Last August I wrote a couple of posts looking back at my short lived musical ventures with my band Another Alternative. At the time I shared the story of Another Alternative recording at Moonsong Studios with producer Bob Moon and shared a long lost live recording of one of our biggest songs, Chasing Dreams. At the time I promised I’d try and get the full recording with Bob Moon up on the site. I was holding out to hopefully get a new master back from a friend, but unfortunately that never happened. So rather than wait any longer I figured I would treat my readers to all 6 songs.

I was 17 years old when these songs were recorded, and all music tracks and vocals were recorded within the span of a day. An important thing to remember is that the versions of these songs you are hearing are a digital copy off of a cassette tape that was a copy of another cassette tape. Needless to say the audio quality isn’t perfect, but I think it gives a clear representation of my music at the time. For your convenience I have added a full album download below that has all of the songs zipped and ready for download, or if you’d rather just give individual tracks a listen you can click on the song title below and stream or download the MP3’s.

Another Alternative

1. Track 1
2. Needle In A Haystack
3. Embarrassment
4. Faces
5. Valentine To Seattle
6. I Do

Earlier this week Google announced  it’s partnership with a number of online music sources such as Myspace and Lala to provide searchers with new music search results that include music samplings.  However, it appears that this exciting new feature came at a cost.

Avid music searchers like me may recall that oftentimes when you would search for an artist you would get the Google Music result for the artist.  The result would provide you with info on the artist, related artist links and discography.  If that weren’t enough you had the ability to view individual albums and their tracklists, and get links to sites where you could purchase the music.  What was even more impressive was that Google actually had a relatively unknown music search operator that could be used to obtain this information immediately for your query.  For instance if you typed music:nine inch nails in the Google search bar you would be directed to the Google music page for Nine Inch Nails.  If you run that query now you are simply redirected to the Google Music Search page.

I used the music operator and the Google Music service quite frequently when it came to updating my MP3 data or seeking out new albums and imports to add to my music collection.  However it doesn’t look like Google is going to be an option any longer when it comes to this sort of data.  From what I can tell this data has been completely stripped from Google and if it hasn’t I have no idea where they have hidden it.

It seems to me that this sort of update from Google would have benefited from not only integrating the new features, but expanding upon the existing features.  Provide artist, album, and track data while providing samplings from various partners as well.  Why provide less data in exchange for some music samplings?

Overall I think this is a positive move from Google. I had always wished Google provided music samples with it’s previous music search services, so in that aspect this is a step in the right direction.  I only hope that with the slew of new music partners they can perhaps incorporate some additional data like that which was provided previously.  Hell, they could even kick it up another notch and partner with some lyric sites.  That would be music search gold.

I’ve talked a lot in the past about the future of the music industry, it’s marketing, and the bands that are already performing ahead of the curve.  With the RIAA and record labels in a constant panic about the decline in CD sales each year and the millions of illegal downloads that happen each year they have been forced to try new techniques to drive record sales.  Various labels and bands are coming up with new ways all the time, but one of the more up and coming methods is the tiered pricing method.  Offered by Nine Inch Nails, and perhaps more popularly by Josh Freese in his outrageous attempt to promote his album ‘Since 1972’, the tiered pricing structure hasn’t really hit the mainstream audience so much as industry veterans and independent artists.

However, Summit Entertainment and Chop Shop/Atlantic Records are about to change that with their announcement regarding tiered pricing for the pre-order of the highly anticipated New Moon Soundtrack.  The soundtrack to the sequel of last years fall blockbuster Twilight has been gaining hype and speculation since before the film was even in production.  Twilight, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 sold 165,000 copies in its first week.  If that weren’t enough Twilight went on to be the soundtrack with the most paid downloads in digital history, with 412,000 downloads, putting it at number two on Nielsen SoundScan’s list of the 100 best-selling digital albums of all-time.  All this done without any special promotions or hype to drive sales, which leads me to believe that both Summit and Chop Shop/Atlantic are anticipating another successful soundtrack with some substantial profits made from this tiered format.

The four tier structure offers something for everyone and starts as low as $9.99 and caps at $499.99.

Digital – The Digital package is being offered for $9.99 and gives purchasers a digital MP3 download of the album 72 hours before its release on October 20th as well as a MP3 download of the single Meet The Equinox by Death Cab for Cutie on September 13th.

Standard – For $16.99 buyers receive the New Moon Soundtrack CD on October 20th.  An MP3 download of the single Equinox by Death Cab for Cutie on September 13th, a weekly e-mail subscription to “Twi-Insiders” with exclusive New Moon information including artist confirmations, clips of music, artist interviews, lyrics and more, and a New Moon sticker sheet.

Deluxe – For $34.99 the Deluxe package offers everything listed in the first two packages as well as a New Moon poster.

Limited Edition – The Limited Edition package offers 50 Twilight fans everything listed above as well as a limited edition Death Cab for Cutie t-shirt and a personalized Twilight Soundtrack Commemorative Plaque for having sold over 2 million copies.  The kicker?  This one is selling at $499.99

While the tiered structure seems to have worked well for bands like Nine Inch Nails, I am left to wonder how well something like this will do for a soundtrack from a film marketed mostly at teens.  I would imagine the bulk of pre-order sales will come from the Digital and Standard packages while a few of the more seasoned Twi-hards will actually fork out the cash for the Deluxe and Limited Editions.  My guess is that if any of the Limited Edition packages are purchased in this economy the bulk of them will be sold to spoiled little rich girls who aren’t getting pony’s for Christmas or uber geeks that live in their parents’ basement.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing but love for uber geeks, but c’mon use that $499 to get out of your parents basement instead of buying a plaque for an accomplishment you had nothing to do with.

All in all I like that record labels are trying things like this.  Offering digital and CD copies of the music with a few extra perks makes me a bit more willing to spend the cash to go out and purchase an album.  Paying $16 bucks for a jewel case, a pretty liner and a CD just doesn’t seem worth it anymore.  Hell paying that much for a digital download of an album doesn’t even seem worth it anymore.  So this is a nice change of pace.  I do think that in a lot of instances though the labels still don’t quite get what it is that the fans really want.  Sure the plaque is nice, but is that something fans of these films and their soundtracks really wants?  I bet you if you dropped in a Rob Pattinson signed copy of the Twilight Soundtrack or a similar perk you’d probably easily make more sales. But what do I know?  I’m just a search marketer and blogger…