ニギー・ターダスト
ニギー・ターダスト
アーティスト直販アルバムの日本語訳(niggytardust-japanese.pdf)をやっちゃってみました。
ご参考までに。
適当に回して下さい。
同じファイルは既にアーティストに渡っています。
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October 31, 2007
Niggy Tardust and the Pigs from Oink, turning Japanese
This, for me, was pretty funny.
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/10/trent_reznor_and_saul_williams.html
What do you think about OiNK being shut down?
Trent: I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don't feel cool when I go there. I'm tired of seeing John Mayer's face pop up. I feel like I'm being hustled when I visit there, and I don't think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that's what's such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they're grateful for the person that uploaded it — they're the hero. They're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band. I'm not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.
I had been exchanging email with a new "virtual" friend of mine, a fellow who is also involved in music commerce. I think my friend is far more grounded than I am!
Anyway. What I wrote to him in my email was:
In reference to the blog post at http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html which I had read before being notified, I said;
I read that oink article a few days ago, very interesting I agree. I wasn't aware it was done by the guy that did NIN art. I knew he had proper perspective.
Oink was great, as I said, all it lacked was monetization. Interestingly, xxxxxxxxxxxxx said he fwd'd my translation of Niggy Tardust over.
Oink wasn't utopia though, it could of have been deeper, there were some bootlegs I was on the lookout for some friends in America, Neil Young stuff. But it had the modern contemporary classics like Steve Reich, etc, it was of quality. But it didn't deny current stuff, I downloaded Fallout Boy just for kicks. Would I buy that stuff? No way. I was skeptical of it at first, but I found myself using it more and more. I obviously knew what I was doing and how much it cost to make those recordings, but I wanted to see from the user perspective, what entices them to act in such ways? With oink, it was simple. Good music, filtered and recommended by knowledgeable people and a members only social filter that didn't allow any mess. SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD OLD RECORD SHOP TO ME! All that imeem stuff pales in comparison to oink.cd, too much frosted sugar coating and no meat. No hardcore. However, I am slightly impressed with imeem, they seem to use a robot/crawler or an intern to scan the blogs and they have checked out my post. The guy running oink.cd probably made no money doing it, it was 100% contribution only. I would of have paid maybe $30 a month subscription or probably $3 to $5 per album if the money went to the artists.
What makes the story even funnier is that having found out about the Niggy Tardust album, it triggered feelings inside of me. So, I translated it into Japanese. Took a few hours. Not one of my best works, but I felt if it had a chance, time was of essence. I know one of the people in the NIN camp, so emailed it over and it is now apparently in the hands of Trent Reznor. I've no idea if they will use it or not, they have their agendas and lives, so I don't really care. What is important is that I agreed to their idea and principle and acted upon it. I even blew off a date to do that (and a date for me is a rare occurence)! If any of you want a copy, here is a download link to niggytardust-japanese.pdf.
Links for 1st November, 2007
I'm going to start posting links to websites and/or articles and/or stuff that evoked a response out of me.
Found this yesterday.
http://www.folkstreams.net/
The best of American folklore films
I was looking for footage of Othar Turner and stumbled onto this seemingly wonderful website.
Now deceased, I've only seen Othar Turner perform once. I was lucky I actually saw the man play, since that might be the best musical/spiritual experience I've had and was one of his last. It was indescribable.
There is always something that connects the dots and in terms of rock and roll, a lot of it did come from the blues. If you think about where punk, etc came from, a lot of it came from rock and roll. With wonderful and free databases such as the above website, youtube.com and amazon.com aplenty, there is a whole legacy of dots that are waiting to be connected, by you.
October 30, 2007
this is great
sourced from http://www.matadorrecords.com/matablog/?p=967
connect the dots. keep the legacy alive.
"long before Boston was Titletown and even longer before people like us figured out how to commodify stuff like this"
tomorrow's hits today (??????????)
i was just checking my email. then found this.
i have nothing against any of these people, in fact, i think they're all competent singers and entertainers. however, i do find the titles "tomorrow's hits today" and "new music tuesday" very ironic. is this what is left? surely not.
seems like recommendation algorithm/engine rehash time! dear itunes, why don't you hire a music editor to proof read this stuff before it goes out? surely there are qualified people abound.
http://www.vbs.tv/
http://www.vbs.tv/, Vice Magazine's internet TV station. I think this is great, it actually gives content with context. Take this interview with Mark E. smith for example. He's alive and it not some intello-jello making muso journo asking the same old bs. He's laughing, he's engaged, he wants to talk.
http://www.imeem.com/
my main computer, an apple macbookpro, joined a wet t-shirt contest and won. she found a hunk of a man and took off with him. so while i try to get her back, i am back with my old lover, powerbook. powerbook is a hot bird, she gives me burns when i type her on the bed. she's a little slow, but her keystrokes are a more solid feel.
