Low Music Sales

Update: There is a God, I aced my hardest final, CS 336!That's just some food for thought for you (you'll want to click it to be able to actually read it). I've spent all day studying (for my CC 303 final tomorrow) and it still made me pause and reevaluate my behavior for the past couple of years. Anyway, I bear good tidings of my CS 336 exam: domination. It took me a while to get through it, but with some help from the teacher I think I nailed every question, and last night I got my pet program to finally compile and link. This is my last night in Austin for four weeks and I'm so going to miss this place, but I do need to get away from school for a little while lest I lost my mind. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that music sales have been suprisingly slow this holiday season. They're pretty upset about it and some blame iPods while others still think its file sharing. What these people don't seem to understand, much like the movie industry, is that they keep trying to forcefeed crap to us at stubbornly high prices. What happened to the days when CDs were between $10 and $12? And what happened to artists caring about how good their music is? The CDs they report as bombing I haven't heard much at all about, and for good reason: no one wants them. Kanye West generated a lot of buzz regarding his album and he got out there and sold it, and that's why he succeeded. Does anyone own Eminem's Encore? I don't, and don't plan on it. 3/4 of the albums on my CD wishlist are from past years.

I reported on the music industry even reaching out and shutting down lyric sites last week, and one of their attacks was on a program called PearLyrics that just searched the web for them. In an unprecedented showing of good will, they apologized, and with good reason. Could we see a Napster-esque conversion in the near future? There's a lot of speculation regarding Apple as the Macworld Expo quickly approaches, and The Brig seems to think they'll showcase a black iBook with an Intel processor. Some people think it's crazy, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility. HP has now decided to support Blu-ray and HD-DVD, but it looks like they'll abandon the former if they don't concede a few things so the battle is really starting to get heated up. This one isn't over by a longshot. Lastly, if you think that Take Two is the first company to be rocked by video game lawsuits, then you'll want to visit 1up for their coverage of the history of video game developers going to court. Who knew that Phillips tried to copy Pac-Man or Nintendo created it's own version of Street Fighter.

It's not really so much of a surprise that King Kong was #1 this weekend at the box office but more that it only made $50.1 million ($66.2 million since Wednesday), which is only a quarter of its budget. The Chronicles of Narnia in second with a decent $31.2 million, but what was most impressive was Brokeback Mountain's clutch on the #8 spot despite being released in only 69 theaters. I think everyone has now come to realize how underrated Christian Bale has been, and he's really thinned down for his role in Rescue Dawn, for which we now have a trailer. It should be a real interesting movie. I was real glad to read a good review for New World, which I was keeping my fingers crossed for and now it looks like it's just as good as I thought it could be. It's very much an artistic film though.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings action:

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Replenish::Rejuvenate
   
2. People::Persons
   
3. Trend::Metrosexual
   
4. Girlfriends::Horrible UPN show
   
5. Spirit::Squad
   
6. Banshee::Evil
   
7. Oasis::Bad in concert
   
8. Thrills::Chills
   
9. Fountain::of Youth
   
10. Boxes::Brown