Posts filed under 'Christian Music'
The press conference in London is still underway, but the press release is already available on EMI’s website and earlier rumours that were started by a Wall Street Journal article yesterday have been confirmed: EMI is releasing “DRM-free superior quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire” and “Apple’s iTunes Store will be the first online music store to sell EMI’s new downloads”.
This is exciting news indeed – regular readers know that I have explained more than once why DRM is not a good idea and will hurt our cultural heritage as well as the music industry’s bottom line in the long run. Let’s hope that this is the beginning of the end of DRM – EMI is only the third largest label, but if this is a success (and my prediction is that it will be), the others will have to follow suit. And there is hope that what works in the music industry might work in the movie download business as well.
Why is this a good idea for EMI and won’t it hurt their sales figures? I believe that it’s a good idea because finally consumers are given a choice. So far, illegal downloads have provided a better user experience than legal downloads – it was always possible to freely copy illegally downloaded music, burn it to as many CDs as the user wanted, use it on many different digital devices etc., whereas DRM prevented a lot of legitimate uses. I resorted to buying CDs, others may have just downloaded DRM-free tracks from illegal sources. Now, for the first time, will I even consider buying downloadable music – and chances are that EMI will have most of what I’m looking for because many bands I like are with christian labels that are part of EMI’s christian music group. I personally wish EMI a lot of success with their smart move, which many in the industry may see as bold and some even as suicidal.
Technorati : Apple, DRM, EMI, iTunes, legal downloads
April 2nd, 2007
Last week, when I launched ccmlyrics.com, I told you that CD reviews etc. would now be appearing there, instead of on this site. Since a lot has happened on the new site in the last week and not all of you may have had a look yet, let me just give you a quick update on what’s been going on.
There has been one CD review, looking at Vicky Beeching’s “Yesterday, Today & Forever”, her first full length solo album. In addition to that, two articles are looking at the lyrics of two of my favorite songs. The first one is “Lonely Nation” by Switchfoot, the other one is “I wanna sing” by Scott Krippayne. If you haven’t been to the new site yet, maybe now is the time…
Technorati : Scott Krippayne, Switchfoot, Vicky Beeching, ccm, ccmlyrics, christian, lyrics, music, reviews
August 6th, 2006
It’s taken a lot longer than I had initially hoped, but today I was finally able to launch ccmlyrics.com, with an initial article looking at the lyrics to “What if His people prayed?” by the Casting Crowns.
Originally, CCMLyrics had been planned as a lyrics search engine and a friend and I actually spent a lot of time developing a rather sophisticated search technology that worked really well. That was about four years ago… we then realized that there was no way for us to legally make these lyrics available from our site and as Christians we felt that we should be setting an example and not breaking the law. So the domain(s) lay dormant for a long time, until earlier this year I decided to transform it into a blog on lyrics instead. It’s still loosely based on the original design, but updated to work with modern blogging software (running WordPress like this site). I’m very happy that it’s finally online and so I hope that many of the regular visitors here will also visit ccmlyrics.com frequently – maybe add it to your RSS feeds now.
I guess this means that in the future, you will find christian music reviews over on the new site, although I may still link to them from here as well for your convenience.
Technorati : ccm, christian, launch, lyrics, music, search
July 26th, 2006
Alive again and relatively well rested after two crazy nights spent on the road to and from Berlin, I’m finally ready to report on this weekend’s event of the year in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. No, not the football finals, that was last week. I’m talking about “Calling all Nations“, a worship gathering initiated by Noel Richards that, after years of planning, finally took place last Saturday, a mere 6 days after the idols of sports had been worshipped in the same place.
Where should I begin? It’s so difficult after an event like this. There are a lot of superlatives that lend themselsves to being used, but I’ll try to restrain myself. There are also a whole lot of negative things that could be said and again, I will try to restrain myself, although a few things need to be said. But let’s start with an overview of what this day was.
