Spotify's related artists

Image via Wikipedia

Spotify have been in the news a lot this week. From founder Daniel E's news that Twitter is their biggest traffic source, to the announcement today about a newly rolled out related artist feature.

According to an article on Tech Crunch, Spotify have been working on a recommendation engine to let you discover new music while listening to your favourite acts. This would act as a replacement for the short, rather static list of related artists that appeared on the artist page. According to Tech Crunch, the recommendation engine is "powered by an algorithm that cross-references data collected over millions of user listening hours, not dissimilar it seems to Last.fm’s ’scrobbling’ of tracks".

Whether the feature will spur you to on to discover any amazing new finds is still up for debate. A quick perusal of the new system finds me on the Pet Shop Boys page contemplating listening to their related artist Brummie metal Gods "Judas Priest" (maybe it's the gay connection they're going for).

Clearly, though, there's still quite a bit of work to do before I'm actually discovering new RELEVANT music using this feature.

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Vinny Vero's Pet Shop Boys Christmas gift

NYC DJ and remixer Vinny Vero was recently commissioned by EMI to do some remixes for Pet Shop Boys' "Beautiful People." As he mentions on his blog, due to time constraints it was never going to happen.

With it looking less and less likely that EMI are going to release his efforts commercially, Mr Vero has decided to post the three mixes he's done on his blog, as a Christmas present for his fans.

These tracks are top quality. In his blog he discusses his idea of Pet Shop Boys remixes that stand the test of time, the ones that retain a majority of the song. The single and club mixes he's created thus stick to that ethos. The third mix is a mash up between "Beautiful people" and A Guy Called Gerald's "Voodoo Ray". Aptly titled "Beautiful voodoo" it works remarkably well.

On top of the Christmas present download, Vero's also written a passionate entry about Pet Shop Boys in general, touching on his work with them in the 90s, remixing the US only single "To Step Aside", and touching on the incredibly inept way EMI marketed the Boys' latest album "Yes," including the decision to not release "Did you see me coming?" as a summer single, and have third single "Beautiful people" be German only.

It's a great post if you're looking for top quality free music, and it's a great post if you're looking for a good read.

iTunes friendly download (30MB)
FLAC (110MB)

Pet Shop Boys christmas ep coming

Score one for Twitter. The synth pop duo announced details earlier today of their forthcoming Christmas EP, released December 14th through Parlophone.

Tracklisting as follows:

1. "It doesn't often snow at Christmas" - new version produced by Marius De Vries and PSB.
2. "My girl" - cover of the Madness song produced by PSB.
3. "All over the world" - new version produced by Marius de Vries/PSB.
4. "Viva la vida"/"Domino dancing" medley. Studio production by Stuart Price.
5.  "My girl (our house mix)" - produced by PSB.

Should be a must buy on a few levels, including the first commercial release of "It doesn't often snow at Christmas" and possibly the first Coldplay song it's been okay to like!


The EP will be released on CD and download next month.

File sharers spend big

Pet Shop Boys via last.fm

Does it come as a surprise to ANYONE the recent news that the most prolific music file sharers are also the most prolific spenders?

In a recent BBC news report on file sharing which discusses a recent survey conducted by MORI, it states that the average file sharer also spends an average of £77 a year on paid for music.


Is that it? In my music buying heyday, I used to trot off to Berwick Street and spend around £80 EVERY Saturday. I had some awesome stuff to show for it too - promos, bootlegs, rare deleted releases.

However, this really rings true for me. Most people who have a passing interest in anything maintain just a moderate level of interest. If you're not a diehard U2 fan, are you really going to take the time to find and visit file sharing sites, when iTunes is right there?

The problem with legit outlets like iTunes is they still don't have all the variations of a release that a fan might want. Take the Voxigen remix of "I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing" by Pet Shop Boys. I scoured the shops for months searching for this. The CD this was on was only released in Holland, and to acquire it would cost me around £40 (if I could ever find it). Of this £40, neither the label nor the band would see a penny of this. This remix has yet to show up on any legit download site.

