We definitely need an iTunes uprising. They continually fail me with their lack of good artists (but absolute abundance of albums with titles like A Celtic Dream by some random classical musicians, or at best not-so-good Irish players.)
I think the last straw for me was my discovery 3 minutes ago that they have NOTHING byt the Bothy Band. At ALL.
Yes, itunes is a big disappointment if you have "non-mainstream" tastes. If only I could just decide to like Britney Spears or whatever other sh*te is lighting up the charts right now.
Possum, don't you know that the Irish invented the panflute 1000 years ago when Turlough O'Rafferty was making his way by the Liffey one day, slashing through the reeds and the rushes, and thought to himself, begorrah, what if I roped together some of these rushes and blew across the top of them? And just like that, the river nymphs and a few leprechauns came to dance a jig while he played and Irish music was born.
John Vesey - Sligo Fiddler
Brian Conway's
Kevin Henry's
Topic 78 collections
Joe Ryan/Eddie Clark
Rounder Cape Breton and PEI fiddle recordings
Lizzie Higgins
I can only speak of the US database, but I think it continues to get better.
This is a tad off topic but what are peoples opinions on sharing music. I was thinking it would be neat to have a site just to share Irish music.Maybe torrents? And if you like the album/artist buy it.
Old stuff like Bothy Band is hard to find even on Amazon since it's all out of print. Hard to know who even owns the recordings. Matt Molloy's recent stuff is for sale, as is Tommy Peoples' and Donal Lunny's. Paddy Keenan's stuff is a bit harder to find.
"Lack of good artists" ! What absolute rubbish. itunes is a brilliant resource for all sorts of genres and continues to grow and provide an ever increasing diverse library of music including ITM, Scottish TM and other styles of trad music.
In just a few clicks I checked and found popular artists like kevin Burke, Martin Hayes, John McCusker, Aly Bain, The Chieftans, Liz Doherty. All good artists. There are also loads of artists I have never heard of and I am continually discovering new players as I search for different versions of reels or jigs etc.
Just becuase your favourite non-mainstream artist may not be listed don't write off itunes. Apple have battled really hard over recent years against the conservative forces in the music industry to deliver better quality and cheaper product. Apple continue to innovate and I as a musician and music lover I would not be without my itunes software or my Apple come to that !
... and Frankie Gavin, Sharron Shannon, Tommy Peoples and the Great and ever so much missed Rory Gallagher who once bought me a pint in a London pub .... but that's another story!
I don't nead iTunes. YouTube has got lots of videos by Planxty or the Bothy Band and the soundtrack from that could be saved. If I want a surprise, pleasant or not, I enter a song or tune title at excite.com.
Tradtunes is a site which acts as a itunes for traditional music. Run by the Uist media group, based in Glasgow, its got soooooooooo many albums availble to download.
Folks should also take advantage of the request function built into iTunes when there's something you want that's not available there. No guarantee that asking for something will work, but not asking almost certainly won't help...
To add to the list of Irish artits on iTunes, there's a pretty good selection of Andy McGann's recordings there.
Having said all that, I'm still pretty much purchasing CDs and ripping them myself rather than purchasing downloads. That may change if DRM goes away and bit rates go up.
..."go ahead and line Apple's pockets if you like. I have found a lot more good Irish music for a lot less money on emusic."
Cheaper? Yes. No DRM? True. But eMusic only pays the artist $0.12 per download and they take forever to get songs in their system. iTunes (US) pays $0.64 per download, and tunes go up within a matter of weeks...
Crazy_fingerz ... we have a saying in the UK ... "you pays your money you takes your choice" .... Apple have never marketed themselves as the cheapest .. If you want to go cheap go to limewire and get into file sharing where downloads are free ...
I am not saying that Apple's itunes is the only place to buy your Irish music. I am simply responding to the false statement that there is, "a lack of good artists on itunes". This is stupid and incorrect.
Ok Jon I get your point. I didn't say there were no good artists...just that you can't go in there expecting to find something, it's more like look around and maybe something will come up.
But really, let's be big kids here and not start calling people or what they say stupid. Thanks.
And for the record, I still do use iTunes a lot, and have discovered lots of good artists, and found a lot that I knew...but was in a bad mood at the time of posting. Mostly due to those PANFLUTES.
