Zunior recently got a little link love from Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired and a little follow-up from Dr. Michael Geist with a story about potential issues between Zunior and Microsoft’s Zune.

Zunior is a great music store. Dave pretty much hand picks all the albums availble on the site. The music is DRM-free in the MP3 format. Hundreds of records are available as lossless downloads in the FLAC format. The downloads also include high-quality album artwork good enough for printing. Each month there is a free Zunior compilation and a podcast prepared by Steve Dinn.

If you’re a fan of great music like Broken Social Scene, Feist, Neko Case, The New Pornographers, The Constantines, The Great Lake Swimmers, Julie Doiron, The Rheostatics, Lou Barlow, Josh Rouse, or Hayden (to name just a few) then be sure to visit Zunior.com. It’s worth it.

By the way, Dave has a “couples” 2-for-1 sale on for today only so you can download records for $4.44. That’s in Canadian dollars so you’ll get the benefit of the currency exchange too!

Digg this

UPDATE: The release from Starbucks is now available. It makes no mention of downloading via the T-Mobile HotSpot network or at Hear Music Coffeehouse locations.

Yahoo! Music Unlimited

Through plug-ins like Scrobbler, I’m able to display my recently played tracks on the homepage of the rugs don’t work.

The big find today was Gijsco’s Last.fm Desktop Generator. Simple put – it’s great! Gijs Davis, a student at the University of Twente in The Netherlands has created an application that pulls a user’s Last.fm RSS feed and then generates an album cover desktop wallpaper image. The Generator has lots of customizable features like changing the album cover size, adding borders, image overlays, and filtering out specific albums. It even has a batch mode so that you can set it up to create a new desktop wallpaper on start-up, once a week or every hour.

If you’re a Windows user and love Last.fm then this is a must check out piece of software. It helps to offset the envy many of us have of the iTunes album cover screen saver that Mac users enjoy (or take a look at this PC workaround version)

BTW If you’re using Last.fm, be sure to invite me as a friend. Digg the story here.

A good follow-up to this cartoon that Joey deVilla found and posted a few months back.

In late February 2006 at the Music 2.0 conference, Dave Goldberg, the VP & General Manager, Music at Yahoo! urged the major labels to ease the restrictions that they place on consumers who choose to purchase music from legitimate download services. Goldberg equated DRM as a consumer cost and not a consumer value proposition.

I can understand in a true subscription model (, Napster, etc.) that DRM is part of the equation. In exchange for access to a couple million songs, users agree to restrictions on how they can use the content. Users are renting access to the library and not purchasing the songs.

If a user is purchasing the song, then it should be free of DRM. They should have portability of the content whether that be between home/work PCs, MP3 players, or their car stereo.

I have purchased DRM’ed songs in the past. It is a frustrating experience and has curtailed my interest in further purchases. I’ve had at least 5 different PCs and a couple MP3 players over the past few years . I’ve also had to replace motherboards in two of my machines. I’ve maxed out on the restrictions for number of PCs/downloads allowed for content that I purchased. This doesn’t happen when I buy a DRM-free CD and rip it to my harddrive.

I could go on and on about DRM but I won’t. Others have covered this space.

I do have a question for Yahoo! If eMusic can license content from the indies to sell free of DRM then why are you not doing the same thing already? Have you chosen not to because it complicates the marketing message (i.e. some of our songs you can do what you want, some of them you can’t – oh the ugly UI headache) or is it that the major labels have forced you to DRM ALL the content you sell or they wouldn’t provide their catalogues?

The series was first developed as a web-based cartoon before it was picked up by The Comedy Network. Odd Job Jack has always maintained an interactive component with games and activities available on their website for each episode that airs. Coming soon, fans will be able to download flash files and create their own episodes and mash-ups.

This is an interesting move by the shows creators as they look to harness the creativity energy behind viral videos like the countless Zidane remixes appearing daily on YouTube. Unlike more mainstream copyright holders, SmileyGuy is embracing the latest trends and courting a larger younger audience.

Here are the details of their email:

Enjoying your summer? Here’s an opportunity to make it even more enjoyable.

