In response to this blogcritics article Coolfer attempts to justify the cost of CDs as not being expensive. He further forms an analogy based on Pepsi.

I totally disagree on the soda analogy, and that CDs are not way overpriced. 

Pepsi is given away for free by some places (notably casinos) as enticement to keep gambling. You don’t see them handing out major or even minor artist CDs as enticement to keep playing (although they do often provide free entertainment). In fact, how often are promotional CDs given away to the general public anywhere? Beverages are served for free all the time because it is recognized that they are inexpensive and because, well, humans get thirsty.

CDs cost pennies to make and the weight in the middle and lower distribution tiers is far too fat. Cut that crap down or out altogether to get to the store, artist and then a little bit to the manufacturing, label and a percentage to the agent that cut the deal. That’s fair and still enough money for everybody along the way to turn a profit. The main problem I have with the RIAA is the greed.

$5-$10 per CD would accomplish these objectives.

.50 manufacturing
1.00 distributor (wholesale)
1.50 RIAA (still outrageous, but they can’t go from everything to nothing)
3.25 artist
========
$6.25 wholesale CD cost +
$2.00 suggested retail distribution (or whatever they could charge)
=======
$8.25/CD

I’m probably leaving out folks due their cut, but I’m a firm believer that the artist and retailer should share the biggest profit from the sale of the CD because the artist created the material and the retailer has to stock the merchandise, deal with theft, and stock intelligently. The manufacturer only has to press the right amount of CDs. If they press too many they can always dump them off at a loss — which is what they’ll do on crap CDs or package them in with other CDs.

$13-17 per CD, on the other hand, is still too much for a mere couple good songs (at best) on a 12-16 song CD and the rest being crap filler.

Don’t try to spell it, but Hallelujah from Sammy Hagar & The Wabos has arrived! Well, at least in part anyway. Hagar, affectionately known as The Red Rocker, is one of those rare musicians and vocalists who has enjoyed success both as a solo artist and with headline bands.

His resume is rather diverse ranging from Montrose to HSAS (featuring Journey guitarist Neal Schon) blues artist Roy Rogers to Van Halen (Van Hagar as some disgusted fans have coined)  to offering songs, production, vocals and/or guitar work for Heart, Alice Cooper and even, yes it’s true: Hank Williams Jr. (Lone Wolf). Not to mention appearing on numerous movie soundtracks like: Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Over The Top (that underwhelming Stallone wrestling movie), Footloose, Up the Academy, plus the classic adult animated movie Heavy Metal.

Sammy was a prominent popular rock artist in the 80’s gliding between hard rock and pop rock with such memorable songs as There’s Only One Way To Rock and I Can’t Drive 55 (both available on Hallelujah). The story goes that one day he got a call to replace Diamond David Lee Roth in Van Halen, of which he accepted and then went on to record several platinum VH albums. He helped usher in a new and somewhat unexpected VH sans Roth era only to leave the band in somewhat torrential times in the late 90’s and return to his almost forgotten solo career some 13 years later.

In Hagar’s absence Van Halen popularity waned not helped by releasing their worst studio offering to date with singer Gary Sherone behind the mic, then firing him after the sales went south, and then they went into sort of an unofficial retirement. Unfortunately, the world hasn’t seen or heard from Van Halen – no new album or live show– in 1,758+ days and counting. Ok, I guess you can hear a quick and somewhat recent soundclip of Eddie playing Joy to the World for 40 seconds here.

The good news is that Sammy Hagar is still out there recording, touring and playing loud and proud rock and roll. This man has a lot of fun playing and you can hear it on this live CD.

So what does Sammy say about Hallelujah inside the CD insert? Trying to put a live CD together was not as easy as I thought it would be. Clearly with his large catalog of songs he should have gone for the double CD set, but fans can’t tell by his limited and vexing explanation if this was a financial decision or a personal decision. Come on, Sammy.

Somehow in the space of a single CD he still manages to squeeze in a cross selection of songs, kicking the set list off with Shaka Doobie. Not the best nor well known song to start a live Sammy Hagar CD, but he bounces back by jumping right into the second song in the setlist with the familiar: suckers walk, money talks, but it can’t touch my three lock box.

