The morphing of MTV

By Steve Spears, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, July 31, 2011

Thirty years ago, the music world changed forever with the words: “Ladies and gentlemen . . . rock ‘n’ roll.”

No longer would we just listen. Now we could watch music move.

MTV was born in the first few moments of Aug. 1, 1981, complete with footage of a rocket launch, a moon landing and the planting of an MTV flag complete with a grinding guitar riff that would serve as the network’s theme music during its early years.

Pretty heady imagery, comparing a 24-hour music channel to mankind’s reach into outer space. But looking back three decades later, it was entirely appropriate.

Suddenly, musicians could leap off a magazine’s glossy pages and show personality. Rod Stewart could seduce the ladies with his strut. Pat Benatar could spin around in her pixie-esque fashion. Michael Jackson could launch his fedora and moonwalk across the TV screen.

And then somewhere, between the airing of the Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star, John Cougar Mellencamp playing cupid for Jack and Diane and the arrival of Snooki and her Jersey Shore pals, our entire understanding of pop culture changed again.

For better? For worse? The answer to both is probably yes.

Birth of a revolution

Everyone has an MTV story.

Millions probably claim to have been awake late that night to witness the event, but they’re most likely stretching the truth. When MTV began, basic cable was a luxury for much of America. It’s believed that on that first day, only a few thousand people in northern New Jersey were actually able to see it.

The first spoken words — “. . . rock ‘n’ roll . . .” — weren’t even spoken by one of its original five “VJs” or video jockeys. Rather it was John Lack, a 33-year-old news radio executive in New York, who would catch lightning in a bottle as one of MTV’s co-founders.

To him, the concept of watching (and rewatching) videos nonstop was a no-brainer. In 2000, in an interview with Vanity Fair, he recalled his pitch to TV executives who questioned the longevity of the format.

“When you listen to music, the first time is just to be introduced to the song,” Lack told them. “The second time, you get to know it. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth time, you think, ‘This is a great song.’ But it’s the 100th time you hear it that gives you all these psychological synapse poppings.”

Lack was overthinking it.

The reason people tuned in seems more simple. It was great entertainment. And it was brought to our TVs 24 hours a day by five soon-to-be familiar faces: Mark Goodman, J.J. Jackson, Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter and Martha Quinn.

The Martha Quinn Years

“You know it’s funny, every once in a while, I’ll read an article, and if they’re talking about the ’80s, I’ve actually seem them refer to the ‘Martha Quinn Years.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my god, that’s incredible’ ” Quinn told the St. Petersburg Times in a 2007 interview. “I was just some goofy kid off the street basically. It just worked out that way. I can’t explain it.”

The explanation is easy. The fresh medium needed faces to go with it; on-air friends a young audience could trust. Who better than the girl next door to explain Boy George? MTV’s fab five became wise sages — pop culture guides for a generation.

These days, Quinn and the surviving original VJs — Jackson died in 2004 — continue to cash in on their MTV histories, each hosting ’80s-centric shows on satellite radio. Their faces seem scarcely aged to original fans of the network because their personalities are fused with the music and events of the decade.

Consider any band or personality from that era that’s still popular today and there’s an MTV moment behind them.

• U2′s Bono waving his white flag at Colorado’s Red Rocks during the live video for Sunday Bloody Sunday.

• Madonna rolling around in a wedding dress while performing Like a Virgin during the 1984 MTV Music Video Awards.

• Michael Jackson and the phenomenon of Thriller.

• “World Premiere Videos” became the first must-see TV. A generation witnessed 1985′s Live Aid benefit for Ethiopia in nonstop coverage on MTV. Bands like Duran Duran were able to use the medium to convert good looks, fashion and music into Beatle-esque hysteria.

It seemed like the music could never end.

And then it did.

The next revolution

Beginning in 1987, MTV began airing its own game show, Remote Control. Compared with the relative innocence of MTV’s earlier years, the show had a decidedly mean streak to it. Contestants were razzed by the likes of Colin Quinn, Adam Sandler and Denis Leary. Losers were buckled into recliners and ejected from the show with all the pomp befitting a drunken bar patron.

It was only the beginning. Videos quietly became scarce. Mopey grunge-rockers from Seattle wanted little to do with the perky airwaves of MTV. Cookie-cutter boy bands ruled concert arenas. Dancing and posing suddenly became more important than singing. Actual music suddenly was as popular as a pet rock.

MTV needed a new niche for a new decade.

In 1992, The Real World — following the hormone-soaked lives of young adults crammed together in a house — began transforming reality TV. It would be the first of more than 70 reality shows to appear on the network. A year later, Beavis and Butt-Head began devolving the world of cartooning. In 2009, a self-proclaimed group of “guidos” and “guidettes” descended upon the Jersey Shore to deliver the wisdom of “smushing” and “GTL.” (If you have to ask, just consider yourself lucky for not knowing.)

And in February 2010, MTV formally dropped the words “Music Television” from its logo.

MTV’s pop culture revolution was continuing. But ladies and gentlemen . . . rock ‘n’ roll? It was gone. Music, it turns out, wouldn’t be the medium of expression for the next generation.

Marking its birthday

Things change. Time passes. The teens of the “Martha Quinn Years” have teens of their own today. The boys from U2 are busy writing music for Spider-Man on Broadway. Madonna is off selling Kabbalah and helping her daughter push a fashion line. And what once was “Music Television” these days concentrates on selling the nonmelodic reality of Jersey Shore, Teen Mom and The Hard Times of RJ Berger.

Chances are that if you witnessed those first few hours of MTV programming and were asked to draw a fever line showing the quality of programming since then, the line would be a straight one — from heaven to hell.

But if you’re older than 25, complaining about MTV today is as productive as whining about menu options at Chuck E. Cheese’s; it’s not about you anymore.

Music videos have migrated to smart phones and YouTube; social media has taken over. The VJs are gone; MTV has a “Twitter jockey” now.

Thirty years later, MTV is still essential to teens, who dare not hop on the school bus until spilling the latest from 16 and Pregnant or reading Kanye West’s latest tweet.

Vinyl records, 8-track tapes and cassettes. CDs and DVDs. On-demand video, iTunes and Auto-Tune. MySpace and Facebook. If there’s a single constant in the entertainment world, it’s evolution. Adapt, or perish.

‘Our MTV’

Earlier this month, the four surviving VJs gathered in the Sirius XM studios in New York to record a special for MTV’s 30th birthday. The session between old friends became a period of new reflection.

