Pictured: The Nipple (AKA waveguide) of a Blue Sky 1” Tweeter
Digital downloads have broken apart the album and decimated major label music revenues. So movies will also get cheap and DRM-free as they increasingly migrate to the ‘Net, right? Think again.
The movie business is often said to follow the lead of the music industry. Watch what happens to music on the Internet, wait a few years, and expect that the same things will happen to Hollywood blockbusters. Think of it as peering into the future, but without the Magic 8-Ball, Ouija board, or astrologer.
As content migrates onto the Internet, what happens to it? In many cases, it gets cheaper—even dramatically cheaper. This price compression effect has been catastrophic for newspapers, and it has whacked away a significant percentage of major label revenue from recorded music (although the music business as a whole remains exceptionally vibrant).
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
On paper, some things just don’t sound like they should go together, like indie-pop/folk and Iceland, for example. But Seabear, a 7-piece band from Reykjavik, Iceland pulls off this interesting combination beautifully. Feeling a bit like Fanfarlo at times (even though they predate Fanfarlo by at least a year), the music has a layered and upbeat-yet-dreamy quality that all too easily sucks you in. This track off their excellent 2007* debut, The Ghost That Carried Us Away, is a perennial favorite.
* We’ve reached that time of year where nobody is really releasing anything, so it’s a great time to browse your catalogue for those things you’ve been overlooking for far too long. Seabear is a band I’ve loved for a while now, and I was more than slightly embarrassed to learn that I hadn’t posted them here yet. Consider me appropriately shamed.
…Well worth checking out!