To keep the momentum going he breaks into an ok version of There’s Only One Way To Rock which I was a bit disappointed in because we’ve already heard a better live version with him and Eddie trading solos – yikes, 10 years ago – on Van Halen’s CD: Live Right Here Right Now. If you already own that CD then chances are good that you will be disappointed in Hagar with The Wabos doing the VH stuff. However, he does have Gary Sherone — yeah, the same singer VH dumped – in for a guest appearance and Michael Anthony guesting on bass (which Anthony’s appearance according to rumours has caused a bit of a rift with the Van Halen brothers). It’s not that the Van Halen material played by Sammy & The Wabos sounds bad, but it doesn’t measure up to Van Halen musically except for Sammy’s vocals. It will be interesting to see if VH ever does play together again how they will deal with Sammy’s vocals. Touche`.

The VH songs on Hallelujah are (in order of the setlist): Top of the World, Why Can’t This Be Love, When It’s Love, Right Now and Dreams. In Dreams especially, the Wabos’ Vic Johnson proves to be a skilled guitarist supporting Hagar material, but is absolutely no match for a full-on Eddie Van Halen solo. If you listen to the two live solos for Dreams side by side you’ll hear exactly what I’m talking about. Vic shouldn’t feel bad because many accomplished guitarists have withered when trying to cover Eddie’s fiery fretwork without the assistance of overdubbing.

The song Give To Live which was from Hagar’s album where Eddie played bass on is a good live rendition of the studio song but there is something about Hagar playing the version acoustically live on the aforementioned Right Here Right Now CD that was stronger. Fortunately, Hagar delivers an unplugged version of Eagles Fly that is outstanding. But then comes the somewhat forgetable song, Little White Lie. Not sure what the story with the harmonica solo is, but with all due respect that is Neil Young, not Hagar, territory. I am also mystified why the extracted setlist covered so many songs from his VH days and newer stuff when he had plenty of outstanding classic material available on Standing Hampton, Three Lock Box and VOA.

Montrose fans will enjoy a solid version of Rock Candy and football fans will like Mas Tequila which I think has been played in more football stadiums in recent years than Queen’s We Will Rock You. Also worth listening to is I can’t Drive 55 where Hagar curiously urges the crowd to get with the times “it’s 65, not 55 … 65, you got it?”. Probably one of the best videos in the 80’s was this video and every time I hear it I think of the judge banging his gavel and them taking Sammy away with guitar in hand. Hard to shake that early MTV generation.

Hallelujah ends as unceremoniously as it started with his newest studio track and while this song isn’t bad, it isn’t worth buying the CD over unless you are a diehard Hagar collector.

At the time of this writing, for those who are interested, Hagar is also touring with members of Montrose and he has a pretty good official website, despite the use of those irritating frames (why do so many band websites use frames?).

In summary,this CD comes across as sort of an appetizer instead of the main course. If you want to hear Sammy doing great live versions of Van Halen songs then buy the VH Live Right Here Right Now CD instead. Hallelujah is certainly competent in both sound and production but not anything spectacular. The overall production has more than a rushed feeling to it and the song selection leaves you wanting to hear what songs didn’t make the cut. Don’t be surprised if you ask yourself at least once why he didn’t include one of his greatest commercial hits: Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy. To be completely fair, it seems from Sammy’s CD insert comments that he knew in advance that he was putting together a jigsaw puzzle with two thirds of the pieces missing and hoping that his fans would support this fragmented effort as being better than nothing at all:

“If this CD is commercially successful enough I plan a double live CD of the whole nine yards: raps, extra songs maybe even a 3 CD set in a limited edition. Who Knows? I could dig that.”

We could dig that too, Sammy.

In the meantime we’ll just have to take, or leave, this slightly above average live CD offering, since for whatever reason the full meal deal is still stored in the Three Lock Box. Maybe if commercial success isn’t reached, then the Red Rocker will offer for download these coveted missing tracks someday? Hallelujah, that’s what dreams are made of. Grade C+

 

Also by Sammy Hagar:
Hallelujah
Three Lock Box
Standing Hampton

Microsoft opens download service in Western Europe - early comments are mixed at best. For legal music download services to work, they’re going to have to offer great selection, high quality (not 128/44), flexibility for sharing between devices, and reasonable pricing. eMusic and iTunes seem to lead the pack so far.

Speaking of music, the other night I finally did some biz with buymusic — I downloaded 3 songs. Where did I hear the songs? Radio @ AOL which is currently my favorite internet music streaming service. AOL’s sound quality is excellent comparatively if you have broadband.