This new news about file sharer spending further muddies the water of the cut and dry scenario bodies like the RIAA are advertising, mainly file sharing is theft, thus must be punished. I believe that enough people who actually know what they're talking about (and I don't include the RIAA) will agree that the best way to discover new music is via services like file sharing, free downloads and - more and more - streaming services like Spotify.




With services like Spotify and We7 now replacing the need for ownership with access, the question of piracy and file sharing could soon be a thing of the past if only they could get their catalogues in order. With issues like international licensing still an issue, this won't be resolved any time soon.

Pet Shop Boys' mis-handling by EMI

Neil Tennant via last.fm

We're used to hearing and reading how record companies don't have a clue about a great many things. To hear how one in particular can screw up the only thing it really knows how to do - release and market an album - well, that makes for interesting reading!

Tonight, when I got home, the latest issue of Pet Shop Boys' fanclub magazine, "Literally", was waiting for me.

Inside, was the story of the release of the duo's latest album Yes, back in March. It read like a catalogue of disasters the duo has faced at the hands of EMI's ineptitude. To be honest, the guys have been INCREDIBLY faithful to a label that has shown them contempt and disrespect over the years.

The problems, well documented but worth talking about again, would make me think twice about any allegiances I felt for my record label.

The download problem
On iTunes, 2 500 copies of the album had been pre-ordered. EMI ballsed up the release date data they provided to Apple, resulting in the album being available for purchase and download mid-week the week before actual release, and for the paltry sum of £5.49. It was eventually removed from purchase until the following week, but this action literally deprived the album of 2 500 purchases that would have counted to chart placement. A number 2 in the charts became a number 4.

As Neil Tennant says in the magazine, "All of the pre-order scams worked against the album, which makes my blood boil."

It was new technology that alerted the duo to EMI's cock up. Says Neil Tennant, "Someone Twittered us saying, 'I didn't realise the album was out already'."

Eastern promise
The physical release of lead single "Love Etc." was beset by issues of low to non-existent stock on shops like HMV or Amazon. This was put down to EMI pressing the discs in the UK and shipping half of them off to Europe for some reason.

Digital Bundle problem
One of the digital bundles EMI sold via iTunes for "Love Etc." featured two Yes album tracks as a pre-album taster. The plan was for the purchaser to only be able to purchase these tracks only as part of the single bundle with an offer to "complete the album" when Yes was released.

The tracks ended up being available individually and the "complete the album" offer never materialised.

Printing cockup
The initial run of the Yes Etc double CD set had a booklet that was printed with the pages bounded the wrong way round. A web page was set up where purchasers could apply to have a properly bound booklet mailed out to them.

This isn't a tale of EMI trying to come to terms with the new economy or trying to work out how to survive in the face of piracy. It's EMI trying to come to terms with releasing and marketing an album and single without cocking it up. Something they've apparently done for about 100 years.

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Gouge away

With the crumbling economy around us and the music industry reduced to suing anyone that resembles a fan, it's a good question how bands are prepared to survive.

If you're hooked in like Nine Inch Nails, you go full guns ablazing into that good internet night, doing it right - giving albums away, but having various flavours of physical medium ready for the diehards.

If you're more traditional, you forgo the freebie release and jump straight into the massive bloody wallet-emptying boxset, released in limited quantities. This seems to be the route most acts are going down. Depeche Mode had their £60 "Sounds of the Universe" boxset with CDs, DVDs and booklets, Pet Shop Boys had "Yes" released on 11 separate 12" records in a batch of 300 copies (for £300).

Now, Pixies are releasing "Minotaur," a retrospective of their main output from the 80s and 90s. As is the democratic way, there are two formats for the discerning fan - a deluxe edition for $175 and a limited edition for just under $500. Both formats include the album in a number of formats - vinyl, CD and blu-ray - as well as other extras.

