Gearfuse

Oh shit! If you’re one of the suckers consumers that pays for tracks on iTunes, your world is about to get flipped upside down. Starting April 7th, Apple will charge more than $.99 for songs with popular tracks shooting up to $1.29. This, according to the LA Times, has been in the works for awhile and Apple has apparently let record labels know when the change goes into effect.

Everyone is predicting it’ll be a fiasco and a half if Apple follows through with the change in pricing. As for me, I’ll stick to Bit Torrent thank you very much.

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“The British are coming! The British are coming!”

Those words are running through every Best Buy employee’s mind right now as they prepare both mentally and physically for the upcoming release of The Beatles: Rock Band. Thank goodness their label, Apple Corps, decided to go with the Rock Band series and not Guitar Hero. Better interface, better equipment and better songs.

The best part about this release? You’ll be able to pick up a $250 set that features instruments modeled after The Beatles’ very own, including Paul McCartney’s signature Hofner bass. The worst part about this release? You’ll have to wait until September 9th to purchase it. Damn!

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According to Billboard, the ever-popular Rock Band is due to get “as many as 5000″ new tracks this year via downloadable content. The report comes as I completed “…And Justice For All” on Expert at 100% last night. Harmonix has already released over 500 songs for the Rock Band series, putting it way above the number of tracks Guitar Hero: World Tour offers. But for Harmonix to meet the 5000 mark, it would need to release over 90 tracks each week for the rest of the year.

I don’t really see that happening, but hey, 2000 new songs is perfectly OK with me. Just stop charging $1.99 for a fuckin’ song!

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Here’s video of a crew of people setting up 49 microwave ovens to play the classic Christmas tune, “Jingle Bells.” It’s not 100% fluid, but nonetheless an impressive feat. I wonder how much planning it took to figure out how to sync them all up…

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Love it or hate it, the Zune isn’t the hit Microsoft hoped that it would be. The current $14.95 a month Zune Pass subscription model hasn’t been attracting enough subscribers, so in an effort to generate more revenue, Microsoft will offer subscribers 10 free tracks to keep each month. 10 free songs a month isn’t a bad idea, but it’s not enough to really lure in a whole new audience. Says Adam Sohn of Microsoft:

Microsoft marketing director Adam Sohn said that Microsoft saw some boost when it targeted its advertising specifically around subscriptions but said that the total number of subscribers is less than the company would like.

“It’s not grown as fast as we’d like it so we think this will give it a shot in the arm,” Sohn said, declining to say how many Zune Pass subscribers Microsoft currently has.

I give the Zune another 12 to 16 months before Microsoft pulls the plug. What say you?

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Tonight, MySpace kicked off its new commercial free music service which doesn’t include any of that bullshit DRM business.  Using its ever popular Flash player, users can purchase songs or add them to a playlist. It’s now possible to create a streaming playlist of as many as 100 songs each that can be shared and ranked.  MySpace music will also offer on-demand, ad-subsidized playback of full tracks in addition to allowing users to purchase unprotected MP3s of songs through Amazon.

Could MySpace music be another competitor for iTunes? It’s certainly looking that way. Just wait until Facebook joins with iTunes commercially. The “Great Social Networking” war is upon us.

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That’s right, you read correctly: Activision is considering a subscription service to deliver monthly releases of fresh songs for Guitar Hero players.

Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith explained:

Looking even further out, we’re exploring new models, like an annual pass subscription where players can subscribe and get a certain number of songs downloadable each month.

As of now, no specific details regarding the subscription information or potential tracks for download has been released. However, Activision is sure that this subscription service will be successful because there is no better time to milk the franchise while it’s still fresh in everyones brains. All Guitar Hero fans want is more songs and nothing more.

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Japanese mobile phone operator, NTT DoCoMo is experimenting with this mind boggling approach to mobile device control that’s sure to give anyone an eye headache worse than TV coming through your glasses. How does it work? Firstly, no hands are needed. Simply move your eyes up or down to raise volume, accordingly. To skip a track, look right twice. Currently, they only have this technology controlling a mobile music player by sensing the electric fields eyes make when they move. In the future, who knows what this form of control could be used for?

Listening to the latest and greatest Josh Groban hits? Turn that shit up. All it takes is looking up. Say there is a bird flying overhead and you just so happened to be listening to the loudest death metal, ever. You look up, the volume raises and you’re officially halfway to becoming Helen Keller. You’ll then be forced to listen to tunes with the Shake-Up headphones, which is more buzzing and vibrating than any Justice song you’ve ever heard.

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So you’ve heard of Guitar Hero and its recent release of its second iteration on the PS2. If not, just think of Dance Dance Revolution (DRR), and Guitar Hero is DDR for rockers. So while the release of Guitar Hero 2 isn’t news anymore, the ability to do custom songs definately is. The people at the Scorehero forums have figured out how to go around the system and code their own note charts and import mp3s to play along to. Think you wanna try? Look at this:

Step 4. Get an .mp3 of the song in question. If one is freely available, it may have been provided by the song creator, if not you will need to rip it from the CD or buy it from Itunes.

Step 5. Insert your GH2 disc into your DVD drive, copy the contents of the disc to a folder on your hard drive.

Step 6. Open Guitar Hero Explorer (Ghex), Go to file —> add archive and locate your MAIN_0.ARK file which is in the “GEN” folder you copied from the GH2 disc

If that looks exciting to you, go ahead. The prospect of playing Metalica and Bullet For My Valentine makes just about any metalhead wish they knew how to attack the technical knowhow required to get through the 8 programs and 12 steps to do your custom importing of data. Soooo, is it legal? Doesn’t look like it, you need a “modified” PS2 to play these “backups”. Video after the jump.

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