“Here’s the thing about MTV today vs. MTV then,” Quinn wrote afterward via e-mail. “Let’s say MTV still played videos 24/7, never stopping, all music . . . it still wouldn’t be our MTV. It’d be Pitbull and Rihanna and the Glee cast. It’s not like they’d be playing the Fixx.”

Yet a few tethers to its start remain. A new show called Teen Wolf is a nod to the 1985 movie that starred Michael J. Fox. And the face of music video fame today, Lady Gaga, unabashedly borrows her nonsensical fashion sense and catchy music hooks from the original Material Girl.

“The spirit lives on in MTV as an ode to its scrappy start. Each and every one of us on the original MTV crew — VJs, cameramen, secretaries, executives — were rebels with a cause,” Quinn said. “Today the ‘rebel’ bit is an act. Nobody’s job is on the line, and the dream has long since been realized. The ‘we’re crazy kids’ routine has become shtick. It’s totally expected for MTV to be unexpected.”

Through all its changes, Quinn says, she and the network’s pioneers will probably always remain fans.

“It’s always fun to watch the Video Music Awards,” she said, “just like it’s still fun to see the Stones even though Mick Jagger gets tons of satisfaction.”

Rock ‘n’ roll survived after all — just not on cable TV.

But MTV goes on. Long after the thrill of music television is gone.

Steve Spears’ blog, Stuck in the ’80s, celebrates the music first played on MTV and the pop culture of the decade. Read it at tampabay.com/blogs/80s. He can be reached at sspears@sptimes.com.

Last modified: Jul 29, 2011 10:14 AM

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iPod Touch with 3G Leaked on Apple’s Site?

Did Apple just accidentally reveal on its site that the next iPod Touch will have 3G, or will this day go down in history as the one where art departments lost their minds?  First we had a Target ad showing what could be the iPhone 5, or it could just be someone being funny in their advertising crew, and now Apple is showing off what could be a huge rumor of what is happening with the next iPod Touch?  Someone stop the madness!

An eagle-eyed reader named Michael Smith dropped by the iTunes page on Apple’s site today and happen to notice that the iPod Touch shown in the picture had a very tiny “3G” up in the top left corner.  We admit it’s tiny as heck, but if you get close enough to your monitor you can see it.  And when you blow it up, it does become pixelated, but you can still distinctly make out that it says “3G.”

This would not mark the first time that Apple has used iPhone screen shots for the iPod Touch if that is the case here. Last Sept. they showed an iPod Touch with a Phone icon, which was quickly replaced.  That being said, the site also leaked the Cinema Displays with Thunderbolt capabilities about a week before their launch, so it’s not unheard of for Apple to make mistakes.

Why would an iPod Touch need 3G you ask?  iCloud.  Pure and simple, Apple is getting ready to launch a cloud storage service that’s all about keeping your music collection up in the cloud, so wouldn’t an iPod Touch become somewhat less useful when you were away from Wi-Fi?  Adding cellular connectivity to the biggest device in your iPod line suddenly makes a lot of sense.

Again, this could just be an art department snafu, but it sure does give you something to think about.  Do you think Apple might add 3G to the iPod Touch?

thanks to Michael Smith for the news tip

Tags: Apple, Apple iPod Touch, Breaking, iPhone, iPod, ipod touch, iPod Touch with 3G, iTunes, Leaked, Rumor, Rumors

Itunes Comes to Iceland

Apple has opened an “iOS App Store” and a “Mac App Store” in Iceland, in addition to 32 other countries. Icelandic residents are able to buy access to the iTunes music website through the “App Store.”

The Ipod Touch.

Service to iPad- and iPhone users will increase a great deal; the upcoming iCloud service should also be accessible, mbl.is reported.

“On Friday night at 11:25 pm we got mail from Apple telling us access would be open to Icelandic iPod Touch-, iPad- and iPhone users soon. A new “App Store” was launched recently for users of the Macbooks and desktop computers,” Macland store in Iceland stated in a press release.

The change is substantial for authorized Apple dealers in Iceland and Icelandic Mac-users finally have access to legal applications.  Macland will assist customers to access the Apple App Store should they require assistance.

A new Mac operating system OS X Lion will be in stores this week but it can only be accessed through the App Store; in the past, Icelanders had to find ways to access the App Store located in different countries.

“Iceland is finally on the Apple-map,” Macland told mbl.is last Saturday.

JB

Microsoft apologizes for Amy Winehouse tweet

One could feel a tiny bit bad for the person at Microsoft’s British PR team who tweeted “Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking Back to Black over at Zune.”

He or she must be having a terrible day.

On one hand, it may have seemed like a sensible marketing move: The person was probably correct in thinking that people might want to remember the singer, who was found dead in London on Saturday, by listening to her music. On the other hand, it reads as an insensitive way for Microsoft to cash in on the tragedy surrounding the 27-year-old performer.

Most of the Twittersphere has seen it in the insensitive light, and they’ve been tweeting and retweeting about it all morning.

        ”Cheap”

“Ouch”

“Vile-leaches–seriously?”

“Gross”

“Utterly tasteless”

“Vultures”

“Real smooth”

“Wow”

And that’s just a tiny sampling of the Twitter-river of venom the post has inspired.

Microsoft has since apologized for the post, via tweet of course:

“Apologies to everyone if our earlier Amy Winehouse ‘download’ tweet seemed purely commercially motivated. Far from the case, we assure you.” 

Microsoft Apologizes for Amy Winehouse Tweet

Amy Winehouse

REDMOND, Wash. –  Microsoft apologized Monday for its Twitter tribute to British singer Amy Winehouse that encouraged mourners to purchase the late singer’s music from Microsoft’s media store.

“Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking ‘Back to Black’ over at Zune,” read a tweet Monday from the account of Microsoft’s Xbox game console about the death of the 27-year-old songstress.

The message, perceived as capitalizing on the death of the Grammy winner, was widely criticized among Twitter users who called it “cheap” and “crass.”

“Whoever is over @tweetbox360 is seriously a foolish tool with little or no PR clout,” one follower wrote.

“Apologies to everyone if our earlier Amy Winehouse ‘download’ tweet seemed purely commercially motivated. Far from the case, we assure you,” the company said after the backlash, adding “With Amy W’s passing, the world has lost a huge talent. Our thoughts are with Amy’s family and friends at this very sad time.”

The singer’s death this weekend has caused a surge in her music sales — her 2006 album “Back To Black” climbed to the top of the US and UK iTunes charts, where it stayed through Monday.

In March, another Microsoft Twitter account for Bing, the company’s search engine, landed in hot water for a tweet seen as a publicity stunt after the devastating earthquake in Japan.

