Your Favorite Indie Music, Your Way ALL The Time on Amaldo.Com

Amaldo.Com is very excited to announce our partnership with Reg’s Coffeehouse. For those of you who haven’t heard of Scott Register, he’s that little DJ in Alabama who discovered the likes of Dido and John Mayer (you might have heard of them) and Reg’s Coffeehouse is his site.

Anyways, every week I eagerly (like a giddy school girl, “eager”) head over to Reg’s Coffehouse.com to hear his weekly show which he broadcasts every Sunday and uploads every Wednesday. He also posts a playlist for this show in case you don’t have time to actually listen but still want to see what’s hip in the way of  indie, alt-folk acoustic music out there.

So how does this translate to Amaldo.Com? Well, weekly I’ll be posting Reg’s playlists (on the blog and on our homepage) and his blog content on this site and from what I can see, you can’t access that content on his site anymore. So if you want to know what Reg is thinking in the way of his current music picks and crushes (musically speaking of course) then you’ll have to come here.

Did I mention we’re so totally musically geeked out to have Reg on board? Even if his logo does remind us a bit of the Starbucks logo… Be sure to keep checking back here throughout the day to see this week’s playlist. We promise it’s that good.

Saving Pandora

As I’ve written previously, I’m a music junkie: an office drone by day and a music PR machine by night and lunch hours. In other words, I’m always scouting out the freshest talent in the pool of indie folk acoustic singer/songwriters to be inspired by. I discovered Joshua Radin a few years back and even interviewed him, which was a blast. For the past six months or six, it’s been Ray LaMontagne and anything I find over at Reg’s Coffeehouse.

What you may not know about me is I’m not only interested in finding new music, but how music is transmitted via the internet. Back in September of last year, I attended a Pandora town hall meeting at MIT hosted by Pandora owner Tim Westergren. I later interviewed Tim and found his commitment to providing his subscribers with free quality music inspiring. As a former musician, Westergren had spent many years as an aspiring musician before founding his company.

Pandora is a free internet music provider and one of the best ways to find new musicians. You input your favorite musicians and it streams not only those musicians, but finds others that you might liked through something called the Music Genome Project. I’ve turned many people on to the site and they are always grateful.

So now comes the sad part. Pandora is in danger of shutting down due to Copyright Royalty Boards which would raise music royalties by 300 to 1200 percent. For most webcasters the new royalties exceed their revenue and they simply will go bankrupt and stop webcasting. Not only is this legislation bad for Pandora, but it’s bad for other companies/local music radio stations and translates to you not getting to sample or hear free music.

Did I mention it’s dumb for the music lobbies too because now people who might actually pay money for an album (whose sales are dropping dramatically) won’t be as inclined to since they aren’t sampling and those who download free music off the internet will continue to do so and cut into label profit. In short, they are punishing the people who might actually spend dollars on music. And these people will react by not wasting money on albums we feel bullied into buying.

As a rule, I’m against petitions and/or pleas for that matter, but I think this one warrants some serious attention on your part.

Music To Listen To: FEIST

The New York Times has turned me onto a new folk indie singer/songstress. I dare even say she might get me out of my current crush mode which has me incapable of enjoying any female sound (even my own) that’s not Regina Spektor.

Leslie Feist is emerging from her indie darling days in Canada and France to become quite the hot ticket and I’m happy for this. There’s a lot of great talent out there in the way of indie folk acoustic songstresses, but Feist (she goes simply by her last name) is pure zeitgeist. (sorry for the pun) And for that I’m qualifying her as my current crush.
Sorry Regina. And Sorry Jenny.

A girl’s gotta keep trekking forward…

Song Starter Kit: “Let It Die,” (slow, moody sultry undertones); “1234” (lighter, poppier car music); “My Mood My Man” (just fun!)

You Are My Sweetest Downfall Regina Spektor

I love my husband. I love his taste in music, some of the time. We both dig folk/acoustic music and this genre predominantly serves as the glue/bridge in our musical tastes and maybe even our marriage. Ok, so that’s an exaggeration, but really in those moments when you’re exhausted from the day’s work and the last thing you want to do is engage another human being vocally or verbally, music is the opiate of the household. It’s a way of bonding without having to say a thing. What could be better?

The first time I heard Regina Spektor was a few years back from a friend of mine, who mostly occupies himself with getting advanced degrees in Biology but is nonetheless always on the cutting edge for indie/alt music. I was immediately drawn to this tiny Russian Jewish girl with bright red curly hair who could not only play piano (and quite well I might add) but had a voice that was so unique it stopped me dead in my blogging tracks. All I wanted to do was listen to “Soviet Kitsch” 24/7 and tell everyone about this girl.

Skip ahead three years and Regina plays sold-out performances in major venues everywhere, most recently in Israel and her music, much to my chagrin, can be heard on shows like CSI New York and Grey’s Anatomy. While it’s only a matter of time before Cold Case gets wind of how fitting Spektor’s music would be for one of their episodes, I don’t begrudge Spektor her commercial success. I only worry that one of these days she’ll get too trendy for my own liking. I guess in the meantime there’s always that other Jewish girl whose music I’m crushing on. She’s just so very Frecha…

Originally posted on Jewlicious.