Axl Rose, Dizzy and a bunch of other good musicians that make up the 2008 version of Guns N Roses have released Chinese Democracy on MySpace first, followed by a Best Buy only release this Sunday.
After listening, I know one place I will be this Sunday besides watching the Seahawks get beat again.
Yes, you can now listen to every Chinese Democracy track in or out of order for free streaming and after the first listen through I figuratively wiped my brow.
Wow.
There are some powerful, mind bending guitar riffs in here. If like me you miss the days when songs were layered with catchy guitar solos, you are in for a serious treat when you listen to what’s behind the Chinese Democracy curtain. Major kill switch, guitar bending, screaming action on some of these tracks.
Sure, the guitar wizard Slash isn’t there — and no disrespect is intended by the title of this post or the following admission — but you don’t end up missing him that much. This is either a testament to it taking nearly 20 15 years to get this GNR album published or the reality that there are 2008 guitar wizards in the making. I saw this 8-year old kid on YouTube yesterday that might grow up to be a future guitar god, who knows.
To tell you the truth: I already listened to it. At first I thought that I would never listen to it until it’s released, but someone handed it to me and I was in my car and I was like, "Okay, let’s give it a try." So I listened to it: It’s a really good record. It’s very different from what the original GUNS N’ ROSES sounded like, but it’s a great statement by Axl. Now you understand where he was heading all this time. It’s a record that the original GUNS N’ ROSES could never possibly make. And at the same time it just shows you how brilliant Axl is. So it was a relief for me to actually hear it.
Like former GNR guitarist I too felt prepared for disappointment and was pleasantly surprised by how good this album sounds. This had Spore-like hype written all over it but unlike Spore, Chinese Democracy delivers.
Track listing and notes
"Chinese Democracy" - for a title track and intro to the album, I suppose it works, but it had a bit too much going on for my taste. Not that I don’t like complex music, but this one feels like you need an Iron Maiden type lineup of multiple guitarists to pull it off faithfully live. I like music that doesn’t feel too much like it was over-processed and this track just oozes over-production. This doesn’t take away from it being a decent song melodically, but stripped down a bit I bet this would have rocked more. The guitar solo foreshadows perfectly (3:26) that this will be a guitar album that kicks ass.
"Shackler’s Revenge" - this has been available and playable on Rock Band 2 for awhile now. One of the weakest vocal tracks IMO. A little too new wave sounding for me, although love the guitar work. Fun to play this on Rock Band.
"Better" - Ironically, this is where the album starts to pick up some serious steam for me. I’d heard a bootleg of this a few years back and enjoyed it then. Professionally mixed it sounds even better. Catchy verse and chorus. Layered with some thundering power chords. This could have been a B-side cut — and a good one — on Use Your Illusion II. If you were worried if Axl could still sing, this track answers with an exclamation mark. Great track.
"Street of Dreams" - the first mellow track on the album, heavy in the keyboard area. Axl’s verse vocals seem off the first few listens, like he’s singing in a can or something but it grew on me after a few listens. This isn’t "November Rain" or "Patience" but it’s pretty good.
"If The World" - has a groovy 70s-era riff going. Almost like this could be something you heard playing in the background of a Shaft movie.
"There Was A Time" - an almost religious song like opening and closing, quickly replaced by a guitar moaning in the background and catchy beat. One of the best guitar solos on the album. 5:21 listen for the liberal kill switch. I think it’s songs like this that will have budding guitarists everywhere adding kill switches to their axes.
"Catcher In The Rye" - second mellow song. Just OK. Kind of a Bon Jovi-ish la-la-la chorus part that didn’t work very well for me. Too much layering and overdubbing here again.
"Scraped" - a vocal assault opening that leads into a "Rocket Queen" type riff. Digging it, especially the wah-wah guitar solo.
"Sorry" - Sebastian Bach of Skid Row sings backup vocals on this haunting third mellow track. This is one where the tons of layering guitars and overdubs actually works quite well. Might be the best lyrics of any song on the album or at least the easiest to understand. Liner notes needed.
"Riad N’ The Bedouins" - easily wins the strangest song title award. A beginning with a theme that moves into an upbeat, rocking moaning intro. I don’t have any idea what this song is about but it jams.
