Great Online Music Downloads? Where?!

So I started an eMusic (eMusic.com) subscription a while ago. Its not quite like the iTunes store because its a monthly subscription, but for $11.99 you get 30 tracks a month. Originally I signed up because I saw a 35 free tracks advertisement, and it turned out to be a great deal. After a couple months I stopped my subscription though.

Then they email me a deal to get 75 free downloads if I restart my subscription. So every couple months now, I get 105 downloads for $12. Like all subscription services, you have to stay on top of the pay date, and downloads DO NOT rollover each month, so you have to make sure to use em, but if you can do that, there is a great selection of music.

Music Quote of the Every Few Days

“If this word ‘music’ is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.” – John Cage

Well, Cage must have been tired of people calling his music.. not music. But this statement is a product of its time. Music has taken on such a broad definition to encompass everything that anyone cares enough to call music. I'm glad this is the case. Music should not be a term to describe a period of organized sound. It is universal.

Rachmaninov CD

A remastered CD of Rachmaninov playing Rachmaninov was recently released and it is absolutely amazing. It is so rare to hear the composer perform their own work, especially from that time, so I had always worshipped the original recordings, static and all. The new album is flawless though. I’ve never heard a piano sound better. It does only have his own compositions though, not any other of his recordings.

Music Quote of the Every Few Days

“Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.” – Aaron Copland

I could not agree more with this statement. If anything, much of the music I prefer to really listen to is stress inducing. Lately, anything I listen to consumes me though. I feel totally incapacitated when I’m actually hearing music I care about, which is fairly depressing because to be productive I can only put on the mindless crap... or Journey.

So Blogs.. yeah

Recently, I have not found anything which seems appropriate to blog about. I could just tell you about my lunch, which was some darn good soup, but I prefer to do my part to keep that pointless stuff off the internet.
Instead, today will be the first episode of my Music Quote of the Every Few Days blog.

“No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.” – W.H. Auden

I’ve always been intrigued by Auden. He seemed to draw from the ancient epics in much of his poetry, which is unique for its time. But did he actually have a strong interest in it, or was this just a remark at the absurdity of opera? Well, apparently he found freedom in writing librettos. He wrote and co-wrote a number of them, even for composers such as Britten and Stravinsky.

YouTube Drains Intelligence

YouTube may be a major part of the internet's future, but it also promotes ignorance and discrimination at a horrific level. While video content is fairly controlled, the 'Comments' section on each runs rampant every form of prejudice and obscene interjections. In order to provide an example I attempted to curb the ridiculous deficiencies of mind in many of these comments, but I came up with nothing but a string of %$*@ and %&##$@*, including "normal" vulgar language, up to seven racial slurs, Nazi slogans, and often the word 'kill' interspersed within.

Nothing is actually done to discourage this even though it is clearly stated in YouTube's Terms of Use: We encourage free speech and defend everyone's right to express unpopular points of view. But we don't permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity).

Clearly these are violated on a daily if not by minute basis. I can tolerate the occasional "you're a &#@% %#$%!s" since there is no clause on half-witted behavior, but even so it is clearly a form of hate speech on an individual level (unmentioned by YouTube; they only specify attacks on a group, as seen above). Users have the option to vote "thumb up" or "thumb down" on comments, and eventually, with enough negative votes, the comment will appear minimized. This is a cop out method; rely on other users to moderate themselves. This could easily be solved by erasing posts and/or users with key negative words. Time to step up YouTube.

For these reasons, I despise YouTube.
I admit though, that on a personal level, I am ecstatic that the #@$%s who write these comments spend their life watching moronic behavior on this website and will never be able to find their way out of YouTube.