anyway. been checking out http://www.imeem.com/. is it just me, or do these websites always have the same "schtick" on playlists and genere classification and whatnot? ie, don't they all seem very shallow?
i can understand that if you're aged between 10 to 20, your musical tastes being narrow. i can understand that this is probably the (shrinking?) age group that the marketeers want to dominate. but what about me? almost 40, but still interested in finding new music. do i have to keep on stumbling upon website after website? isn't the world going to be flat? i like modest mouse "dashboard", fuck, they're friends of mine. major namedropping aktion! but when you reach a conversant level with music, if you heard a song twice, you kind of build a database of the structure and you want to move on to something else.
or what about older music? don't people want to know what inspired whoever to come up with whatever song? or where they got the idea, or oftentimes, plain ripped it off? the art is in making your references vague, referencing happens all the time. it's a statement of respect and compliment.
i want a panic/surprise button.
applestore genius bar, you better fix my keyboard on the spot tomorrow. otherwise i ain't buying that leopard skin swimsuit. ooh, just gave me the horn thinking about that. build my own midgets.
Brian Eno - Music For Airports Interview
October 26, 2007
Quite Interesting
I've thought about it and have my own set of conclusions. Some are pretty solid, some graduate slightly. But they are opinions nonetheless and by having a thought process, my thoughts are mine. Collected and derived from other sources and wonderful coaches I have found, but via exercise, they become mine, not yours or a copy. I've had enough of copy copy copy. Deconstruct it, get rid of the ego. Scream if you have to.
Think for yourself.
■技術とイノベーション 2007-10-17 7:29:00 by yousmz
ある知り合いと久しぶりにあっていろんな話をした中の一つです。
Googleがどんどんすごいことになっていますよね。
新しい技術を研究して、それを無料サービスとして公開する。
広告で成り立っている企業とはいえ、このスピードはすごいですよね。
日本でも最近多くのサービスが立ち上がり、それによって多くの企業が成長しています。
しかし根本的なな違いがあります。
日本ででてくる新しいサービスは「米国ですでにある」ものだということです。
要するに、「コピー」＋αでしかないということですね。
もちろんGoogleも検索エンジンという考え方は「コピー」になるかもしれませんが、サービス全体を捉えた時のビジネスモデルがこれまでにない斬新なものだったということだと思います。
このようなサービスは日本では生まれていない。
ここに大きな理由があります。
日本企業の風土です。
日本の企業はこれまで築き上げたものを成長させるような仕組みを考えるのは得意ですし、そういう形態を守る傾向にあります。
これが悪いということではなく、このために、新しい形のサービスや商品がでてくることに抵抗を持っている企業も多いということです。
大企業であれば、そういうサービスが現れたと同時に何かするというよりは、様子をみてそろそろというときに同様のサービスを、お金と人の力であっという間に立ち上げます。
でも、世界にもないような本当に新しいサービスがでてくることはほぼないです。
なぜでしょうか。
それは、日本の企業風土として、「これまでのものを壊す」ようなものを良しとしない傾向にあるからです。
新しいサービスを嫌うというよりは、大きな変革を好まないという方がいいかもしれません。
別にこれまでにないものを作りだすということではなく、これまでのサービスに新しい技術や考えを取り入れて新しいものを生み出すことがなかなかできないというのが正しいかもしれません。
ベンチャーキャピタルやエンジェルも同じです。
日本の投資風土は、「ある程度見込みがでてきたら投資」です。
正直これは投資ではなく融資と変わりません。
立ち上げ時期、俗にいうアーリーステージでのリスクまで負った形の資金援助がベンチャーには必要です。
でも日本の投資家はこの時期のリスクを負わない。
というより、アイデアは認めても、それをビジネスにするための支援はできないのかもしれません。
ところが米国の投資家は、アーリーステージから資金援助を確実に行うことが多い。
正直、Googleもそうです。
二人の学生がビジネスにできたはずはなく、そこに目をつけた投資家がビジネス化も含めアーリーステージで支援したことがとても大きいと思います。
こういう企業風土の違いで、現在の社会に影響をもたらすような変化を起こすビジネスは日本では立ち上げにくいんだと思います。
日本も少しずつかわってきていますが、今の時代スピードが命。
たった数日、いや数時間決断が遅れただけでそのサービスは他の企業で立ち上がってしまうかもしれません。
Googleのような斬新なサービスが日本発になるのはいつの日でしょうか。
Indie Rock College Cred Algorithm from Hell
So I have been trying out the new music recommendation and social network service www.jango.com.
It's ok.
It's like last.fm but with quicker access to music. Please note, I have not used www.last.fm in ages, my comparison of the two is not fair.
I have two issues with www.jango.com, one is to do with the site itself and the other, more to do with social networks in general.
1. I find their "music matching" algorithm or whatever it is they got running in the background, what I would call "Indie Rock College Cred Algorithm from Hell". Their recommendations are stuck in CMJ land. I like to think that my musical tastes and reach have a bit more now, since I am not 18. Maybe these recommendation sites need a "panic" button or "suprise the hell out of me" button.
