UPDATE: Updated to remove a cut-and-paste SNAFU that had the first line… twice.
It was reported on Digg, so of course I saw it and checked it out quickly. At first I expted the 70 Free Songs From iTunes (iTunes link) to be a collection of the latest popular music that they wanted to give away to boost sales and get attention from people… well, like Digg, and the iTMS-using geeks therein.
Actually, it turns out that these 70 songs were from Stanford university. The Music Store describes them as:
A wide range of musical performances by Stanford students, faculty, staff, alumni and artists-in-residence.
Now, let’s ignore how incredibly cool this idea is in the first place. Sure it builds a huge community and gives all these guys some extra needed exposure… The real point is: some of these guys kick ass!
I quickly fell in love with several of these artists in the first few tracks. Songs like Impossible and Coffee by Avery Brown and A Starfish In The Front Yard and Fade by Chris Ayer had me captivated for hours listening to these amazing free tracks (4.6 hours to be precise).
If you’ve got some extra time to burn and want to find some really amazing music, be sure to check out this great collection from Stanford…
Unfortunately, to even get the FREE music, you have to have an iTMS account.
And the only people allowed to have an iTMS account?
Those people in the countries that have iTMS!!
C’mon Apple - they are free songs, give them to the rest of the world too. I’m sure the artists won’t mind, as they want to sell albums in other countries - Oh that’s right, if we buy the albums from a real store, you don’t get a cut; so f@#$ing well open a store in Australia like you have been promising for so long now….
Oops sorry, got carried away there…
Hey, it’s not my fault you live in the land of the weird, where creatures the size of my car hop around at random… oh, and you don’t get an uber online music store…
If JHymn worked on iTunes 6.0, I’d unlock the files and share… Oh well.
Hey, does it actually know that you’re from the land of the hoppy creatures automatically? No way to, uhh… “forget” and say you were an American?
When you sign up you have to give credit card details, and the numbers are, of course, different all over the world.
Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to wait.
You just enjoy your free music, and don’t worry about the rest of us
Hmm… Didn’t think about credit cards…
Which makes me think (a dangerous past time for some of us) yet again… I’d never considered that credit cards would be different all over the world. I guess I’ve always just assumed “a VISA is a VISA is a VISA”…
I think I need to get out [of the country?] more…
Looks like Apple reads your blog…
We now have iTMS in OZ!!! I was at the supermarket last night and they were advertising iTMS gift cards. What the???
So after throwing all the groceries back in the cart after they were scanned, I raced off home, jumped on the net and whey hey - music nirvana (no not Nirvana, nirvana; oh never mind).
Meanwile the wife is tapping me on the shoulder wanting to know why there is cereal all over the back of the car
Free music here I come….
So… what do you think?
And what kind of cereal?
Not bad at all. Some nice easy listening there (showing my age…)
Cereal - Uncle Toby’s Plus (http://www.gffoodservice.com.au/Content.aspx?ContentID=161)
Good to hear you enjoy the Stanford music. Since you mentioned Chris Ayer, I thought I’d let you know that there’s an all new Featured Artist section with Chris Ayer. He’s allowed us to post 10 of his tracks complete with introductions and an interview. I hope you enjoy them.