"I.R.S" - (somewhat) mellow track #4. Better than "Catcher in the Rye" but not as good as "Sorry" and "Street of Dreams"
"Madagascar" - mellow track #5. There is some similarity to the last track with this one, although the beat is different. Gotta dig the clips of King’s famous "I have a dream" interspersed with the "Failure to co-mun-nicate" clip in "Civil War" — nice way to pay homage.
"This is Love" - this is the sixth and final mellow track complete with piano, keyboard and vocals only opening. When the guitar comes in around a minute in the song, it’s surprisingly subdued but effective. Axl layered vocals are nice. This kind of reminds me a bit of Black Sabbath "Changes" in the overall feel, though the melody is nothing like it. At 2:15 the guitar power chords start to color the song leading to a heavy, somber solo. Cheap guitar solo nowhere to be found on this album. Thanks GNR!
"Prostitute" - the drumbeat to this one reminds me a bit of "Locomotion" on Illusion 2. This might be my sleeper favorite of the album with the gripping melody. Some nice Axl screams before the guitar wailing. I thought at first, hey this solo was short, but stay with it as more riffing assaults your ears (in a good way) at 4:23. Oh yeah this is good. Are we going to be left with a piano outro? The drums fade into the distance and keyboards dominate. You can imagine smoke rising through the stage. And then like that it’s just … over.
Can’t stop listening to these tracks on MySpace.
Kudos aside, back down to earth it’s clear that Chinese Democracy isn’t Appetite For Destruction. There is no smoking gun of a song like "Sweet Child O’ Mine" on here, but there are several very good, catchy heavy tracks like "Better" that will get plenty of rotation. The guitar work alone deserves high marks.
Axl would likely be the first to say that creating another Appetitle wasn’t what he was trying to do. I believed he’d botch up Chinese Democracy, but there are brushes of brilliance on this album. Axl might be difficult to get along with, but there’s no denying he’s got major talent and knows the recipe for good music.
Appetite is a classic and even if the original GNR got back together I doubt they could bring back the fire and magic of that album. I’d put Chinese Democracy somewhere between Use Your Illusion I (which I didn’t much care for) and Use Your Illusion II (which is a classic). The 6 of 14 mellow songs make it feel very Use Your Illusion 2 like as far as overall theme. It’s world’s better than the crap on Spaghetti Incident. Although they are two completely different types of albums, I put it about on par with Lies.
Where does this work for a grade? The wait was much too long, but it feels worth it in a few of these songs. The overall vibe of the album is thumbs up. Easily one of my favorite albums of the year among the best of the new music by 80s bands. A few of the tracks are weak, but even the weakest are better than expected. And hey, don’t forget your free Dr. Pepper! Now I’m stoked for a live GNR concert. Grade: A-
Daylight savings and Rock Band AC/DC pack time yesterday. Remember, you can only get this one at Wal-Mart.
$39.99 and standalone. You do not need Rock Band or Rock Band 2, however you do get a code on the back page of the manual to transfer the game tracks to either Rock Band or Rock Band 2. More like download since you download through Xbox Live with a one time use code.
It’s a short one, we played through this in less than a couple hours on expert difficulty. There are some AC/DC specific achievements like getting 5 stars on drums on Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.
Is it worth $39.99 USD? If you are an AC/DC and Rock Band fan you’ve already bought it and played through it, if not, well, it might be a bit pricey as an introduction to both franchises. I’d spend a few more bucks and get Rock Band 2.
Update November 1, 2008 8:19am PST: Activision/Red Octane that make Guitar Hero World, have offered a drum tuning kit download (Windows XP only) which is supposed to fix the issues discussed in the review that follows. You will need a USB to midi cable which they will send you if you fill out a form here.
Saturday night at the stroke of midnight we joined a small line of people at the Tacoma, WA Best Buy as the first to buy the newest installment of Guitar Hero (Guitar Hero World Tour). After buying the $29.99 warranty for the bundle the total rang in at $233.90 USD.
We got it home and immediately dug in. The drum setup was quick and painless and give you a sense of quality that the Rock Band drums do not have. They seem more realistic — until you start actually playing.
The laggy band mode drum syncing ruined the first time gameplay experience for me. The drums are better synced in solo mode and even when playing with one other player, but add two or three more band members and it’s a mess.
