Side-Line blog

Your movie library at a good price? Yes you can !

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:49:30 GMT

(Advertisement) Here's a new player in download land, as far as films is concerned. Movie library offers thousands of movies at a really ridiculous low price with downloads being priced as low as $0.99, for a complete movie that is. It's clear that the website ants to offers few hurdles to pass by, for instance unlike other services you are not obliged to download or install any additional software. instead, it suffices to use the...

AudioCubes from Belgium become international success

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:15:15 GMT

From the 2nd to the 4th of April the 5th edition of the Qwartz awards take place in Paris, a prestigious festival in which the International Electronic Music Awards are handed out. Nothing special you would say, except that this year someone from Belgium is about to get one of the...

How to make your music website make some real profit? - get $25.00 for free

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:00:00 GMT

Since I know there are quite some music site webmasters reading this blog and the rest of the website, I thought it might just be the time to present you 2 ways to actually make guaranteed profit from the visitors passing by on your indie music website. Why only 2? Because there are only 2 ways to make good money from a website about indie music, all the rest is really not worth trying out unless you want some extra peanuts here and there. We tested out over...

Next generation HD DVD based music distribution and marketing platform launched

Fri, 11 May 2007 19:41:38 GMT

I was forwarded this info ahead of the press so I guess it...

Pandora pulls the plug in various countries

Fri, 04 May 2007 10:44:23 GMT
Pandora, an automated music recommendation and internet radio service created by The Music Genome Project, is no longer available in...

Never again paying too much for concert tickets ?

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:25:54 GMT
A few days ago I was asked if I would be interested to write something about the US concert / theater and sports ticket reseller Ticket Liquidator. At first I must say I was rather hesitant, knowing that many of these resellers ask outrageous prices. But when I actually checked out the website of www.ticketliquidator.com I was surprised. Not only...

Microsoft Digg clone MSN Reporter abused by users

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 15:13:46 GMT

A while ago Microsoft launched its very own 'Digg' service aka ' MSN Reporter'. The launch was obviously part of MSN's ongoing efforts to increase the amount of usergenerated content on its network....

Apple goes for higher quality DRM-free music on its iTunes store

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 22:44:07 GMT

DRM-free songs on Apple's iTunes store are no longer a secret wish, it is actually becoming...

iTunes Completes My and Your Album at a reduced price

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 16:36:47 GMT

With the new "Complete my album" functionality iTunes tries to encourage people to actually also purchase a full album after having bought a single track from that album. When you have bought (a) track(s) you are able to buy actually the rest of the...

Excentric Phil Spector innocent in murder trial ?

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:47:39 GMT

The selection of jurors who will be asked to decide if legendary music producer Phil Spector, 66, was responsible for the shooting death four years ago of a cult movie actress...

April becomes MySpace hacking month

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:07:59 GMT
MySpace is full of leaks and can be easily hacked. That is the opinion of 2 american hackers known under the nicknames 'Mondo Armando'...

The Police to record entire reunion tour ?

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 21:42:19 GMT

While concert tickets for their reunion tour are going to be pretty expensive already it seems that the post punk act The Police have found another way to fill...

Comics hero Captain America dead, shot by lover

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:02:51 GMT

USA Today and Howard Stern were getting the scoop: Captain America is dead, shot 3 times in the stomach by the girl he...

Will all labels die ?

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 14:26:07 GMT
The music business continues to go through some very troubled times. We were, just like you, shocked to hear that 2 of the more important labels from the past 15 years were closing their doors. Chrom, the German label which over the past 11 years launched bands such as Deine Lakaien, Distain!, The Eternal Afflict or yet Helium Vola, Qntal and more, moved the whole catalog of Deine Lakaien to the new label while it has been finding new homes for each of its other active bands. The second...

Paris Hilton or the girl without talents

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 17:36:18 GMT
Whilst listening to the Grinderman debut album - a feast for the ear btw - I got a news mail on Paris - stupid - Hilton. Actually this Paris Hilton newsmail was sent out by a quality newspaper in Belgium, which makes me wonder if that is really the extra e-service a quality newspaper should deliver. But that aside, I started reading it because face it, people love gossip, and I am not any different than you, you and you ! After having read the newspiece (a short one, I guess just...

American Idol sex scandal, a good (cheap) tric for music success?

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 15:53:19 GMT
Here is what it is all about: Antonella Barba, a contestant in American Idol and until last month a Catholic University student from Point Pleasant, would be pictured in some...

Sony withdraws Deep Purple album after complaint singer

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 19:16:36 GMT
You'd think that majors would do things a bit more professional than this: Sony BMG has...