“How you can #SupportJapan – http://binged.it/fEh7iT. For every retweet, @bing will give $1 to Japan quake victims, up to $100K,” the company wrote.

But Twitter followers accused the tech giant of trying to get press instead of just donating money to help the victims of the natural disaster.

“Why not just give them the $100k,” one follower tweeted, among the slew of nasty messages posted.

“We apologize the tweet was negatively perceived. Intent was to provide an easy way for people to help Japan. We have donated $100K,” the company said.

Live Nation and StubHub Actually Behind Newly Launched Anti-Scalping Groups …
Ticket scalpers aren’t exactly the most beloved contingent of the live music industry, and many us have been burned by opportunists who buy up concert tickets and resell them for an inflated price. It made perfect sense, then, when two opposing non-profit organizations recently launched: the Fans First Coalition, which aims to combat scalpers who resell tickets at inflated prices, and the similarly named the Fan Freedom Project, which battles for the rights of consumers to resell tickets.

Well, it turns out that all is not as it appears with these two groups. Although the non-profits present themselves as grassroots organizations looking out for fan interest, a new report from the New York Times suggests that they’re actually corporate fronts.

Live Nation (owner of Ticketmaster) is the primary financier behind the Fans First Coalition. This makes sense, as Live Nation is trying to stop scalpers from marking up the price of its product. Although Live Nation is not officially a member of the Fans First Coalition’s board, the majority of the artists who support the cause (such R.E.M., John Mayer and Dixie Chicks) are managed by Live Nation. (It’s worth noting that the Fans First Coalition doesn’t denounce ticket reselling outright.)

As for the Fan Freedom Project, it is actually backed by the legal ticket-reselling website StubHub. The group believes that a ticket belongs to the buyer and can therefore be resold as desired. The organization’s slogan is “we the fans believe we own the tickets we buy.”

“This is a classic,” Ellen Miller, executive director of lobbying watchdog Sunlight Foundation, told the newspaper. “The campaigns present them as ground-up activities, but they are really nothing more than fronts for particular interests.”

So what has inspired these massive companies to start up non-profits as fronts for their interests? The real issue at stake is paperless ticketing. This means that when you buy a pass to an event, you don’t receive a physical or even electronic ticket. Instead, you must show your credit card and/or ID at the door. This makes it more or less impossible to resell a ticket, and completely undermines StubHub’s business model. While the the Fan Freedom Project is selfishly motivated, it does have a point: paperless tickets are harder to give as presents, and exchanging them through Ticketmaster’s system can result in additional fees.

Whichever side you happen to agree with, it seems that neither the Fan Freedom Project or the Fans First Coalition is really about benefiting the fans.

Ticketmaster, resellers and consumer advocates battle over paperless tickets

What could be more inoccuous than paperless tickets? It even has an environmentally friendly ring to it.

On the contrary, paperless tickets are  becoming the latest grounds for a skirmish between Live Nation Entertainment’s Ticketmaster, ticket resellers and consumer advocates.

Backed by Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster, a group of concert promoters and artist managers this week declared war on resellers who buy tickets in bulk and then resell them on sites such as StubHub, Craigslist and elsewhere.

“It erodes the heart of our business,” said Randy Levy, an independent concert promoter who is a member of the group, dubbed the Fans First Coalition.

The solution: “paperless tickets” that are largely non-transferable. That means only the original buyer can claim the ticket on the day of the event.

Not so fast, says the Fan Freedom Project, backed by the National Consumers League and founded earlier this year by Jon Potter, former director of the Digital Media Assn.

Potter argues that the real agenda for promoters who back paperless tickets is to prevent consumers from selling or giving away tickets they have purchased.

“Consumers should have the right to determine what they can do with a ticket once they’ve purchased it,” Potter said. “That means being able to sell it at both higher or lower than face value.”

The controversy over paperless tickets is not new. Miley Cyrus and Bruce Springsteen both experimented with paperless ticketing back in 2009 for their concert tours.

The Live Nation/IMP Wars Are Not Over

It’s a big day for concert behemoth Live Nation: The company announced the first handful of shows at its new Fillmore venue in Silver Spring. It’s also been an ugly week: The company is engaged in an astroturf battle with online ticket reseller StubHub. Live Nation started a non-profit called the Fans First Coalition, StubHub started the similarly named Fan Freedom Project, and the two have been scrapping over control of the legal ticket-scalping market. Both groups claim to speak for consumers; neither group is especially palatable. Making things even uglier is the fact that Live Nation isn’t exactly being altruistic: Its Ticketmaster division owns the smaller ticket resellers TicketsNow and TicketsExchange. Neither group wants a ban on scalping; Live Nation wants an allowance for paperless ticketing—meaning, you pick up your ticket by presenting your credit card at the venue—that could cripple a third-party reseller like StubHub.

Wading into the fray? Seth Hurwitz, owner of local promoter I.M.P. and a frequent legal opponent of Live Nation. The Fillmore Silver Spring is poised to be a major competitor to the I.M.P.-booked 9:30 Club.

In an interview with TicketNews, Hurwitz aims some pointed arrows at Live Nation over its Fans First campaign, which he says approached him about joining its coalition. “My first reaction was are you kidding me? Why are you asking me? Have you stopped scalping tickets, and of course the answer was no,” Hurwitz tells TicketNews. “That’s like Peta sponsoring a Ted Nugent tour. With a taxidermy business on the side, for animals killed the ‘right’ way. It’s absurd.”

Hurwitz tells TicketNews that his opposition to Fans First Coalition has nothing to do with his ongoing legal battle with Live Nation—OK, fair enough. But although one lawsuit was dismissed in March, I.M.P. still has a pending antitrust suit against Live Nation.

Expect more on all of this soon.

Microsoft has 3 months to make or break Windows Phone – Part 2

Click here for part 1

3. Windows Phone Studio

The new IOS 5 will include the iCloud  service with allows easy syncing of IOS devices. The old  Windows Mobile had a great online component called My Phone. With it, you could…

synchronize your contacts, calendar appointments, tasks, photos, videos, text messages, songs, browser favorites and documents between your phone and your My Phone web account.

Then came the Kin Studio, a revolutionary cloud service that accompanied the short-lived Kin Phone. I hope that Microsoft will bring this back in the form of “Windows phone Studio.”  This would include all the features that existed in the My Phone service like lost phone tracking in this new service. I also hope they integrate the Office Web Apps, Office 365, SkyDrive, and Live Mesh Synching capabilities. Something that the Skype purchase could bring is text messaging (as a premium addition perhaps) to cell phones and land lines directly from the the web interface. Adding Xbox live account management, Zune pass streaming, podcasts and Zune social would be a good bonus!

