Or, more accurately, free Beatles and Metallica mash-ups. Some of you may hiss at me for writing about Beatallica, a spoof band that came out way back in 2001 that combines music from… the Beatles and Metallica! But with those new remastered Beatles Albums just released, it’s possible Beatallica has become more relevant again (or so I hope).
For those not familiar with Beatallica, the band takes the message and theme of famous Beatles songs (like “Let it Be”) and modifies the tone to match Metallica’s sound (”The Thing That Should Not Be”), ending up with a usually hilarious song influenced …read more

The New York Times recently came with an infograph charting different kinds of media and the sales they’ve enjoyed. Here’s a breakdown of each medium and their respective peak years and sales for those respective years:

Medium
Peak Year
Sales (in Billion $)

8-Track
1978
3.1

Cassette
1988
6.1

LP/EP
1978
8.1

CD
1999
16.4

Download Album
2008
0.6

Download Single
2008
1

The first impression that the graph leaves is that digital downloads are killing the music industry, as relatively lackluster sales are hurting the machinery needed to get our favorite tunes out.
To be fair though, it’s not clear if that was the RIAA or the NYT’s intent. It’s worth noting the chart paints a clear trend: the sales of older …read more

DOS users know this: setting up a sound card during the dark ages of DOS and Windows 3.1 was a chore. Aside from physically inserting the card yourself, you had to struggle with IRQs and DMAs. And the only real audio hardware around were probably branded Creative.
Now we can tell our grandchildren about how hard it was for us, as they roll their eyes and plug in an X-Fi Go! into their computer. The X-Fi Go! is basically a sound card that fits into, and powered by, a USB port. And it also acts as a 1GB flash drive to …read more