You've got your headphones on and you're dancing

Music Post #43 /// 8 CDs

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 02:08:51 GMT

Avey Tare & Panda Bear- Danse Manitee (uploading.com) I lied Steph. This wasn't by Animal Collective, it's the second CD of a 2 disc set by Panda Bear (Noah's side project). It's a little too... folky for me.
VHS or Beta- Night On Fire (uploading.com) Recommended to fans of bloc party; tv on the radio; we are scientists.
Gatsby's American Dream- In The Land of Lost Monsters Recommended to fans of armor for sleep; copeland; emery.

The Books- Thought for Food Recommended to fans of animal collective; broken social scene; deerhoof.
The Books- The Lemon of Pink

Aloha- Some Echoes I think this is Some Echoes (not released yet), it's either that or Here Come Everyone. But I've been listening to Aloha lately so I thought I'd upload a CD by them... only now I forgot which one I chose. It's a slow CD but it's not boring. Recommended to fans of broken social scene; animal collective; american football
Metric- Static Anonymity EP Errr generally Metric fans know who they are. Recommended to fans of broken social scene; stars; ladytron .
The Boy Least Likely To- The Best Party Ever I love this CD. I remember reading a description somewhere that said they were part indie rock, part 4th grade band practice, and that sums it up pretty well. If you like Architecture In Helsinki, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or Tilly & The Wall (etc etc with the light hearted random-instrument bands), you should give these guys a try. You'll either love them or hate them. Songwise, I like Be Gentle With Me, Paper Cuts, and I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon To Your Star.

It was overdue to happen...

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 04:19:09 GMT

Well kids, LJ has finally flagged one of my entries for violating copyright laws. They just ask you to delete it. So while I'm not being shut down/thrown into prison, I think it's time to switch over to being 'friends only'. If you've already friended me, I'll add you back on this account. If you're a lurker, you're either going to need to get an LJ/friend me to see entries from now on. I'll check for new people tomorrow night and from then on I'll probably only remember to add new friends about once a week.

Music Post # 19 /// 7 CDs

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 09:03:24 GMT

Beta YSI, winzip, mostly mp3 (I hope).
One day I'll stop updating in a rush and I'll check the formats again.

Uploaded Dec 18th:
Annie - Anniemal Indie dance beats with pop vocals (just my opinion though). This girl could easily sing mainstream MTV if she wanted to but she chose to go the LCD Soundsystem/The Sounds/DFA 1979 route. I guess it's good if you like girly/pretty vocals paired with dance music.
Architecture In Helsinki- Like a Call EP And thus concludes all the EPs by them that I own.
The Microphones- It Was Hot We Stayed In The Water
Minus the Bear- This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic
Minus the Bear- Highly Refined Pirates This is one of those local Seattle bands that manages to be consistently good without being spectacular to the point where they get a lot of hype. It's the Teenage Fanclub effect.
My Morning Jacket- Z This made some of the top 2005 album lists of a couple of blogs/people that I've seen.
My Morning Jacket- It Still Moves

Almost done with requests. x_x Then I'll post a couple of personal recommendations before going back to the random roulette of uploads.

If you like what you see, please friend me.
Please go to this entry if you'd like to request anything.

Music Post #2 /// 10 CDs

Fri, 25 Nov 2005 09:23:55 GMT

YSI, winzipped, mp3 unless noted otherwise.

Uploaded Nov. 23rd-
Comments are just some random facts about various indie record labels.
The Album Leaf- One Day I'll Be On Time
The Good Life- Album Of The Year
-Hell will be Conor Oberst, or some such Saddle Creek exec. flogging me for downloading so much of their music. I'm semi-obsessed with this label.
Joan of Arc- In Rape Fantasy and Terror Sex We Trust
-Okay I guess I lied about not commenting on the CDs I uploaded, but since many people might not have heard of Joan of Arc, I'd only recommend this if you're already a fan of the band, or Cap'n Jazz. Their CD is sort of weird and experimental, but not in the easy-to-like Neutral Milk Hotel or Archetiture in Helsinki kind of way. These are the brothers that did American Football, and were pretty much record label Jade Tree's cash cows for a while.
Magnetic Fields The - Holiday
-Rumour has it that the Arcade Fire chose to sign onto Merge because they're huge fans of the Magnetic Fields, and these guys were also signed under them. If the Arcade Fire and Ben Gibbard approve, that's good enough for me.

