7.6.16

B-T The File

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And now, we bring you the hot news of the moment: despite having not released a new single yet, Buck-Tick has found a new way to part you from your money. The band (or more correctly, the band's management) have unveiled a new, expensive way to listen to Buck-Tick's music through the magic of proprietary technology and costly electronics made by suicidally exploited workers in China to entertain first world boredom.

- Are you sick of the fact that Pandora doesn't have any of your favorite artists and keeps forcing you to listen to Lorde, even though you never, never wanted to?

- Are you upset that most of Buck-Tick's music isn't available through iTunes, and you'd really prefer to pay Apple even more money than they already have, rather than clutter up your already-cluttered abode with more cumbersome plastic discs that incidentally don't vanish when your computer's hard drive malfunctions but nevermind that?

- Are you all in favor of the modern era's current emphasis on paying a monthly fee to borrow access to the great music collection in the Cloud, rather than buy copies of the CDs yourself and listen to them for free for the rest of your life (or as long as CD players/cassette players/record players shall endure), but you don't want to pay a monthly fee unless the entirety of that fee goes straight into Mr. Sakurai's tight, sweaty leather pockets?

Well then, B-T The File is the streaming service for you!

Through this service, for the minimal fee of just 1500 yen per month (which, full disclosure, is more than Cayce's gas bill costs most months, and here in Tokyo we have gas stoves and gas-heated hot water), Buck-Tick fans can now listen to the entirety of Buck-Tick's discography on their iPeens or iDroids. The service works on iOS version 8 or above, or Android 4.4 or above, so if you don't have one of those operating systems, before you can pay money to listen to B-T, you'll have to pay money to upgrade your phone.

Doubtless many Blog-Tick readers won't be convinced by this, seeing as hardcore fans have certainly found their own ways of tracking down the band's entire discography, and YouTube offers a pretty decent playlist of its own for the tall fee of 0 yen per never. But wait! B-T The File will soon be offering fans the chance to listen to unreleased tracks! What will these tracks be? Will they be golden oldies like "No No Boy," or will they simply be grainy recordings of Imai yodeling in the shower? It remains to be seen. The service website promises that more unreleased tracks will be added later, but I'm betting that as soon as they add new ones they take the old ones down, to force you to keep paying.

As an additional special feature, B-T The File will enable users to make customized playlists of the Buck-Tick songs that best suit their mood, and share them with other fans on the network...but we will caution you all here and now to use this feature judiciously. "BUCK-TICK BEACH PARTY 1999!" featuring nothing but "Mermaid" and "Survival Dance" on endless loop is guaranteed to go down well, but bear in mind that if you save your "Steamiest Toll Fantasies For Lonely, Horny Nights" playlist publicly, everyone will learn your secret, and perhaps you're not willing to share. Handle with care!

On the other hand, if you have any ideas for amusing playlists that you WOULD like to share, feel free to leave a comment on this post!

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Oh and I'm afraid that if you want the entirety of your fee to go into Mr. Sakurai's tight, sweaty leather pockets, you're going to have to catch him the next time he's touring with the Royal Burlesque Theater of Buck-Tickistan. He's surely getting a cut of this money but I daresay not the whole package ;)

8 comments:

  1. Is this the first unlimited music streaming service in Japan? Are B-T trailblazing? I'm not into streamed music much myself but if so, I applaud them for going somewhere that other angels fear to tread :)

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    1. I have no idea if it's the first in Japan, but they have often been trailblazers in the past. I wish the service were cheaper and available on the computer.

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  2. I will stick with my cumbersome plastic discs, thanks.

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  3. This is really sad for me. I use Spotify and don't mind paying to stream music at all. In fact, BT used to have tracks up there until late last year and they were pulled down (I had a suspicion this was going to happen). But paying roughly $15 a month to listen to just BT music (I do love them, but not that much) is too much of a hurtle for me to cross. I mean, if it were other bands too, where you can explore other visual bands or something I would pay...

    I wonder if they will release the App Internationally.

    Ugh. I will be so sad if YouTube starts to pull the videos up there because of rights issues. Then maybe iTunes will loose rights? Guess I should go buy all my digital tracks from the Japanese iTunes now.

    Waaaah!

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    1. Honestly, I think your best option is to buy as many CDs as you can and pirate the rest (because nobody's got the cash to just up and buy Buck-Tick's entire discography in one go.) Victor already scrubbed all B-T's Victor years videos from YouTube ages ago, and Apple doesn't deserve anyone's money till they bring back the iPod classic and the old version of iTunes that, you know, actually worked. If you to track down cheap used copies of Buck-Tick's releases, I can help you with that.

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    2. Do as Cayce says, I just would like to add that if you really buy physical media, would be nice to go for Lingua Sounda releases, since it's their label.

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  4. I think it would be easier to just down load the Mine Music app from the Japanese ITunes Store and and make all the 244 songs on there of Buck-Tick available off line. Or just buy CDs from Yes Asia they happen to have most of BT's albums and singles and lives but they are rather pricy I think the most expensive one is 59 USD and that inludes shipping but Amazon has a few BT CDs if I am remembering correctly also Rakuten global and Samurai buyer has CDs

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  5. In response to what I said you can always make a ton of requests to iTunes for BT to be available as well

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