2. Ok, someone I don't know at all from somewhere in America wants to befriend me. But why? Because I listen to similar music? Because I have cool looking glasses?
More insight into the relationship factor would fair nicely, thank you very much.
Disclaimer stuff. I am not involved in any of the above mentioned websites.
October 25, 2007
Here's a Good Rundown on the Oink.cd Saga
TechCrunch Article (quite fair report apart from the bias on FLAC files, not true)
Article Linked From TechCrunch (the most fair report I've read so far)
The comment I left on the above TechCrunch article
# oink user
October 25th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
i was an oink user for the past few months. i originally found myself there through finding out that an album i had worked on was “leaked” close to 4 months ahead of it’s intended commercial release. i found myself an invitation and started to use it, trying to understand how it works from the user perspective.
i must say, it was a very good system, all it lacked was monetisation. it was easy to find good music, downloads were often good quality (not just FLAC, mp3’s in various rates from the same album for example), lots of lost gems.
i do find the “leaking” of material before it’s intended commercial reelase date quite rude, this is probably mostly done by journalists and people who receieve advance copies. under what intention, i’ve no idea, maybe they want to appear cool and elitist, which it isn’t, at all, since in most cases, people who leak the work were never an integral, crucial part of the making it. in the case of the album i was involved in, i hadn’t even heard the finished version!
oink did have a sense of fairness though, they had no files that led to the new radiohead album and instead, when you searched for it, it went to the band’s website. yes, i bought it as well.
as i said earlier, it was a good website that promoted finding new music and exploration, within a fairly safe environment; real music fans.
if a rights governing body, made from the ground up, that is not full of the political bs that surrounds existing rights agencies for physical and broadcast were to exist and handle rights management and collection of monies from websites such as oink.cd, a subscription model would be perfect. for such, i would be willing to pay.
as for the curent state of music, a lot of the problem lies in the fact that the current value structure is no longer valid and probably has not been for the past 5 years, but a lot of people still want to cling on to this crippled model. believe me, i was/am one of them. i have come to realise in the past few months that those days are gone for many and on it’s last legs for the successful and one has to create a new/recycled viable method of music commerce that is kinder to the curious fan, serious fan, the people that make the music and those that help to sell it.
'nuff said.
October 23, 2007
Please Try Me
I am all so very scared.
Back in Black
Tomorrow's World
Once upon a time, in the prior century, during the decade of the 7th, there was a Japanese boy born in Tokyo in the 6th decade, growing up in North London, England, United Kingdom, Europe, Earth.
From a very early age, this Japanese boy was always into gadgets, like most boys are, but this particular boy loved to take things apart and see how things worked. He even wanted to be a scientist at age 5. However, this boy had control issues and was not able to put things back (and he still can't). He always used to tinker and fiddle about. His parents called him "the touch of death", or in a direct translation "don't let him touch anything new, he'll break it". Those comments disturbed the little Japanese boy, but nonetheless, drove his curiosity in the pursuit of the "why?".
This Japanese boy used to enjoy watching Television. Here's a typical flow for a Thursday night.
As mentioned in the above clip, during this period, there was (is?) a British television show called "Tomorrow's World" that captured the heart of a then, very young Japanese boy. Here's the intro to the programme from the early 80's (could not find one from the 70's).
Here's Kraftwerk on Tomorrow's World.
Here's Pink Floyd on Tomorrow's World.
Tomorrow's World preceded the famous music programme, "Top of the Pops". This combination proved to be "killer content", for this Japanese boy loved gadgets and dancing women.
Original version of the above song by the Monks (not the American garage/punk band).
This is an example clip. Back then, it was natural for TOTP to comprise of Dexy's Midnight Runners, the Pretenders, and Legs & Co. The first two mentioned were NEW bands back then, Chrissie Hynde was a seemingly rather mesmerising woman that the young Japanese boy felt attracted to. Dexy's were all about the horn section and the black colours.
But, Legs & Co. damn, this was the fumie moment for any parent exposing their children to TOTP. In the case of this Japanese boy, he was often told to eat his fish fingers. What you can't get, you want more.
Anyway, back to Tomorrow's World. Apparently, the programme was slotted just before TOTP on purpose, so that the kids, who anxiously waited to see what was happening that week, would also tune into TW, in essence, an education programme made with a pop perspective. Well, BBC, it worked.
In 1981, TW and TOTP even had a joint episode "Look Around You, Music 2000", where they held a contest to see what kind of music would become popular in the 21st Century.
Contestant Anthony Carmichael was going on about rap, back then, there were only 2 known examples of rap music on a commercial basis in the UK.
"Rapture" by Blondie
"Fab 5 Freddy" I think he used to present MTV Raps??
"Ant Rap" by Adam and the Ants
Tom Tom Club were 82, I think. Maybe 81. "Wordy Rappinghood"
Anthony Carmichael. Impressive.
