Thursday’s Music Briefing: Yangaroo, Q Prime, Timberland & Much More
> Yangaroo has appointed Josh Zieman, former VP Marketing at EMI’s Manhattan/Blue Note Label 
Group as Senior Vice
President of Business Development. Yangaroo’s Digital Media Distribution Service allows record labels to distribute music directly to radio stations digitally and securely.
> Are the major labels on the verge of becoming profitable again thanks to digital revenues. (ars)
> Mega-managers Q Prime are opening their own label, the Mom & Pop Music Company. (FMQB)
> Vote here in the UK’s BT Digital Music Awards.
> Does Metallica‘s new release sound better on Guitar Hero than it does on CD? MusicRadar thinks so. (Thanks to Randy Taber for the tip.) Tell us what you think.
> Samsung makes a bid for ScanDisk. (AP)
> Shoe manufacturer Timberland is using music to drive four local environmental action days. (press release)
Agree with music radar that the GH versions of Death Magnetic sound better than the cd. To me, anyways, the difference if fairly dramatic (heh. metal, dramatic…)
I was only able to find a couple of tracks from GH online, but I not only did a listening test, but did an visual analysis in Audacity (even dragged my non-Metallica aficionado wife in for verification.)
My main problem with this type of “brickwalled” production is that listening becomes very fatiguing on the ears and I can only listen to a few songs at a time. This is the biggest shame with current production. They are killing good music by stripping out all the dynamic. I don’t believe this happens with jazz or especially classical, where a dynamic, live feel is so important. I don’t understand why rock can’t be handled the same way.
Or at the very least, there is an emerging market for “audiophile”, non-super compressed, loud versions, as evidenced by the recent trend in “audiophile”-quality vinyl sales. Why can’t labels release a digital audiophile configuration? (in other words: metallica, put up the GH versions for sale on amazon and itunes, there is obviously a demand for it)