Who the hell is Richard Marx? Being another baby of Gizmodo, I’m sure I’ve still got a lot to learn about music, especially since I’m one of those kids who’s completely brainwashed by The Mouse.

For those of you who know me, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to know the very first CD I bought was the soundtrack to Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. I was about 10 years old when I purchased the CD, but before that, I recorded my own cassette of it by holding an old boombox, with a double-tapedeck, up to the speakers through every single song of the movie.

I don’t remember the gadgets I used to play them on, but from VHS to cassette to CD to digital download, I still listen to “Belle” at least once a week. It’s true that living in my little magical bubble might make me a little detached from the real world, but you have to admit that this sparkly, yellow ball gown is so much more flattering on me than your wizard capes and crumpled up binder paper. Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!

For Gizmodo’s week-long Listening Test (a tribute to all things audio), each writer will be sharing his/her first album. In other words, there will be many more to come.

Listening Test: It’s music tech week at Gizmodo.

The first music that I ever purchased was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie Soundtrack (on cassette).

After seeing the movie for my eighth birthday party (we were rained out of the combination miniature golf course arcade), I was so taken by the Partners In Kryme ballad Turtle Power that I immediately bought the tape with my card loot. Disappointed by the rest of the album, I’d play the song, rewind, and play the song again and again for hours at a time. I can still remember sitting in the back of my family’s conversion van on the long trip from grandparents’ place, clutching my sister’s bright yellow Walkman, the plastic causing my hands to perspire a bit. She’d lent it to me on the condition that I didn’t burn through her batteries by rewinding to hear Turtle Power every 3 minutes. I promised not to. I totally lied.

For Gizmodo’s week-long Listening Test (a tribute to all things audio), each writer will be sharing his/her first album. In other words, there will be many more to come. [Image from Flickr]

Some of the transformations work out in expected ways: De La Soul, Common, and the Beastie Boys all look cute as cheerful minifigs. Somehow they managed to find a minifig as angry-looking as The Game, but reimagined him as more of a crazy biker with pinkeye:

But my favourite has to be Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic,” just for how inappropriately happy he looks in Lego.

[via Prefix]

The tech is known as DDA, and it comes with “online extras” to go with the physical product. Albums are identified by a card attached by a piece of string. On top of that, each stick comes with the proprietary DDA media player you’ll need to activate files from the USB, although the music can be transferred into iTunes easily and comes in both MP3 and WMA formats for your portable music player of choice.They’ll be available through HMV, Sanity and Virgin music stores.
But the biggest question of all around this new format is “why”? Sure, CD sales are sagging, but do music companies seriously believe that consumers want to buy hundreds of USB sticks to listen to music they can buy cheaper online? If MiniDisc – a format that had the potential for greatness – failed, why the hell do they think something like this will work?

What about you? Would you buy your music on a USB stick for the same price as a CD?

[via News.com.au - Thanks Kevin]

The problem with this set of advantages, though, is that they’re shared with virtually every other physical format. You know, the ones that that have been careening towards extinction since high-capacity MP3 players made it big? That said, if it comes down to buying an album on a CD or a reusable SD card, the choice is clear. In either case the music is likely to be copied to a computer or iPod rather than lugged around on its own individual piece of plastic, but why not get a perfectly usable 1GB SD card out of it? If you’re keeping your Discman spinning on account of scary sync software and the high price of overladen MP3 players, maybe SanDisk’s minimalist $US20 unit is right for you. Check below for the (respectable) artist release list. [SanDisk]

* ABBA
* Chris Brown
* Coldplay
* Connie Talbot
* Daughtry
* Don’t Quit Fitness Bundle
* Elvis Presley
* Five Finger Death Punch
* Jimi Hendrix
* Jimmy Buffet
* Katy Perry
* Keane
* Kelly Clarkson
* Kiss
* Leona Lewis
* Lynyrd Skynyrd
* Metro Station
* MIA
* Nelly
* New Kids On the Block
* Ne-Yo
* Nickelback
* Pussycat Dolls
* Rihanna
* Rise Against
* Robin Thicke
* Saving Abel
* Shwayze
* Solange
* Sugarland
* Tim McGraw
* Toby Keith
* Usher
* Weezer
* Young Jeezy

But all of that may change in the near future, with MusicWeek reporting that Apple is planning on releasing an application in conjunction with Snow Patrol’s upcoming album that lets you interact with a digital booklet for the album on the iPhone or iPod Touch. After the Snow Patrol launch, it will be rolled out over other albums in the iTunes catalogue.

So will this digital booklet tempt me away from the old-fashioned CDs of yore? Not likely. But it will make the process of buying an album online a lot more appealing to a lot more people. I’m just not one of them.

[MusicWeek via TechCrunch]

[LimeWire Music Blog]