I also would like to see the the Kin Studio UI maintained rather the stale Windows Live UI. With this, Windows phone will be well ahead of Android and IOS when it comes to the cloud component (especially the ease of use) of mobile devices which I believe will be an integral part of the industry going forward.

4. Better hardware

We already know that there are  new devices coming from Nokia, Samsung, HTC, Fujistu, and more. One thing that has been frustrating about the current WP7 hardware is the lackluster nature of the offerings compared to their Android counterparts. Since the OS does not officially allow removable Micro SD cards, I would like to see 32 and especially 64 GB options of devices available from all OEMs. Add to that, I hope that front facing cameras will become standard (The Skype purchase should make video calling more viable now in addition to messenger and Lync).The last three features, though not pressing, would be highly welcome; “real buttons “ for “back” “home” and “search” instead of capacitive ones, inductive charging ala Palm Pre Touchstone and finally NFC support.

5. Expanded Marketplace Bing services with feature parity to the US

Many of our international readers complain and rightly so about the lack of certain features (Zune pass, Videos, Bing Search etc.) found only in the United States. The new App Hub update promises to expand the the marketplace for developers in more countries, I hope will this translate to missing services being made available to all these regions also as per Microsoft’s WP7 head, Joe Belfiore tweet in that regard. They  have been signs reported earlier that consumers in Australia will soon be able to purchase music from the Zune marketplace. This needs to carry over to allcountries where WP7 devices are sold.

6. Windows Phone website.

I hate having to bring Apple into the discussion over and over again, but I can’t deny the fact that they are good at making their products easily understandable to the average consumer through their marketing. Compare the Windows Phone and the iPhone landing pages below. Right out the bat, the iPhone site is bold, more attractive and informative than WP7.  Microsoft could do so much better because they  have the power of the Metro UI design on the side, they just need to apply them better on the website.

I have just gone through what I think Microsoft can do to battle the formidable task ahead of them in the mobile space with the upcoming release of Mango. It is by no means exhaustive, but I believe that Microsoft needs to make some serious proactive steps this time around in order to give Windows Phone a fighting chance.  What do you guys think?

Model of access to online music continues to evolve

Online music has gone through several phases. The Napster phase was great for users, because it meant you could download whatever you wanted for free and ignore the legality and ethics of the matter.

The iTunes phase brought legal online music purchasing to the masses, but was not much different from buying a physical album; you still had to buy anything you wanted to listen to.

The third phase of online music is subscription. The subscription model enables you to pay a small monthly fee to be able to listen to as much music as you want so long as you keep paying the monthly fee. Services such as Microsoft’s Zune Pass have offered this for a while, but this is the year it seems people finally will begin embracing the subscription model.

The rdio.com music service is available on a wide array of devices.

A screenshot of the Spotify music service.

The first part of the year was dominated by rdio.com’s service. The second half of the year seems poised to be dominated by its competition Spotify.

Spotify has been around for several years, but only in Europe. The company has been trying to secure deals with record labels in the U.S. for years and finally was able to secure the rights to do a proper launch.

Spotify’s killer feature is its base cost: free. The service is ad-supported. So, much as with radio, you have to listen to commercials periodically between the songs you choose. In Europe, the amount of time you can listen to the free service is capped at 20 hours, but the U.S. launch presently is unlimited. I wouldn’t expect that to last forever, but it’s certainly worth taking advantage of it while you still can.

I have been using Spotify as my primary music environment since the launch last week and find it to be an enjoyable alternative to iTunes and rdio, a similar subscription-based music service.

What I like most about Spotify is the desktop client it offers both for Mac OS X and Windows. The Spotify app allows you to search its entire music library, add songs to play lists and even share a song with friends by dragging it onto their name in the sidebar.

Even better, Spotify can play all the existing music already on your computer, so you don’t have to manually add to Spotify’s library any music you already own.

Mobile apps also are available for Android and the iPhone, I tested the iPhone app and found it to be a suitable experience.

The biggest problem with services such as rdio and Spotify on-the-go is relying on 3G service to be reliable enough to support streaming. Both services allow you to download songs locally to your device for offline playback, but that requires a bit of planning ahead and anticipating what you want to listen to before you head out.

Spotify is available in beta right now, but offers instant access for people who sign up for a paid subscription. For $4.99 a month, you get unlimited music playback with no ads. For $9.99 a month you also get mobile access and higher quality audio.

I signed up for the $9.99 a month plan because I am a big fan of sampling new music. For the price of a single album on iTunes, I now can listen to anything I want with just a quick search. It doesn’t get much more compelling than that.

Justin Williams is the owner of Second Gear. You can contact him at justin@secondgearsoftware.com.

Windows XP Media Center: A Look Back

I often get very personal remarks from the anti-Microsoft crowd, as if a Microsoft product defeat were somehow personally bothersome to me. Generally speaking, Microsoft highs and lows don’t impact me in that sense, but every once in a while a technology or product does comes down the pipeline that is indeed personally important, for whatever reason, something that affects me, my family, and others around me in ways that most products and technologies do not. Media Center was such a product, and while I have long since moved on from this solution for various pragmatic reasons, it’s hard to escape the notion that Microsoft was on to something there and if things had just gone differently, it might have changed the world.

When Microsoft revealed its Windows-based ambitions for the living room in January 2002, just months after the Windows XP launch, it seemed they were on the right path. The company opted to enter the living room through the PC rather than a new set-top box because Windows was familiar and powerful, and at the time, that division could do no wrong. Media Center proved tantalizing but frustrating, bringing both the best and the worst of the PC into the living room. Over subsequent yearly updates, the software was improved, the messy, cable-laden Setup routines were streamlined, and Microsoft added extender capabilities to the mix so that you could leave the Media Center PC in the office and use a simpler box in the living room.

While Media Center never really saw much success, Apple liked it so much that it copied the UI, and bald-facedly, first in its Front Row software for Mac OS X and then later in the Apple TV. That alone should be a clue, or even proof, that Microsoft had done something right. But through a combination of reasons–its reliance on expensive and complex PCs early on, the added complexities of extenders later, and a general move away from traditional TV video sources towards more online content–Media Center was always just a niche product. And by the time Microsoft integrated this software into mainstream versions of Windows in Vista and then 7, it seemed like development had slowed to a crawl if not stopped almost entirely.

Media Center, like Longhorn, like Zune, like Tablet PC, is a great example of what could have been, maybe the best example in Microsoft’s history. There, on the cusp of a new decade, the software giant was positioning Windows as the center of an ever-expanding universe of new computing experiences. It seemed like the right strategy at the right time, but it was neither. And while it’s easy to point fingers after the fact, it’s something none of us really saw happening at the time.

