Let's not be gloomy cos it doesn't help anyway: better look at the countries still into the habit of buying music.
A few funny facts: South Korea is a hot market while France and Germany see more sales than the US of A (relatively speaking as the diagram takes sales divided by GDP) . Interesting to know...
http://www.economist.com/node/18621481

On another hand, as this Economist article will explain to you, China, soon to become the world's first economy, is a disastrous market for music: it's Pirats' Heaven...
http://www.economist.com/node/17627557
Funnily enough, to complicate the game, China has just release a weird list of songs that are banned from their territories...It seems like Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and Beyoncé are all stuck in the China Censorship Bureau for no other reason that showing up a lifestyle not feeling right. I guess they're scared that people start wearing meat dresses...

1. "Americano," Lady Gaga
3. "Aunt Beat," New Treasure Island Sport Band
6. "Bloody Mary," Lady Gaga
8. "Burning Up (...

We often take heavy-metal for the musical equivalence of frontal lobotomy, and most of the times it does fit the description, even for the people loving that musical genre. But we shouldn't take for granted the people behind the instruments and think they are plain dumbed by the sheer ferocity of their music. Look at Nikki Sixx, bassist of Mötley Crüe, the legendary heavy rock outfit: behind the bandana and the make-up stands a real artist and a great photographer.
And a serious one-liner addict too: "I have a wonderful assistant," Sixx said during his talk with journalist Kristine McKenna, as his pictures flashed on a digital screen. "I tell her I need four amputees and a midget and she finds them."

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/nikki-sixx-addiction-softened-my-...

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KOLLECTOR: track your songs on radios in real time. worldwide.
register for the free beta version on...

The problem with myth is that they sell something foggy and mysterious, which makes the crowd go bezerk for them, but that stop us from seeing the truth, what's really beyond the things we think we know...
Let's try with a simple test, on a musical genre most music lovers (that's you and I) think they know...You'll be amazed how far from the facts we sometimes are...

1. Grunge began in Seattle
2. Grunge was overwhelmingly male
3. Nirvana came from Seattle
4. Kurt Cobain was murdered
5. Cobain didn't want to be famous
6. Cobain wrote most of Hole's second album, Live Through This
7. Nevermind was actually crap
8. Grunge was all dark, gloomy, woe-is-me music
9. Cobain was grunge's only casualty
10. Grunge had a great legacy

Write down the answers, and then go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/24/grunge-myths-nirvana-kurt-co... and discover what THE TRUTH really is :))

Seems like graphics are a pit without an end when it comes to album covers.

Oh, wait, most of today's music is bought without a cover as such ! Ask the old ones, they will all tell you the pleasure of looking an album cover for hours, deciphering what the band really meant by putting the bass player in front of the singer, or why they used bright orange with gold for the title fonts...
And then came the CD, this little piece of plastic that had an 8 pages booklet that was sold with glasses so you could read the tiny tiny tiny lettering.
And now mp3s: you don't need eyes no more, the cover is gone most of the time, and to think of it, most of the times you don't need ears cos they aren't no more trebles, the bass is gone and it's all compressed anyway :)

Naah, just kidding. We at Kollector we love album cover and we can only share with you this unique link to Record Cover Purgatory :)

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/9374

In a rather intriguing move, Alan Wilder is selling in auction most, if not all, synths and instruments, drums, professional gears, clothes, CDs and vinyls he has collected along the years he was member of Depeche Mode, one of the bigger electronic band there is. This makes us for a unique event that will take place early september in Manchester.

Among the rarities that will be on sale, yes YOU can buy it, there will be rather unique piece of history like Depeche Mode acetate vinyls or test pressings, but also early eighties synths like Arp Odyssey and Oberheim 8....

COLLECTED - The Alan Wilder/Depeche Mode Collection
A Historic Equipment, Vinyl & Memorabilia Auction

Auction date : Saturday 3rd September, 2011 4.00pm
Venue : Zion Arts Centre (www.zionarts.com)
Address : 335 Stretford Rd, Hulme, Manchester M15 5ZA
Viewing : 10.00am to 8.00pm - Friday 2nd September, and 10.00am to 4.00pm - Saturday 3rd September
download the pdf catalog: http://auction.recoil.co.uk/download/
http://auction....

Just to tackle on from the hilarious but oh-so-true Henry Rollins rant on sell-out (?) songs being placed as soundtracks for adverts (http://blog.kollector.com/?q=blog/i-want-sell-out-now) , we have this as a counter example...Here are songs that forever and ever will be stained with the adverts using them as aural beds...This said, it's hilarious to notice The Rolling Stones "Start Me Up was used for Windows 95 or that a Violent Femmes song was used for a junkfood commercial when in fact its bass player is profoundly vegetarian :)

http://flavorwire.com/203000/10-songs-that-have-been-ruined-forever-by-a...

You cannot ignore Henry Rollins.
The impressive and well-built (both brain and muscles) ex-Black Flag leader, has been touring the world with his own band and is now an educated TV Host (altho slighlty sexist at times) and movie star.
Here you can see him giving a well thought off speech about selling out....

Take it away, Henry, YOU RULE !

Oh, no, Steve Martin (The Jerk, Pink Panther, Roxanne, etc...) didn't take the time to write us a letter altho I'm pretty sure he would enjoy the deadpan humour set in some of our entries (not), but he did send once a very humourous note to a fan named Jerry. Oh, btw, the video shows here Steve Martin in an un-politically correct comedy act called Flydini. He loves magic :)

Incidentally, Steve is a very good banjo player with or without the Muppets to back him ;) http://youtu.be/TXyvCJlPgME

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/06/personal-letter-from-steve-martin.html

David Lynch, the fantastic movie director of Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Sailor And Lula and the list goes on and on and on..., will released "Crazy Clown Time", a 14 tracks solo album, on November 8th.