When hearing the beat and when to hit the notes is all wrong. I tried recalibrating in the options several times but never found the sweet spot in band mode. I hope an update through Xbox Live comes along that fixes this as a quick survey of the Amazon reviews show many complaints from other reviewers about the same issue.
In a music game like this, quality calibration is vital. I give drum calibration a 0 out of 5 stars. I was failing on medium difficulty whereas I’m able to play hard and even expert drums on Rock Band 2. The plan was to play all night, but our band grew tired of me failing on what should have been easy intro songs and we quit playing around 2:30am.
We didn’t break out the Guitar Hero microphone or guitar, preferring to play with Rock Band gear there. Reports on the guitar, bass and singing in Guitar Hero were all thumbs up from other band members.
Activating star power on drums and microphone
Your drummer and singer may wonder how star power is activated. It’s in the skimpy six page manual, but we’ll throw you a bone. To activate star power on the drums, hit both yellow and orange cymbals at the same time. On the microphone just tap the top of the microphone, no yelling in the yellow spots required like Rock Band. Kind of prefer Rock Band’s approach here.
GH Tunes sans vocals
Being able to create and share your own tunes with other players was a promising feature I was stoked about. We peeked at it briefly Saturday night and people had already created and shared some tunes mere hours after launch. Sunday after a fresh night’s sleep I checked it out in more detail.
Bummer alert: only instrumental tunes are allowed — drums, bass, guitar and even keyboards, cool — but no vocals. This is going to lead to a lot of axe shredding and drum pounding but will be a non-starter for vocalists.
Hopefully vocals will be added as part of an update someday (?). Or do we need to wait another year for Guitar Hero 5 to come out?
Summary and grade
For guitar, bass and singing, Guitar Hero World Tour is solid. Major thumbs down on drum syncing. I think until this is fixed we’re going to see a bunch of drumless bands. Or bands where the drummer marches, literally, to a different beat.
As for the GH Studio? No vocals hamper but not ruin the experience. I’m sure others will disagree with wanting to hear people screaming out of tune, karaoke style, but the absence of vocals is noticeable.
Surely there must have been a way to add vocal tracking to GH Studio? Since the software can detect when the music is in tune, was it that difficult to add the ability to match GH Studio created vocals? Or was this a copyright concern, afraid that bands would be creating an endless stream of unlicensed covers? I’m guessing technology was a small part of the concern here and copyright issues are playing at least some part.
Whatever the case, Guitar Hero World Tour’s strength remains its roots: guitar. Bass and vocals for the game part are a decent add, but while the drums are fun to pound on they aren’t much fun to play — outside of single player mode — because of the lag/syncing issue. I also don’t like that the bass pedal isn’t attached to anything like rock band to keep it in place, although must admit not having any trouble with it moving all around.
Guitar Hero World Tour as a package ends up a mixed bag and feels way too first generation in everything but its namesake. Perhaps our band is spoiled by competitor Rock Band which really has the band experience down and sports a solid lineup of hundreds of songs available, while Guitar Hero World Tour pretty much is limited to what comes with the game. Almost all the prior downloadable Guitar Hero songs and previous songs in games are not forward compatible.
Guitar Hero World Tour sports an impressive list of tunes, don’t get me wrong — and there is the ability to download for $$ a small few tracks (like Metallica’s complete Death Magnetic album) as well as what other players create in GH Tunes for free, but it doesn’t come close to matching Rock Band’s currently available music library. And with the AC/DC Live at Donnington track pack coming November 2nd, Rock Band will raise the stakes further.
Put all this together and I wouldn’t recommend to readers or friends looking to form their first music game band experience to buy Guitar Hero World Tour over Rock Band 2 this holiday season. Being my favorite baseball hat of the moment is my Guitar Hero cap pictured above, I’m conflicted, but the differences between the two in band mode are glaring.
Hardcore music game fans like our band will buy it regardless. I wouldn’t label GH World Tour a totally disappointing band experience, but it’s not up to par with all four band members (sans the drums, it works good). If all you care about is a cool guitar, bass or vocal experience in Guitar Hero World Tour then stop reading and buy this game now. You might want to skip the bundle and just buy the game otherwise.
AC/DC already had my vote for most creative music marketing in 2008 for their new album Black Ice and they’ve taken it even further by converting part of their "Rock and Roll Train" video into Excel format. Bummer that it’s only a partial. Why not go all the way?