October 19, 2007
Robert Andrew Deacon, music producer, born August 6 1965; died September 8 2007
Just read this.
I have pretty much all the issues of "Volume".
It was a good magazine/sampler.
Rob Deacon, who has died aged 42 in a canoeing accident, was a true innovator in the independent music world. He helped break many artists across a vast range of styles and introduced a unique format with his 1990s compilation series, Volume and Trance Europe Express. He worked outside the mainstream, yet succeeded by the sheer force of his creativity, good nature, powers of persuasion and friendship.
P2P vs Radiohead's "free" Rainbows: why P2P can be a hard habit to break / Social Network Portability
Intereting read over at arstechnica. I've inserted additional material into the original text. I may add more thoughts on this later.
P2P vs Radiohead's "free" Rainbows: why P2P can be a hard habit to break
By Nate Anderson | Published: October 18, 2007 - 11:11PM CT
Radiohead's innovative digital distribution arrangement for their new album, In Rainbows, lets people pay whatever they want for the music, including nothing at all. Despite that, BitTorrent swapping of the album has been on the level of other major releases. Are people really so cheap that they won't even register with the band in order to snag a free download? The answer appears to be yes.By handling the recording, mastering, and distribution themselves, the band managed to keep the tubes clear of any Rainbows before the official launch (no mean feat for a hotly anticipated album). Once the album became available for download, though, it spilled immediately onto P2P networks, primarily BitTorrent. According to BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland, who spoke with Ars about the issue, the album was grabbed by BitTorrent users roughly 240,000 times in the first day of release and has tailed off since in "a perfect half-life curve."
Insert. Source: Alexa
Insert. Source: Infofilter
Unlike most BitTorrent song swapping, In Rainbows is generally being shared as a complete album. Radiohead, which hasn't been known for singles in the last decade, might be pleased that their work is being downloaded as a whole, but would no doubt prefer that people get it from the band's website.Garland speculates that convenience is the main factor at work here; price doesn't enter into the equation. Radiohead's site does request a number of user details that go beyond the e-mail address needed to create an account and retrieve the download code, and such a process will put some people off at any price. Plenty of users have simply become accustomed to getting their music from BitTorrent; for this group, it's easier to simply grab it when the album shows up on the network than to visit another site, register, get an e-mail, and then download the songs.
Insert: I was also reading presentation by Tantek Çelik on the issue of Social Network Portability The reason I have been purusing this is the number of websites where I now have to be a registered member. I have to input my email address, etc details EVERY time I want to check out something new. Right now, there are a LOT of them. Think about it, how many websites do you have your email address (real or not) registered with? How many of them do remember the passwords? How many of them do you remember actually registering?
The fact that the band let users set a price for the music also encourages the perception that the price of music should be up to the buyer. If both BitTorrent and Radiohead offer the album for the same price, fans might see little difference between the two sources. In fact, Radiohead's move might even make BitTorrent look increasingly legitimate as a forum for picking up new music. Thus, assessing this as a "piracy versus free" issue isn't exactly right; once some users got the message that it was "free," it didn't matter where they got the album.Garland agrees that the move "amplifies a long-standing" disconnect between the industry and the people who buy its products, and he points out that this is hardly the first time the issue has arisen. Downloaders have long claimed that "radio is free" and "I can make mixtapes" to defend the free downloading of music from P2P services. Despite the music business' attempt to counter these arguments, radio, mixes, and P2P all "feel like free" to many end users. This hurts the perception that they shouldn't torrent their music, and Radiohead's set-your-own-price model may encourage that feeling (as have record label attempts at using P2P services to promote certain songs; how does a user know if the song they're grabbing is illegal or not if even the labels use BitTorrent to offer free music?).
To Radiohead, there certainly is a difference between sources. The band wants people to use their sites, it wants to collect their information, and it likely wants to send them information about concerts and merchandise at some point down the line. But the band has learned the hard way that money isn't the only thing that matters to Radiohead fans.
October 18, 2007
DLT, Kid Jensen, Simon Bates, phooyuk
i was looking for stuff on youtube just now and one thing led to another. just like the telly. bad things.
it took 1 minute 36 seconds for the music to start. little boys start to have various thoughts..........
this song has no meaning, but never mind.........
so is the one, but she warps from america to cambodia........... and adds a big "wooo" backing chorus
this, another "wooooo" song, this was out on stiff records if you didn't know
then before that one, they had this song, i believe it went to number one. KENDO!!!! ha ya!!! ah so!!!!
then to wrap it up, i give you sheena. she won something with this song, eurovision or something. no, that dress? probably did not come from midge ure. no, people did not dress like that back then. at least not in north london during the daytime. i forgot the words, but i think not the 9 o' clock news has some joke on this song.
totp of the same song. notice same outfit. 10% unemployment rate back then, mate. you were lucky to be a pop star, probably.
headmaster and pupil. hit me with the ruler. i think i saw this programme. "swap shop" is a children's tv show on the bbc i think it was, saturday morning. the flip show was "tiswas", i believe. notice at number 76, WORZEL SONG! 77, SKY! Cheggers! sorry, got carried away there.
modern girl was a hit. "na na na na na/na na na na na/na na na na na//she's a modern girl".
flourescent lighting was uber cool back then. light sabre effect probably. this was only a few years after star wars 1.