Brand new audio converter has landed

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 14:38:40 GMT

What about converting any song to any size you want, what about convert channels from stereo to mono, what about changing bitrate or frequency easily...? Many questions but there were not that many options available,...

YouTube to become a recordlabel ?

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 20:40:21 GMT
While MySpace and other sites are slowly but steadily adding musicstores to their popular sites, YouTube is working on a revenue sharing model that might just become a new way for bands to get paid for what they have on offer, not that you will earn fortunes with it, but it might be interesting nevertheless to see how it develops. The idea, and it is not a new one, is to get the poster of a video paid for the content he offers via a split of advert revenue. Nothing...

Xbox 360 ruining your computergames ?

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 18:09:25 GMT

According to the Dutch consumers organisation Kassa there appears to be a problem with the Xbox 360, the console seems to scratch the discs of the games that get inserted....

Shaved hair Britney Spears and more available on eBay - not anymore

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:51:06 GMT

Britney Spears' shaved head is giving some people pretty weird ideas on how to exploit the event. On eBay you can now purchase the shaver she supposedly...

Britney Spears or what do you do when your private life and career are a mess? You shave your head.

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 21:08:31 GMT
Ooooops ! Now that she is divorced, that she spent time with that other brainless babe Paris Hilton, that she got addicted to drinks and drugs, Britney Spears has found the ultimate kick: shaving her head. I actually thought it was just a prank until even CNN showed some footage of Britney Spears in a tattoo parlor in the San Fernando Valley with her head shaved completely bald. But unfortunately for la Britney, it looks horrible, in fact her head is just a bit too round (or is it fat?)...

Dark Crystal 2: it's official

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:27:18 GMT
"The Dark Crystal" is a 1982 fantasy film by Jim Henson and Frank Oz which must have been a favourite to many. The story itself related about another planet in another time about 1000 years ago. When the Dark Crystal is damaged by a Urskek an age of chaos begins. Jen the last of the Gelfings nearly exterminated by monsters controlled by the Skekses starts his dangerous journey to find the missing shard of the crystal. Now, 25 years later, a second film is to be produced. It...

Live video The Police at Grammys

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 01:40:59 GMT

As confirmed by the very well informed Sting and The Police website Stingus.net the UK band The Police will kick off their 30th...

The Police play classic Roxanne at Grammys - worldtour to be announced today

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:05:40 GMT
It has been a busy weekend, after...

Wikipedia to disappear - not if they become fund raisers

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 20:50:53 GMT
I just happen to read a post on Mathew Ingram's blog where he ask whether Wikipedia is about to disappear. The post was kind of inevitable as it was a chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation itself who launched the question during the recent Lift conference in Geneva. Florence Devouard suggested that Wikipedia was running out of money and could 'disappear'. It seems Wikipedia...

iTunes to go DRM free as well ? - Update

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 15:19:07 GMT
In an open letter posted yesterday on the Apple website , Steve Jobs pleads to get rid of the DRM as it constitutes a big barrier in order to sell more songs as downloads via iTunes and other download platforms. Especially this part of his letter says it all: "In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs...

Mainstream download shops go DRM free

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 17:50:30 GMT
3 important download services, FNAC and Virginmega from France, along with Canada's Puretracks, are each making a change in their business model - moving from heavily DRM-laden WMA files to MP3. This switch is happening for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the hope of the French retailers to sell music files that can be played on the iPods that are flying off the shelves of their physical retail stores. The rumour is also that at least one of the four major record...

You have a band, songs recorded but no label. Now what ?

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 17:22:22 GMT
For all those bands out there that do not have a label yet but want to start selling a professional product nevertheless, there's an extra solution being offered via a new company called Kunaki. Via this company you can start printing CDs or DVDs in small quantities and actually also set up an own store via them to sell the CDs via your website. On top of that they also deliver to stores such as CD Baby and Amazon if you want...

Unsigned ? Not for much longer perhaps with Unsigned.com

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 04:06:09 GMT

After the demise of MP3.com many new formats have stand up to try and get the unsigned or lesser known artists hooked up with a solution. Sites such as MySpace.com, Download.com or yet Vampirefreaks.com jumped into the void. But none of them actually...

Front Line Assembly and Depeche Mode sounding too loud ?

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 03:21:22 GMT
For some time there has been a discussion going on that the music industry tends to record and broadcast music at progressively higher and higher levels to create a sound that stands out from others. This tendency is often being referred to with the terms 'loudness war' or 'loudness race'. While the overall maximum amplitude of a CD cannot be increased, reducing the dynamic range of the signal using audio compression will cause the human ear-brain mechanism to perceive the...