We arrived way too early at around 6am, when gates opened at 9, so some of our group went off into Berlin to see some of the sights, while others (like me) spent some time sleeping (or trying to) on the bus. Anyway, at 9 we were let into the stadium, which I must say is an impressive sight, although it looks different without any grass in it. We had seats in the east curve, which is about as far away from the main stage as it gets, but then there were no seats that were really close to the main stage anyway. A smaller second stage was right in front of us, though and throughout the day performaces would alternate between those two stages. A little earlier than scheduled, the “Psalm Drummers” started the program at about 10.45 and from then on there was a steady rotation of worship leaders with some of them playing just one song and others a couple of songs, up to about a maximum playing time of half an hour. There were worship leaders from around 20 different countries (and visitors from 30 countries) and although the start was a bit slow, as the stadium filled up with what must have been more than 20.000 people (no official numbers I’ve heard, sorry) there was a growing sense of unity and enjoyment of worshipping God together.
There were only two short breaks the whole day and there were a few talks by different people and times to pray together afterwards, but the main focus was pretty much on worshipping God through songs. I enjoyed most of the music and I’m sure God enjoyed all of it. Of course, everyone has his favorites, so I will name a few worship leaders that I particularly liked. First off, there was YFriday, which I hadn’t seen live before and who did a great job right at the beginning of the day. Claas P. Jambor is always a treat, he only played one song (Open Skies), but it was great. Reuben Morgan (Hillsong) was fantastic. Delirious? as always played a solid set, but never really got out of “concert mode” – so it was good that the last time slot belonged to Matt Redman, who did a good job in wrapping up the day’s events and bringing us all together in worship once more.
The large variety of worship “artists” (I’m a bit reluctant to use that word…) was also one of the problems of the whole thing. At times it got quite hectic when there was a string of musicians just leading one song (which in many cases people didn’t know and couldn’t sing along to right away) and then handing over to the next person, who would play something in a completely different style. You’d have a band getting the audience fired up and celebrating, only to be followed by another artist starting a slow, quiet song that just didn’t seem to capture the atmosphere. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the entire day that was like that, but it did happen more than once.
And then there’s the big question: what’s the point? Worshipping God together is great and something we are called to, yes. And we did that a lot. But the feeling remains that maybe (and especially with several years of planning) there should have been more. Somehow it feels to me like a tremendous chance was missed to use this event as a catalyst for… something. I don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m wrong and it wasn’t missed and I just didn’t get it. Right now it feels like we had a great day, certainly prayer and worship together and proclaiming the glory of God in this country will change things. But it doesn’t feel like something we’ll be telling our grandkids about one day… let’s hope that it’s just my faith that is too small.
Technorati : Berlin, Calling all Nations, Hillsong, Matt Redman, christian, event, music, worship
July 16th, 2006
I must admit that while I like some of Hillsong United’s songs, their CDs have usually left me with the uneasy feeling that something was missing and when they led worship at Soul Survivor last year, they didn’t manage to capture me the way that some of the other worship leaders did. Having said that, I think that “United We Stand” is the best recording they’ve ever produced.
Actually, I need to go further than that – it’s the best worship CD I have bought in a very, very long time… and I have bought a lot. What can I say, it’s just perfect. The moment I popped it into the CD player for the first time (in the car, in England, on the way over to a friend’s house), I was hooked. The two minute instrumental intro that seamlessly blends into the first song “The time has come”… and then it just never stops. 75 minutes of pure perfection, each song leading to the next, with occasional instrumental interludes. It all makes sense, the songs lead to each other both musically and lyrically. And as always with Hillsong songs, they are incredibly easy to learn, so even when listening to the CD for the first time, I found myself singing along after having heard the first half of the song. I really like how they manage to keep the songs simple, but don’t compromise on depth.
If I had to pick a favorite song, that would be a hard decision to make. “From the inside out” is one of the candidates, I had heard that one before on the acoustic “preview” CD that Hillsong releases three times a year and it’s a captivating song that immediately made it to the top of my “songs I sing in the shower” list. But there are so many others as well… I have to mention “The stand”, simply because we sang the chorus last year at Soul Survivor and now it’s a finished song that surprises me again and again. And “Take it all” – high powered, edgy, with those trademark sing-along lyrics – “… Jesus, we’re living for Your name, we’ll never be ashamed of You!”
Hillsong United: United We Stand, 15 Tracks, 75 minutes playing time, plus a 30 minute bonus DVD… money well spent.
Technorati : Hillsong, Jesus, christian music, review
April 20th, 2006
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