In an interview with Wired, lead singer Black Francis described the forthcoming release as a price-justified "objet d'art". He went on to joking state that if you're not that big a Pixies fan, download it for free off the net.

It seems to be a good time to be a music fan with deep pockets.

Super use of superlatives

With tomorrow's release of Pet Shop Boys' new album Yes and all the hoopla surrounding it (outstanding contribution Brit award, all those "return to form" articles), I got to thinking about the use of superlatives and what it actually means.

One of the ways we will always categorise things will be through ranking. This is biggest, smallest, longest, shortest, smelliest, rudest, etc. In music it's no different. From the genre specific - the bassiest, synthiest, poppiest, etc. - to the commercial - "best selling album of all time" - it seems that superlatives are one of the only very few ways we have to talk about music.

What does this have to do with the new Pet Shop Boys album? As acts get to be of a certain age, every album they release will always be compared with their previous tour de force. For Pet Shop Boys, that example of artistic excellence is - in most people's books - 1993's Very. So every subsequent release has been using this album as the 10 at the top of the yardstick.

Music tastes may change, artists may age and release operas, musicals, novels or books of poetry that affect their lives and outlook on that life, but as music is a recorded snap shot of time, it all comes down how well the next release matches up to the previous best. Thus the circumstances in 1992 and 1993 surrounding the release of Very are very different from those surrounding Yes.

Does this bear any credence on the music itself? Probably not. Very is stripped of the surrounding music scene of 1993 and made to live on its own in the canon of Pet Shop Boys material. The remixes for the album's songs bear testament to the musical movement of the time however.

Likewise, Yes, bears all the hallmarks of pop music in 2008, with production and co-writing credits for the Xenomania production team, who also worked on the Pet Shop Boys-penned Girls Aloud single "The Loving Kind". Will Yes, in years to come feature as a window out on to the pop landscape of 2008, or echo the economic decline we are all feeling, or will it be held up as 7 or 8 on the yard stick of Pet Shop Boys releases, where the Holy Grail of Very's 10 remained just out of reach?

My guessing in the latter.

For the record, having listened to Yes a few times, I'd give it at around 7.5. That's below Fundamental but above Release, and not even in worrying distance of Very's 10.

Music for every moment

Cover of Hysteria

I certainly agree that for various occasions in life, there's music to fit the mood and situation. For instance, driving down the road really really fast, you can't beat "KDX 125" by Pet Shop Boys.

Sitting here in my pod beavering away at work, I've found it rather embarrassing to discover that the perfect album to listen to whilst chipping away at the grindstone is Hysteria by Def Leppard. Not a natural selection by anyone, I must admit, but it's quite driving and perfect for just getting on with it.

Now if I could only locate my mullet and tasselled jean jacket, I'd be all set.

Whose blame is it anyway?

Image via Wikipedia

In an interview recently, Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant was complaining that the most annoying thing about internet piracy was that it ceased making the release of music - singles especially - an event.

While I agree that the term "release date" doesn't mean a damn thing these days, I would argue that, in the case of singles, the blame for them not being "events" should lay solely with record labels.

Back in the good ole days, a single would go to radio around the same time it went to the shops. The single would thus begin it's upward chart trajectory. Take "Relax" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood which went from the basement parking lot of the charts, all the way up to Number 1, staying there for weeks.

The single was released in October 1983 and didn't hit the top of the chart until January 1984! In June 1984, it found itself at number 2 just behind "Two Tribes". This is a single with a chart live of well over EIGHT months.

These days, a single goes to radio up to two months before it hits the shops. By the time you have the chance to buy it, you're bored of it. I guess one could argue that the day a single goes to radio is "event day", but I would counter-argue this is about as detrimental to the shelf-life of music as downloading pre-releases is.

Just another side of the coin.

Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant talks Battleship

Hot on the news that Pet Shop Boys being the cornerstone of the forthcoming Trafalgar Square summer season, ex-journo, current PSB Neil Tennant, has penned an article for The Guardian explaining why the duo created a score for Battleship Potemkin.