John Davis, previously of Q and Not U and Georgie James, has released the first single from his new band, Title Tracks.  Two songs on the single, and both are great, fast, hook-chorused rock.  The record release party was last night, but I was working.

Lala.com isn’t cooperating tonight, so head over to the band’s myspace to check out some samples.

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Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, wants to expand his musical horizons.  Maybe he heard that the kids were listening to good music again, or maybe he picked up a staffer’s iPod by accident and wanted to know what the dreck was.  So he’s soliciting requests from constituents (with constituents defined broadly enough to include the entire internet).  Each month, he’ll share an artist he really likes.  The first one?  Wisconsin’s very own Bon Iver.

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Variable mp3 pricing hit iTunes and Amazon MP3 this week.  That means that oldies will be 69 cents, while new and popular tracks will be $1.29, with the majority remaining at the 99 cent price point.  Thank God the music I like isn’t all that popular.

But Muxtape’s existence was a waltz with illegality.  The act of storing songs on a server that are not owned by the server’s owner brought down MP3.com almost a decade ago, and this wasn’t too much different.  Limited a bit, but only in that just 12 songs could be uploaded at any time.

8tracks.com, a Muxtape competitor, claims their service is a bit more legal, at least under the DMCA, because they believe they are a webcaster, not… whatever Muxtape was.  I took it for a spin today, and was generally impressed.  It’s not as slick as Muxtape; the interface is pointlessly disjointed, with the main focus of the site (the mix) shoved off to the right for some reason.  Once you get past that, though, it’s fairly straightforward – upload your mp3s, reorder them as needed, and edit the title or author tag if it’s not recognized.  It even allows you to embed the mix (see below) which was one of the shortcomings of Muxtape, and add cover art (I’m too lazy right now).  You’re limited to just 8 tracks, in keeping with the site name, which can be kind of a drag.  But arbitrary limits have to be set somewhere, right?

In other news, Google released their new web browser, Chrome, today.  It’s got a lot of great features, including better memory management than Firefox, a privacy mode, and overall snappiness.  I’m still playing with it, and not sure that it will replace Firefox as my browser of choice (especially since it’s not available for Macs yet), but it’s definitely running lighter than Firefox ever has.  Check out this webcomic for more details.

Now for the mix:

Listing:

1. The Real Tuesday Weld – It’s a Wonderful Li(f)e: What a terribly pretentious name for a great song.
2. The Week That Was – The Airport Line:Sounds like Village Green Preservation Society era Kinks.
3. Devotchka – Comrade Z :I’m really digging this Eastern European sound.
4. The Race – Feathers
5. Kyle Andrews – Tennessee Torture Dream:Andrews wishes he was old school Pete Yorn. We can forgive him for this, but only because new Pete Yorn is so terrible.
6. Takka Takka – Silence:Check out the video.
7. Good Old War – I’m Not For You:My friend Mike found this band, and he’s almost always right when he points me to his discoveries.
8. Billie the Vision and the Dancers – Lily from the Middleway Street:A strange Swedish collective, all of their albums are available for free on their website. This is from the newest one, I Used to Wander These Streets.

Let’s say you are a fan of Arcade Fire. You can already read quite a bit about the critically-acclaimed Canadian cult band on its eMusic album pages. Now eMusic will add a wealth of content from the Web 2.0 universe: the band’s Wikipedia entry, pictures from Flickr, and videos of Arcade Fire concerts from YouTube. None of this is available on iTunes or the Amazon digital music store.

eMusic will also allow members to share these pages with friends on popular social media sites like Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us and Twitter. “These are the things that we know our customers are already doing with the music they love,” says eMusic CEO David Pakman.

Great!  Music lovers can discover new music via serendipity, which can lead to success, but more often results in you just missing stuff.  Social networking tools, where you can discover who you like based on what people with shared interests like, can be really beneficial if implemented correctly.

On a different note, I hope they don’t become like IMeem, despite what the article claims:

points out that iMeem, which describes itself as a social networking site with a heavy music component, is already doing some of the things eMusic is putting into place.

iMeem is a sprawling, poorly implemented promise that fell flat.  This may, in part, have been a result of the major label buy-in, which (excuse my elitism) resulted in mainstream music rocketing to prominence.  I love that eMusic’s charts are, for the most part, filled with bands I like or who are trying to make it.  It makes guided serendipity much easier.