Reward a passionate friend
Julian Cope writes about Japanese rock.
I was wondering about this book. There was D, a photographer/art director friend from NYC in town last week and when we went out, bumped into a friend of mine, N. N plays in a cult status Japanese band. N doesn't speak a lot of English and I'm pretty hands off about that stuff (use yer brain) so naturally, 2 people having communication issues turn to mutual subjects, music (and a bit of old tv programmes). They started talking about rock, then psyche rock, which N plays and D likes, so they start throwing names around. The MC5, followed by Julian Cope was one of them. D has worked with Julian, my Japanese friend is part of a band that Julian likes and they've exchanged email. Small world. It turns out, Julian and N have similar hobbies.
Anyway, so I was checking my email. I tend to ignore the ones I get weekly for a couple of days, and there it was, included in the weekly email blast I get from Other Music in New York. Hmm, me wonders, so I took a lookie at Amazon, where the following review comes from.
In the book, Julian Cope mentions bands from generations quite a bit older than I am, like the Flower Travellin' Band, Les Rallizes Denudes (Hadaka No Rallizes) etc.
FACT: The recordings of these bands are quite rare, though some of them have reissues now. But do you know what has been happening since the turn of the century? People in America and Europe have been bootlegging these recordings. A lof of known Western bands have been listening to them and appreciating them. The Long Tail before it was defined, dude. They've been on sale at various record shops in America. They probably still have sections for it at Other and Kim's in NYC.
Julian also mentions some people I've had the pleasure of knowing over the years. 3/3 is a band that precedes the legandary (at least to me) Friction, aka Reck. So 3/3, Reck goes to NYC, plays with the No New York bands (Contortions, Teenage Jerks), comes back, then forms Friction. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Reck is one of the first Japanese guys that started to go to NYC. No? Mr. B? Ms. H? Mr. B?
I mean, people like JO who used to be in a known band, knows more about Japanese stuff than most Japanese people. They do their research. It's not just musicians. There is H, who now resides in AL/USA, he does serious work for seriously famous magazines, but he's been a follower of Japanese music for decades. When I first hooked up with H via Buffalo Daughter in the 90's and went to his former apartment in the East Village, NYC, man, the guy has shit you would not believe. I kid you not. Original pressings of Japanese bands. You ask him where he got them from, and he goes "oh, I found it at a supermarket/flea market" and you just wonder what made him pursue them and he goes "oh, they're interesting". H's been talking about BD, Cornelius, etc, since before they were known, and this is before the internet. I'm sure H has sent a lot of money to Amazon Japan now.
When I came back as a 13 year old kid from England, I already had the rock/punk/whateveryouwanttocallit genes inside of me, I was abducted by aliens. So, I was thinking most Japanese bands were utter crap, lifeless smily shiny white teeth shit (which I unfortunately feel the same to this day, but then again, the quality of Western bands is getting bad as well, flattening effect, compressors in action!). Anyway, there were a few Japanese bands that made my high school days not so much a dread. Friction was one of them, and though I have yet to see the current formation of Friction (just drums and bass), I've enjoyed each show that I managed to see.
From what I've witnessed, there is an underlining thread between these guys. They don't care what the fuck you think of them, they do their music on their own terms. I could tell you stories, but I've no right to on the internet. In a nutshell, they're fucking real and sincere about what they do. Maybe that's what gets reflected into their sound and over time, crosses borders (a lot of them never played outside of Japan) and gets appreciated, re-interpreted, re-cycled. Food for thought.
A to Z
Man, just look at the names, Julian's definitely done his research. Video and other stuff.
Julian's not some amateur, he's had success as a pop star and he probably had enough of the bs, and just wants to do what he wants, in his own terms. He's selling stuff by other bands on his website, that is one way of doing it. Bands helping each other.
Yes, I did buy a copy of Reward, when was that, 80, 81? I saw this particular TOTP back in the day. All those trumpets, gives me the immense horn, that. Dexy's, Modern Romance, UB40, The English Beat (ok, sax)? For a 11, 12 year old kid, trumpets are trumpets. Then I saw Julian play around the World Shut Your Mouth period, 86, 87?
What am I saying here? Nothing much really, but other than someone will connect the dots.
Excellent, September 20, 2007
By zphage - See all my reviews
Follows up on Mr. Cope 1995's Krautrocksampler, which detailed Germany's (1st of 3 Axis powers) late 60's early 70's heavy pysch and experimental music scene.This book details Japan's (2nd of 3 Axis powers) late 60's early 70's heavy pysch and experimental music scene.
