Aurgasm

Friends, it’s been a while. Aurgasm launched in 2004 and soon after was one of the top 50 music blogs online, with thousands of music lovers visiting daily.

But things change. The posts have slowed down. And over the past 4 months, most posts were totally missing. (Sorry about that, but I’ve now painstakingly restored as much as I could!)

We don’t plan to post new artists, but the site will stay online for you.

Also, if you’d enjoy a more varied tour on the past 14 years of Aurgasm, you can now poke through the archive in random order:

➡ http://aurgasm.us/?random

Hugs and hearts to all the Aurgasm fans out there. 💖

I’m heading with Aurgasm friend, Adam, to Europe for three weeks in July.

Right after we land, we’re hitting up the Dour Festival in Belgium.

Totally psyched about this. We plan to bring you the same sort of broad coverage that we did for SXSW. Go check their lineup and yell at us if there’s anyone there we need to see.

We got our train passes

After the festival, we’re planning on meeting up with my brother in Stuttgart and taking the train around quite a bit. Right now we’re planning on hitting Amsterdam, Stuttgart, Prague, Olomouc, Krakow and Budapest. And then maybe Zagreb or Rijeka, Croatia, or Cluj, Romania, or somewhere else?

If anyone has suggestions for what to do or see, or any nearby cities, please leave a comment. (I might email you back) If you live in one of these spots, I’d love your perspective and we should definitely meet up for a drink!

Can I get some music, please?

Why, certainly :) Dub FX, is a beatbox artist who street performs all over Europe. Watching him construct one of his multilayered compositions is impressive—he throws some pitch-shifted bass underneath ethereal treble highlights and solid hip-hop vocals:

Four and a half years after its inception, Aurgasm is now sporting some new looks. I worked together with designer Tom Kershaw to craft a more engaging, more rich, and more 2009 look. Larger imagery, a fresh identity, and enhanced visual clarity join the usable music listening experience you’ve gotten used to.

This redesign is a gift from us at Aurgasm to you, our faithful readers. We truly enjoy sharing music with you. We hope you like the design. I’m still ironing out some bugs, but please leave a comment if you see something out of sorts.

Thanks!

As far as I know, Aurgasm was the first mp3 blog to introduce an mp3 player embedded on the site. Not trying to brag, just providing a little history. But now, after a few years and much thought, we’ve switched over to a new player, the Yahoo Media Player.

This new player has a playlist, floats along the page as you move, and has a bit more functionality than the old ‘n busted play button. Click around!

This little button: will appear to the left of all mp3s on the site. Click to immediately play that track.

Yahoo will be improving the experience based on your feedback, so let’s hear it! Leave a comment why you like it, why you hate it, wish it would do ___, or anything. Thanks!

Update (2008.07.24): I’ve updated to the newest version of the player.

This tidbit of news rolled in last week, so let me first say Welcome to the new readers!

And even better, they might actually consider Aurgasm in the Top 10, along with classy joints like Apartment Therapy, ArsTechnica, and BoingBoing. But probably definitely it’s just an alphabetical listing. ;-) But still, we’re honored.

And thank you to all of Aurgasm’s faithful. You guys keep this ship asail!

Three weeks ago, I fired off an email to the IFPI, who had ordered a DMCA takedown notice for the entirety of Aurgasm’s music.

Through some back-n-forth, I was informed that the IFPI’s complaint was only addressing three songs, not all of the music. (In particular, they didn’t like the An Pierlé and the Lily Allen music being shared.) I decided to seek permission for those two artists with which I could then file a counter-notification back at the IFPI. I tried getting in touch with An Pierlé’s management at PIAS/Helicopter, but a response never came from the contact points I found. Lily’s representation proved a little more accessible. Although they did give me permission; it was granted reluctantly and only for a week’s time.

Now, since the complaint was regarding three songs, I could reinstate the rest of the music archive. For now, I’m going to hold off on that and continue to post music we have explicit permission to share. I’m going to be making a few upgrades to Aurgasm quite soon that will improve the whole experience for music fans and copyright holders. Stay tuned.

In Other News

I’ve learned that Aurgasm got a shout-out in Britain’s National Newspaper of the Year, The Guardian. We were mentioned in the sidebar about soul music blogs in The Guardian Guide this last Saturday, Nov 19. It’s not online and my local libraries don’t have it, so if any of my British brethren can hook me up with a scan of it, I’d be most appreciative.

Update! Updates!

(11/22) My good man Duncan hooked me up with a scan of the pages. (Thank you!) Check em out:

(11/27) …and we just got in a scan of Southwest Airline’s in-flight magazine Spirits, who ran an article on mp3 blogs. Aurgasm and a few of my excellent brothers were included:

Since Aurgasm’s launch over two years ago, I have been putting all of aurgasm’s mp3s in this folder called /tracks/. If you had pulled it up in your web browser, it was a directory listing of all the music I’ve posted for the past 6-8 months. What you may consider a treasure trove for you, the IFPI (essentially a worldwide RIAA) considered it a violation of the DMCA. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act is what the RIAA uses to sue dead grandmas without computers, claiming they’re sharing mp3s.

So what happened the other day?

Thursday, the IFPI contacted my webhost and had them remove all the mp3s on my site. No further legal action is being taken (that’s a good thing), but all of aurgasm’s music is gone for the moment.

…and thank you.

I appreciate the outpour of support everyone has given. Fellow bloggers have been educated by my mistakes and supportive of my plight. Aurgasm’s readers have eager to help; offering to document their purchases that came from this site and more. For the moment, be comfortable and sit tight. Things will hopefully return to normal quickly.

So what now?

Aurgasm will continue to feature your favorite music you’ve never heard, but we’ll be thorough in obtaining permission to share the music we need to share. Up to now, a good portion of the music on Aurgasm has been posted with artists’ (or their representatives’) consent, though not all. I am eager to put Aurgasm’s music back online, but need to first get legal consent from all artists to share their wares. I’m in the midst of communications with the IFPI to rectify the situation.

With sage advice from EJ of Loudersoft, I fired off this email to the IFPI this morning:

To Whom It May Concern:

1) I have permission from the record label, PR company or the artist directly for many of the tracks posted on my site. Additionally, some of them are not copyrighted whatsoever, therefore it’s unlawful to claim to represent the copyright for all of them.
2) If there are any specific examples of tracks that you consider to be in violation, you are required under U.S. jurisdiction to provide me with complete and full disclosure of the specific offending items.
3) If you fail to respond to this with the appropriate information on or before November 1st, 2006, I will assume that the IFPI is withdrawing their DMCA complaint, that it has no further merit, and that I am exempt from future action on this claim.

-Paul Irish
http://aurgasm.us

Stay tuned for more music and hopefully less drama. :)

We have received a formal DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice
regarding allegedly infringing content hosted on your site. The specific
items in question are as follows:

The party making the complaint (International Federation of the
Phonographic Industry), claims under penalty of perjury to be or
represent the copyright owner of these works. Pursuant to 17 U.S.C. §
512(c), we have removed access to the files in question.

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