On profits and margins of music industry.

The Global music industry trade body said a few weeks ago that:

”Global online music sales nearly doubled in 2006 to about $2 billion, or 10 percent of all sales, but failed to compensate for an overall decline in sales of CDs”.

The fact that online is the fastest growing sales channel is no news, everybody knows that CD is taking its’ last breaths. CD may not die next year, but the signs are clear, like we have blogged here before. But instead what is not so well known is the fact that the record companies must be making better profit distributing music via web than the oldskool way. I mean, take a look at the value chain. In the offline world they had to pay billions for manufacturing, storing, logistics, and resale costs. To simplify a bit: in the online world the webstore is the only player between the record company and the customer, am I right? And once the record company is the webstore, you're actually getting your music straight with no middle men. Ok, the real problem seems to be that the volumes of (legal) online music are still quite low, but hey, that side of the industry is still young.

They keep whining that the total sales are declining, but they don’t admit that their business is actually getting healthier and better once they move online. If you have any info on this matter, I’d like to know. e.g. what is the estimated profit margin on cd’s vs. online music, let me know.

There is one more dark cloud hanging over record companies: albums might be a thing of the past soon. It could easily be all about singles, peeps don't wanna pay for songs they don't wanna listen to. What comes around comes around, the big industry was based on singles and if was only in the 60's when albums became a standard.

Brooklyn Brewskis Spotted!

Finally. It was last summer when we first reported about Koff's promise to start importing Brooklyn Lager into Finland, but despite the marketing blurb, no Brooklyn's finest brewskis were to be found anywhere at all around here.

But now, today, I found 'em. So I can now report that yeah, they do exist. In the Alko (the state monopoly liquor store chain, yeah, we still have that upon us) of the Arabia shopping mall, hidden away on the top self between all those wierd Druid-brewed beers from Belgium. And it's damn expensive too, one bottle is about 5 times the price of any local lagers. But who cares?

You finally know you are starting to get old when:

You finally know you are starting to get old when:

Bands you used to love start doing re-union & comeback tours.

1.) Diamond Dave, who’s had his share of trials & tribulations during his career for sure, is going to back together with Van Halen for summer of 40 concerts. After 20 years of being on a solo career. I always reallyreallyreally hated Sammy Hagar so that’s cool in a way, but there’s more:

That strangely your-dad-like-looking-beardy-wierdy Michael Anthony is not playing bass in VH anymore but instead Eddie Van Halen’s 15-year old son Wolfgang will be on the bass. ‘Scuse me? And wasn’t Wolfgang actually also the name of Eddie’s guitar somewhere along the way? I am too disgusted to look that up now but who cares.

2.) I am not sure if this is even worse or not but apparently Zack de la Rocha is going back together with Rage Against The Machine for some gigs, or at least for the Coachella festival.

Audioslave sucked from beginning so it’s good if that stops them from existing but didn’t Zach leave RATM for some hard-core political agenda against commercial everything etc.? So what’s up with he joining them again? You ran out of money (and your political agenda) or what, dude?

EDIT!

Apparently Audioslave broke up today, February 16th! Hooray! But wait, does this mean that Soundgarden will reunite?

Bringing the rappers together to spread the universal message of Jah

Being both a reggae fanatic and a hip hop bedroom DJ I have a sweet tooth for rap-reggae colloborations. So I was also really into Game’s ”It’s Okay (One blood)” that featured Junior Reid. Mr. Reid has been doing his stuff for a long time, he made his first single in the 70’s and a few records with Black Uhuru in the 80’s to drop some facts. And we hip hop heads remember that the Staten Island posse Wu-Tang sampled him a few years ago on the song “One Blood Under The W".

All you true Game fans know this by now, but I only recently found out that there is a new remix version of the song out. And not just a remix, it’s the longest remix in the history of hip hop: the total running time is almost 12 minutes. It features a long list of players from all around the States: Jim Jones, Snoop,Nas,TI, Fat Joe,Lil Wayne, NORE, Jadakiss, Styles P, Fabolous, Juelz, Rick Ross, Twista, Kurupt, Daz, WC, E-40, Bun B, Chamillionaire, Slim Thug, Young Dro, Clipse & Ja Rule…. Whooah.

Get yours while you can

Ain't No Other Man But Gordon. Blue Ink & All...

