Next Katie Melua’s album, Secret Symphony, is now planned for March. Following the two latest (and deceptive) ones, this one brings back the initial producer, who will provide some new songs, besides covers of other artists’s songs that content will consist most of.
We can still listen to one, Gold in Them Hills.
Category Archives: Music / Movies
Sword & Sworcery : digital album
The soundtrack from Sword & Sworcery is available at download for 8,21$ (27 tracks) in various formats (MP3 320kbit/s, AAC and even FLAC). The songs are also provided through streaming in full length.
iTunes Store : soon 24 bit
The iTunes Music Store may soon provide 24 bit encoded songs (that is the standard for mastering these days, and it had also been used in 90s for some albums/compilations of some famous artists (a 24 bit to 16 bit dithering was used for CD media).
However it still won’t be lossless, and as stated in a comment the better headroom (additional dynamic range left for mixing before clipping) – noise floor not being anymore a problem with converters these last years – is of few use since music editors keep maxing out the level (using a compressor).
I indeed had to use a limiter to rise MJ Style’s album audio level (a compressor would have produced a pumping effect if applied after the original mix’s reverb), in order to ensure it being close to other songs at the iTunes Store. The result was a somewhat mechanical sounding beat for snare (levelled due to the use of a limiter).
Sarah McLachlan : Laws of Illusion
New album of Sarah McLachlan, Laws of Illusion, has been available for close to two weeks. The sound is great (very warm and strong piano, that reminds Galaxy Vintage D or Roland’s Complete Piano), and one song distinguishes from the whole, Love Come, also provided as a solo piano version.
What seems uncommon is that we can listen to the full songs at deezer.
Katie Melua : The House
New album from Katie Melua, The House, has been available for some weeks (we can listen to wav samples here). While we understand the idea for change (as her latest album was deceiving), and we can agree that the new gothic (symphonic metal) way seems an interesting/promising one, there isn’t many songs to remember yet in the new album (that is however based on samples listening and The Flood clip).
Work on sound is nice however, and first reviews seem positive.
We may better listen to Live At the O2 Arena, that provides nice version of previous songs (22 songs at iTunes Store, at a somewhat cheap price).
MJ Style : full listening for a few days
MJ Style album is available as full preview (streaming) for a few days ! That is here (through the Zimbalam player). However you are not allowed to record the tracks nor to share these (only streaming).
Update : despite full length streaming is setted in the Zimbalam player configuration, playing stops 20s from the end of each song (well, that is still 4 or 5 minutes of free listening for each). You may then get the (non free but full length) songs from iTunes.
iTunes 9 : create an iMix from ITMS
Since iTunes 9 we cannot anymore drag and drop songs from ITMS to iTunes library, if we didn’t have buyed them before (it then limits creating iMix). There however exists a workaround :
- from the ITMS home, click on the Browse link (in the Quick Links area, up and right, under the Open a session link).
- in the columns views, choose Music, then genre and sub-genre (choose All for the later), artist, and album.
- in the bottom view drag and drop the songs to the Library.
- create a new playlist and add the songs from the library into the playlist.
- select the playlist and click on the icon (right arrow) that now displays.
- choose Create an iMix in the dialog.
The iMix will be published at best in the following 15 minutes. Through your account section, click on the “Manage the iMix” link to display your submitted imixes, and then on an imix link. Then click on “Display all imix from this user” link to check for avaibility.
To reach the global iMix section, search for imix, then click on imix link under “Related” (on the left).
Note : you can only post imix to the store corresponding to your account country. You have to create additional users to release imix to other stores.
Zimbalam Flash player update
Zimbalam updated its Flash player, as we can see here. The interface is more polished and intuitive, and allows to easily browse albums.
Tory Story 3 new trailer
A new interesting trailer of Toy Story 3 is available at Apple site. The movie is expected this June.
5 years site anniversary
The first news at Cjed Audio Home site was written just 5 years ago. Since, more than 3000 news/articles have been published, and Cjed music downloads at musique-libre (Dogmazic) reached 200 000, without counting direct access.
Most of the previously available 70 songs have been temporarily deactivated (only 4 are still downloadable), in order to give focus on MJ Style album.
There are still about 90 percent unreleased songs (700 total) to be discovered (first were composed in 1987).
MJ Style available at iTunes Music Stores
MJ Style is now available at most iTunes Music Stores (appeared 12 hours ago in countries located in ahead timezones, and should since be displayed at European and American stores).
I discovered that when searching for Cjed using the upper-right search field, the displayed page lists songs in the wrong order. The reason seems that is lists all songs from all albums for the artist, and so the numbers don’t correspond to tracks numbers (and have then more to do with the order of songs’s database records). By clicking on the artist’s name/link on the left side (Artists area), the album’s songs list is ordered fine again (the same when clicking on the album’s name).
This is here for access to the Zimbalam player (that also provides a direct link to the iTunes Music Store). On mac, the Flash version used by the plugin seems to produce some artifacts at some samples start (ok on PC), however they play fine at iTunes Music Store.
MJ Style : J-10 and iTunes exclusive
There is now only 10 days left before release of MJ Style at the iTunes Music Store. The decision of being iTunes exclusive was made in order to provide the best audio quality (AAC 256 kbits – MP3 on other stores), the easiest user experience, the safest investment (ITMS has been here since first days) and security for customers, and to avoid sales split over many marketplaces. Moreover I didn’t want to promote subscription-based platforms, that aren’t an artistic way of buying music, nor recent marketplaces that got exclusive agreements from majors (not available to Apple, that was forced to keep DRMs for a long time, and more recently to increase the price of new single releases).
From a full album (9,99$ or euros) I will get 5,40 euros net income : then there will have to be at least 11 full albums sales for me to become profitable (30 euros are required to put a release online, and the same amount for removing it if needed).