Beautifully written, enclosed in a hardbound, "trade paperback size" book. Divided into two books: Book One has four chapters that deal with Japan pre and post World War II, the impact of Western/American culture, rock'n'roll, (GS)Group Sounds emergence and decline, the confluence of the Japanese avant garde, jazz,and rock scenes with the youth culture explosion of the 60's.
Book Two has 8 chapters, which deal with specific bands as follows:
Come Together 1969
Flower Travellin Band
Les Rallizes Denudes
Speed, Shinki, and Glue
Taj Mahal Travellers and Takehisa Kosugi
J.A. Caesar and the Radical Theatre Music of Japan
Masahiko Satoh and the Free Thinkers' Union
Far East Family BandA Top 50 round up follows with a short list of albums to avoid.
A truly great treat for the open minded and curious listener, this book promises to be the groundswell moment just as Krautrocksampler was.
(Mr. Cope is there a book on the 3rd Axis power, Italy, due? Pejoratively titled " Woprocksampler"?)
Web 2.0 Summit: Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz
these bits really caught my attention. i totally agree.
Web 2.0 Summit: Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz
Moritz: Lesson of Google: Larry and Sergey taking their time and being deliberate, and being prepared to say no. Most people are in such a panic because they have product deadlines to meet, or open reqs; most every leader and director of every company will fall prey to temptation to lower hiring standards to fill the spot; that is very much a short term fix. Very glad Larry and Sergey were insistent in take their time, and finding Eric Schmidt, thanks to John Doerr, to join their company. I am huge, huge believe that greatest possible thing that can happen to an investor in a company is to be blessed with the sort of personal people who start company with enthusiasm, verve, talent and develop and grow with that company. No accident that the really great companies - Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison, Gordon Moore, Larry and Sergey - the founder grow up with the companies, and do not lose the zest they had in the early years. Look at the history of Apple over the last 20 years and what happens when the founder returns.
John is asking Moritz about platform companies; he is wondering if Facebook is similar to other ones?Moritz: There are traits of those companies; you get the whiff of them, more than a whiff, at Facebook. When communications flows through one of these companies, good things tend to happen on the Internet. Facebook is this incredible communications system. That would be one common theme - Google, PayPal, YouTube - company that few, than 100s, than 1,000s then millions and 10s of million can do something for themselves. Enable millions of people to do something they haven’t done before.
October 15, 2007
U CANNOT B SIRIUS
LIKE OMG.
Did he try PRAM clear?
more Radiohead anger management
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/101407radio
"This is a solution for Radiohead, not for the industry."
Of course it is. If there was a question asking the contrary, can the music business PLEASE get a life? Why are you expecting a SINGLE FUCKING BAND to save your business and broken model?
1.2 million is a very commendable, successful and hopefully sustainable figure for the band and their related staff. I wonder how much the bandwidth is costing them. I'm sure they don't need too many people to serve the downloads just before the physical products kicks in place.
And are there new downloaders continuing to purchase downloads? I better try that, RIGHT NOW. How much.......well, this would be my second purchase (I got the diskbox), so er, 1.5 Pounds? that would be about 300 Yen, US$2.7? One second thought, why buy it again? Stupid.
Radiohead Sales Estimates Surface, New Wrinkles Emerge
Radiohead has yet to disclose sales numbers on its latest album, In Rainbows, though fresh estimates are bubbling. The first comes from Gigwise, which pointed to downloads of roughly 1.2 million several days ago, citing a source "close to the band". That figure was echoed by a similar estimate of 1.3 million received by William Blanchard, owner of digital content delivery and ecommerce firm Lambcast, Ltd. Blanchard tracked sequential order numbers from the Radiohead website, and shared the top-level estimate with Digital Music News on Sunday.But how many of those customers actually paid for the album? A survey of 5,000 participating fans by the London-based Telegraph offered a possible breakdown. The newspaper found that one quarter paid nothing or one pence, another half paid between one pence and £10 ($20.32), and the remainder volunteered higher prices or purchased the £40 ($81.30) box set.
Meanwhile, some dissatisfaction surrounds a choice by the band to deliver the album in a compression quality of 160kbps, a level that trumps iTunes but falls below standard CD-quality. The move appears part of a larger plan to motivate purchases of the more conventional CD album, slated for release early next year. The traditional disc - like the more complicated box version - will carry bonus tracks to encourage purchases. "If we didn't believe that when people hear the music they will want to buy the CD, then we wouldn't do what we are doing," manager Bryce Edge recently told Music Week. "This is a solution for Radiohead, not for the industry."
October 14, 2007
\\\\\HUH????!!!! HAVE WE SEEN THIS SOMEWHERE????!!!!/////
there are two things in here that has not changed much. and they probably don't care of the changes going on right now.
bonus clip. i'm not a big fz fan, but the way he conducted his career is worthy of much respect. and his last album, white shark? something shark is beautiful (he knew he was dying).
