Eric R. Danton | Sound Check

Merge opens an online store

While the major record labels continue to flounder, the indies are showing brains and adaptability: Merge Records, for example, today announced it will begin selling mp3s and lossless FLAC files through its own digital store.

"While we still view physical record stores as our favorite place to buy (and sell) music, for those who prefer to get their music digitally, we want to make the experience as close as it can be to 'the real thing' with all the convenience and speed of a download," reads an e-mail from the North Carolina label.

Along with releases by Merge bands including the Arcade Fire and Spoon, the label's online store will feature exclusive, rare and otherwise out-of-print offerings, starting March 4 with "Superchunk Clambake Series Volume One: Acoustic in-stores East and West," released in its original form in 2002 as a super-limited edition of 1,500 copies.

Merge promises that its downloads will soon come complete with full album art and liner notes.

Nine Inch Nails releases digital 'Ghosts'

Nine Inch Nails leader Trent Reznor took viral marketing to a new level last year with "Year Zero," his creepy vision of a dystopian United States.

For a follow-up, he's releasing "Ghosts I-IV," a four-volume collection of 36 instrumental tracks Reznor recorded over 10 weeks last fall. He's expanding upon the Radiohead model by making the collection available in a few different configurations from the Nine Inch Nails website:

• Free: The first nine songs are available as a free, high-quality download, which also includes a 40 page PDF and the "digital extras pack": various wallpapers, icons, and graphics tools for your computer, website or profile.
• $5: All 36 tracks, available in a variety of digital formats, including high-quality mp3 and lossless FLAC files, as well as the digital extras.
• $10: All of the above, plus two audio CDs to be shipped, presumably, when that particular configuration becomes available April 8.
• $75 deluxe edition: Hardcover book holding 2 audio CDs, 1 data DVD of all 36 tracks in multi-track format (in .wav files readable by Mac and Windows), and Blu-ray disc featuring stereo recordings in high-definition 24 bit 96Khz with an exclusive slide show.
• $300 deluxe edition: Includes everything above, along with four 180-gram vinyl LPs, two limited edition Giclee prints available exclusively in this package. The disc book, art book and prints are all housed in a fabric slipcover, and the 4XLP vinyl set comes in its own fabric slipcover. This one is limited to 2,500 pieces, numbered and signed by Reznor.

"Ghosts I-IV" is also available April 8 as a regular 4xLP vinyl set for $39.

"I've been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn't have made sense until this point," Reznor writes on the "Ghosts" section of the NIN website. "This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective — dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams."

Arcade Fire looks in rorrim kcalb

This is pretty cool, as a feat of web engineering if nothing else: The Arcade Fire allows you to create your own mix of the song "Black Mirror" on this website, which plays a surreal marooned-at-sea video above six toggle switches that allow viewers to turn the various instrumental tracks on and off.

Want to hear Win Butler sing accompanied only by drums? You can do that. Curious to study the piano part by itself? You can do that, too. Trying different combinations yields some pretty trippy sounds, and it's a great way to waste time.

Metromix clamps on the beer goggles

I wasn't planning to write about Metromix, the nightlife and entertainment website Tribune Co. launched in Connecticut earlier in October — my colleague Roger Catlin was acidic enough about it for the both of us.

It's not that I'm a big supporter: Tribune, owner of The Courant, could have poured all that money into expansive online versions of the CAL section or the Hartford Advocate, which it also owns, and built up established brands instead of introducing and marketing yet another website. It didn't, fair enough, national advertising platform, blah blah blah.

But now the company has thrown away even more money on a PR firm to plug Metromix (to me, among others) with a press release that begins:

New Pornographers thrown down gauntlet

It's so on: In accordance with the name of the band's new album, "Challengers," the New Pornographers have issued the first of four YouTube Challenges, with the others coming in subsequent weeks. The winner (or winners? It's not really clear) receives an iPhone.

The first challenge: Create a dance, based on a New Pornographers song. And, ya know, videotape it so the band can view it. You can also challenge the band to perform a task, though the musicians reserve the right to refuse. "We probably won't accept," says Blaine Thurier, in the introductory video below, followed by the video detailing the first challenge.

Introduction

Challenge 1

Computer virus targets mp3s

All those awesome hard-to-find remixes you've been trolling the Web for all these years? They're in jeopardy from a new computer virus that targets mp3 files, NME.com reports.

The virus, a worm called W32.deletemusic, infects and sorts through computer hard drives and attached external drives and memory cards and deletes all the mp3 files it finds.

Watch, the RIAA will have thought this up as an anti-piracy measure. (We kid, we kid. But still ...)

There's a free virus scanner here that can detect the worm.

V Casting with Song ID

As cellphones, mp3 players and appointment books merge into all-knowing digital devices, the array of features they offer is sometimes overwhelming, if not outright overkill. Alarm clock? Good. Tip calculator? OK. Storing your entire library of music and photos on your phone? Too far.

Amid all the clutter, though, Verizon Wireless has slipped an intriguing application into its V Cast phones: Song ID. It's a free way to identify an unfamiliar song and who sings it. Then, if you're so inclined, you can pay $1.99 to download the song or a ringtone version of it to your phone. (That's a buck more than most digital song services, but the price also includes a second version of the song you can download to your computer.)

To promote this service, Verizon Wireless provided a loaner phone (my own cellphone is saddled with technological limitations). So, with a borrowed LG enV in hand — that's the kind with the flip-down QWERTY keyboard for nimble-thumbed text-message aficionados — I've spent the past couple weeks playing around with Song ID.

Forged in the seedy clubs ...

If you're a music geek who daydreams by thinking up fictional band names, you're in luck: This band-bio generator might be the greatest online waste of time since Snood.

Just enter a few biographical details, click on the "generate bio" button and behold! A backstory that's as good as a lot of the PR bios that show up in my inbox. Hit "regenerate" and get multiple versions.

This is awesome. Thanks, Bumbershoot! (And thanks, Flannery, for the link.)

AARP: Not too old to rock 'n' roll

With all the web-based music options available, from Pandora to Rhapsody and a bunch in between, it seems redundant at best for the AARP to jump into the arena with its own version.

Yet the gigantic lobby for the over-50 crowd today launches AARP Jukebox (essentially a modified take on Pandora) with customized "radio stations" featuring the favorite music of celebrities like Joss Stone, Patti LaBelle and Corinne Bailey Rae.

A press release describes the endeavor as "the latest step in a broader effort by AARP to use the power of music to build on a strong emotional connection with its members."

What's on your DoddPod?

One of the profiles on the "Cool New People" feature looked awfully familiar the other day while I was dithering around on MySpace.

That's right, Chris Dodd is makin' friends online. And not just through MySpace: Connecticut's senior senator has a Facebook page, too.

This is indescribably awesome, not least because his MySpace page links to ... his iPod play lists!

The DoddPod (No. Way.) includes standard Boomer fare like James Taylor, Eric Clapton, the Doobie Brothers and Steppenwolf, along with less obvious choices, such as pop songstress Anna Nalick, '90s pop-rockers Smash Mouth, country singer Radney Foster and melancholy Brit-rockers Keane.

Now you can get in on the action, too, by suggesting songs the senator should hear. Recent recommendations have included Jewel, Dave Matthews Band, Ben Lee and the Dead Kennedys. Dodd might pass on the latter band, given his friendship with Ted Kennedy (who also has a MySpace page).

My full-album recommendations for Sen. Dodd: "London Calling" by the Clash, "The Revolution Starts ... Now" by Steve Earle and "Year Zero" by Nine Inch Nails — all protest albums that every presidential candidate should take to heart.

And Senator, how about giving these a try?