We can at least take heart in this, however: The new user experience coming in Windows 8 can be tied directly back through many previous Microsoft products, but the genesis of this new way of thinking occurred 10 years ago in the original Media Center version. That many of the same people are still toiling away at Microsoft, trying to get it right yet again, is a testament to how strongly they feel about this stuff. I feel it too. Media Center really does matter, and it deserved a better fate.

This retrospective focuses on the XP versions of Windows Media Center as well as related products of that era, including Media Center Extenders and Portable Media Center. As with previous retrospectives, newer articles can be found at the top.

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2 Review – October 14, 2005

Update Rollup 2, codenamed Emerald, builds on the success of XP Media Center Edition 2005 and adds a number of minor new features. None are particularly notable, per se, and one might argue that the biggest point of this release–making XP MCE 2005 compatible with the HDTV Media Center Extender that ships with Xbox 360–will be hidden from most users anyway. And Microsoft is using UR2 to extend MCE 2005 to many more locales, opening up the wonders of Media Center to a much wider range of potential users. Let’s take a look.

Remote Keyboard for Windows XP Media Center Edition – September 6, 2005

The Microsoft Remote Keyboard for Windows XP Media Center Edition works almost exactly as you’d expect it to, and with a single nagging exception, it appears to work quite well. It’s pretty straightforward.

Media Center Extender for Xbox Review – December 7, 2004

In this review, I’ll take a look at Microsoft’s software-based approach to remoting the Media Center experience to the Xbox video game console and see how it stacks up against standalone Media Center devices.

Media Center Extender for Xbox Photo Gallery – November 24, 2004

Here are some photos of the new Media Center Extender for Xbox, which includes a software disc, a controller dongle, and a remote control.

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Review – October 12, 2004

Three years after I first set my sights on this intriguing multimedia champion, XP Media Center Edition (XP MCE) is at a cross-road. It still offers the premium PC experience, with amazing and unparalleled digital media features. But too, it’s still a computer, and not necessarily the type of device one would want in the living room. In other words, the same old arguments about Media Center seem to apply today as much as they did when the product first shipped in 2002.

Media Center Extender Review – October 12, 2004

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2004, Microsoft unveiled its plans for TV set top box devices, called Media Center Extenders (codenamed Bobsled), that would let users remotely access Media Center content from any TV in their home using a wired or wireless connection. The idea, I thought, was a good one.

Portable Media Center Review – September 2, 2004

Portable Media Centers have exceeded my expectations, but that doesn’t mean they’re for everyone. The first generation devices are fairly large and expensive, and they require a fairly new XP-based PC for a decent experience, and a Media Center PC for the best experience. Since I count the number of Media Center users on one hand at this point, we’re talking about a fairly small group of people that can totally take advantage of this device.

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 Review – September 30, 2003

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 is one of the stealthiest major software releases Microsoft has ever released. Several months in the making, and several beta machines later, I’m still surprised that the company didn’t do anything throughout 2003 to build excitement for the new version, which ships September 30, 2004 with a variety of new and modified Media Center PCs from a number of PC makers, including notable new additions Sony and Dell. In this review, I’ll examine the new software release, its myriad new features, and the various other supporting technologies that are becoming available now to Media Center owners for the first time.

Microsoft “Media2Go” Preview – January 15, 2003

As a digital media enthusiast and frequent business traveler, I’m genuinely excited about Media2Go and am looking forward to getting my hands on a pre-production model for long-term review. We live in a truly wonderful age, and Media2Go is a necessary, evolutionary step in getting digital media content–photos, movies, songs, and recorded TV shows–off the PC, and into our hands, wherever we might be at the time. While digital video recording (DVR) devices like TiVo have made it possible to digitally time-shift TV content, Media2Go takes this capability to the next level, allowing us to digitally time-shift and space-shift. And if the price is right, it could be a breakthrough product.

Copying Content in Windows XP Media Center Edition – October 10, 2002

It’s possible to backup, copy, and share content you record with Windows XP Media Center Edition. In this showcase, I’ll explain how, but first, let’s take a look at some of the issues that surrounding Microsoft’s capitulation to the television networks and other content providers which makes this capability less full-featured than it could be.

Windows XP Media Center Edition Review – October 9, 2002

Windows XP Media Center Edition is Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 (SP1) with an additional application, Media Center, and related supporting services. XP MCE runs only on media center PCs, which include modern processors, fast video cards, FireWire connectivity for attaching a DV camera, a TV tuner card for interacting with a cable or satellite signal, and, optionally, other multimedia features, including a DVD writer, surround sound speakers, and front-panel access to the types of memory cards used by most digital cameras.

Joe Belfiore Talks Windows XP Media Center Edition – September 3, 2002

In this exclusive interview with Joe Belfiore, General Manager, User Experience, at Microsoft’s Windows eHome Division, we discuss how Windows XP Media Center Edition–code-named “Freestyle”–evolved over time from concept to product. Joe has been an instrumental part of Microsoft’s user experience efforts since the first version of what became Windows NT, and his background includes user interface work on Windows 95, Internet Explorer 3 and 4, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and the new Media Center experience in XP Media Center Edition.

Windows XP Media Center Edition (“Freestyle”) Preview – May 1, 2002

As we move toward a more connected world where digital media experiences such as music, photos, and movies are used more and more with PCs, it makes sense to bring that machine into other areas of the house. Windows XP Media Center Edition (“Freestyle”) addresses this need. With Windows XP Media Center Edition, a new generation of TV-based PCs, or PCs used in smaller living areas such as dorm rooms and apartments, is made more viable thanks to a simple new user interface. Somewhat predictably, Microsoft calls these PCs Media Center PCs.

HTC 7 Pro (US Cellular)

While HTC’s Android cell phones have stolen the show, the company originally made its name here in the United States on deluxe, full-featured Windows Mobile phones. The HTC 7 Pro on U.S. Cellular continues that tradition, albeit with Microsoft’s vastly improved Windows Phone 7 OS. The HTC 7 Pro is a solid smartphone, and a good choice if you text or email more than the average person, although it lacks the battery life and third-party app catalog of other models.

Design, Call Quality, and Apps
The HTC 7 Pro measures 4.6 by 2.3 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs a substantial 6.5 ounces. It’s made of a complex mix of matte plastic, glass, soft touch rubber, and aluminum surfaces; the effect is bulky, but handsome. The front panel slides back and tilts up at a 45-degree angle, which is great for watching movies or using the phone as a very tiny laptop computer.

