The Black Week kicked off over the weekend with over 100 new app sales!
In recent years I've used the Black Week sales to show off my hipster cred by highlighting upcoming artists I found in that year... before they were cool. 2020 has been a weird year on so many fronts. One of the unpredictable consequences of the year was me not listening to a lot of Indie music. So this year I'm renewing my hipster card by featuring random music things that amuse me.
Back in 2000, while Napster was being strangled barehanded by Lars Ulrich, there was also a legitimate site for MP3s. The original incarnation of MP3.com was a cross between BandCamp and SoundCloud. Every single Indie band ever posted their music to MP3.com. And it was awful. Just fucking terrible. There's a very good reason most people don't even know about the original MP3.com. I spent quite a lot of time going through the site, and I only found 1 decent act in the whole catalog.
Otep's first EP was up there before they were signed by Sharon Osbourne. The female-led band brought a uniquely sinister take to Metal that immediately caught my interest. In the years since they've been consistently charting with every single release, and have done some very interesting covers. Here's the first song that made me a fan 20 years ago.
Reader Comments 8
I am a make up effects artist and I helped to create the artwork on their first two albums! Evil J or as I called him (not so Evil J) is one of the best bassists and nicest person you could ever meet. Otep herself is absolutely wonderful and brilliant.
Those that I'm informed of are:
- all Sugar Bytes apps, including Looperator and, I hope, Drum Computer ;)
- BLEASS Groovebox and, I suppose, Alpha
- LK from Imaginando, with Matrix and all other goodies
Anyway, what a list above! Now's the Time
This is a huge problem, and I sincerely wish that I could keep track of IAPs and mark Freemium apps. But the official API from Apple doesn't even mention their existence in an app. There is no chance they're going to change that, because the API hasn't changed since the launch of the App Store! Portions of it have been broken for nearly a decade. I even made it pretty far into the Apple Corporate to report one of those broken features. A top-level executive in charge of (then) iTunes replied back when they confirmed my report. This was about 6 years ago and they still haven't fixed that (or any) bug in the API. There's just no way they're going to suddenly start adding features.
Oh tut-tut, don't dismiss all hope. After all, feeping creatures always come before bugfixes. And documentation.
That is something I've considered. There are some legitimate legal concerns with violating a TOS, and even scarier civil ones, from a company like Apple. Since discchord is a sole-proprietorship, it's pretty easy to spot the ne'er-do-well. I don't honestly think that they would care that much, but I can't say that with 100% certainty. If they cared enough to make that a part of the TOS, then they might care enough to make an example out of someone. Meanwhile, I'm low-hanging fruit waving around a big red flag.
Obviously, more iPad musickers need to know about your app sales page.
https://discchord.com/sales
the weirdest thing about mp3.com, and maybe someone can correct me if im remembering this wrong, but you couldn't actually buy mp3s could you? i think you had to use a credit card to buy a cd from cd baby or something and they would ship it to you? i think paypal hadnt come around full force yet? i definitely remember winning ebay auctions in the late 90s and mailing a money order.