UniqueTracks has added a new purchase-and-download option to its CD pages. Instead of waiting for your CDs to arrive through the post or DHL, you can now license and access the complete CD immediately using our MP3 Download option.

What’s great about full-album downloads, besides saving shipping time, is that you also get the deep discount pricing that we offer on all of our CD sets.

This feature will help media producers who are near deadline and need music tracks quickly. It’s also beneficial to our international customers because by downloading the complete albums, they’ll save shipping time and also Customs duty charges.

With UniqueTracks new Album-Download option, you can now purchase and immediately download a complete CD in MP3 format to your computer.

Pack Discounts

You can also download our popular four-volume Packs. These packs offer a 15% to 25% discount over standard single volume CD pricing. When you use the MP3 Download option to select the volumes in a pack, the shopping cart will immediately discount your cart by that pack’s discount percentage. This way you can download complete UniqueTracks Packs and receive the same discounted pricing.

Further MP3 Discounts

If you’d like to license individual tracks from several CD sets and create your own custom collection, you can do that and now receive special discounted pricing.

When you place 8 individual tracks in your shopping cart, the cart will immediately discount your total by 20%. Placing 10 or more tracks in your cart will trigger a 25% discount.

This simulates the deep discount pricing we offer with our album sets but lets you, in effect, create your own custom CD. You can even choose to have us burn and ship the CD to you.

album+download, mp3+download, music library, royalty+free+music, uniquetracks

We have added a Wish List on all UniqueTracks product pages. The Wish List is handy because often when you’re searching for music, you’re looking at several tracks and several different sites. Now, when you find a track you like, save it to your Wish List - the Wish List will remember your choices and when you return to the UniqueTracks site, you’ll be able to easily find your tracks again.

Each item placed in the Wish List lets you add your own comments about the song. You can even e-mail a copy of your Wish List to colleagues or clients showing your choices. They can then log on to your Wish List and listen to the tracks you’ve picked for them. This is especially useful when a client is not located close by.

This link to our Themescapes CD page shows the Wish List located directly under the picture of the CD.

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I’ve been watching Steve Jobs’ keynote address at the recent 2006 MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. As always, there are a lot of great new enhancements to Apple products.

Of special interest to me was the new Podcast studio, an addition to Apple’s GarageBand software .

The new GarageBand includes a built-in Speech Enhancer which optimizes sound for your gender and vocal range, improving the sound of your voice and simulating a professional microphone, even when you’re not using one. And a dynamic “ducking” effect automatically reduces music volume when you speak, so your listeners always hear the talk above the tunes. These are features common in radio stations and radio production studios so it’s quite a nice addition to the package.

If you are a PC user or if you’d like to view another similar product, check out M-Audio’s Podcast Factory. M-Audio is a company that creates professional music studio products. Though I have not used Podcast Factory, I personally use and recommend many M-Audio products.

UniqueTracks royalty free music is fully compatible with either of these products.

I’m wondering if any of you use GarageBand for podcasting. It does seem very easy to get up and running with a podcast very fast.

One thing about GarageBand that has always bothered me is its name.

A true garage band really is something that emerges spontaneously from a group of friends’ love of music - it’s not a software package - it’s a bunch of people who learn to make music together the old fashioned way, by actually rehearsing and playing it, trying things over and over, arguing, learning what works, learning to cooperate - becoming musicans in the process. There is a rawness, honesty and authenticity to the sound of a real garage band.

In fact Steve Van Zant (Springsteen E Street member) has a critically acclaimed radio show devoted solely to “garage” music. Little Steven’s Underground Garage. You can bet none of the music broadcast on this show was made using Apple’s GarageBand.

Instead of the garage, Apple should have turned to areas of the home where this product actually gets used - like the bedroom or the kitchen table or the den.

If you have experience with GarageBand, please post it here. Let me know if you have created a successful podcast or any other project.

apple, garageband software, garage band, macworld, m audio, podcast, podcasting, professional microphone, professional music, radio production, royalty free music, sound of your voice, steve jobs keynote

I received Bruce Springsteen’s remastered Born to Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set CD/DVD this Christmas. The DVD is a full length concert film showing a performance by Springsteen and the E Street Band in their first date outside the U.S. at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in November 1975.

Listening and watching this concert you get the sense of how glorious this band was. What strikes me most is the difference between the power of a real “band” and all the digital studio effects and wizardry we music creators have at our fingertips today.

This band grooves so hard, like nothing I’ve heard in rock music certainly in the last 10 years or so. The closest act I can think of to what the E Street Band manages here is Prince’s band circa Sign ‘O’ the Times. Even the idea of what a “groove” is has changed to a point where it is now considered something that you purchase and import into your digital sampler.

I like the digital music tools we have today but I think the ease with which we can create audio tracks has caused us to forget just what great music is made of. The Springsteen concert audio is pretty raw, it’s not a great “recording” but through all the audio non-perfections this spirit, this holy-rolling sound comes through and it completely transports the listener.

The E-Street Band for all its size can turn on a dime. If Bruce hangs on a note longer than usual the band follows. Compare this to acts today that have pre-recorded backing tracks (like in hip hop or most pop music). These bands have no nuance because the “band” is on tape. The performance relies only on the charisma of the “star” but the accompaniment cannot contribute because it is frozen in time.

The best argument I can think of against this trend in modern music is this new concert video on the new Born to Run re-release.

You can see and hear a clip from the concert on Amazon Born to Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set

bruce springsteen, digital+music+tools, digital+sampler, e+street+band, great+recording, springsteen+concert