price of an email address. You make it easy for us to tweet, blog, facebook, and share your music without treating us as thieves. I’m glad you’ve offered me the chance to come to my musical conclusion by sampling your music for free.
I am sure there are people out there who enjoy your new musical direction and I don’t fault them for it. It looks like you’ve already “sold out” a $50 tshirt package on your merch site, so congratulations on that too. It’s just that I don’t think your music is for me anymore.
