SearchMe.com – legal loophole opens door to amazing music search engine

I came across SearchMe, a really neat free/legal music search engine that lets you listen to full versions of the songs. I don’t know how it’s possible for this site to exist, but apparently they get their music through Imeem widgets, and Imeem has a licensing agreement with four major record labels, and there is some kind of loophole in their licensing agreement which allows a site like SearchMe to exist.

To access the site, go to www.searchme.com and click on Music. I was able to find really rare stuff on there, such as the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack by Yoko Kanno, Ahmad Jamal’s 2008 album entitled It’s Magic, some Kenny Barron albums, some Roy Hargrove live tracks – it’s pretty much endless! It also lets you share the songs. For example, click here to listen to one of my favorite Ahmad Jamal jazz piano trio tracks, a song called Arabesque from his album It’s Magic.

Henry Hey and Sarah Palin – jazz piano brilliance mixed with politics

In other news, I discovered the music of New York jazz pianist Henry Hey. I was browsing the web and saw a link to a YouTube video about Sarah Palin singing along with a jazz piano accompianist (click here), and was intrigued. It turns out that pianist Henry Hey took a video of a Palin interview and added piano behind her words, in perfect time with her vocal rhythm and intonation. I thought to myself, “this is where Jazz Piano meets political activism” – from a musical and political standpoint this video is pure genius.

So the result of all this Youtubing is that I went over to Henry Hey’s record label Nineteen Eight records (click here) and bought his 2008 piano trio album entitled Watershed. It costs $9 USD for the whole album as a digital download, and is available in non-DRM MP3 format (which let you freely copy to any of your devices or computers to enjoy the music wherever you are: but of course instead of copying to friends you should encourage them to buy their own copy from the web site to support the artist).

If you’d like to listen to some of Henry Hey’s music, check out his myspace page (click here).

Youtube video of myself performing Chick Corea tune

Also, in the past few weeks I have been working on learning the wonderful Chick Corea tune, entitled “Windows”. I mostly know it from his incredible 1988 album Now He Sings Now He Sobs.

Last weekend I made a Youtube video of myself performing my own improvised arrangement of Windows (click here to view), and the comments I have been getting are really encouraging.

dugin27 writes:

I don’t know how much money you’re going to make playing piano but I know enough to say that you’re goning to have one hell of a fine time with that instrument for the rest of your life. Bravo and best of luck. Bud

drmhouse writes:

Very nice playing… you love to just play and it’s fun as hell to watch.

I’m really enjoying this whole Internet thing, to be able to share my music with people around the world, and learn from other talented people by watching their music too, it’s the greatest thing! Many interesting years ahead!!