Every time I sync my Zune — every time — it pushes another copy of The Last Poets - “Mean Machine” onto the device. It’s like my Zune is trying to warn me about the Man, which considering its origin, is pretty ironic.

I have 33 copies of the song on there right now as a result. This means that “Mean Machine” comes up inordinately often in shuffle mode. Sure, Zune software has pushed other dupes, but this one is really egregious.

This ordeal is only punctuated by the fact that the very first sounds in the the track are the words “Driving me NUTS!” And, fittingly, the title of the album this track appeared on was This Is Madness.

Maybe my Zune is trying to be a mean machine. Again, irony abounds.

Stealing your time, smooth and slick
with the latest trick to get rich quick
from nonsense at your mind’s expense
as your mind digs the scene
from the Mean Machine
designed to drive your brain insane

Tay Zonday is K-Os meets Busdriver meets Mark Leyner.

All of which are good things, btw.

It could be better only by playing Rick Astley.

While the new Zune software leaves a thing or two to be desired over the previous one (album info updating, ahem), it does make it a lot easier to explore and subscribe to podcasts. Not only does it provide a searchable showcase of popular pods, it makes it a cut-and-paste operation to add a new one, and from then on, the Zune software will automatically download and sync new episodes.

I suppose this is something iTunes has been doing all along, but I’m happy to have it. Interestingly enough, the Zune actually uses the term “podcast”, a Kleenex moment for a word directly derived from the leading competitor.

Hey EMI:

Ever heard of EMusic?

I mean, you guys practically have the same name.

I suppose that with major label DRM-free files now available on iTunes, it wouldn’t be a total sin to get an iTMS account. Even though $1.29/song is pretty steep compared to the ~ $0.33 I pay now for indie and DTD (direct to digital) tracks at EMusic… although I don’t usually use my month’s worth, so that’s a misleading price (EMusic is a flat per-month fee for X number of tracks in a month).

Honestly, the winner here will be Apple, with DRM foes (like me) now considering signing up with iTMS and buying some tracks. The loser will probably be EMI, but… will they? At $1.29 a track, a CD’s worth is anywhere from $13 to $20. That’s with no label art, no cover and sleeve art, no plastic case, no printed track listing. Maybe EMI will find out that DRM-free doesn’t cause a surge in losses (any more than a regular CD ever did!) and you get to skimp on the perks.

Also, being first out the door among major labels, they will benefit the most from DRM foes hopping on board. Everyone else will be chasing a longer tail.

“It’s All In Your Head FM“, the live sound collage performance by Negativland and based on their Over The Edge radio show (and which R and I saw in Seattle in March) is available on CD.

The show, “It’s All In Your Head FM”, is a two-hour-long stereophonic look at monotheism in all its fundamental forms worldwide, and the all-important role played by the human brain in believing them. Dr. Oslo Norway is the founder of an all-new radio network, and his provocatively-reasoned position of God-less objectivity can actually start arguments. Is monotheism now doing more harm than good? Christianity and Islam are this year’s featured religions as Negativland asks you to contemplate some rather complex ideas about our brains’ beliefs in “documentary collage” form.

I was going to post a pump for eMusic, but I found a good start from Atrios at Eschaton:

Unlike most (all?) legal download services, emusic has no DRM whatsover. You download the .mp3 and it’s yours to do with what you want. It runs on a monthly subscription service - starting at $9.99 for 40 songs/month…. They don’t have most of the latest and greatest from the major labels, but they have some interesting back catalogs and a lot of great indie stuff.

Link

Another thing that I find great about eMusic is that they will help you find related music to whatever you’re looking at, with help coming from user playlists and download trends.

It is a little annoying not finding most popular (i.e. you’ve heard of it) artists, or the most popular of their albums, but that may not be important to you if, like me, you miss services like the old mp3.com that introduced you to new, good, music from bands you wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. And $0.25 a song certainly beats iTunes’ $0.99.

Since the eMusic files are straight MP3 (and this may have something to do with their limited catalog), they work on any MP3 player, not just an iPod, and furthermore, they can also be downloaded with any Web browser on any platform. (There is a snazzy and fairly useful download tool for Windows, but it’s entirely optional.)

eMusic