The 3.6-inch capacitive touch screen is on the small side for such a bulky phone, but its 480-by-800-pixel resolution looks sharp. The display lacks the vibrancy of HTC and Samsung’s newer panels, though. The slide-out, five-row QWERTY keyboard is an absolute gem. It features large rectangular keys that are well-raised and separated. They exhibit just the right texture and resistance for fast, near-silent typing.

The HTC 7 Pro is a dual-band EV-DO Rev. A (850/1900MHz) device with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi; the phone connected to my WPA2-encrypted network without a problem in tests. There’s no Wi-Fi hotspot mode, though. Voice quality was fine overall, with a clear if somewhat brittle tone in the earpiece, and plenty of available gain. Callers uniformly said I sounded good through the microphone. Reception seemed about average. Thankfully, the HTC 7 Pro doesn’t suffer from the same horrid background hiss as the HD7S ($199.99, 2.5 stars), even though the wide earpiece speaker looks identical on both handsets.

Calls sounded clear through an Aliph Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset ($129, 4 stars) and the TellMe-powered voice dialing worked flawlessly over Bluetooth. The speakerphone was excellent, with plenty of gain for use outdoors, albeit with a touch of distortion at the highest volume setting. Battery life was short, though, at just over four hours of talk time.

By now it’s clear that Windows Phone 7 is a beautiful smartphone OS that’s fun to use. It features smoothly sliding home screen tiles; tight integration with Microsoft Office, Exchange, and Outlook; XBox Live compatibility; and it works just like a standalone Zune for music and video playback. Regardless of the task, the 7 Pro’s 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU keeps things moving at a good clip. That said, while the Windows Marketplace offers a decent selection of apps and games, it’s nowhere near what’s available for Android and iOS devices. Keep an eye out for news on the upcoming “Mango” version of Windows Phone 7, which adds many new features to the OS.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
There is a standard size 3.5mm headphone jack, plus 16GB of internal storage for media files, with about 13.7GB free. There’s no microSD card slot or USB mass storage mode, though; you must sync the phone with a PC or Mac using dedicated Microsoft apps in each case.

Music tracks sounded clear and full through Samsung Modus HM6450 Bluetooth headphones ($99, 4 stars). The Zune-like music app was fun to use, with large album art, clear fonts, and smooth animations and responses?much like the rest of the OS. There’s also an FM radio that uses the bundled, tinny-sounding wired stereo earbuds as an antenna. Standalone videos played smoothly in full screen mode, but audio only played through the phone’s speaker, not over stereo Bluetooth.

The 5-megapixel auto-focus camera has an LED flash. Test photos were okay but not great, with well balanced in bright outdoor sunlight but only modest detail and muted colors. Indoors, some shots exhibited slight graininess and a softer focus, but they weren’t too bad. The HTC 7 Pro’s auto-focus works before you press the button, not after; let the phone focus automatically first, then snap the photo, and you’re golden. The camcorder recorded crisp 640-by-480-pixel videos at a smooth 27 frames per second. But 720p files (1280 by 720 pixel) looked soft and not as detailed, with a more uneven frame rate that averaged 19 frames per second.

U.S. Cellular still trails the four major U.S. carriers in terms of network coverage and high-end smartphones, but it’s beginning to rectify the latter problem in earnest. The HTC 7 Pro is a fine choice if you like Microsoft’s clean slate, Zune HD-influenced mobile OS. But with a paucity of third-party apps, it’s still a niche player next to Android phones like the HTC Merge ($149, 4 stars), our current Editors’ Choice smartphone on U.S. Cellular, and the LG Genesis ($149, 3 stars). Both of those handsets are $50 less expensive up front, offer more features like free, Google-powered GPS navigation and a mobile hotspot mode, and work with a vast selection of third-party apps in the Android market.

Benchmarks
Continuous talk time: 4 hours 1 minutes

More Cell Phone Reviews:
?   HTC 7 Pro (U.S. Cellular)
?   T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide
?   HTC Status (AT&T)
?   Samsung Dart SGH-T499 (T-Mobile)
?   Motorola XPRT (Sprint)
?  more

This picture made me laugh so I knew you might find it funny too.

It’s polite to include the

site where this live concert photo originally came from

only since
everyone is always wondering.

Was this photo of live concert is worth seeing?

Baidu to Pay Record Labels to Offer Beyonce, Lady Gaga Downloads in China

The Baidu Inc. music website, right, is arranged next to the Google Inc. China music website in Beijing. Photographer: Nelson Ching/Bloomberg

Baidu Inc., owner of China’s most popular Internet-search engine, agreed to pay record labels to offer songs by artists including Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Frank Sinatra, ending a six-year dispute over piracy.

Sony Corp. (6758), Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG) will receive undisclosed fees for allowing their content to be downloaded for free to users of Baidu’s Ting and MP3 services, the Chinese search-engine operator said in a statement today. The four companies will end all outstanding litigation, according to the statement.

The deal paves the way for the Chinese company to ease concerns that led the U.S. Trade Representative to call Baidu a “notorious market” for helping sustain piracy. For the record labels, the accord allows them to capitalize on the world’s biggest Internet market, where almost all music downloads are estimated to be illegal.

“China has a long way to go yet, but the deal serves as a good baseline to work from,” said Ed Peto, managing director at Outdustry, which represents western music companies in China. “Baidu will need to show sustained commitment over the coming few years before this deal can be seen as a proper watershed.”

Bidu rose $3.12, or 2.1 percent, to $151.25 at 10:04 a.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares had increased 53 percent this year before today.

The Beijing-based company, which handles about 80 percent of the country’s Web-search traffic, expects the agreement to lead to a “precipitous drop” in the piracy rate, spokesman Kaiser Kuo said.

“This is a mutually profitable deal,” Kuo said by phone today. Record companies will benefit from sales of advertising linked to their music, in addition to license fees, he said.

Chinese Piracy

China has a music piracy rate of “virtually 100 percent,” the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in its 2011 report released in January.

One-Stop China — a venture between Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music — will license its catalogs and new releases, including songs in Mandarin and Cantonese, to Baidu, according to the statement.

Vivendi SA (VIV)’s Universal, Sony and Warner Music previously lost rulings in Chinese courts when seeking damages from Baidu for copyright infringement.

Baidu was named in the U.S. Trade Representative’s “notorious markets” list published in March for helping sustain piracy and counterfeiting. Google Inc., Baidu’s closest competitor in China’s search-engine market, started a music service in the country in 2009.

Baidu “won’t lose money” from the agreement with One-Stop China, as sales of advertising will more than offset the cost of license fees, Kuo said.