Well, since this is new I just feel like adding something about my music tastes-

Barsuk Records which is Seattle-based and therefore close to where I live (Rilo Kiley, Death Cab's Trans)
Subpop Records which is also close to the heart of the Washington scene (Iron & Wine, Postal Service, Sleater-Kinney, Soundgarden, Sunny Day Real Estate)
Saddle Creek Records can do no wrong in my eyes (Bright Eyes, Desparecidos, The Faint, The Good Life, Cursive).
Jade Tree Records has all my love over on the East Coast (Alkaline Trio, My Morning Jacket, Pedro the Lion, the Kinsella brothers and everything that grew up from the fragments of Cap'n Jazz & Joan of Arc)
Merge Records for putting out records from so many amazing bands that inspired the current indie rock movement of today (Magnetic Fields, Neutral Milk Hotel, Teenage Fanclub)
And many more than I can't remember right now, like Matador, Rough Trade, Spunk, Control Group, etc. I started paying attention to record labels a couple months ago, when I ran out of new music and realized that finding artists through record labels was a great way to discover stuff. I'd recommend clicking the links if you want to find bands in the same vein as the stuff you listen to right now, since I won't be posting 'Recommend to Fans of' with my music links (though that's mostly because I suck at thinking up similar artists, and find it kind of silly to want to listen to a band that sounds close to something that already exists).

Uploaded Nov. 24th-
At this rate, I won't have any Christmas music left to share by the time December starts. Still, I love these 3 CDs.
Arcade Fire- Christmas Album 2002
Bright Eyes - A Christmas Album (requested by _nonstopdancing)
Matt Pond PA- Winter Songs EP

Azure Ray- Hold On Love (requested by _nonstopdancing)
The New Pornographers- Mass Romantic (requested by yellowsummer)
Modest Mouse- The Lonesome Crowded West

I'm pretty open to recommendations on what I should upload if there's a CD or two you want from my slightly outdated CD List. I'll try to get up at least one thing in every entry that's not from that collection, since that list is mostly a compliation of stuff that I've downloaded from LJ communities.

MAKE REQUESTS HERE

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 06:14:17 GMT

Please comment to this entry if you'd like to request something off my CD List. I've listed the format type of the songs under the comments section of my recordnerd. Everything will be zipped and uploaded to YSI unless you specify otherwise.
Look at my To-Do List to see what others have already requested that I'll be posting soon, or to see if your request is coming up.

I don't think this will be a problem, but please request five CDs or less at a time, after I've filled your request you can always come back for more. The number of songs you request doesn't matter, but please state which album they are from, and the track number if possible.

I'll do my best to fill the requests in the order they were asked, but sometimes my laptop refuses to share a CD with the world. If I do something out of order, it doesn't mean I'm intentionally skipping over you, it means I'm putting all the blame on my electronics for being prats. Glad we cleared up any potential hard feelings.

MUSIC SHARING OVERVIEW

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 06:14:03 GMT

More than you ever wanted to know about computer audio files and the ways to share them.

Compressed Files
Zip files: are a way of turning a folder into one file that is reduced in size. I will be using Winzip to compress a CD folder that contains the song tracks. CDs must be compressed before they can be uploaded to servers, since you can only upload a file, not a folder. In order to listen to the music, you must decompress the file into the original folder, which restores the song tracks to their original size.
Rar files: can compress files up to 8% to 15% more efficiently than Winzip. Still, it is popular to zip files on LJ because winzip comes with Mircosoft, and some people do not want to download .rar extractor programs.
**You can open both .zip files and .rar files with WinRar, download it here.**

I will zip all CD files uploaded to this journal.

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Song formats
mp3: the universal internet audio file format. Any music program can either play mp3 tracks, or can convert mp3 tracks into the appropriate file type to be played.
m4a/AAC Audio: Real Player and Apple's iTunes can both play this file type. Incomptabile with Windows Media Player, but necessary for iPods.
wma: is mostly associated with Windows Media Player, but can also be played on Creative products. WMP rips CDs into this format by default (but can be changed by going to Tools > Options > Rip music) but this file type isn't popular on LJ, because it is incompatible with iPods.
.wav, .ogg, .mp4: Unpopular file types that I do not deal with.

My CDs available for download are either mp3, m4a, or wma. I upload mp3 by default and I will specify if files are ever wma or m4a.

-The only way I know of to convert wma to mp3 (if you know a good program feel free to comment) is to burn the wma songs to a CD, and then rip them back onto your computer as mp3s.
-To convert m4a to mp3, you could either use Apple's iTunes Library (I don't own this but I'd assume it can convert m4a to mp3) or download this program. My computer is maxed out on space so I don't have a file convertor, but someone recommended the second m4a-to-mp3 program to me so I'm going to assume that it works.

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Song Quality
kbps: kilobytes per second. An average song of about 3 minutes ripped at 128 should be around 3,000 KB (kilobytes), I'll estimate.
32 kbps - 96 kbps: A small file (anywhere from 1,000 KB- 3,000 KB depending on the song length) that has a low quality sound. It might not be too noticable on your computer speakers, but if you turn up the volume or play a file that's 32 kbps on a stereo, you'll notice the difference. The sound will be fuzzy and distant, like you're hearing music from underwater. Some people can't tell the different in sound quality though, so to each his own. Uses about 18 to 33 MB per CD if ripped between 40-75 kbps in wma format.
128 kbps - 192 kbps: The standard rate at which music is usually ripped from CDs and floating around the internet in. If I can catch it, I will not upload a CD below 128 kbps in quality. Uses about 57 MB if ripped at 128 kbps in mp3 format, and 86 MB if ripped at 192 kbps in mp3 format.
256 kbps - 320 kbps: Extremely high sound quality in terms of transferring the CD to computer audio format. Uses about 115 MB if ripped at 256 kbps, and 144 kbps if ripped at 320 kbps.
470 - 940 kbps: On WMP, this is called Windows Player Audio Lossless. Mathemathically, the CD quality is lossless when converted to wma format. Uses 206 MB to 411 MB per CD.