Hat tip to Mashable’s Adam Ostrow who labels this "clever." Indeed. All this marketing wasn’t needed for this AC/DC fan but I enjoy and appreciate the extra effort. If this is the AC/DC swan song, they are going out at least from a marketing perspective strong.
With new AC/DC studio album Black Ice street date of October 20 inching closer I peeked into Wal-Mart over lunch time today to complete our collection of AC/DC albums by buying Let There Be Rock, Fly On The Wall and Blow Up Your Video all for the stunningly low price of — get this — $7.
If you’re nodding at this price thinking, yeah, yeah, but Let There Be Rock aside, these aren’t among the strongest AC/DC studio albums out there, Wal-Mart also had Back In Black, Highway To Hell and Dirty Deeds selling for $7 each. Yowsa! As I wrote yesterday, I’m not a Wal-Mart fan, but it’s hard to argue with these bargain prices.
If you need to round out your AC/DC collection, might want to check this deal out. I noticed that the Walmart website had some of their studio albums for $9, but I saw them all priced locally for $7. If you’re new to the rock steady world of AC/DC this means you could pick up their entire back studio album library of 15 CDs (15 x 7 = $98) for a little over 100 bucks [AC/DC studio albums: ‘74 Jailbreak, High Voltage, Dirty Deeds, Let There Be Rock, Powerage, Highway To Hell, Back In Black, For Those About To Rock We Salute You, Flick of the Switch, Fly On The Wall, Who Made Who, Blow Up Your Video, The Razor’s Edge, Ballbreaker, Stiff Upper Lip].
Have you seen new AC/DC studio albums available for less than $7 each? Can’t say I have. Hells Bells for competition, it’s a dog eat dog!
Wal-Mart is getting an exclusive deal on possibly the last AC/DC album Black Ice due out later this month. It doesn’t stop there as the New York Times is reporting another AC/DC exclusive: an AC/DC Rock Band game.
This is hot, we got teased by the Rock Band 2 AC/DC track "Let There Be Rock" and now there will be more:
Both Columbia and the band will make money on the game, which contains the songs from the popular DVD “AC/DC Live at Donnington.” The game, which will be available for all consoles in early November, will cost less than most new games, about $40 instead of about $60. That makes it an attractive product to Wal-Mart, which believes that lower prices drive demand.
Ahh, but what they don’t tell you in this snippet. Keep reading.
1. Thunderstruck 2. Shoot To Thrill 3. Back in Black 4. Fire Your Guns 5. Jailbreak 6. The Jack 7. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap 8. Money Talks 9. Hells Bells 10. High Voltage 11. Whole Lotta Rosie 12. You Shook Me All Night Long 13. T.N.T 14. Let There Be Rock 15. Highway To Hell 16. For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)
Note: I’m pretty sure Wal-Mart sells another Live at Donnington (exclusive too?) so this might not be the exact track list of the game (it is NOT, stay with me). There is also an AC/DC Live at Donnington [Blu-ray] version of this concert — oh yea.
Even though it’s AC/DC there needs to be more than 16 songs for $40. I would expect 25 or more songs with some special Rock Band goodies exclusive to this game.
I checked the official Rock Band forums to see if they had any detailed information yet. Indeed, they did, providing the full press release with the actual AC/DC track list, which adds two more songs to the list above ("Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be" and "Heetseeker"):
AC/DC LIVE: Rock Band Track Pack will feature the master recordings from the best of the band’s live performances. The live recording was specially remixed for Rock Band by Mike Fraser. The game features 18 tracks, with more than 99 minutes of game play for each instrument:
"Thunderstruck" "Shoot to Thrill" "Back in Black" "Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be" "Heatseeker" "Fire Your Guns" "Jailbreak" "The Jack" "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" "Moneytalks" "Hells Bells" "High Voltage" "Whole Lotta Rosie" "You Shook Me All Night Long" "T.N.T." "Let There Be Rock” "Highway To Hell” "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”
Guitar Hero Aerosmith which sold well enough to spark a possible music trend: band-themed play our music games. There have been band video games before (I’m thinking about the Iron Maiden PC game quite some time ago) but they didn’t interact directly with the music like these crop of game. In the Aerosmith game players could rise through the club ranks playing Aerosmith songs along the way. It came with an Aerosmith-themed guitar. The problem with the GH: Aerosmith game was that it was a pretty short experience for experienced players and didn’t add anything that unique or new. My son got through the whole game in a few hours at the expert difficulty.
