6 posts tagged “whm update”

 01/02/2009 20:25:08  ♥ written by vu ()

Little Dragon-Recommendation Little Dragon 3 comments Read More What's On The Horizon For 2009? (Musically Speaking) http://www.bloghe... Other new records to look forward to: Bruce Springsteen's Working on a Dream, Morrissey's Year of... Gulf Coast Bands » Why Your Band Should Use Twitter http://www.gulfco... Twitter is a micro blogging social networking site that allows you to write what is deemed as “tw...

For those wondering if I'd died and/or retired: no.  Just been relaxing and enjoying the days off with the various two-day Holidays we've been experiencing. I've been writing everyday for two years now and I guess it's taken some tolls on me. Part of my strategy for this year, 2009, is that I will be doing less reviews and probably more towards per my request, as I really cannot handle the overwhelming music submissions.

The weekly podcast will probably be less-than-weekly because of my schedule. I'm hoping to have on old friends in future shows, particularly Ryan who is still missing in action (although I did catch up with him recently when he was home for the holidays). Also, having said not-so-weekly, I did just wrapped up a recording session with Ceji. The podcast will be out this Sunday, but if you're already subscribed, you may get it in your feed sooner.

Among the music she's listening to, she highly recommended Little Dragon. When I found out that singer Yukimi Nagano was Swedish/Japanese, I immediately thought of Maia Hirasawa. Kudos for the bicycle bell on Little Dragon's song "Recommendation".

Also, just a quick shout-outs to some links/mention of W♥M in the blogs: KPerfetto thinks we're one of the places to discover new music. Yay!

We're also getting a ton of Twitter requests, thanks to Ariel and recently a post from Gulf Coast Bands:

As you can see, Twitter is a very powerful tool if taken advantage of and used correctly. It is in my opinion, that every band and musician should have a twitter for their fans to follow. It’s free and the possibilities are endless on who can spread the word about your work. Check out some links below to other people using twitter.

Music Bloggers & Podcasters & Zines
twitter.com/weheartmusic

I've been trying to follow you back. However, if you're over abusing your twitterness (like posting 30 messages in 30 minutes, you are so removed). I'm also not convince about twitter, right now that 140-character limit is ridiculous and if you follow over 20 people, it's completely and utterly useless.

So, I was snooping around the Facebook, I still don't really use the service so it was a shock to me that we have 76 fans - shocked that 76 people accidentally clicked on the 'become a fan' button. Anyway, I think you may have to be an admin to view the breakdowns, but between women vs men - the girls are winning with 62%. Our demographic is the sweetspot of 25-34 year olds (which I will be leaving this age group very soon as I'm a very old man).

We now see about 50/50 digital submissions vs physical CD/mailouts. At the rate it's going, I would hazard digital distribution will be more than 75% by the year's end. Which I'm fine with, but I still ♥ old compact discs.

Other trends I've started to notice is that more people I know are starting to drop their cable bills in favor of just watching television via the internet. I think this is great news, considering that I've been doing this for a while and dropping over-the-air altogether last year.

One service that I've been testing out is Playon. The program is still very beta, I've experiences freeze-ups and "data corruption". When you're watching a serial television show, that's upsetting as it's not like you can skip to the next episode. It's also cool to be able to watching hulu or netflix via my ps3, but it's lame that I have to have a computer to stream the media. I may think about purchasing something like a Roku box if/when it is able to stream hulu and other media sources.

So that's about it for now. Hope 2008 was good for you, and here's to 2009.

Links: www.weheartmusic.com podcast.weheartmusic.com news.weheartmusic.com

 11/28/2008 22:38:20  ♥ written by vu ()

Camera Obscura-Tears For Affairs Camera Obscura 2 comments Emelia - Tears for Affairs (Camera Obscura) Emelia Let's Get Out of this Country 1 comment

Happy black Friday!

I wanted to give you guys a November update, even though the month's nearly over. I'm looking over my pending music list right now and I have too many to cover before the year's over, but I'm going to give it the old college try and cover as much of it as I can before starting a fresh slate for 2009. I'm very excited about the new year, working with brand new exciting music companies that we haven't worked with before.

