Music by Fabio Napodano a.k.a. It-Alien

last.fm has announced that, since March the 30th, its radio streaming service will require a subscription fee of 3€/£/$ per month.

I’m not against pay sites; I acknowledge that running a site such as last.fm costs money and these money cannot be refund through advertising only, but what really bothers me is the fact that users from USA, UK and Germany will still not require paying, because in these 3 nations last.fm already pays its bills back through advertising and current subscriptions.

this idea is completely wrong in my opinion, discriminating and senseless.

A couple of better ideas would be:
a) let EVERYONE pay, and pay less (as low as 2€/month or 20€/year)
b) give the option to buy what you use, through pre-sold straming “packets” of 1,000 songs, for those people who do not make regular usage of last.fm radio.

last.fm announcement

read last.fm announcement

music enthusiast Imbuteria has interviewed me and published the result on various places, for example here. The interview is in italian, although it also quotes a brief introduction in english made by IMISound promotions, but don’t ask me for a translation because I’m lazy :)

Interview Link

“Bovine Music Show” has selected my song “There, in a corner..” for their Feb 09 2009 list. Check out their site for more music!

Download Media (53:55min, 0MB)

Bovine Music Show site

I’m not going to try to convince anyone to listen to the bands I’m talking about in this post, rather I’m pointing the index to those who are fond of extremely complex and obscure music: I heartly advice you to listen to these bands:

• Koenji Hyakkei, a japanese band which wonderfully fuses avant-progressive rock with obsessive rhythms and japanese madness;


• Present, a belgian “rock in opposition” band always on the thread between madness and genius;


• Univers Zero, an ensemble which performs intriguing instrumental songs close to chamber music.

if you know what Zeuhl music is, well, then I’m probably late with this advice, otherwise give their records a spin..

Recently I have been contacted by an italian site looking for some “talents” to scout. Their self-entitled “artist director” has written lots of (generic) kind words about their project on the road to start, then he invited me to join it.

I was already suspicious when I entered the site, but when I read the contract agreement, I saw with a great surprise that the text was automatically translated from english to italian, with very funny results..

anyway, the contract stated, in this sort-of-hybrid language, that the contractor was going to authorize the site to publish the songs for any kind of use, and even to sublicense to third parties!

what did they give you in exchange? Promotion, of course! Hah!

when I asked for more infor about this (both the translation and the content of the contract) on their shoutbox, firstly they removed my messages and moderated the shoutbox, then they replied me saying “sorry?! we did not send you any contract..”

well, this is pretty ridicolous, isn’t it?

Always pay attention to what you are signing, at least give a good read at the crucial parts of the agreement!.