A Guitar Hero: Metallica game is in the works, presumably following the GH: Aerosmith formula. If GH and Metallica are smart, they’ll include some other goodies to sweeten the deal.
I’m guessing at $40 there will be no AC/DC guitar or other accessories. In fact, they are billing this as "The AC/DC LIVE: Rock Band Track Pack" - which sounds like it’s going to be among the more expensive RB track packs released to date. Rock Band and Guitar Hero players are already paying a premium to play downloadable content songs. Would like to see an AC/DC themed Rock Band game for $20 more perhaps with an exclusive Angus axe.
"Go Beyond the Disc! - The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions ship with a code on the back of the game manual that lets you import all of the songs into the Rock Band or Rock Band 2 game environment (Internet connection required)."
So that $40 will include an export code. And these are remixed tracks by Mike Fraser specially for Rock Band. Zing!
I’m not a Wal-Mart fan, but a huge AC/DC fan, so they’ll earn my business for both the Black Ice CD on October 20 (you can buy the CD from AC/DC website if you want) and AC/DC LIVE Rock Band Track Pack on November 2nd. Hat tip to great big geek, who was the first to turn me onto this New York Times article.
BTW, AC/DC is running a YouTube Give It All You Got contest at their website trying to find the best video cover of their song, "Rock and Roll Train" where you can win a Gibson guitar signed by the Young brothers.
Update 10/2/08 4:00pm PST: Harmonix employee Henry writes: “There will be unique achievements and trophies for this track pack, as well as several song specific achievements. They will rule.”
Yesterday I spent too much time getting my music organized in iTunes on the Mac so that the new iTunes ‘Genius’ would not suggest to me music I already own. Probably won’t bother trying iTunes for Windows, “bloated” or with unintentional or intentional problems as some folks are suggesting , as I’ve been happily using Zune on Windows for almost 2 years now, but what other compelling choice for music management is there on the Mac (suggestions, please)? It’s sort of a shotgun gadget wedding on the Mac.
Genius creates playlists based on a song you listen to from what you already own and I’ll get to that fun in a minute, but finding/exploring music I don’t own is something I enjoy. A true musical genius would be able to mine the world’s database of music and return me exactly the type of music I enjoy but don’t already own. AmazonMP3 does a decent job recommending me DRM-free MP3 albums I might want to buy based on what I’ve already purchased from them, can the iTunes Genius do better?
First, you have to activate Genius, which burped for me the first time:
But worked fine the second try:
This process took several minutes mining our family’s ever growing music collection of 272 artists and 50.35 GB of music. After running, I noticed iTunes 8 changed my default view to Cover Flow.
Cover Flow looks pretty when you have album art for every artist and ugly when you don’t.
A couple years back I hunted missing album art for every album but through time and circumstance I’m missing a lot these days, since iTunes on the Mac isn’t my regular music player any more. Good thing you are just a view click away from going back to the boring text view and can have iTunes automatically fetch missing album art.
Recommending to buy songs you already own = not Genius
Even after a couple hours making sure the music library was updated — and Genius was updated too — the Genius was still recommending songs I already owned on best of albums instead of the studio albums. Bummer. I would think a song with the same name by the same band that’s not marked ‘live, unplugged, acoustic, demo’ etc., would not be returned as a result.
Not all the results were bad, I noticed a couple songs of possible future interest. This part of Genius shows promise, but sorry, it’s a long way from being genius.
Play a song and press the Genius button to generate a similar playlist of songs you already own = almost Genius
My first Genius playlist test started with the song "Born Again" by Black Sabbath, here’s the playlist Genius generated:
Cool results! I like many of these songs. They aren’t just popular tracks I’ve listened to with songs like "I’m Insane" by Ratt live and "The Eyes" from Dio’s Master of the Moon. And I totally dig "Keep It Warm" off the same Born Again album, "Heaven and Hell" Live by the renamed Sabbath. This Genius generated list of 25 similar songs is excellent.