Here’s just a quick Holla! for Kriton’s Number #1 fan and MySpace-friend Gordon Thomas from Canada.

A super huge shout out goes to our man for keeping the party rocking with Kriton tunes!

But psst, dude... Be careful with that blue felt marker or whatever it is you are using ‘cos I think some it has found a way into your cheek somehow? Or could be blue lipstick from some of the ladieeez?

I sure hope it's the latter option.

"Bandwidth Limit Exceeded"

Oh yeah, it wasn't probably a good idea to post mixtapes into the Kriton.biz site after all. Who was to say it's gonna be so friggin' popular. I thought only my mommy's gonna download it. So the site's down right now. Hope to get it working in a few weeks still... And we'll get a new home for the amazing Hennessy mixtape "Pull Up Di Henny!". Watch this space.

Stay fresh!

ps. That disturbing-ass pic up there is another one of those shots from the upcoming Kriton video "Scared Money".

pps. BTW, The site is down now, so you cant get the music. If you should need Kriton mp3's, hit us up on our myspace site, myspace.com/kritonhigh , we'll send you the goods.

*************
UPDATE: WE'RE BACK LIKE COOKED CRACK!!!!
thanks to our fresh-like-damn service providers, kriton.biz is online again. More bandwidth = more happiness! Go there!

Even more free Kriton material out now!

Here come the hotsteppers! Hennessy has selected and mixed the biggest danchehall anthems and tunes that rocked the Kriton boat last year. It's all done live on two turntables and a lot of gunshots and foghorns guarantee a real banging experience. The mixtape's called "Pull Up Di Henny" and here's the best part... you can easily download it here for free. And if you like it too much, you could order the cd from us or donate a few bucks using the paypal shitstem on this page.

Timbaland and the 40 thieves

How should one react to this?

Basically this nerd blames Timbaland for stealing his nerdy amiga-tune. C'mon, the beat ain't that original and it could just be a coincidence. And if it's true, so what. Hip hop has always been about sampling and this poor guy's tune ain't the first one sacrificed on the altar of music biz.

I Know What You Bought Last Summer

You know the feeling when you realize that your latest shopping binge went overboard and your Visa’s screaming for vengeance like Ozzy in his prime. And you start going through your receipts and price tags from your shopping bags and pockets to figure out what kind of junk you have actually purchased in the last few months/weeks/days/hours.

If you can even remotely relate to the scenario described, you can get the idea how I felt after I came across this tag in the photo above. It’s from a t-shirt i got for my son last summer. I can’t recall the precise location where this item was for sale, but it was during our road trip to Stockholm Sweden. Satans barn?? WTF?? For all you who don’t speak swedish, Satans barn means ”Satan’s baby or kid”.

So, was this intended as an omen? Is this t-shirt designed for Satan’s baby only or even worse... Was this tag actually taken from Lucifers kiddo? How did I really spend my summer vacation? Have I actually met Devil’s descendent a few months ago without knowing it? Or was my offspring mistaken for the future ruler of Beelzebub’s Palace?. The t-shirt did have a large skull on it, so I should avoid any garments resembling a dead skeleton in the future..

E.T.’s choice

All nerds know that there have been rumours about this, but now it’s true. This is the thing that E.T. or Alf would grab, if they needed to dial 555-outer space and listen to Bowie's Starman while doing it. The new Apple iPhone seems to be the gadget of all gadgets. Check here how Stevie praises the thingy
I won’t get into too much detail (yuh know, phone+ipod+netbrowser), but the touchscreen seems to be the clue, a true knockout IMO: the phone has only one real button. iPhone ain't ready for 3G yet, but we are waiting.

And to top this all, Job's entourage released Apple TV earlier this week.It is a set top box that connects your home computers to your TV wirelessly via Wlan. Downside for this gadget is its pretty steep price

What gets me excited about this company is both their interest in state of the art design combined with good usability and their ability to deliver the goods – not many disappointments here. Ok, I kinda hate iTunes and the monopoly they have created around it, but that’s another story.

Daily Dose of Environmental Consciousness: China in 2020

Here’s your daily dose of environmental consciousness, think about this for a moment, please.

According to China Daily newspaper China is in dire danger of drowning in its own waste if the the general development of the economy and urbanization keeps going on at the rate it does now, and you don’t really need to be a psychic or a fortune-teller in order to predict the future of China. Yes, it will go on like that.