Google, owner of the world’s most-popular search-engine, accounted for 18.9 percent of revenue generated in China’s search-engine market during the second quarter, declining from 19.2 percent three months earlier, according to research firm Analysys International. Baidu’s market share increased to 75.9 percent from 75.8 percent, the researcher said.

Baidu is adding services and bolstering partnerships with technology companies including Microsoft Corp. to lure Web users in China from domestic rivals Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700) and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Lee in Hong Kong at wlee37@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net

Chinese search engine in a deal to pay record companies for music

China’s 470 million internet users will soon be able to legally download more than half a million songs including hits ranging from Lady Gaga’s Boys Boys Boys to Frank Sinatra’s My Way.

The landmark deal between Baidu, China’s version of Google, and three of the world’s largest record labels ends a six-year legal battle about “notorious” piracy in the world’s most populous country.

Under the terms of the deal, Sony, Universal Music and Warner Music will receive an undisclosed fee every time one of Baidu’s millions of users downloads or streams a track online.

The deal comes after the record labels and US officials accused Baidu – which is by far China’s biggest search engine handling almost 80% of the country’s internet traffic – of “deep linking” customers to third-party sites that host pirated music. The US trade representative accused Baidu of providing a “notorious market” sustaining piracy in the world’s largest internet market.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimates that at present 99% of online music in China is pirated. The rampant piracy has made it very difficult for music and film companies to make money in China. The global music industry collected $75m (£47m) in China in 2009 compared with $4.6bn in the United States, according to the IFPI.

Frances Moore, chief executive of the IFPI, said Tuesday’s deal was an “important step forward”.

Under the two-year deal between Baidu and One-Stop China, which represents the three record labels, more than 500,000 songs will be stored on Baidu’s server and made available to stream or download. The companies refused to state how much money the labels will collect from each download. The labels will also collect a share of associated advertising.

The deal, which requires Baidu to remove its links to sites carrying pirated material, ends a legal case pending at Beijing’s Higher People’s Court. Jennifer Li, Baidu’s finance director, said: “Baidu, the Chinese music fans, recording artists and the record companies will all benefit from this win-win partnership.”

Kaiser Kuo, Baidu’s director of international communications, said: “We’ve never wanted to stand there and thumb our noses at the recording industry. This is a watershed moment. It’s a great way for us to deliver the best possible user experience by providing free and high-quality music and brings obvious tangible benefits to all parties involved including the label, artists and advertisers”.

Dick Wei, an analyst at JP Morgan, said: “The deal will be very positive for Baidu in terms of user experience and it also fits in with Baidu’s box computing strategy, which is to make a lot of information available on the Baidu site.”

About 10% of the songs will be in Mandarin or Cantonese.

Baidu’s shares, trading on the Nasdaq in New York, have more than tripled since Google’s partial withdrawal from China in January after a dispute about government censorship in the country.

Earlier this month Baidu signed a deal with Microsoft to provide English-language search results, but they will be censored to meet the Chinese government’s demands regarding controversial subjects, such as political dissidents, Taiwan and pornography.

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iTunes’ New Rival

Spotify isn’t the only company doing this. There are others like Rdio, Pandora, and Last.fm in the space. But Spotify is the biggest, and, according to geeks, the best, thanks to a clean user interface and really fast song streaming. Spotify has 1.6 million paying members and 10 million total users.

How Spotify Can Challenge Apple iTunes’ Market Dominance

Within the United States, Spotify also enjoys another unique advantage: Spotify’s music streaming service is integrated with Facebook, which means users can easily share songs with friends.

Operating in only seven European countries, Spotify has 1.6 million paid subscribers and more than 10 million registered users. Spotify is seen as the future of digital music business and is billed to eclipse pioneer Apple iTunes.

Instead of selling individual downloadable tracks, Spotify will offer a three-tiered subscription model that lets customers choose between a free, ad-supported service, an ad-free subscription for $5 and a premium service available on mobile devices for $10.

Users can now stream whichever song they like to their computer or mobile phone. “We want to make it simple for people … If you want to take your music with you, you shouldn’t have to worry about 15 different sync programs or anything else. It ought to be as simple as pressing play and it works. And ultimately when you get to that point, that’s when people are prepared to pay. People are prepared to pay for convenience,” Spotify founder Daniel Ek says.

Pitchfork Day 2: Recap

The second day of the seventh annual Pitchfork Music Festival began under gray skies in a thick, hot, and humid funk as publicists disseminated their emergency heat plan via email—“We have a CTA cooling bus station at the end of Flatstock the poster exhibition and another if needed on Ashland and Washington and we will give away one bottle of water to the first 6,000 people through the gate for both today and tomorrow”—though my favorite source for weather wisdom, Ginger Zee, said this morning that Saturday is supposed to be positively pleasant compared to the final day of the fest tomorrow.

The music on the main stages kicked off at 1 p.m. with Brooklyn vocalist and loop mistress Julianna Barwick, who electronically layered multi-part harmony vocals to create a one-woman female choir not unlike an army of Enya’s, though without the annoying New Age wispiness.

Unfortunately, the first half of Barwick’s gorgeous and lulling set had to compete at near-equal volume with Chrissy Murderbot and MC Zulu over on the second stage; the volume there only subsided midway through, by which point the sun came out, the temperature started to soar, and now it was the weather ruining the intended bliss.

Nevertheless, Barwick’s recent album “The Magic Place” has shot to the top of my list for further listening.

Rating for Julianna Barwick (when she could be heard without distractions): 7.1.

Next up, New York indie-rockers Woods veered between two poles throughout their set, one annoying and one sublime. In more conventional folk-rock mode, the group was sabotaged by band leader Jeremy Earl’s wispy, wimpy, and just plain weak vocals, to say nothing of the uninspired songwriting.

But for the other half of the set, when the band would lock into a trance-inducing groove (my colleague Greg Kot rightly invoked the mighty krautrock legends Can) and stretch out into noisy psychedelic jams that were everything that Animal Collective’s should have been last night but weren’t, the group was nothing short of brilliant. Which means I’m just gonna have to split the difference with my final grade.

Rating for Woods: 5.5.

Imagine a slightly sunnier, marginally less threatening Nick Cave fronting a groovy if unholy merger of the Bad Seeds and the Human League and you’re sort of closing in on what New York-based writer, musician, and publisher Wesley Eisold is doing with Cold Cave, which recently released the impressive “Cherish the Light Years” on Matador Records.

It’s always somewhat painful to see someone who so clearly thrives in the dark and would never be seen not wearing black struggling to create his vibe in the brutal summer sun, but Eisold did his best, and Cold Cave, like the good half of Woods, was a welcome surprise.