I tried playing other less popular songs that I five star rated in iTunes to see what Genius returned. Next: "All Mixed Up" by The Cars:
Doh! Even after an update, no luck with this song. Next song: "Time and Time Again" by Counting Crows:
Another good list with some songs I recognize and like along with some lesser known titles. Thumbs up. Next song: "Comin’ Under Fire" by Def Leppard:
Another solid playlist, saved. I found while testing more songs with Genius, I wished there was some sort of way to quickly output the results of these Genius playlists as text files to share with others online. Wait, this could be where a service like Nutsie comes in. Remember me writing about Nutsie a year ago? Bet the Nutsie folks are ecstatic over Genius. I see where you can make an iMix out of these playlists but Nutsie seems like a better idea if it works with Genius playlists.
Overall, I like what Genius does. I don’t think the name quite fits because as you can see from a small sampling above that there are some holes. I suppose even Einstein wasn’t perfect, so maybe I’m being too harsh, but the Genius algorithm appears very, very good. This feature will encourage me to start using iTunes again. Mission accomplished, Apple.
New iPod announcements
Before exiting this post, I see Matt is curious what I think about the new iPod announcements. From an Apple shareholder standpoint (I’ve owned AAPL stock for a couple years now), I love these Apple events. Steve Jobs out on stage evangelizing like only he can. And what’s not to like about taking $100 off the iPod Touch?
Being excited about touch screen enabled devices like tablet PC, I really like the idea behind the iPhone and iPod Touch but here’s my problem: not enough practical storage space for the price.
Realistically I’m only going to carry one music device. I’ve already got my Pocket PC which the iPod Touch could someday replace, but I don’t see it having enough space for me at the right price now. We have over 50GB worth of music and my current 30GB Zune isn’t enough. Why would I spend $299 for the iPod Touch 16GB and have 14GB less for music not counting cool iPod Touch applications? Even though the Nano’s price is right the storage is the issue there too. Always have liked the Nike+ tie-in.
Right now the 32GB iPod Touch is selling for $399. The money conscious side of me says: wait it out until the price comes down and storage amount increases. Inevitably it will. The cool gadget side of me is saying to stop thinking about it and drop down the bones now.
The iPhone remains out for me as long as it has anything to do with AT&T. If Sprint had the iPhone, the current cell phone carrier my wife and sons are using (I haven’t had a cell phone of my own for awhile), I might pull the trigger. Been checking out that Samsung Instinct and thought maybe, just maybe that would look good in my hands but then I think about having a phone contract for two more years and that keeps me at bay.
So it looks like I’ll be getting either a Zune 120GB or iPod 120GB classic. In the iPod corner is knowledge that my wife’s 80GB iPod has worked very well and I like the interaction with iTunes on the Mac. Also, I’m hoping this holiday season to upgrade my Mac. Last and my first ever Mac purchase was in October 2004. It’s time for me to get one of those shiny Intel-based iMacs. Santa, are you listening? Having the 120GB iPod would fit this scenario well.
In the Zune corner, bonus points for how the Zune has treated me as a customer by continuing to give me firmware updates on my Zune 30GB with features that are in their next generation devices. I’m intrigued by comparing the channels function to the ‘Genius’ and must admit not being one of the 50% using the FM tuner to date, so that FM to tune capability won’t play much of a factor. I spend 75% of my time in the Windows world and prefer Zune software to iTunes on Windows. Seems like jumping into the 120GB is going to fit my growing music needs well whether it be Zune or iPod.
If I let desire rule my wallet, I’d buy a new iMac, the Zune 120GB and the iPod Touch 32GB tomorrow. Oh temptation, you cruel beast!
Remember me writing last week about my negative customer experience with CD Baby? This morning Don Dokken made it so I could only buy his second solo album Solitary ($9.99, been available online since Feb 2008) through the service Snocap via dokkenstore.com.
Didn’t go through as many screenshot motions as I did with CD Baby, but Snocap wouldn’t let me add my credit card in Firefox so I could finish the order. I kept hitting the ’submit’ button and nothing happened. Grrrr.
When I fired up Internet Explorer things seemed to work correctly, but minor gripe, why as a first time customer do I have to do the following:
1. check box next to the song to order 2. confirm order 3. be taken to another browser window — hey I’m already in one — to visit Snocap to register for the site and add payment information on file. Why not open in a tab? And why not wait for the other browser window until we actually add payment information and can verify we are on a secure page? 4. In IE I saw an option to use PayPal. After authorizing, did the system take me back to finish the order? Of course not. So back to the other browser tab to try the order again. 5. This time it went through and asked me if I wanted to download the Snocap download manager or download the songs direct. By all means to anybody reading, choose to download the songs direct.