This album has been penned by the Master himself, with the help of singer Karen O (The Yeah Yeah Yeahs). No doubt will it be featuring haunting tracks filled with strange vibes and organic twisted sounds...

Incidentally, the video for "I know", one of the song featured on the album, was done by by Tamar Drachli and chosen by David Lynch as official video thru a competition that saw 450 entries.
Some funny facts appeared on the way Lynch likes to work and one of them comes from Angelo Badalamenti, the composer of Falling (Twin Peaks thema): Angelo and David would sit down at a piano and Angelo would play immediately the moods described by David. Then, Angelo Badalamenti would be on the set, playing his music live while the actors would do their part...Aaaah, the magic of movie making :)

On the side, when not busy jamming with his buddy Moby in his recording studio or having speeches about transcendental meditation, David Lynch has found the time to...

Despite having been put aside since the late eighties by the CD, despite the arrival of various formats and especially the mp3, vinyll is not dead, and actually enjoys a second life these last years.
Sales are up, and even tho they count for a mere single digit %, the fact is: vynil is cult and here to stay. And, as music lovers, we can only smile and appreciate. And buy the damn black thing :)

Numbers ? Nearly 3 millions albums were sold in the USA in 2010, and that's vinyll's best year since 1991. Ok, it's a ridiculous fragment of overall sales compare to 26% digital download and the rest being CD, but it shows people still want sound quality (let's never forget mp3 are compressed and under quality digital reduction of the actual sound: it doesn't sound the way it is supposed to), an artwork they can look at without using their parents' glasses and something which has a texture and a smell: a full experience. LONG LIVE THE VINYL !

More to read here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2011/07/13/vinyl-vs-cd...

We all know this is a challenging time for selling music, but the Music Industry seems to have hit an all-time low here as they are starting to sell Monopoly games based aroundhuge rock bands.
For instance, the Metallica Monopoly game is on sale, and you can now safely buy your hotels in Beverly Hills and put houses in Malibu with your Lars avatar and laugh all the way to the bank while Kirk spends some thinking time in jail...

Oh, by the way, they do this Monopoly limited edition with other icons like Elvis, The Stones, Kiss and AC/DC...
What will the future hold for us ? A Coldplay water filter system and the unique Beyoncé shopping mall caddy ?

LAST MINUTE: I just found out KIss has an amazing line of KISS (tm)tombs and urns...http://tinyurl.com/3qk3eqh

Hip Hop music was at the beginning a vehicle for social comments and self expression but has too often slide into being no more than cliches about fast cars, fast women and fast money...But in some countries, like Mozambique, it can still digs deep into people's everyday life, and troubles, and hopes, and its social message and comments still matter and influence. And in some case it matters so much that the artist ends up in jail because his message somehow unbalanced the Governement. Azagaia is a famous Mozambican hip hop singer recently jailed for some seemingly minor drug offenses but the truth is that his message and the impact it has on the people was too big to be ignored. His main problem seem to be in songs like "A Minha Geração" (where he sings about the governement) and "Arrriii" (on the influence the USA may have on the Mozambican affairs): obviously Azagaia has decide to use his artistic talent to express himself on internal politics and the small or the poor.

Just like Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, The Clash, The Jam and so many, many other bands that were in it for more than money and fame....

More on this:...

Ok, that's an easy title for an article, but the Julian Treasure video is worth looking at, and listen to.
TED (www.ted.com) is well known for the quality of its talks but also for the insights and wit of their delivery. You often get great ideas and thoughts displayed in amazing fashions and styles.

In this demonstration from the english sound expert, one can see why and how it's important to actually go back to REALLY listening, to be in the moment and the experience of hearing rather than being subjected to waves of noise and not making a conscious choice about where to project your attention. I've told you: ideas worth spreading !

http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_5_ways_to_listen_better.html?ut...
http://www.juliantreasure.com/Julian_Treasure/Julian.html

(the vibes on this short video are just incredible)

It was ugly. The death of an artist rarely leaves people without an emotion, and the death of some polarize these emotions in rather violent fashion sometimes.
Rarely have people been so cruel on the passing of a star . And this was a fragile, erratic, wonderful artist with, yes, a terrible addiction.

Now that a few days have passed, it's time to go back and remember who Amy Winehouse really was, what an incredible singer/songwriter/talent we loose and how terribly tragic these recent years, and the medias, were to her.
This excellent Pitchfork analysis by Jess Harvell replaces Amy in context.
And it feels good.

http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/8011-appreciation-amy-winehouse/

The final word would be Oscar Wilde's: "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal".

It's not often a new, usable and fairly different instrument is born ! The other day, we posted something about Amon Tobin and he's in fact has been using this relatively new instrument, the Haken Continuum (first released in 2002), quite extensively for his latest work "Isam".

Basically the Continuum, invented by Dr Lippold Haken ( a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering from Illinois) is a a touch-sensitive keyboard with a playing surface of nearly 8 octaves (they have a 4 octaves version too) which can control midi instruments (synths, samplers, drum machines, MPC, etc...) but also generate intriguing sounds by itself thru a 32 voice polyphonic sound generator. Ok, it sounds very technical so let's just say this amazing and beautiful machine delivers great sounds and is extremely reactive and expressive, something that can be missed on most keyboards. This is due to the fact that the surface of the neoprene keyboard reacts to the smallest input, in a three dimentionnal way: pitch of the note, additionnal timbre control and slides between notes. The possibilities are immense and already famous composers are using it, like John Williams on the soundtrack...