Sandy West of the Runaways Dies

Sandy West, drummer for the influential 70s band The Runaways, has died after a long battle with lung cancer. She left an indelible mark on rock music as a founding member of The Runaways, which featured fellow rockers Joan Jett, Lita Ford and Cherie Currie, and as a leading inspiration for a number of notable musicians, both male and female. Many young musicians can trace their inspiration directly to the first time they heard "Cherry Bomb." She will be remembered by more than one generation of fans as a strong part of their musical landscape. But Sandy's impact was felt far outside of the music industry as a loyal friend, loving confidante and strong defender of those she loved most. Her strength as a player, passion as a person, and dedication as a friend will be remembered always by friends, fans and fellow musicians alike.

http://therunaways.com/

Windows Vista Installation

Soundclick Paid Services: How They Work, Do They Work

If anyone wants screen shots of VIP pages and the like then let me know but they are not that exciting.

http://www.soundclick.com

$9.95 for VIP

The main things this get you

• No ads on your page
• Customizable home page for song (in addition to the standard one)
• Deep Linking (see below)
• 50% discount on paid promotions (see below)
• Larger file size uploads (MP3 above 128)
• Extra points with song plays for chart position

I signed up for VIP 10/1/06, just after the release of my latest song

My last song on 9/9 registered 110 plays in the first 5 days

This one registered around 200. At the end of 5 days my song was 122 on the main Pop chart.

On 10/6 I paid $15 for a single day as the “featured” song on the pop charts page.

That single day I got 126 song plays and moved up to #12 on the main charts. Now that I’m featured on page 1 of the main charts I start to get more residual plays. Getting 400 plays on the next 3 days.

10/10 I Did the deep linking experiment, the song auto plays and counts as a play when you access HMHS website or that thread in 2090. This gave me an extra 200 plays over the next 4 days.

Since then I’ve got about 40 plays per day which is 25 or so better than normal, probably still a residual effect and from being high in the Pop-General chart. The song got as high as #4 on the pop general chart, sank down to 20 but has bounced back to #4 yesterday, not sure why.

Net result ($15 + $9.95 per month) got me 650 plays in a couple of weeks, instead of the 200 or so I usually get. For example “Fake Love” which is my “hit” got 550 plays over a month.

FYI: Manzana and my cover of Wake Me Up When September Ends has had at least one play a day for almost 12 months and currently shows 2,800 plays.

VIP stats are not that interesting. You get almost nothing worth having in my opinion. Even the Hot/Flop votes only show up for the most recent day. All you really get is an idea of where your listeners come from web wise and location wise.

Is it worth it ? Who know, it’s fun to know that 150 people heard your song in a day and that I got 40 or so downloads but for $15 I’m not so sure. The $9.95 per month with deep linking and customizable home page is a decent value that I think might be worth it for some. (plus no ads of course)

The Impossible Jam

Elvis, Jimmy Page, Stevie Wonder, Keith Moom, Sheryl Crow ??, Noel Gallagher !!!

Microsoft's Monaco - The Windows Garageband

Here's news about a new program coming with Vista

GarageBand is Apple's MacOS application for amateur musicians. It comes with 1,000 pre-recorded sampled loops, and 50 sampled or synthesised instruments that can be played using a MIDI keyboard connected to the computer, or using an on-screen keyboard.
Monaco will be aimed at the same audience, sources said, and will be positioned in the same way – except that it will work on Windows only. Microsoft also is expected to play up Monaco's use of Microsoft-devised search algorithms for finding particular music clips.

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,1947454,00.asp

VW Car Guitar

To me this is quite weird. VW has built a guitar interface into their new cars.

http://www.vdubsrock.com/

There's a Rock God contest there also to enter.

Here's Slash's commercial



There's also a Nigel Tufnel (Spinal Tap) version coming soon.