For pragmatic reasons, I try to keep my music files between 128 kbps - 192 kbps. When I rip a CD onto my computer, I have it set for a default of 192 kbps.

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File Hosting Servers
The two most popular sites for hosting uploaded files are YSI and MegaUpload, then Filefactory, RapidShare, Sendspace, and UploadHut.
I am willing to upload to these servers:

Yousendit (YSI)
+Pros: No limit to the number of downloads per day, generally fast download speed.
-Cons: During the upload, there's no progress bar or file label (if the file gets cancelled halfway through the upload, I won't know which one it is until all the rest are finished since I typically upload CDs in groups of 10). Files will expire after 7 days or 25 downloads, whichever comes first. Sometimes blocks hotlinking. Hotlinking is directly clicking on the webpage address. (Ex: Clicking on http://www.yousendit.com) YSI blocks hotlinking to 'cut down' on the number of widely distributed illegal files, and it sometimes blocks files from being downloaded if their filenames contain words like 'Coldplay'. Even if given the chance, you should not hotlink files because it helps YSI trace the file distribution back to its source, and could result in communities getting shut down one day. To work around hotlinking, people either put the URL inside of an HTML tag by going <*a href="http://urlhere">Text to Link Here<*/a> or by going hxxp, which forces you to manually paste the link into the address bar to prevent hotlinking. If you use Firefox you have to change the hxxp to http before the address bar recognizes the link, if you use Internet Explorer it will convert hxxp to http automatically.

Megaupload
+Pros: Files stay uploaded until they are untouched for 30 days, there is a bar to show you the file's name and progress while it is uploading (it shows the speed at which the file is uploading, the estimated remaining time until the upload is complete, and at the end it shows how long the upload took).
-Cons: You have to wait a minute before you can download the file, you have to download it within a certain time after the page is ready or it refreshes itself when you click on the link and makes you wait for another minute, there is a maximum number of downloads per day (I'm guessing between 20 to 30 files though, I've hit it before but I don't know of that many other people who have). At times, megaupload can also be RIDICULOUSLY slow when you download a file, and that's why most people prefer to use yousendit.

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SendSpace
+Pros: This is the most amazing server out there. There's a virtually limitless amount of downloads, and the file stays available until it's been inactive for 14 days. Progress bar during your upload to show you the speed and time left until the upload is complete. The download speed is as fast, if not faster than YSI's.
-Cons: None that I can see.

RapidShare
+Pros: Downloads reasonably fast, about the same speed or maybe a little slower than YSI files normally.
-Cons: You have to click on the 'free' button on the first page and then wait another 25-60 seconds for your download to appear. If you don't do either of those soon enough (I'd guess that you can't wait more than 3 minutes in between those two actions) then you get sent back to the first page. You can't have parallel downloads, so if you're downloading one file from rapidshare you can't be downloading another file from rapidshare at the same time. Restricts the number of downloads you do per hour depending on how crabby it is (it usually won't let me do more than 3). There's a maximum upload size of 50 MB per file, so sometimes CDs have to be split into two parts if they're uploaded to RapidShare.

FileFactory
+Pros: About the same download speed as YSI or rapidshare.
-Cons: You have to click past a shitload of ads and wait in between each page to get to your download. At least it isn't bitchy like RapidShare, FileFactory won't send you back to the start if you wait a while between clicking past each page.

UploadHut
+Pros: Stays on the server for at least a month.
-Cons: Maximum upload file size of 50 MB. The file is labelled with a random number, not with it's original title. Is meant to host images, so if you upload a song have to paste the file link into a program like Windows Media Player. (Ex: Take the address that ends in .mp3 and go File > Open URL. Once the song starts playing, go File > Save As to save the song to your computer.) If you upload a zip, it works like a normal file hoster and gives you a link to save it to your computer, but you still have to change the name of the file.

Right now, I am uploading CDs to Yousendit by default. Maybe if this journal gets popular one day and the 25 downloads are used up before it can expire in a week, I'll switch over to SendSpace.

-If you're curious as to why I don't just use megaupload since it's convinent to have a file available for 30 days, it's because I've found that people are typically not generous with sharing CDs unless you make a trade. Using yousendit means that people will have to regularly pay attention to this journal to make sure that the links don't expire during the short time that they're up, and if I find someone who has a CD I want, they'll be more likely to negotiate a trade with me, instead of flipping back through my journal entries to find the CD they want from my collection.