Front 242 ghost album appears

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 02:47:17 GMT
The colleagues from Release were very surprised to see that a brand new Front 242 album titled "Na Dunya" mentioned in the Swedish newspaper Göteborgs-Posten among the spring album essentials. The news was also available on various other sites such as Noise.fi, CDON.com, and so on. Good, no, great news for the Front 242 fans if it weren't for the fact that a distributor (Playground) screwed up some data. No new Front 242 album and certainly not one that with the name...

Nelly Furtado producer responsible for theft ?

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 05:27:02 GMT

I got a mail from a Side-Line reader referring me to something that kinda shocked me. Apparently the wellknown producer Timbaland or one of his assistants has ripped off another track to use it in the song...

The Police departs on 60+ dates reunion tour

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 05:15:04 GMT

This is a cool story... being a longtime The Police fan, I just had to post this in the Side-Line blog :) The popular fan website...

Professional web solution for DJ's: DJ Dossiers

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 02:56:57 GMT
You have many webhosting companies, but

An egg or a head ? Anton Corbijn did not really know.

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 23:59:03 GMT

I just came across the above video when browsing through Google video and I remembered an interview I had with Jean-Luc De Meyer from Front 242 back in the...

Smokefree campaigns can be funny as well

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 16:56:44 GMT

While all cigarette packets in Belgium are now being plastered...

iTunes sales dropping drastically according to report Forrester... or not ?

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 21:17:30 GMT
Apple's iTunes Music Store has experienced plummeting sales revenues this year. That is at least what magazines like The Register and Bloomberg seemed to imply after having read a recent report by Forrester Research. We checked it out as well and found that...

Buying concert tickets at Goformusic: not for Firefox users

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 02:50:23 GMT

The Belgian popular ticketting platform Goformusic.be is apparently not investing in its webdevelopment....

Google and piss on Depeche Mode... literally on video

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 04:29:55 GMT

So why the...

New Milli Vanilli scandal ?

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 03:50:16 GMT

The USA is facing a new Milli Vanilli scandal as a female sessions/studio/backup singer is about to reveal that she has been doing the leadvocals on several albums of a today's superstar. Everything started with a post on the blog...

Allofmp3.com - The End

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:00:47 GMT
It's the end for Allofmp3.com. Digitaljournal.com reports that the US and Russia have agreed on actions that Russia will take to address piracy. This does include shutting down AllofMP3.com as the agreement names the Russia-based website allofmp3.com as an example of such illegal websites. Recently, AllOfMP3 has received quite a few slaps in the face as its site...

Absurd Minds are Neo-Nazis... says eBay

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 03:07:14 GMT
Neo-Nazis, for god's sake. Imagine Absurd Minds being Neo-Nazis! Surprised by the title? Well here is what happened actually. I...

MySpace loosing it?

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 04:40:35 GMT

MySpace is facing ongoing problems with their servers that simply cannot cope with the enormous traffic. As a result of what can only be an under'served' IT team, songs are no longer streamed since a couple of hours. And this...

George Bush Jr. beaten by unofficial Depeche Mode video

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 22:03:08 GMT

Music and politics, they sometimes go quite well hand in hand. Take the above video which is an unofficial animated music video for Depeche Mode's single "John The Revelator" from their album "Playing...

LiveJournal selling out to Russian government?

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 05:45:07 GMT
With the whole Litvinenko story in the back of my mind, I was surprised to read on...

10 tips to survive the demo firewall

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 03:24:27 GMT
With every new issue we face a new pile of demos that arrive in offices. And that pile gets bigger and bigger every...

ReviewMe: get paid for blogging about music

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 15:51:44 GMT
Ever thought about monetizing your music blog? So far you had Adsense doing the leading business in the blogosphere next to a few other options that sometimes revealed to be...

Changing a site's color and its impact...

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 04:22:43 GMT
As you may have noticed, the Side-Line website has completely changed color and lay-out. It does not look very goth does it? Well it never was intended to look goth anyhow. Since the layout change caused some mayhem on forums, not in the least on our very own Side-Line forum, I decided to explain the reason for using the colour scheme and the general idea behind its use. First this, Side-Line an sich never was and never will be a pure Goth website. As a magazine we...

MySpace and music sales, any indie future?

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:00:46 GMT
Back in July, Reuter announced that Napster founder Sean Fanning was to sell MP3's on MySpace with his Snocap Linx service. It is...