Rating for Cold Cave: 7.3.

As for the non-musical doings in Union Park today, I had my third (third!) encounter with a young woman hired by this year’s corporate beer vendor asking to survey me about my hops preferences and collect the data on her iPad (third time I’ve declined, too).

But, at the other end of the spectrum, the activists from Between Friends, Rape Victim Advocates, and several gay rights groups have been a much bigger presence today, handing out their hand fans and anti-violence literature as the crowds enter the front gate, as well as staffing their booth on the midway.

As good as some of the preceding acts were, the beats per minute stayed firmly in the “nod your head and bounce in place” range. But the tempo finally was upped to an inspiring head-banging frenzy with the 3:20 p.m. main-stage set by the L.A. hardcore punk duo No Age, and a sizable portion of the crowd responded in a spirited mosh pit.

On album, Randy Randall and Dean Allen Spunt can indulge in a fair amount of noise-rock experimentation. But like most smart punks, they know to stick to the basics on stage, dishing out adrenaline, adrenaline, and more adrenaline. Oh, and a rip-roaring cover of the Misfits’ “Hybrid Moments” to boot.

There really was just one word for what the band delivered: Ferocious. And, lord, was it needed at Pitchfork Day Two.

Rating for No Age: 8.8.

And then… back to the pointless, clichéd, mid-tempo electronic noodling. Was Manhattan’s arty electronic Gang Gang Dance as bad as Animal Collective in Grateful Dead mode Friday night? Almost. And at least Panda Bear and pals had a light show.

The set started out with about 10 minutes of grooveless beeps, squiggles, and synthesizer farts, and things only got marginally better when the drum machine kicked in. The utter lack of dynamic range, melodic ideas, rhythmic originality, or sonic diversity of any kind made the hourlong set easily seem six times as long.

Rating for Gang Gang Dance: 2.5.

My plan for Saturday had been to spare my intrepid colleague Althea Legaspi from having to leave the shade surrounding the second stage, but after Gang Gang Dance, I just wasn’t up for Destroyer. I didn’t have any expectations for this set being much better than the one at Pitchfork a few years back, especially after “Kaputt,” so I swapped with her for OFF! I desperately needed another dose of No Age-level energy.

Formed about two years ago, OFF! is an L.A. hardcore-punk supergroup comprising singer Keith Morris (Black Flag and the Circle Jerks), Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides), Mario Rubalcaba (Rocket From the Crypt), and the great Steven McDonald (Redd Kross). But the key word there is “hardcore,” and unlike pretty much every other supergroup in rock history, this one spends zero time resting on its members’ laurels.

In fact, OFF! spends zero time resting at all.

At past shows, Morris apparently has filled some of the time padding the group’s relatively short list of originals with a lot of stage patter. But that was kept to a minimum in Union Park as the band tore through one fierce but melodic burst of chaos after another. And what stage patter Morris did deliver was pretty funny.

“‘F*ck People’ is about, ‘F*ck people who text people on their cell phones while driving along, too important to show that they’re about to change lanes,’” Morris said, trying to explain exactly who he had been addressing in the pleasant little ditty the band had just played. “It’s about, ‘F*ck people who get in the 15 items or less line at the grocery store with 20 items.’ It’s not, ‘F*ck all you people,’ unless you’re one of those people. Then f*ck you!”

Ah, yes, this is exactly what Pitchfork 2011 needs! And Morris knew it, too.

“I really want to thank all of you for hanging out with us,” he said at the end of the set. “We’re kind of an odd flavor at the Pitchfork party.” Too true, too true.

Rating for OFF!: 9.4.

The problem with festival high points such as No Age and OFF! is that when the rest of the long, long day fails to measure up, the disappointment is all the more intense.

Some of the rest of Day 2 wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t that good.

With its mix of hard-hitting D.C. punk ala Jawbox and Fugazi and hints of R&B and hip-hop, Pitchfork the Webzine has credited the Dismemberment Plan, which broke up in 2003, as progenitors of the dance-punk explosion of more recent years. Hence anticipation was high in some corners for its reunion at the festival, but this was not one of those.

In the past, when it was pushing forward in a straightforward punk way, the group could be perfectly… O.K. But when it would break things down for a lazy beat-box interlude or experiment with more fonky grooves and snaky choruses, it generally lost the plot. The same held true as the band took the stage in Union Park, highlighting tunes from the recent reissue of “Emergency & I,” originally released in 1999, and the rest of its catalog.

Rating for the Dismemberment Plan: 4.1.

Though turntable artist DJ Shadow(Josh Davis) undeniably is brilliant at what he does—perhaps the best—booking him as the penultimate main-stage act was a big miscalculation. For one thing, his hypnotic breakbeats are really an excitement-building, night-ending sound. For another, there just isn’t much for 18,000 people in a hot dirt field to watch.

Shadow tried to make up for this with the weirdest stage set-up yet seen at Pitchfork (and yes, it even was stranger than the Flaming Lips’ sideshow circus). Taking a big cue from Lady Gaga, he started his set hidden behind a giant egg, which only turned around to expose him midway through. The problem was, we were supposed to be entertained by video projections on this large white orb during the time when we couldn’t see him. But at 7:30 p.m., and for quite some time after, the sun still was too bright to fully enjoy whatever images he was showing, so all was for naught.

Rating for DJ Shadow: 5.3.

Finally, it was time for Fleet Foxes to close things out. Though I love their new album “Helplessness Blues,” and was blown away by how their beautiful, multi-part harmonies held the crowd in hushed awe when they played a midday set at the Pitchfork Music Festival a few years ago, I was dubious that they could pull off one of the three key headlining slots. The music is just too intimate.

Some people clearly agreed: There was a steady exodus out the gate and down Ashland Avenue shortly after the Seattle musicians began. But other devout fans had been camped out in front of the green stage since 1 p.m. specifically to claim a prime position for their heroes, and they were rewarded with perfectly spellbinding renditions of the group’s delicate but captivating and haunting yet uplifting tunes.

While current Pitchfork raves Bon Iver deserve nothing but scorn and derision for their modern take on Bread or America, Fleet Foxes are a welcome reminder that not all of the folk-rock of the ’70s should be forgotten. Still, they just weren’t as much fun as OFF!

Rating for Fleet Foxes: 8.5.

Meanwhile, on the second stage, here are the reviews from my colleague Althea Legaspi

Chrissy Murderbot and Sun Airways

G-Side, Destroyer, and the Radio Department

Twin Shadow and Zola Jesus