Kassia is fond of saying that around ‘Loper HQ, April Fools isn’t a day, it’s a season. However, this year, real life has gotten in the way, so in honor of that, I’ve decided to point out a few actual real things that are far more absurd than most of the jokes you’ll see today.

Let’s begin, shall we.

• Continuing Record Company Cluelessness About the 21st Century
  Last week, there was an article in Entertainment Weekly about the rush-release of the new Gnarls Barkley album. Apparently, the fact that it leaked online a few weeks early caught Atlantic records by surprise.

Read the entire entry …

So, let me preface this entire thing by saying two things: 1) I l-u-v love Wilco, and I have since the first album, and expect to for the rest of my life and 2) Given that their music seems not to fit the narrow parameters of any current radio format, I have no issues with Jeff Tweedy getting as much of his amazing music out there in any way, shape or form possible.

That said, is it just me, or are TV shows currently flooded with Wilco music? And I’m not even talking about the Volkswagen commercials — which I’m fine with but fast-forward through — but in the actual shows themselves.

I’ve noticed it three times in the last week. One time is a novelty; two times is a coincidence; but three times is a trend! Therefore, I’ve decided to start The Wilco Songs on TV Shows Watch, which will be dedicated to cataloging the instances Wilco music shows up in a TV show.

Read the entire entry …

The song “Sweet Home Alabama” is many many things: one of the greatest political songs ever written; the song that put Lynyrd Skynyrd on the musical map; the catalyst for Neil Young and Ronnie Van Zant’s friendship.

What it wouldn’t seem to be, however, is a song that would make people go, “gee, I need to spend my tourist dollars on Alabama. Let’s go!!”

However, the good people who run Alabama’s tourism agency disagree with me: in 2008 the theme by which they will try to encourage people to go visit Alabama will indeed be “Sweet Home Alabama.”

Read the entire entry …

It’s pretty much Apple week here at Medialoper, and why not? So I figured that I’d add my perspective on the new iPods, as well as the Universal’s wholesale abandonment of iTunes for Amazon’s Unbox.

Everybody I know seemed to be keeping at one browser tab open on the press conference yesterday, and until the drastic price drop of the iPhone, it pretty much went the way that most people had predicted beforehand. Without going into any deep analysis of What It All Means, here are some of my thoughts.

Read the entire entry …

One of the biggest pieces of news about digital music last week was that Universal Music was going to deign to sell their music without DRM. This is, of course, a good thing for consumers, especially in a week where Google Video’s wholesale abandonment of their service showed just how fracked-up DRM schemes actually are.

The other big news in Universal’s announcement is, of course, that they aren’t going through iTunes to sell the DRM-free music, despite the reported success of EMI’s non-DRM’d tunes. This is widely seen as the latest dick-wave in an ongoing pissing contest between Universal and Ap–

Quick, name three Universal Music artists!!

Read the entire entry …

Saturday, July 21, 2007 3:00 AM PDT

It’s still not here yet.

Read the entire entry …

I stumbled upon an article that posed an interesting question: why aren’t lyrics included with downloadable music? The article suggests that rights issues (and compensation issues) are simply too complex to allow lyrics to be part of the digital package. I’d suggest something else.

One of the key arguments for digital media is the lack of packaging. No jewel boxes, DVD cases, or junk to manage in your increasingly small household. Of course, this means that the consumer misses out on liner notes and other supporting material included in the physical package. Despite this loss, the major entertainment companies — publishing, music, and motion picture — are trying to approximate the price of physical product in a digital world (publishers, for what it’s worth, take the cake here).

Adding this material to the digital package would not increase costs in any noticeable manner. Consumers would still lose when it comes to what they get for what they pay.
Read the entire entry …

So this is how it is with Heroes right now: I TiVo the show on Monday night; spend all day Tuesday desperately trying to avoid spoilers (one co-worker made fun of me by emailing the following: “Mr. Muggles is the mastermind behind everything”); Tuesday night Rox and I watch it after dinner; and on Wednesday I check out various online deconstructions: TWoP, Sepinwall, Poniewozik , EW, etc.

This isn’t so different than my current pattern with a lot of other shows — TiVo, watch, deconstruct — except that Heroes also has something else that I check out on Wednesdays — the online comics on NBC.com.

Read the entire entry …

As is my sometimes habit, I ventured out into the real world this week to take the pulse of real people who use real new media. Nobody was paid nor bribed in the course of these discussions and all opinions reflected here represent the opinions of my (anonymous as they shun fame and fortune) focus group, expanded this time to include a few voices from the legal profession.

So here is what they’re saying out there in reality. Remember, real people with real money to spend on goods and services:

Read the entire entry …

In light of Microsoft Vista’s tardy, ho-hum arrival–and its incomprehensible, off-strategy “Wow!” marketing campaign–let’s revisit, and hopefully debunk, a commonly held myth about Microsoft, namely, that the company has “bad” technology, but compensates with it’s “good/great” marketing.

Even a cursory trip through Microsoft’s marketing past can serve as convincing testimony that Microsoft’s marketing is often ineffective, and often as strange as the company’s top executives can be at times.

Read the entire entry …