Those plucky German label heads at Morr Records – home to acts like Duo 505 and Mum – have put together a little sampler called Music For Hairy Scary Monsters, which was released last week. The compilation includes some new and recent songs by mostly Icelandic groups in celebration of a couple events held there. (Feeling well traveled, yet?)

But the best joints on it are from the Brits featured on the album: the duo, ISAN. (I think the two songs they’ve contributed are new, but it’s hard to tell from the label’s broken English press release(pdf). Rather than "throwing" the events in Iceland, they "terminated" them.)

The MP3 samples I found were too short, but you can stream the full songs at Boomkat.

Their addiction to music finally put them in the streets.

The first Isan song on Monsters is a remix of Mum’s "Re-Spring My Sing Reverse". It sets in with an atmosphere on the cusp of tragedy with a pronounced rhythm, dark synths, and some glitched up, spectral Mum vocals. Then it hits the spot with a couple dark, overlapping electro melodies. Unfortunately, its stingy on the melodies, and loops them a few times, but the mood of the song is undeniably attractive. Also, the song has some interesting, but subtle, sound play; using breath as percussion, and taking a sample of the fuzz in the background of a record and chopping it up a bit.

The second, "Singing Bowl," is more Space Odyssey in its setting. You peacefully float through space with a sun on your back as they comfort you with distorted xylophones and wine glass rims, dispersing some crunchy drums here and there for good measure, as well. The wine glass rims get a bit too loud at times, but perhaps this is to add an element of danger to your journey.

Support NYC businesses, cop it at Other Music’s new digital store.

When anybody with basic computer skills can download music, buying it online has almost become an altruistic act. If it’s free, why pay for it other than to support the artists they enjoy? (Well, there is the remote chance they are scared of getting sued.)

Some internet companies are taking a "glass is half full" approach to this situation. They are banking on the goodwill of people who already buy online, and hoping they would be willing to pay more for music if it were to benefit the artist.

The older of the two companies out there – that I know of, at least – is MagnaTune. The site allows listeners to hear the site’s catalog of artists for free. But to download songs, users have to pay. The site has a base charge, but a buyer can choose to pay more for a song if they like. All money is split with the artists 50/50.

And the new cat on the block is SongSlide. They start songs off at 59 cents, and allow buyers to slide a bar up to donate more money, with all of the extra profits going to the artist.

The catalog of these sites is very limited and makes them more of an interesting experiment with a good faith business model.

But can it pay off? The co-founder of SongSlide, Devin Brewer, tells Freakonomics that the average song sells for $2.08. But this may be due to the novelty of the site, and its limited audience. More telling may be the sale prices at the older MagnaTune. While the site doesn’t provide average sales data on their statistics page, their albums with the highest average sales prices are not that encouraging. Few sell for much more than the base rate of $8.00.

"Music Burgler"

Another telling anecdote may be the experience of Jane Siberry. At first, she allowed listeners to download her music free, but gave them the option to pay. The model was successful… only until she got some media coverage. She then got a swarm of new listeners – who decided to download and never pay.

Take from this what you will, but buy music. (How much have you spent on alcohol this month, hm?) 

Originally hailing from the New York graf scene, Busy Bisc 1 has chosen the mic as his weapon of choice as of late. And this here cut, “Heavy Metal”, is one of his best joints to date, possibly challenging some of his graffiti. “Heavy Metal”, part of his free Stay Up Project, takes on the subject of guns. While Bisc is often on the stream of consciousness, inter galactic tip, his subject matter is consistent through this whole song. And the lyrics don’t glorify weapons, either, but  simply tell a story about what can happen when younger cats get a hold of one. The delivery is nasty, and the beats are hard as hell (true to the title, it samples a heavy metal riff). It’s even got the perfect “Tonz O’ Gunz” sample.