Also, I wanted to give a warm welcome to Jaklumen to the W♥M team, who I think will be handling most of the electronica/ambient stuff. I'm going to try and schedule to have all the active writers to appear on a future podcast (once everything is sorted out, I think our next writer appearance is Australian "Schnitzel" Sally). For those keeping track, previous appearances includes: Kate & Lara, Emelia, Brian, Alex, Derek, Dave, Ryan, and Christina. I would love to get a reoccuring co-host, but just getting someone to a commitment to a weekend recording session on a regular basis is harder than you think. Generally, I prefer taping on Sunday (daytime) so I can work on editing the show Sunday evening, whilst catching up on television I've missed via hulu.com.

Speaking of television shows, as I am writing this, I'm downloading the third season of Supernatural on iTunes for free. Technically, I have paid for it because I picked up the DVD. I'm starting to see more and more when you buy a DVD it comes with a digital copy of the movie for watching it on your computer or portable device. Since I have an iPod Touch, I have noticed I am starting to use its video feature a lot (especially when I'm sitting around with my cat and reading reference books).

We Heart Music on iPod Touch

Not to sound like such an Apple fanboy, but I really think it's one of the best looking and performing device. In fact, here is what W♥M looks like on an iPod. The Safari browser renders the page correctly, and the zooming function works like a charm. There is a lot of scrolling involved, but I reckon it's not a device that you're going to spend hours reading on it like a digital book. The way I see it, is that it's just to quickly look at website or catching up on some emails.

Sure, I would love another browser on the iPod, like Opera, but Apple does not play nice. I just want the freedom to add whatever software I want to it, you know? Quake (with physical buttons add on) is available on a broken iPhone, so the potential is there! They can really turn this into a PSP or Nintendo DS competitor, but perhaps that's fourth or fifth generation down the line.

If Quake is your thing, the best free first-person shooter on the iPod is Cube. This is such a great-looking game on the platform, shame the accelerometer control and gamma is pretty bad. For the price (free), I would still give it a five-star rating.

As for music, I've been listening to Camera Obscura on my iPod and as a special bonus, here is our own Emelia with her ukulele rendition of "Tears for Affair". Apologize in advance for photography cover artwork, just so you feel better, here's a picture of me & photogirl. I do have a funny story about that picture, but for the long and short of it, the photograph was taken at a Camera Obscura concert on a velvet couch at the Varsity Theater.

Of course you protest, that's what you do best
And you're modest and shy to the end
You're watching them as they're looking at you
And you know it was money well spent

She told me you'd given up drinking to be with somebody you knew
And you tried to get into the bible but it never got into you

Hype Machine

Hey, if you use hype machine, twitter, or lastfm, please add us!  Also, we were recently on vox.com/music!

UPDATE 11/30/08: Normally we get one or two people who listens to W♥M exclusively through The Hype Machine, which is not a lot, but any new reader/listeners is cool in my book. 

Well today I checked our page and there is a huge spike (36 as of this writing) on the Camera Obscura's "Tears for Affair" song!

Links: www.weheartmusic.com podcast.weheartmusic.com news.weheartmusic.com

 09/03/2008 21:26:18  ♥ written by vu ()

Love Psychedelico - Standing Bird Love Psychedelico 3 comments The Valley Girl's swanky new hair 2 comments

I can't believe September is already here.

Appearing tomorrow at the Temple Bar is Love Psychedelico, who we've previously mentioned a few times on W♥M.

It's too insane, this band sold out the 14,201 seated Nippon Budokan in Japan - several times, I might add - and the lucky people in Los Angeles gets to see them in an intimate setting.

Find out more details about the gig on our news.w♥m and their official (US) and myspace.

Also, tomorrow I'm supposed to be around for a free show at the Acadia Cafe to see singer/songwriter Leerone. I believe earlier tomorrow she will also be at Station 4 in St Paul for the "Concert for Change Festival". The republican convention happening in St Paul is just coincidental.

You can find details of her other appearances on her website or the 'space.

One last announcement: many of you probably don't know that I am a closet comic book fan. I am the creator of the almost-ten years george-perez.com and I got the announcement that Perez was involved in an auction to help save and preserve "the Superman House". It's all over the news, but I thought I'd mention it here as I feel strongly about it. You can read all about it on ordinarypeoplechangetheworld.com

By the way, the most interesting item in the auction is a hand-written draft of Neil Gaiman's upcoming book. It's currently at $530, way above my budget.