October 13, 2007
the next logical step for a MAJOR record company
this does seem to be the next logical step for a major from a financial and risk perspective, but i don't feel is a long term solution. i'm sure it will at least do ok, especailly if it is going to try and sell the new zune hardware, microsoft will want business badly to maintain it's corporate dominance and regain lost confidence in music ventures.
but you know what? have you ever seen microsoft or any major do something really cool with music? in terms of microsoft, have you ever seen them do anything cool at all? ok, disclaimer. i am a mac user and have been for a while, since er, like os 6. but i did have a 5 year period where i had an affair with bill gates. i did not enjoy it, because the ui (that's user interface) SUCKS, trying to fix something os (operating system) based SUCKED, they have all these little components that SUCK and man, their design philospphy or lack of is pretty consistent. if you want pure performance, windoze is good, i admit, but so is unix/linux. macs ain't that bad nowadays too.
and as for major record labels doing websites? dude, there's shit i found out earlier in the year that i just cannot tell you, but my reaction was "HUH????"
oh, maybe it has to do with that, aha............ i really hope not.
this model will work to a degree if the hardware manufacturers decide they need to xxxx xxxx and put up the tab. i really have reservations towards FREE music, i mean, i'm not accountant, but come on, there is NO AVERAGE for production costs. it could be $400 to $400,000 (and more). does a painting have average production costs and are they free???
see, the thought process of majors is not an integrated one and is very single perspective. it definitely puts the intent of the artist (produce supplier) waaaay back. ok, a lot of artists are pretty ignorant about their commerce, but still.
oh, i am going to be killed again for being honest. so, i've probably spent about 4 lives out of 9, got 5 more.
Universal Music Takes on iTunes
Universal chief Doug Morris is enlisting other big music players for a service to challenge the Jobs juggernaut
Relationships in the entertainment world can be famously fraught. And few are more so these days than the one between Steve Jobs and Universal Music chief Doug Morris. You may recall that Morris recently refused to re-up a multi-year contract to put his company's music on Apple's iTunes Music Store. That's because Jobs wouldn't ease his stringent terms, which limit how record companies can market their music.
Now, Morris is going on the offensive. The world's most powerful music executive aims to join forces with other record companies to launch an industry-owned subscription service. BusinessWeek has learned that Morris has already enlisted Sony BMG Music Entertainment as a potential partner and is talking to Warner Music Group. Together the three would control about 75% of the music sold in the U.S. Besides competing head-on with Apple Inc.'s (AAPL ) music store, Morris and his allies hope to move digital music beyond the iPod-iTunes universe by nurturing the likes of Microsoft's Zune media player and Sony's PlayStation and by working with the wireless carriers. The service, which is one of several initiatives the music majors are considering to help reverse sliding sales, will be called Total Music. (Morris was unavailable for comment.)
This isn't only about Jobs; Morris badly needs to boost his business, and Apple is the one to beat. The iTunes store has grabbed about 70% of downloads in the U.S. And the iPod--well, what's left to say about that juggernaut? Plus, music companies have been here before. A few years ago they launched services with the aim of defeating Napster-style file-sharing--and failed miserably. And let's not forget that existing subscription services have signed up only a few million people, vs. hundreds of millions of iTunes software downloads.
While the details are in flux, insiders say Morris & Co. have an intriguing business model: get hardware makers or cell carriers to absorb the cost of a roughly $5-per-month subscription fee so consumers get a device with all-you-can-eat music that's essentially free. Music companies would collect the subscription fee, while hardware makers theoretically would move many more players. "Doug is doing the right thing taking on Steve Jobs," says ex-MCA Records Chairman Irving Azoff, whose Azoff Music Management Group represents the Eagles, Journey, Christina Aguilera, and others. "The artists are behind him."
Morris and Jobs were once the best of allies. When Jobs began pushing his idea for a simple-to-use download store in 2003, Morris backed him. Industry insiders say Jobs felt that Morris, unlike many other music executives, understood that they had to adapt or die. And in the years that followed, Apple and Universal moved in near lockstep.
But before long, Morris realized he and his fellow music executives had ceded too much control to Jobs. "We got rolled like a bunch of puppies," he said during a recent meeting, according to people who were there. And though Morris hasn't publicly blasted Jobs, his boss at Universal parent Vivendi is not nearly so hesitant. The split with record labels--Apple takes 29 cents of the 99 cents--"is indecent," Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy told reporters in September. "Our contracts give too good a share to Apple."
After unilaterally breaking off talks with Apple in July, Morris continued offering Universal's roster--Eminem, 50 Cent, U2, and other artists--to Apple, but on a month-to-month basis. That freed Universal to cut special deals with other vendors, such as cell carriers eager to generate revenues. AT&T (T ) is packaging ringtones and music videos of Universal artists and is expected to start selling downloaded tracks with videos soon.
