I’ll be opening for John Michael at Cafe Coco on April 12th at 8 pm. It’s an acoustic set, so it’ll just be me and Mike. There’s a $5 cover and, of course, you can order dinner there too (I recommend it, the food’s really good!). Check the shows page for a map to Cafe Coco.
I’m thinking I’ll debut a new song that night…
Great article on one of my favorite bloggers, Bob Lefsetz.
I heard about this yesterday on NPR and was going to blog about it anyway. Luckily, Wired posted a story on it too and conveniently gave me the link to the actual recording.
A French inventor named Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville decided to make drawings of sounds, so he hooked up a horn (old-0school speaker) to a needle that etched the sound onto a piece of paper that was coated in oil-lamp soot. His idea was to simply enjoy the art of the music in a drawn form. But this year, a music researcher discovered the phonautograms (pictures of sound waves) and sent to Bell Labs to see if they could deduce actual sounds out of them. The result (after some tweaking) was the following clip:
Ok, so it’s not going to win a Grammy or anything, but it predates Edison’s recordings by 17 years. So while he wasn’t the first to actual record a sound, he was the first to play one back.
I would have sworn this article in Wired was an April fools joke, if it weren’t for the fact that I found it on Rolling Stone’s site too.
It looks like emo kids in Querétaro, Mexico are getting beaten up by punk rockers and metalheads. Police were brought in to stop an anti-violence protest march by the emo kids regarding the fighting.
I remember in Junior High when we had groups like this. You had the skaters and the jocks. They would fight after school and beat each other up. As I’m reading this story, at first I’m laughing cause I really thought it was a joke. The comment on Rolling Stone about Elmo (not emo) was priceless! The more I read, the more I realized this isn’t a joke and it’s just kinda sad. The best solution is simply let them be. Who cares if they are the way they are.
I don’t want to be all preachy, but it doesn’t help make metalheads, punk rockers, jocks, skaters, or even emo kids cooler to beat up, make fun, or anything else. It simply shows your immaturity. What exactly is the point of beating them up? As a former picked-on kid, keep your thoughts (and fists, feet, all other body parts) to yourself. Love is the answer.
I read this posting on hypebot the other day and I couldn’t agree more. The premise was that if Apple, as a successful company, pays their CEO a salaray of $1 per year, but he gets bonuses and stock based on the performance of the company, then why wouldn’t labels do the same thing. Warner Music just re-hired their CEO, Edger Bronfman Jr. at a salary of $1 million per year. Which is an outrageous salary for someone who has overseen the demise of that company and doesn’t seem to be doing anything to right the ship.
So, the writer of this article posted a challenge: put your money where your mouth is and base your income on the performance of your company. Accept a $1 per year salary and only get stocks and bonuses based on performance. I know why this would never happen though. The labels are failing miserably at their own business and the CEO wants a guaranteed gig, even if there’s not enough income to justify it.
I would gladly pay his salary of $1 if were to take up the offer though. I wonder if he’d end up paying the label at the end of that year…
eMusic says they will sue Apple if they decide to try buffet-style access with the purchase of a premium-priced device. One of the options Apple could offer in the future would be this: if you buy their premium device (like an iPhone with a crazy add-on fee), you get all the music you want from the iTunes store. Sounds good for the consumer, right?
According to eMusic, this would be the definition of tying, that is, ” the practice of making the sale of one good (the tying good) to the de facto or de jure customer conditional on the purchase of a second distinctive good (the tied good)” (Wikipedia). This is from the Sherman Anti-trust law, enacted in 1890, which says, “Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony”.
To sum up, if someone buys an iPod, they are tied to major label content (potentially shutting out independent sources of entertainment). Which would be tying to a tee. As much as I would love to have the buffet-style access to iTunes, it would be not be in the best interest of EVERYONE if this were allowed. Indie artists like myself get screwed (once again by major labels), because the largest music market (iPod owners) would be almost unattainable to reach.
The only hole I see in this case is: would iPods/iTouches/iPhone be prevented from loading music from other sources (like CDs or other distributors)? If so, this would clearly be tying and would not be allowed to continue, by law. If Apple retains their current policies of allowing any MP3 or AAC to be played on their players, then this suit could have issues, but should still be brought, if anything just to bring all the details to light.
Random idea for someone to take and run with:
My site is run off a WordPress installation. I downloaded the software, uploaded it to my GoDaddy server, set it all up, and here you are reading it. I was able to change the way it looks, added functions that weren’t built-in and even linked into other sites (like Flickr). It would be really cool if someone created an open source version of iTunes. Not the program, mind you, the store. You can either host it on someone else’s server (like WordPress does with their blogs), or you can download the software and upload to your own server. You have built-in players for mp3s (or whatever format you choose), video players, security, payment processing, etc.
I know they already have shopping carts & estore software out there, but this would totally open, totally free. Any artist can download it, post on their own site, and be able to sell MP3s, videos, and any other digital stuff they want from their own site, securely and worry free. They could choose payment plans (like $x amount per year for any new recordings and videos that come out, or autobuy any new recordings/videos released, or just buy one track at a time).
They could customize the way it looks, pricing, what they actually sell (mp3s, DRm’ed recordings, AACs, FLAC, videos, etc), and even write plugins that offer additional capabilities, like linking to your stores on iTunes, Amei Street, eMusic, etc.
To borrow from Henny Youngman, “Take my idea, please!”
Sandisk recently announced the Sansa Sessions, a flash-based micro SD card that holds 50 songs from selected artists. SanDisk is betting that this MicroSD will become the new format the music is distributed on and all that all artists in the future will be selling MicroSDs instead of CDs.
While I have no doubt there will always be people who prefer a physical format over a digital one, they’re trying to pull an Apple, except without the suport of open standards. MP3s and AACs work because they are open standards, thus Apple created the iPod and iTunes to play those formats. Barely anyone has a MicroSD slot in any device (unless you’re my bro-in-law and have a Sansa), so right off the bat, they have a limited market. Even the name of the product implies it’s only for Sansa owners – and how many of those are there vs iPod owners?
Musicians go with what’s easy. CDs are cheap, can be bought just about any where, have been the standard for at least 20 years now, and will work with any brand of CD burner. It would be years before everyone would have a MicroSD slot in their computer (like they have CD burner now) and even then I just don’t see this taking off like they hope it will.
So, go luck with that…
I have never liked the idea of subscriptions for music. You pay $x amount per month and you get to play all the music you want. Stop paying, you’re outta luck. It just seems mobster-ish to me, which is par for the course for record labels, but not for Apple. So I’m a little queezy about the idea of iTunes offering the same thing. There seems be a giant void for details, so here are my questions:
I’ve tried Limewire once or twice. I’ve gotten away from the whole file sharing thing, although I will be adding my own files there once we get them all finished up. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Limewire has opened a legit, for-pay music store. I’m stoked because they are working with mostly independent labels and acts.
The store can be accessed through the Limewire app, or through the web. You can buy tracks individually for $.99 each, or opt for a subscription which works similarly to eMusic.
Not bad! All the tracks are DRM-free 256k MP3s. Not super high quality, but good enough anyone’s iPod or computer speakers. Expect to see Christopher Joel on the list once we get the album done!
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