In actual W♥M news: the podcast is going strong!! Stronger than ever.

I'm pleased to announce the re-appearance of former W♥M writer Valley Girl on this Sunday's podcast. Now that I've embarrassed her, I can guarantee another awesome dudecast.

Also, I have just added radioexile.com to news.weheartmusic.com. If you have a blog and/or website and would like to be on our link roll, just send me an email.

OH! Also, as a favor, I 'investigated' wordpress using a free version via weheartmusic.blogsome.com. I spent a lot of time looking its codes and I can tell you that if you ever want to customize your WP blog, you will need to really understand how CSS works. CSS have really replaced the original html, in my opinion. It's very flexible and it's also easier to understand.

My first impression is that it's half-manual and half-automatic. WYSIWYG doesn't always work, even with some of the best plugins... and if you really want to do make splashy posts, you still need to hand-code things (much like how I compose all my posts prior to putting it on vox).

I also like the ability to create users and "comment approvals". There's a lot of cool stuff, but you know, for new users, I would have to recommend them to check out vox and sites.google.com. I'm not afraid to admit that WP is too complicated.

OH2!  Watch my crappy video!  The music at the end is by Dylan Champagne, which I will be reviewing soon-ish.

Search Box!

5 comments

UPDATE 9/4/08 8:40pm: People have complained about the vox search - I will admit it's not the best (I think it doesn't index anything older than 6 months).  So starting today, you will see a box on the very low/right of the sidebar.  The search also search W♥M News and Press Release, as well as any future websites in the WHM family.  I have tested out IE and Firefox and even Chrome, but if you are having issues, please let me know.

Also, as a special bonus, is a drop-down menu of current writers.  Clicking on a name will take you to their articles. If you're still active, send me a note and I will add your name to the list.

UPDATE 9/6/08 8:53am:

How to add Google Custom Search to your blog
1. Create a Custom Search via google.com/coop. This will be great if you have multiple blogs and/or websites. Unfortunately that also means duplicate results if you cross-post same articles.

2. Copy and paste this code into your blog's main page. On vox, the sidebar width is only 150pixels, so you may have to change the "size" to less than 15. Change "Search" to "Go" if you want to shorten the submit box - however this box is not necessary (the return/enter key should work just as well).

<form action="http://www.google.com/cse" id="cse-search-box">
<input type="hidden" name="cx" value="[YOURCUSTOMGOOGLECODE]">
<input type="hidden" name="ie" value="UTF-8">
<input type="text" name="q" size="40">
<input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search">

How to emb audio on your blog
One of the nice thing about vox, is that it allows anyone to emb media on any website that allows embedding.

Click on any audio and there is an option for "emb", which admittedly DEFAULTS to autoplay=true. You must change this to false.

If you're not too crazy about the 500 pixels (too large), you can change all "500" to "320" or "200". There is a small hack for 150 pixels, but you must "wi" in place of "pi" after 150 for the image and it will work. This probably won't mean a whole lot to any of you unless you start using the embed feature on your blog.

Another hack you might want to check out is to just place the "mediaURL" to your own MP3. Have fun and ask me if you're still having trouble setting up any of these for your blogs.

I have added our latest podcast on the sidebar, just click on the play button and it will automatically play.

Links: weheartmusic.com news.weheartmusic.com

 08/09/2008 12:59:42  ♥ written by vu ()