From experience I should have done that, but didn’t. Next, the order screen turned into a message saying there was an error returned from the software. Meanwhile, the Snocap download manager was still installing. Huh? When it fully installed and ran it didn’t show any music for me to download.
[sigh] Here we go again. Didn’t we just do this a week ago with CD Baby?
6. I went directly to the Snocap site and checked this out:
The ultimate website NON-confidence builder: big, broken image. The screenshot might be a bit small but there is only a ‘profile’ link and ’sign out’ — nothing about account or transaction history. They lose points for not making this more clear. When you click on ‘profile’ you can then navigate to your transaction history.
7. And there, finally, I can download the songs one at a time without having to use the download manager. I didn’t see any way to add the songs to the snocap download manager. Fortunately all the songs from Solitary downloaded.
Why is buying music from some of these online music sites a hassle? I’ve had very good experiences with AmazonMP3, iTunes and Zune but my last two experiences with services I haven’t used before has not been good. I was pleased to see the artist, Heavy Jack, reply this morning to my experience last week and say they are looking into it.
I’m starting to understand, but still don’t think it’s cool, people who go the bittorent route to get the hard to find music. Enough of this, what about the Don Dokken solo acoustic album, Solitary. Is it any good?
It’s mellow, I’ll say that. Have to listen to it more to judge but I’ve always liked Don Dokken’s mellow stuff. On his first solo album the song "1,000 miles Away" is one of my favorites. With Dokken who doesn’t like "Alone Again?" And pretty much the entire Under Lock and Key album (ok, not every song is mellow on there, but that one seemed like one of the most mellow Dokken albums) with tracks like "It’s Not Love" and "Jaded Heart." Then there are some more rare and less commercially appreciated albums like Dysfunctional with excellent songs like "The Maze" and "From The Beginning."
In the official Dokken podcast #2 and elsewhere Don Dokken keeps saying that this year’s good selling Lightning Strikes Again (my favorite track off that one is "Oasis") is probably the last Dokken studio album. He wants to do something outside what he feels are the musical confines of Dokken. Something "harder." Rhino, the company who published Lightning would like another Dokken album but it doesn’t sound like Don Dokken is interested at the present time.
One request, whatever you do, Don: please make it easy and hassle-free to buy whatever album you make going forward. This is something for musicians to keep in mind with how they choose to distribute their music. If you make it too much of a pain in the ass, some (many?) fans will take the path of least resistance. A quick search engine query reveals tons of illegal avenues to acquire Solitary.
Solitary Track List
1. "In The Meadow" 2. "I’ll Never Forget" - the ID tags in this MP3 were not set correctly and I had to manually fix. Good thing it’s easy to do these days in a wide variety of software. 3. "Where The Grass Is Green" 4. "Ship Of Fools" 5. "You Are Everything" 6. "Venice" 7. "Sarah" - Don Dokken says this song is about a "first love" he had in the 80s. One of the better tracks. 8. "The Tragedy" 9. Someday
If you like the harder Dokken songs like "Breaking The Chains" then Lightning Strikes Again will be more satisfying. If, like me, you enjoy the mellow side of Dokken, roll the dice with Snocap or attend one of the Don Dokken solo shows when he starts doing them again (he’s out touring with Dokken in support of Lightning now). He is selling Solitary at his shows. I wish he’d consider using a service like Tunecore.com which will get his music out on iTunes, AmazonMP3, Rhapsody, Napster, EMusic and more.
2008 is a great year to be a rocker. A new Metallica album available next week and the next — and possibly last (hope not) — AC/DC studio album Black Ice will be available October 20. Oh yeah.
You can grab the AC DC what happened in history widget for your blog or favorite social service here or using the ‘get & share’ link in the embed above (RSS Readers: visit the page to see widget embed).