Of course, the average iTunes customer spends about $10 a year with iTunes and the average eMusic customer spends about $160 a year with eMusic. Given that the proportion of the download cost that goes to the artist is pretty similar in both cases I am not at all sure that artists end up getting a bad from eMu. (Obviously I am a happy eMusic customer of many years standing). They have loads of brilliant music that's likely to be of interest to people here, too. The English folk music that forms the bulk of my collection is far more likely to be on eMusic than on iTunes.
gw - iTunes pays the record company 64c/download. The artist sees maybe a dime of that. (see http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/ for some background.) I suspect eMusic's economics are similar.
"gw - iTunes pays the record company 64c/download. The artist sees maybe a dime of that."
Not if the artist controls their own music. We own the publishing and performance rights of our music so we get $.64 per download. That iTunes pays out $.64 was my point--the whole record label ripping off the artist debacle is another matter no doubt worthy of it's own thread. I'm not opposed to eMusic, and I'm NOT a fan of DRM, but I definitely prefer seeing the $.64s stacking up in our digital accounting spreadsheet
iTunes
iTunes
We definitely need an iTunes uprising. They continually fail me with their lack of good artists (but absolute abundance of albums with titles like A Celtic Dream by some random classical musicians, or at best not-so-good Irish players.)
I think the last straw for me was my discovery 3 minutes ago that they have NOTHING byt the Bothy Band. At ALL.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by possumawesome
Re: iTunes
I just found 106 recordings, about 50 of bad Irish songs, played by the same group of PANFLUTES.
What is this world coming to?
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by possumawesome
Re: iTunes
Yes, itunes is a big disappointment if you have "non-mainstream" tastes. If only I could just decide to like Britney Spears or whatever other sh*te is lighting up the charts right now.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by timmy!
Re: iTunes
I dunno....I didn't consider panflutes to be mainstream...the world is so unfair.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by possumawesome
Re: iTunes
Possum, don't you know that the Irish invented the panflute 1000 years ago when Turlough O'Rafferty was making his way by the Liffey one day, slashing through the reeds and the rushes, and thought to himself, begorrah, what if I roped together some of these rushes and blew across the top of them? And just like that, the river nymphs and a few leprechauns came to dance a jig while he played and Irish music was born.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by kennedy
Re: iTunes
Oh, Possum, in your honor, I have a redneck joke for you that I learned in Texas...
How many rednecks does it take to eat a possum?
Three---two to look for cars.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by kennedy
Re: iTunes
Oh yeah...sorry, I forgot about that....
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by possumawesome
Re: iTunes
HAHAHA I love the joke Kennedy...that MADE MY DAY!
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by possumawesome
Re: iTunes
There are pleasant surprises on itunes such as:
John Vesey - Sligo Fiddler
Brian Conway's
Kevin Henry's
Topic 78 collections
Joe Ryan/Eddie Clark
Rounder Cape Breton and PEI fiddle recordings
Lizzie Higgins
I can only speak of the US database, but I think it continues to get better.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by edl
Re: iTunes
This is a tad off topic but what are peoples opinions on sharing music. I was thinking it would be neat to have a site just to share Irish music.Maybe torrents? And if you like the album/artist buy it.
Just a thought.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by whangee
Re: iTunes
I got Trian and John Williams' Steam on iTunes.
Old stuff like Bothy Band is hard to find even on Amazon since it's all out of print. Hard to know who even owns the recordings. Matt Molloy's recent stuff is for sale, as is Tommy Peoples' and Donal Lunny's. Paddy Keenan's stuff is a bit harder to find.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by ElaineT
Re: iTunes
It's not iTunes' decision to have artists on the site or not, it's up to the artist/record company to put their music up.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by irishfiddler32
Re: iTunes
"Lack of good artists" ! What absolute rubbish. itunes is a brilliant resource for all sorts of genres and continues to grow and provide an ever increasing diverse library of music including ITM, Scottish TM and other styles of trad music.
In just a few clicks I checked and found popular artists like kevin Burke, Martin Hayes, John McCusker, Aly Bain, The Chieftans, Liz Doherty. All good artists. There are also loads of artists I have never heard of and I am continually discovering new players as I search for different versions of reels or jigs etc.
Just becuase your favourite non-mainstream artist may not be listed don't write off itunes. Apple have battled really hard over recent years against the conservative forces in the music industry to deliver better quality and cheaper product. Apple continue to innovate and I as a musician and music lover I would not be without my itunes software or my Apple come to that !
