Erasure Club sees the light of day

Back in the day promo meant expensive, exclusive and very few people could get a hold of it. To whit, back in the day Erasure released a series of four exclusive promo EPs called "Erasure Club", with the catalogue numbers ERAS1, ERAS2, ERAS3, and ERAS.

Up until now, the only tracks from ANY of these eps that have seen a wide distribution have been the tracks from ERAS4, released as "Abba-esque Remixes".

Come August 10, Mute are finally releasing a few more ERAS tracks on an ep cunningly titled "Erasure.Club". There is still one track that will remain unreleased even after this EP comes out - "Who Needs Love (Like That) - Winnie Cooper Mix" from ERAS2 - which is left off due to clearance reasons.

If you have the rare as duck's teeth promos on 12", I'd recommend getting rid before their value plummets.

The tracklist:
'Push Me Shove Me (Moonbeam Mix)' 6:22
Remixed by Jon Marsh, taken from ERAS1
'Push Me Shove Me (Catatonic Mix)' 4:14
Remixed by Jon Marsh, taken from ERAS1
'Senseless (Avalon Mix)' 6:30
Remixed by Bruce Forest, taken from ERAS1
'Ship Of Fools (Orbital Southsea Isles Of Holy Beats Mix)' 9:43
Remixed by Dr Alex Paterson & Thrash, taken from ERAS2
'Sometimes (Danny Rampling Mix)' 6:13
Remixed by Danny Rampling, taken from ERAS3
'Weight Of The World (Heavy 'B' Mix)' 5:12
Remixed by Bruce Smith, taken from ERAS3

PRS unveils new streaming rate

It's only taken the closure of Pandora's UK operation and YouTube banning music videos in the UK for the PRS to sit back and reassess the amount they charge companies to stream audio over the internet.

The Beeb are reporting today that as of 1 July 2009, the PRS will drop the rate per song from 0.22p to 0.085p. This should come as great news to not only Pandora and YouTube but also to other burgeoning services that offer streaming for free, and count advertising as their sole method of income - services like Spotify or Last.fm (in the UK at least).

Worryingly, the Beeb reports, "In 2007 [the PRS] published the proposed rates and there were a number of services who objected and so it went to the tribunal, who fixed the rates for a two year period."

It's still fantastic to see that the old school music industry, as late as 2007, was still running scared and playing catch up with the emerging tools and routes to market available via the Internet.

The PRS announcement today further fuels the argument of access versus ownership, as the cost of access continues to decline.

Five massive hits that almost weren't

I'm usually averse to these kinds of lists that seemingly take random information and try and bodge it into a nonsense list, but Cracked.com have an interesting tale on five massive songs that almost weren't.

It's worth a read just as the history of five random big hits, not THE five most massive almost non-hits, or whatever other sites try and drum down your throat.

I was interested most in the genesis of Michael Jackson's mega-hit "Billie Jean". The stories of him being bullied and humiliated by Quincy Jones are legendary, so to find that he was able to salvage a track that Jones was so vehemently opposed to AND make a mega hit out it is quite something.

Spotified!

I've always loved music. It's what kept me going through my teenage years, and for a while there I was spending upwards of £100 a week in Berwick Street on the latest and greatest promos and CDs. Now my addiction has a new master and it's a lot cheaper than £100. I call him Spotify.

There have been LOADS of online music sites that have tried to sate a person's appetite for all things rhythmic, but most of the ones I've used have always had that little thing lacking. The other option has always been wholesale "piracy" which is always a double edged sword as it gets my goat that we have to pay over and over again for the same song (moving from vinyl to CD or buying a best of album).

Anyway, in the last few years I've been using Last.FM as my port of call for online music. Their player allows you to play tag radio. So if you want to listen to 80s music, you enter 80s as a tag, or ambient or synth pop. As long as there's enough material tagged accordingly you'll get a decent radio listen. If there's not, you can tag artists, songs and albums.

Spotify, however allows you to go one step further and listen to albums and singles by bands with seemingly no restrictions, apart from an audio ad every 20 minutes. The service is still in beta, so there's all sorts of things they could add, but what they have in place right now is amazing. The audio quality is pretty decent, the songs start right away and they have a playlist feature that allows you to collaborate with other Spotifiers to create "Now That's What I call a Playlist" (or similar).

Don't get me wrong, I still use Last.FM as it's been storing my music habits since 2003. Spotify even taps into that by allowing you to track or "scrobble" the tracks you listen to on Last.FM.

There's rumour an API will surface when the service is out of beta, and you can be rest assured that it'll explode just like Twitter did. My only concern is how the hell are they making money? I can't imagine one audio ad every 20 minutes is cutting it. They do have a paid service, but the only benefit seems to be cutting out the audio ad.

Since using Spotify, I've seriously begun questioning the need for a CD collection, something I never thought I'd contemplate. It's a decent piece of software that can make you do a complete 180 of your beliefs and perceptions. Good on ya Spotify!