According to the calculations/predictions, in 2020 China will produce close to 400 million tons of garbage. This equals the amount of waste that was produced the whole world in the year 1997. It is also predicted that in 2020 860 million Chinese will be living cities. This will put an enormous strain on the waste management of the cities. Currently only about 50% of the garbage produced can be recycled and/or post-processed in a environmentally friendly way while the rest is just dumped and piled up like in the photo above.

So the Blade Runner/William Gibson/Judge Dredd –style of highly urbanized dystopian vision of the Mega-Cities is coming true, maybe sooner than we thought? Then again, if you look at the positive side of things, there will be endless business opportunities to be explored in the Chinese waste managment business. Time to invest in some stocks now?

Buddha-In-A-Box for only $25

I was just browsing through the weekly newsletter of TurntableLab and look what I found, another cool yet completely useless plastic noise-making thing Made In China, which I simply need to have! (FIY: NYC-based TurntableLab is the best web-store for records, selected pop-culture and design books, Lomo Cameras, t-shirts/hats/bags, music producing equipment, dj-gear and other cool stuff in the world, period.)

Fm3: Buddha Machine

“This little soundbox has quickly achieved cult classic status in the electronic music community. A fellow record store dude told me that they moved a couple thousand over the holidays (Brian Eno bought 8!). The creators, FM3, are the duo of Christiaan Virant and Chinese keyboardist and computer musician Zhang Jian, both based in Beijing. Their simple box plays 8 ambient loops (buddhist type tones to melodic guitar) and fits in the size of your palm. It includes a built-in speaker, a headphone output, volume control, and a switch that rotates the loops. Plug in your headphones and veg out, or put it by your desk for stress relief. Available in 6 different colors (shipped randomly). Comes in kitschy Chinese packaging too.”

You can use Google and find tons of rave reviews of of the thing and it only costs $25.00. AND look at the blueprint above, there IS a Buddha inside it…

Kriton video madness and other things

Happy noo year homies. And the new year has been happy for us. Already!

Okay, while Jzzi & Hennessy are getting busy telling you about craploads of really "important" things going on in the world today, i have tried to take on the postion of telling you what's going on with the kriton household. At least every now & then. And now stuff is going on.

This year has started off really well: the shooting of the first ever Kriton High School Bangers music video already started on friday the 5th of january. The video for our horror crunk anthem "Scared Money" is being produced, directed and photographed by the mighty Fiilin.com. I won't spoil too much now, but i'll give you that the video will be gloomy, creepy, psychedelic and somewhat disturbing. David Lynch meets Disney animation meets Chris Cunningham. Just look at this teaser photo from last friday's sessions and imagine the rest. We'll keep you posted about the video when it's coming up! In a youtube near you...

Also we might wanna spoil some other things going on at the Camp Kritón recently. Here's a few hints: brand new Hennessy track, 1st ever Kriton mixtape/mixshow, 1st ever Kriton Beat cd, new Kriton promo cd, rap colloborations, future production colloborations. Other stuff i can't remember right now. Loads of stuff!

2007 and the Kriton is coming on strong.

Buy Whitney's Gear! No, not that gear....

This news is stolen from the mighty Music Thing Blog but I just could not resist:

We, who all love Whitney Houston like I do, all know about her trials, tribulations and troubles with cocaine, crack rock and Bobby Brown , her teeth and hair falling off and so on. Well, now also the tax office is after her and as consequence she is forced to auction off lot of her old live equipment and stage show props.

The auction is being held in New Jersey next Monday and I must say that there is a lot of weird stuff “UTILIZED BY WORLD FAMOUS RECORDING ARTIST WHITNEY HOUSTON“ for sale there!

Besides a lot of “designer stage wear” (mostly Dolce & Gabbana, btw), there is a pile of old Roland keyboards, a Hammond, Bobby Brown music awards (mostly for cassette tape sales), "1 Aroma Steam Personal Sauna, in two flight cases", "'Whitney's Throne' Chair", a Lucite Grand Piano with no legs, and many old Akai samplers. Maybe there is a crack pipe hiding somewhere there as well?

But really, how sad. Let’s make fun of her now that she is still alive but she is gone we will all feel bad everytime when we listen to “I Will Always Love You”, “ I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and especially my all-time Whitney favorite, “My Love Is Your Love”.