Reasons to Have Faith in the Google Music Beta

Many people were slightly underwhelmed at what functionalities went live at the Google Music beta’s launch. Not only was support missing from the world’s second largest music publisher Warner Music Group, but the Google Music beta was also missing core functionality to purchase music on Android devices and PCs. Google has started to roll out music purchases to specific Android phones since the original announcement, but it is still easy to sense that there is a cloud of uncertainty hanging over Google’s latest project.

To further complicate the situation, Google is not entering the cloud-based music market alone. Amazon’s Cloud Player and Apple’s iCloud and iTunes Match services already exist and are competing for money and mind share.  There are also other music services that offer alternative music purchasing services that have gained traction such as Spotify and Pandora that the Google Music beta has to compete with. With such well-established competition, it can be easy to dismiss Google Music to be another one of Google’s ill-fated ventures.

June Playlist: 90's Rock, Modernized

Summer is here, and there's no better way to celebrate the start of this great season with some great rock. Yellowcard is one of the last modern ambassadors of the pop-punk rock craze of the 90's, so it is fitting to head into summer taking a brief look at their latest album When You're Through Thinking, Say Yes. Continuing Yellowcard's efforts to modernize their 90's pop-punk style, When You're Through Thinking, Say Yes is a standout album that has lots of great songs.

June Playlist: Alt Rock explosion

It's been a while since my last playlist, so I've been catching up on music that I've missed in the past couple months. First up is the title single from Relient K's latest album, "Forget and Not Slow Down" (embedded above). It's a solid song filled with musical and lyrical catches, a great example of Relient K's masterful composition of guitar, piano, and vocal sounds. If you're looking for something a bit more pop-oriented from the same album, "Candlelight" is a great fast-paced piano ballad that really showcases lead singer Matt Thiessen's songwriting talent.

Despite not being quite as solid as Relient K's latest album, Thousand Foot Krutch's 2009 Welcome to the Masquerade album still has a few interesting tracks like "Forward Motion" and "Fire It Up". While "Fire It Up" is a energetic headbanger that may please the punk rock fans, "Forward Motion" is a ballad that takes better advantage of the band's vocal strengths, and is just a more memorable song in general.

While B.o.B. doesn't really fit with the other alt-rockers here, his album The Adventures of Bobby Ray is still a great album that is worth mentioning. There are the hits "Airplane" and "Nothing on You", plus other great songs like "Magic" featuring Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo. A talented musician that can play multiple instruments, B.o.B. isn't your ordinary rap artist, and his collaborations with rockers Rivers Cuomo and Hayley Williams (in "Airplane") show just how broad his creative talent is.

March Playlist: J-pop galore

I promised myself that I wouldn't be listening to any more Japanese music, since y'know, I don't know any Japanese. But goddamn, the Japanese make some pretty catchy pop-ballads, so I couldn't resist this month. First up is Supercell's new single "Sayanora Memories" (embedded above). It's similar to Supercell's other popular single that was used as the ED for Bakemonogatari, which means it hits all the high marks, literally. Another plus is that the music video for "Sayanora Memories" is also pretty charming and well produced, so by all means check it out. 

Next up is "Pink Monsoon" by May'n, her latest single for the Macross Frontier movie. It's not as epic as her older hit "Diamond Crevasse", but it's a very slick song that's so well produced it will be stuck in your head for days. Also from the Macross Frontier movie soundtrack is May'n's "Eternity", which doesn't have as much layered synth effects, but is still a solid song. Last of all, we have "Kaze to Oka no Ballad" by Real Paradis, which is the ED song for Nodame Cantablie Finale. It isn't a spectacular song (and not a very good music video either...), but it definitely encapsulates the mood of the anime well with its lyrical hooks and relaxed tones. 

Hopefully next month I'll have a playlist that isn't filled with songs in a language I don't understand.

Can hip-hop, blues, and classical music be combined? Heck yea.

Nope, this isn't another crazy Japanese musical mash-up. Rather this exquisite piece of music is a result of a online mix-up collaboration between talented semi-professional and amateur musicians, most of whom live in LA. From its hip-hop and blues influences, to the classical guitar and piano melodies, this musical project is pretty amazing to listen to. Give it a go. You definitely won't be disappointed, no matter your musical preferences. 

Edit: Youtube video here.

Oh god I'm talking about music

2009 has been a rather interesting year for alt. rock and rock music. The album I was looking forward to the most, Weezer's latest album Raditude, was almost painful for me to listen to as a whole. But on the flip side, there was some decent stuff that graced the air waves in the past year. The Fray's latest self-titled album was really nice to listen to, and Third Eye Blind's Ursa Major was a solid reminder to why I liked them so much.

But really, I think the biggest surprise of 2009 for me was Switchfoot's Hello Hurricane. I've never been a fan of their older albums (or their past musical styles), but in this album they really pulled out all the stops to refresh their sound. Unlike Weezer's Red Album (again Weezer, c'mon), their musical experimentations blend nicely with their patented vocal catches and soft sounds to create an album that's musically diverse and fun to listen to. Before Hello Hurricane, I wouldn't have put 'musically diverse' and 'Switchfoot' in the same sentence. But now I can do that without any sense of sarcasm.

Another solid album that also came out at the tail end of the year is Leona Lewis's Echo. Not that I expected anything less, even with the standards she set with her stellar first album. What is confusing me though, is why Square Enix choose her single "My Hands" as the theme song for the international version of Final Fantasy XIII. "My Hands" is a nice song...but it doesn't match the whole Final Fantasy concept of androgynous Japanese teenagers summoning giant ice-machine-monsters to fight the Greater Evil. The only people who are going to buy Final Fantasy XIII are people who love the Japanese flavor of the series, so why replace the perfectly fine original Japanese theme?

Heh. I knew I'd manage to talk about games somehow.

Another Awesome Japanese Music Vid, Part XVIII

The title does not lie folks. I've lost count of how many trippy insane Japanese videos that I've watched so far, but this one is one of my new favorites. If you stay to enjoy the whole vid, it gets better and better, so watch it till the end. Enjoy.

Edit: Youtube video here.

Yet another Japanese video

SOUR / 日々の音色 (Hibi no Neiro) MV from Magico Nakamura on Vimeo.
But this one is tons better. The Japanese Rock/Pop/Jazz hybrid is awesome by itself (even if you don't know Japanese), but the video collage made up of various international fans via web cam is even more awesome. Enjoy :)