Flogging Molly - Paddy's Lament Flogging Molly 1 comment Flogging Molly at the Minnesota Irish Fair (08-09-08) Tour Dates 08/10/08 Westfair Amphitheatre Council Bluffs, Iowa 08/13/08 Sziget Festival Budapest 08/14/08 Frequency Festival Salzburg 08/15/08 Gambel Open Air Gambel 08/16/08 Highfield Festival Erfurt 08/17/08 Beautiful Days Festival Exeter 08/19/08 Lucky Rijseen 08/20/08 Traum Kiel 08/21/08 Festival Malmo 08/23/08 Reading Festival Reading 08/24/08 Leeds Festival Leeds 09/12/08 The Asylum Portland, Maine 09/15/08 Starland Ballroom Sayreville, NJ, New Jersey 09/16/08 The Electric Factory Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 09/18/08 The Norva Norfolk, Virginia 09/19/08 House of Blues North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina 09/20/08 Headliners Columbia, South Carolina 09/21/08 Amos Southend Charlottle, North Carolina 09/23/08 Varsity Theatre Baton Rouge, Louisiana 09/24/08 House of Blues Dallas, Texas 09/25/08 Verizon Wireless Theatre Houston, Texas 09/27/08 Schnepf Farms (EDGEFEST) Queen Creek, Arizona 09/28/08 Viejas Concerts In The Park Alpine, California 09/29/08 House of Blues Anaheim, California 10/10/08 Knitting Factory Boise, Idaho 10/11/08 Roseland Theatre Portland, Oregon 10/13/08 MacEwan Hall Calgary, Alberta 10/14/08 Commodore Ballroom Vancouver, British Columbia 10/16/08 Bell Memorial Union Concert - Cal State Chico Chico, California 10/17/08 Arcata Community Center Arcata, California 10/18/08 Radisson Hotel Sacramento - The Grove Sacramento, California 10/19/08 The Fillmore San Francisco, California 10/20/08 The Fillmore San Francisco, California 10/24/08 The Pearl - Palms Concert Theatre Las Vegas, Nevada 11/02/08 Academy Newcastle 11/03/08 Barrowlands Glasgow 11/05/08 Astoria London 11/06/08 Academy Manchester 11/07/08 Ambassador Dublin 11/08/08 Academy Birmingham 11/09/08 Academy Bristol 11/11/08 013 Tilburg 11/12/08 Gr Freiheit Hamburg 11/13/08 Tragarn Goteborg 11/14/08 Rockefeller Oslo 11/15/08 Arenan Stockholm 11/16/08 Vega Copenhagen 11/18/08 Huxley’s Berlin 11/19/08 Turbinhalle Oberhausen 11/20/08 Schachthof Wiesbaden 11/21/08 Tonhalle Munich 11/22/08 Z7 Basel 11/24/08 Listhalle Graz 11/27/08 Estragon Bologna 11/29/08 Razzmatazz 2 Barcelona 11/30/08 Rockstar Bilbao 12/02/08 Elysee Montmartre Paris 12/03/08 Limburghal Genk 12/04/08 Melkweg Amsterdam 12/06/08 Cruzan Amphitheatre West Palm Beach, Florida

W♥M Notes

1 comment

I'm sitting here on the couch, waiting for food and listening to the upcoming Bark, Hide and Horn's National Road for review for 8/12, and I swear the guy is singing "leave my belly alone." I can't be bothered to check my iPod to find out what track that is (edit: the track is "This Abdomen Has Flown").

We have a few things coming up, which I'm pretty excited about. Derek is going to handle Tricky - Knowle West Boy for September 9^th and Soup will be taking the Deerhunter - Microcastle for October 28^th. The big one for me will probably be Noah and the Whale - Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down, the band that apparently Laura Marling used to be in before she went solo.

So basically, some really great, awesome, quality bands that we really love are coming in! You can always figure out what we're reviewing on site.w♥m (check out September 9^th - insane, eight albums!) I must really sound like a broken record by now, but if you think you have what it takes to produce a 200+ word article/review, please contact me. At the moment, I have way too much music submitted and not enough dedicated writers.

So today, I will be heading out to the annual Irish Fair of Minnesota (you would think they would put this closer to St Patrick's Day?). I am especially looking forward to seeing Flogging Molly at the event, they're scheduled to appear around 9pm tonight.

If I'm not completely wasted, I might update to let you know how it turned out.

Update: There was a whole lot of walking around yesterday. The event was free, but you had to buy these "food tickets", which are really design for you to spend 6 tickets and have 4 useless tickets left over (so you're basically giving $4 to the event holder). The food and drinks were understandably overpriced as the whole event was free. Yet, for some reason, I still need to complain about my $7 Fish & Chips.

Sheeps at Minnesota Irish Fair 8-9-08

We didn't spend too much time at the Irish craft stuff, but wasted some time listening to Irish storytelling, watching sheeps grazing the grass (not. very. exciting.), and looking at new/traditional Irish photographies and art.