So how did the buymusic experience go? First of all, as I saw someone else mention (sorry I don’t remember who it was to permalink them) that the quality is only 128k. This is disappointing for a paid download. They need to get that up to at least 192/44 or better yet, make it 320/44. The three songs I chose were from Def Leppard and were 99 cents each.

Since I wasn’t registered the site prompted me for an email address and then took me to the real form where it snagged my credit card and shipping info. Once you get through that you can go checkout and then download your music one at a time (another bummer). Note: you are going to need Windows Media Player 9 for this so if you don’t have it then you better download it before expecting to be able to play the song. I found that even after I downloaded and upgraded WM 9 on my machine there were still some “digital rights” that needed to be synchronized, which I assumed to be the security process that identifies my computer to those three songs so that they can only be downloaded on this one machine.

Overall, the selection of buymusic is good, the quality is substandard and the process of retrieving your purchased songs (one at a time) is not refined. Improvement is needed. Grade: D

The Blog Herald is running a sort of song/karaoke blog-related contest which is based upon the satire lyrics by Christian Crumlish and since I love music and like the original song (American Pie) it was based on I fired up the recorder and gave it a whirl. While I’ll likely never win with my voice and rendition, if you want to hear me tackle the song, feel free to laugh after you:

• DOWNLOAD bloggingpie.mp3 (6.09 MB 192/44) It was a fun distraction!

Other artist versions (please trackback or comment here so I can find you to link up):
Listen to Pete Hopkins do the full version. Pete was the first to enter this contest. Nice acoustic guitar in the beginning and mild distorted guitar in the later parts.

One of the things I’ve always liked about the XBox was how you could burn tracks from CDs to listen to while playing some of the games. Listening to MP3 on your regular stereos is becoming more in vogue. A range of digital music players are springing up that let you listen to songs on a hard drive on a hi-fi.

Michael Jackson isn’t finding the RIAA a thriller, in fact he is: “speechless about the idea of putting music fans in jail for downloading music” You aren’t the only one, Michael, who wishes the RIAA with this sue the customers offensive would just beat it.

Related article:
Will I be sued for downloading?

Related entries:
RIAA on the offensive
Beefing up security during recording process
911+ filesharers targeted so far
RIAA’s real lawsuit numbers

Somebody finally did the math on the RIAA lawsuits against filetraders. Michaela Stephens calculates that it will take 2191 years for the RIAA to sue all estimated 60 million filetraders based at a rate of 75 per day.

Gina brings up an interesting acoustic cover of November Rain by Guns ’N Roses at crushing krisis. Peter is scheduled to come onto the radio show at 4am PST / 7am ET, and it is possible we’ll hear something live from him then!

Speaking of Guns ‘N Roses? What exactly happened to them? They came out with an incredible first album, then took forever to follow it up. And when they released a follow-up it was a 2 CD set, and then they broke up. AXL was doing a few shows with not the original band but him and Duff, I think. Chinese Democracy, the new CD, has been in the coming soon mode for some time. Smells like a possible Van Halen situation here.

And since it is 10pm, it is time for me to change my shirt again! 8 hours ago I changed from Miami Vice mode to casino Club Aladdin. Now it’s time for my R.E.O Speedwagon Concert shirt. Pictures at eleven (I’ve always wanted to use that cliche’)

Unsuspecting grandparents and roommates are among the first, according to this article to be fleshed out by the RIAA in their seemingly unending quest against digital pirates.

Over the coming months this may be the internet’s equivalent of “shock and awe” - the stunning discovery by music fans across America that copyright lawyers can pierce the presumed anonymity of file-sharing, even for computer users hiding behind nicknames such as “hottdude0587″ or “bluemonkey13.”

I’m not sure the comparison to the Iraq shock and awe is appropriate or relevant, but I think this will raise the awareness level for internet users who share their accounts with others to be more careful. Check out this humorous cartoon on the RIAA that I found using Google images search. The cartoon is from designer cosmo7

(source: Mediapost) My current personal favorite internet Radio @ AOL was ranked as the number one Internet Broadcast Network with 21,679,740 hours of Total Time Spent Listening (TTSL) for the month of June. What do I like about Radio @ AOL?

1) broadband sound is great,
2) commercial free (only station IDs so far, but I bet this changes) 
3) plenty of different music “stations” within the network 
4) follows the KISS principle that AOL is so great for: Keep It Simple Stupid. LIVE 365 has the diversity as far as stations go, but AOL is doing things right so far.