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by Jon_bailey
Re: iTunes
noel hill's on there. the kells are too (i'm biased to both). so's liz carroll.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by daiv
Re: iTunes
... and Frankie Gavin, Sharron Shannon, Tommy Peoples and the Great and ever so much missed Rory Gallagher who once bought me a pint in a London pub .... but that's another story!
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by Jon_bailey
Re: iTunes
I don't nead iTunes. YouTube has got lots of videos by Planxty or the Bothy Band and the soundtrack from that could be saved. If I want a surprise, pleasant or not, I enter a song or tune title at excite.com.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by kuec
Re: iTunes
Tradtunes is a site which acts as a itunes for traditional music. Run by the Uist media group, based in Glasgow, its got soooooooooo many albums availble to download.
check em out at
http://www.tradtunes.com/
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by rachrach
Re: iTunes
Folks should also take advantage of the request function built into iTunes when there's something you want that's not available there. No guarantee that asking for something will work, but not asking almost certainly won't help...
To add to the list of Irish artits on iTunes, there's a pretty good selection of Andy McGann's recordings there.
Having said all that, I'm still pretty much purchasing CDs and ripping them myself rather than purchasing downloads. That may change if DRM goes away and bit rates go up.
Jeff
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by jeff_willner
Re: iTunes
Jon_bailey, go ahead and line Apple's pockets if you like. I have found a lot more good Irish music for a lot less money on emusic.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by timmy!
Re: iTunes
..."go ahead and line Apple's pockets if you like. I have found a lot more good Irish music for a lot less money on emusic."
Cheaper? Yes. No DRM? True. But eMusic only pays the artist $0.12 per download and they take forever to get songs in their system. iTunes (US) pays $0.64 per download, and tunes go up within a matter of weeks...
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by gw
Re: iTunes
Crazy_fingerz ... we have a saying in the UK ... "you pays your money you takes your choice" .... Apple have never marketed themselves as the cheapest .. If you want to go cheap go to limewire and get into file sharing where downloads are free ...
I am not saying that Apple's itunes is the only place to buy your Irish music. I am simply responding to the false statement that there is, "a lack of good artists on itunes". This is stupid and incorrect.
# Posted on May 19th 2007 by Jon_bailey
Re: iTunes
Ok Jon I get your point. I didn't say there were no good artists...just that you can't go in there expecting to find something, it's more like look around and maybe something will come up.
But really, let's be big kids here and not start calling people or what they say stupid. Thanks.
# Posted on May 20th 2007 by possumawesome
Re: iTunes
And for the record, I still do use iTunes a lot, and have discovered lots of good artists, and found a lot that I knew...but was in a bad mood at the time of posting. Mostly due to those PANFLUTES.
# Posted on May 20th 2007 by possumawesome
Re: iTunes
Of course, the average iTunes customer spends about $10 a year with iTunes and the average eMusic customer spends about $160 a year with eMusic. Given that the proportion of the download cost that goes to the artist is pretty similar in both cases I am not at all sure that artists end up getting a bad from eMu. (Obviously I am a happy eMusic customer of many years standing). They have loads of brilliant music that's likely to be of interest to people here, too. The English folk music that forms the bulk of my collection is far more likely to be on eMusic than on iTunes.
# Posted on May 21st 2007 by BohemianCoast
Re: iTunes
gw - iTunes pays the record company 64c/download. The artist sees maybe a dime of that. (see http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/ for some background.) I suspect eMusic's economics are similar.
# Posted on May 21st 2007 by rdi
Re: iTunes
"gw - iTunes pays the record company 64c/download. The artist sees maybe a dime of that."
Not if the artist controls their own music. We own the publishing and performance rights of our music so we get $.64 per download. That iTunes pays out $.64 was my point--the whole record label ripping off the artist debacle is another matter no doubt worthy of it's own thread. I'm not opposed to eMusic, and I'm NOT a fan of DRM, but I definitely prefer seeing the $.64s stacking up in our digital accounting spreadsheet
# Posted on May 22nd 2007 by gw
Re: iTunes
I didn't know that about eMusic gw. I spend £6.50 a month with them for 40 downloads and am quite happy. Most of what I buy is old and obscure.
# Posted on July 7th 2007 by Bren