The real attraction for us was the Flogging Molly show, who actually arrived  earlier than scheduled. They were very anxious to get on stage and rock out. And it shows, Dave King came on stage with a pint in his hand, dressed in a suit - and launched into "Paddy's Lament", a very rocking song from their latest album, Float.

He made jokes about how they went to the Science Museum and discovered that the only dinosaurs there, were themselves. There were also lyrics changes, notably anytime a location was mentioned, it was changed to "Saint Paul, Minnesota".

After five songs, the mostly young, punk, goth(?), gypsy crowd started getting rowdy and eventually forced me to flee my stage left corner. I had to leave through the front barrier, as looking behind me, there were over 1,000 people staring back at me. I got this sense of enviness as the young folks at the front thought I had been stage diving and wanted to hi-five me, screaming "yeaah man, you raawk!"

Yep, that's me alright, crowd surfer extraordinaire.

I ended up watching the rest of the full set, over 1½ hour, complete with a two-song encore, with three police officers enjoying the show from the back.

Links: floggingmolly.com myspace.com/floggingmolly

[music is good] (4-1-2008)

Can you believe it's April already? There are a ton of great stuff coming out this month, which I can't talk about until near the release date, and I'm just in general very excited about the music submissions. Maybe it's just my music taste, but there are a ton of good stuff coming out in June (so far from now!), particularly of the Latin and World Music variety.

Also, I wanted to welcome Kate to the W♥M club. Apparently she's "twenty-something" and (I'm going to quote out of context) with : "minimum input, maximum output".

I'm hoping to have Todd do 80s/90s rock & punk reviews and Andrew for Minneapolis rock music, but obviously I don't want to pigeonhole anyone to a particular genre.  

Having said that, I am kind of looking to have someone write about hip-hop and rap. If you can produce about 200 words every few weeks, please contact me. We have a lot of hip-hop in-house for some reason (the best of the bunch seems to be Ghostface Killah from the Wu-Tang Clan).

Hmm, Vu-Tang Clan, anyone?

Also, by the time I mention this, vox.com/music will have probably refreshed their page to spotlight someone else. For the beginning of April, Sally's Duran Duran article was spotlighted. Congratulation, Sal.

I leave you now with the best comment from last month that you may have missed:

Debra wrote: Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 6:27 AM

Nina & Frederik - Little Boxes Nina & Frederik 4 comments Read More Little Boxes http://weheartmus... The third season of the Showtime series Weeds recently began. The popularity of the show has incr...

Ok whoever posted this song rocks completely and utterly...

I was a tiny little thing in the early eighties while my red haired [long down to her hips] mother used to wear maroon and burgundy crinoline [and sometimes looking back what must have been nylon] dresses - of a floral fashion - with giant cuffs on her sleeves... and my Mum being so gentle and conservative, yet with her platforms and one lp record she had with her in a tattered paper cover with two people on the front...

a woman, who looked to me as though she was wearing a sack, and a bearded man, standing over her - both of whom my mum had some kind of emotional attachment to.

and then while she fanned us to sleep, me and my equally tiny little blonde brother, stretched out on our paisley, bumpy throws on our sticky, bumpy lounge suits in the mid day heat -

she used to sing to us, after popping on a crackling, rich, prized LP session of songs to which we used to doze off.. hearing her quiet little voice over the harmony of the two obvious hippy/professionals...

Ok and I remember her singing about Puff the magic Dragon, and Mary's Boy Child, and the Ocean, and the Little Boxes, to which there was always a knowing and wistful significance attached.

So.... I sadly have just about worn out my youth, since in two days i will hit my 29th birthday... but I swear for a child who was toddling out of the 70s, these two singers were important to me for the sake of my clever and quaint mother, who somehow has never modernised herself beyond her 20s, and those platform shoes, and cuffs and friggin uncomfortable sweaty materials they passed for dresses and blouses in those days.

and anyway.... whoever posted this, know that I was quoted nearly $70 american dollars for a copy of the record my mum has, with 'little boxes' on it.

I would have paid it in a flash but the person disappeared.

So how many other people who listen to this song with rapt eager eyes and a twinge of sadness are my age? i.e. how many of you remember the song via their doe eyed mums and their beautiful long auburn 70s locks??

well done whoever you are

 04/10/2008 08:07:32  vu my♥posts www.weheartmusic.com