Black Ice Track Listing
1. Rock ’n Roll Train - you can listen to this track on the widget page
2. Skies On Fire
3. Big Jack
4. Anything Goes
5. War Machine
6. Smash N Grab
7. Spoilin’ For A Fight
8. Wheels
9. Decibel
10. Stormy May Day
11. She Likes Rock N Roll
12. Money Made
13. Rock N Roll Dream
14. Rocking All The Way
15. Black Ice
When I buy digital music downloads from places like iTunes and AmazonMP3 the music is available, as expected, for download right away. This morning I bought an album in MP3 format from an indie rock artist, Heavy Jack, from CD Baby. Believe that this was my first ever CD Baby purchase.
One of the things I like about CD Baby is they take a very small percentage of the money from the sale. Via their artist signup site:
For digital sales, we keep only a 9% cut, paying 91% of all income directly to the artist. For physical CDs, we keep $4 per CD sold.
Good deal for artists/bands, I’m there. So yesterday I checked out this music discovery service and came across Heavy Jack. Loved their song Fly Away (Black Crow), particularly the Hendrix-like vibe, embed is below for readers from the blog (won’t show in RSS feed):
Good stuff, I wanted to show them some material ($) fan love and thus went to their website this morning and saw I could purchase their album in CD or MP3 format. I went for the MP3 format which cost $9.99. I used PayPal and received confirmation that CD Baby was paid right away at 7:02am PST.
What I didn’t receive as expected was a download link from CD Baby or explanation of when the download link would be coming. I waited. And waited. Waited. Started to wonder around 10 minutes if the order didn’t go through on CD Baby’s end. Hey, sometimes things happen.
30 minutes later I decided to write an email to CD Baby with a copy of the transaction number and ask them how long it took to get the download link? I didn’t expect to receive a response to this email right away. If I got a response by the end of the business day, I’d be happy. Through experience have learned to set expectations lower when emailing customer service of any site online. It’s a pleasant surprise when somebody responds right away, but a business day is reasonable.
49 minutes after the sale, I received an email with the subject line: "CD Baby loves Tdavid" and order # confirmation:
Nevermind being anal about their script failing to capitalize the ‘D’ in my name, that’s just nitpicky, what does matter is that the download link they provided in their email didn’t work. The page just errored out. Waited a few more minutes, figuring maybe there was another delay before the download link was activated. As silly as that seems, have seen that situation before. Nope, didn’t matter, still didn’t work.
In their ‘love me’ email they added the message:
If you’re not able to use that link from this email or just not ready to download yet, you can always log in to your account at http://cdbaby.com/account and find all of your MP3s in the "Your Downloads" section.
Hello, I was able and ready 55 minutes ago. If you love me, just give me a download link that works already. Where is the music I paid for? WTF is up with this place? I don’t walk into a music store and pay them for a CD and then come back and hour later and still can’t get the CD to take home. This isn’t ordering a pizza on a Friday night when the parlor is getting slammed and they are understaffed, it’s an automated web order system for a digital download.
1 hour 25 minutes (8:27am PST) after the sale and all I see when I click the download link in CD Baby is this:
At this point I thought maybe, maybe the download link would work on another computer. Tried it on my laptop. No work in Firefox or Internet Explorer.
1 hour 42 minutes here I sit still unable to download music from the link. If I was into BDSM I’d try buying another MP3 download from CD Baby for a different artist just to see if this negative customer experience was an isolated case. Instead, I’m making this blog post for others to tell me their CD Baby MP3 purchase customer experiences. Did you get your MP3 download right away? Did it take more than a couple hours? Did the download link not work at first and work later?
1 hour 53 minutes. Still no working download. I’m getting ready to hit publish on this post. Some say you should never blog mad, I say when your wallet is impacted: screw that! This is a bad experience.
2 hours. Wow. The download link finally worked! I’m going to publish this as written anyway to see if this is the norm for CD Baby MP3 purchases. If this is the normal customer experience, CD Baby is one torturing lover. If you run a music delivery service, don’t make your customers wait two hours for digital downloads. Two minutes, fine. Two hours and it’s time to hire new programmers.
Update 10:02am PST: Received an email response from “pony” at CD Baby apologizing for their servers being down this morning while they did some work.
Saturday night at the stroke of midnight we joined a small line of people at the Tacoma, WA Best Buy as the first to buy the newest installment of Guitar Hero (Guitar Hero World Tour). After buying the $29.99 warranty for the bundle the total rang in at $233.90 USD.
taken from 1992 DVD via Amazon: 