Is your summer sucking? This is still for you.

Everyone’s favourite temp Jack Ryder is heading back to work with a new thirteen episode installment of Odd Job Jack. Beginning Saturday, July 22 at 9:30 PM ET/PT on The Comedy Network, Jack takes on jobs that are odder than ever. King Crab Fisherman, Clown Dancer, Corpse in a Terrorist Drill – it’s gonna be a wild season.

Guest stars that Jack (Don McKellar) works with this season include Jason Alexander, Molly Parker, John Goodman, Christian Slater, Jerry Stiller, Sean Cullen and many more…

COORS LIGHT TEMP CHALLENGE
Don’t forget to visit oddjobjack.com because big free things are afoot. We are giving away a PlayStation 3 as our grand prize this year and there are hundreds of other prizes to be had including instant win trivia prizes.

FREEJACK
Odd Job Jack also unveils FreeJack this season. We want you to get animated and to that end we are giving away the master files of every character, prop, and background from every episode this season. We also provide tutorials and other animation support material. All free to hack, use, remix under a share-friendly license.

Why can’t real work be this much fun?

Odd Job Jack

Disclosure: My brother Paul works at Smiley Guy Studios. Even though I saw him on Sunday he had yet to make me aware of their decision to release the content this way. I found out via their newsletter.

I’ve decided to join the fray by dedicating Volume 3 of the Over In About An Hour mixtape series to Amanada and Andrew Baron. The playlist titles capture some of the back and forth of the past few weeks. All the tracks can be found on. You can hear the Volume 3 (boomed vs. unboomed) mixtape here if you are a YMU subscriber. The tracklist is:

1. It’s A Hit (from the album More Adventurous) – Rilo Kiley
2. What New York Couples Fight About (from the album Charango) – Morcheeba
3. Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt (from the album With Love And Squalor) – We Are Scientists
4. They Put Her In The Movies (from the album Bliss Descending) – Jason Falkner
5. Bad As They Seem (from the album Everything I Long For) – Hayden
6. Brother’s Gonna Work It Out (from the album The Mack) – Willie Hutch
7. Love & Appreciate (from the album Murray’s Revenge) – Murs
8. Divine Intervention (from the album Girlfriend [2 Disc Reissue Edition]) – Matthew Sweet
9. Friends You Learn To Hate (from the album Sweet Release) – The Flashing Lights
10. Before You Leave (from the album Clayton Park) – Thurst Hermit
11. On To You (from the album Shine A Light) – The Constantines
12. Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away (from the album Clap Your Hands Say Yeah) – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
13. Unemployable (from the album Pearl Jame) – Pearl Jam
14. Time Is Tight (from the album Stax Gold) – Booker T. & The MG’s
15. Back From The Dead (from the album Down In Albion) – Babyshambles

Feedback as always is welcomed. I know there are hundreds of other songs out there that would have fit but I limited the playlist to an hour’s worth of tunes.

PS. Andrew and Amanda – if you’re reading this, please enjoy it with a smile as it is intended to lighten up a rather public and difficult time for you both.

The series is awesome. Each year about one thousand people attend TED. Many of them are handpicked to attend – “The TED conference is an annual event where leading thinkers and doers gather for inspiration.” This year by distributing these videos online TED organizers are widening the audience to the broader population.

Of the initial series, I highly recommend watching Majora Carter, founder of the Sustainable South Bronx organization. Her talk is passionate, engaging, sprinkled with nervousness and humour, on a subject (holistic community development) that does not get enough attention paid to it. You can watch it here (flash enabled). Be sure to share with friends and colleagues.

Robert of the Radish is the king of the playlist. His constant output blows me away time and time again. Each mix of songs he weaves together is inspired with creativity, a dash of humour, and a love of music.

To have something I created (to be shared with a couple of friends) be acknowledged by someone miles away in this simple manner has got me excited to start making more mixtapes. I am also stoked that he made the connection to Thurston Moore’s Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture as it such a great book and one that occupies a place on my bookshelf.

Thank you Robert for taking the time to stop by. You made it so worthwhile.

Johnny