Scratched Into Our Souls

This Week's Obsession: Thru You Just Blew My Mind

Music mashups have been around since 2002 or so (the Nirvana/Beyonce mashup "Smells Like Booty" is the first one I remember), and video mashups for nearly as long. But I've never seen anything like what Kutiman is doing with his Thru You series of videos, taking upwards of 20 YouTube videos from as many different musicians and weaving them together into something completely unique and—and this is the most important thing—musically and visually compelling.

For some reason, though, he doesn't allow you to embed the videos in your blog, which seems to—ahem—contradict the spirit of the project itself. Still, it's amazing stuff. Check it out.

Update: Kutiman doesn't have the embed code on his page, but (duh) the clips are on YouTube. Here's the first one, "The Mother of All Funk Chords":

Qtrax Finally Almost Ready, and Still, Nobody Cares

Announced almost a year ago to great fanfare, the Qtrax music service sounded like a great idea: In exchange for viewing a few ads, music fans can download music for free, legally! It was supposed to launch in January of 2008, but of course it didn't, even though the company says 300,000 users have been participating in its beta test. Word is now that version 1.0 of the software is just about ready, but forgive me if I'm not salivating over the prospect.

All four of the major labels are involved, which of course means that the service will be seriously flawed. It only works with Windows machines, because the tracks will use Windows Media digital rights management that will track usage and prevent users from sharing the music with others -- and from playing it on iPods. (It's not clear if you can burn the tracks to CDs.) So Mac users can't use Qtrax, and the PC users who can will be limited in how they can use the music. I know, I know...whaddya want for nothin', right? Maybe this is the labels' way at getting back at Apple for forcing them to abandon DRM in the iTunes store, but with the foothold that iTunes and the iPod have, I can't see Qtrax being successful.