But what happens when someone bakes and hand-delivers these same people a three-layer cake consisting of: a legitimate way to access the music they want, when they want, from any connected device… and adds some frosting at the low cost of $0.10 per track? I will tell you what happens, they pine for that which was lost… their convenient justification/rationalization for stealing music. 

Now for a short message to all the people that are complaining:  Get past the fact that you can’t justify stealing music anymore! Lala offers you a way to access your entire library from the cloud.  Sure, it takes a very long time to upload/verify your library. DEAL WITH IT!  If you didn’t steal so much music it wouldn’t take so long.  And guess what?  In the future, you will have the ability to make the CHOICE to listen to a song once for free, stream infinitely for $0.10, or download the file for an additional $0.79-$0.89.  Its not perfect, but it is leaps and bounds better than your other options.  Are you concerned that you won’t be able to access a song when you don’t have an internet connection?  Here’s an idea… if you like the song so much… BUY IT! and it will be on your computer.

Stop complaining. Enjoy the bounty.  It’s not perfect, but it is most definitely an option.

I use the word “suck” because there is not another adjective that provides a succinct description.  Flashy ads? Check. Terrible UI? Yup. User Experience?  Epic Failure.  And the worst part is that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Enter Lala. A CD trading post turned free streaming music, Lala is now offering users the ability to stream a song for free exactly one time.  This sounds like it might fall into the “suck” category, but you can buy the right to stream the song an infinite number of times for $0.10.  Which is great. But what if you want to buy? Well you can do that too… and if you already purchased the streaming version for $0.10, it will be applied towards the purchase.  Thank you Lala.

Now let us all hold hands and pray that the artists actually see some of this money.

Note: Apparently Lala also added the ability to listen to your entire music library from any computer (or connect device?) by simply scaning the music you have on your computer. If you don’t understand how awesome this is, we need to talk.

I put together a Favtape of some of the songs I’ve been listening to this week.  I’m mostly an album junkie, so it’s safe to assume that I’ve been listening to the albums that contain these songs.  If you’ve never used Favtape, it’s an mp3 crawler version of Opentape.

Kaiser Chiefs - Addicted to Drugs
This song is so much better than Weezer’s take on the same subject. Kaiser Chiefs are great, and the new album is definitely worth checking out when it comes out on October 28th.

Kings of Leon - Crawl
Brad Barrish had this on a mixtape he sent me last month, and if I hadn’t heard this track I probably wouldn’t have checked out the new album. The rhythm section sounds so good, and despite the mediocre-to-poor reviews around the web, Only by the Night is one of my favorite albums of the year.

Oasis - The Turning
Dig Out Your Soul kills. I was never a big Oasis fan, but after listening to this album I’m going back for another listen to the catalog.

Blind Melon - Wishing Well
I’ve been a Blind Melon fan since the very beginning, and Soup is one of my all-time favorite albums. I hated Unified Theory. Needless to say, I was very skeptical of the new album when it came out in April. When I finally listened to it, I was pleasantly surprised, and I realized that I didn’t need to compare anyone to Shannon Hoon anymore.

The Streets - Heaven for the Weather
This song is cheesy as hell, but I enjoyed Everything is Borrowed so much that I put two songs from the record on one playlist. Deal with it.

One Block Radius - Black Mercedes
This is an example of a Favtape substitution. I wanted to put ‘Dead Man on the Radio’ from their self-titled debut album, but alas, no such luck. This is mom-friendly hip-hop and album struck me as slightly lame when I first heard it, but it grew on me.

Murs - The Science
Murs for President didn’t get very good reviews, but like the Kings of Leon record I talked about above, I really dig it. I’ve been a bit disappointed with past Murs albums (yes, even Murs 3:16), but this time I feel like presented a cohesive group of ideas. This song is the most pointed and poignant, and I think it encapsulates the spirit of a great hip-hop album.

T.I. - Swagga Like Us
Ganster as hell. Paper Trails is very solid for coming at us just over a year after T.I. vs T.I.P., in fact, I think it’s a better album. Have fun on vacation Clifford.

The Streets - The Escapist
The perfect contradiction to the track I posted above. Mike Skinner’s passive, incongruous talk-rapping vocals are perfectly juxtaposed against this amazing production. Epic.

-Ryan

All City Affairs - One Shot

The Week That Was - The Airport Line

-Ryan

-Ryan

The Avett Brothers - Murder in the City

-Ryan

Santogold - Guns of Brooklyn

-Ryan

Idiobeat is an ongoing collaboration between Joshua Kuss and Ryan Taylor.  It started as a vision for on-deck mobile streaming per-per-play service.  Ideas evolved, business plans were written, content deal terms were negotiated, publishers were harassed, investors were pitched, and RIAA, SoundExchange, and NMPA spoke behind closed doors.  As it turns out, new streaming legislation compromised the business model and Idiobeat as we dreamed it was abandoned in May of 2008.

We’ve both done some interesting things since then, but mostly we’ve been brainstorming and fully geeking out with our RSS feeds and twitter updates while trying to get in as much beach time as possible.  Idiobeat is currently under development, and you will be able to watch it evolve over time.  There’s not much to say about it yet, but it’s reasonable to assume that Idiobeat will be a valuable destination in the tech/music/art/culture/commerce space.

Stay tuned,

Ryan Taylor & Joshua Kuss