I’m not sure how I ended up on Rhythm Records’ mailing list but when I received a copy of their newsletter last week it looked interesting so I took a look at their site and spotted one or two albums I wanted to buy.
This evening I got around to actually doing so. I was very satisfied with the experience. They have a long list of South African artists on their catalogue and offer non-DRMed downloads in MP3 format so you can play them on any OS and download them to any MP3 player. Their music is reasonably priced at R6 per track, considerably less than the likes of Pick ‘n Play, who charge more than twice this for most tracks and only offer DRMed downloads that can only be played in Windows Media Player.
So what did I buy? Two albums, Takeaways by Bed On Bricks and The Red Stone Album by Pebbleman.
I saw Bed On Bricks play live at Rock The Bay in December 2005 and thought they were a really great live band so when I saw that their third album was an acoustic live set I just had to buy it. I’ve given it a spin and I like it. It has a mellow vibe but is still upbeat and funky as you would expect from Bed On Bricks.
My only experience of Pebbleman was the track Loaded Gun that I downloaded from SAMP3.com a few months ago. It is a driving guitar-based rock track and impressed me greatly. Listening to the samples of Pebbleman’s other tracks revealed them all to be of the same ilk. A nice album, not metal, but good old-fashioned hard rock.
I will definitely be passing more of my business to Rhythm Records and will continue downloading sample tracks from SAMP3.com to get an idea of what local music I like and want to buy. I suggest you do the same.
On the subject of South African music, you might want to check out my South African Music group on Flickr. If you’ve taken any photos of South African musicians then join the group and post them.
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