That's not all: In August, Morris announced a five-month test with Wal-Mart (WMT ), Google (GOOG ), and Best Buy (BBY ). The three companies will sell music downloads that can be played on any device--a freedom not available to buyers of iTunes songs, most of which play only on Apple devices and software. Morris wants to see if the downloads, which won't have copy protection, will help cut into piracy and hike sales. And of course he won't be upset if iPod owners bypass iTunes.
With the Total Music service, Morris and his allies are trying to hit reset on how digital music is consumed. In essence, Morris & Co. are telling consumers that music is a utility to which they are entitled, like water or gas. Buy one of the Total Music devices, and you've got it all. Ironically, the plan takes Jobs' basic strategy-- getting people to pay a few hundred bucks for a music player but a measly 99 cents for the music that gives it value--and pushes it to its extreme. After all, the Total Music subscriber pays only for the device--and never shells out a penny for the music. "You know that it's there, and it costs something," says one tech company executive who has seen Morris' presentation. "But you never write a check for it."
The big question is whether the makers of music players and phones can charge enough to cover the cost of baking in the subscription. Under one scenario industry insiders figure the cost per player would amount to about $90. They arrived at that number by assuming people hang on to a music player or phone for 18 months before upgrading. Eighteen times a $5 subscription fee equals $90. There is precedent here. When Microsoft was looking to launch a subscription service for Zune, Morris played hardball. He got the tech giant to fork over $1 for every player sold, plus royalties. Total Music would take that concept even further. "If the object is to wrest control of the market from Steve Jobs," says Gartner analyst Mike McGuire, "this is a credible way to try it."
Of course, Morris still needs Jobs. It's noteworthy that Universal has not pulled its music from iTunes--Morris simply can't afford to do that. Universal's earnings fell 25% in the first half. Jobs, of course, knows that and can afford to be magnanimous. "Doug's a very special guy," the Apple chief told BusinessWeek. "He's the last of the great music executives who came up through A&R. He's old school. I like him a lot."
phrase of the day
the computer is a weapon. google is a tool. music is a handshake.
(c) me! 2007
i know it's flawed in detail, but i have a headache, can't bother.
huh huh huh
October 12, 2007
if it's information
that you can access and manage (via rss or whatever), keep it.
the chances of you finding that little piece of info that may solve the puzzle, may be very slim.
October 11, 2007
day 6
i think it is. i am human.
230 words so far. i think i'm not done on this level. but a LOT BETTER than where i was a week ago.
profession
profession
Between xxxxxxx and You
Minoru Yokoo
9:59pm October 9th
xxxxxxx君は今の仕事（ってxxxxxxxxx？）はしばらく続けるつもりななの？音楽業界、閉塞的でつまんないかも。本当はただ録音したいだけなんだけどね。
xxxxxxxxx
Today at 3:50pm
そうすねえ。。xxxxxx、そしてxxxxxx。かな。
飽きましたけれど。でもまだ残尿感があるので、
最後にパパっと花火を。線香花火？？
ヨコオさんは自らレーベルなどは？
それこそ「搾取」されてしまうのかな、ギョーカイ・システムに。
ま。お互いそろそろ40すからw
どうしようかなーというところですよね。
Minoru Yokoo
Today at 4:47pm
レーベルは興味ないですね。服のラベルと同じですから。んでも、もっと前向きなことなら興味あります。たいていの音楽に罪はないんですから。
実は、xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
あそこxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxというか。その辺りを目指しているらしく、xxxxxxxxxx経営のxxxxxxxxxと何かしないか、という可能性はあります。それだとxxxxxxxxxxxxxx欲が絡んだ金じゃないので、いやじゃないんですけどね。
レディオヘッド落としました。買いましたよ（爆笑）。
悪くないな。大量消費としたものと考えると。音は160kだから、その程度。でもちゃんと作ってるね。
Minoru Yokoo
Today at 10:48pm
http://minoruuuu.tumblr.com/
deliciousの新しいやつもこういう感じなら移行しなくて済むんだけど............暫く両刀使いかなぁ。tumblrは引用できるのが最高。全部読み直さなくて済む。
いいすね、これ！ありがとう！
opal fruits
http://minoruuuu.tumblr.com/
Share
xxxxxxxxxxx
Today at 2:10pm
スパグルご招待39！2005.02に登録はしていたようですw
http://xxxxxxxxxxxxx.suprglu.com/
タンブラのBookmarklet (Share on Tumblr) はいいすよね。
ヨコオさんの言う、思考スピードについてくるってのは、まさに。
FFでのブラウズをお勧めしたのは、必須ツールがいくつかあるから。
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8551
とか
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/9436
はマストね。
共にGreasemonkyが必要です。
http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/index.html
Dashboardが見やすくなるコレも、ね。
http://userstyles.org/styles/2410
友達をつくったりこのあたりから掘ってみたりして、
http://mao.s151.xrea.com/tumbrowser/
Reblog行為をしたりされたりしていくうちに、
タンブラの真の姿が見えてくる。かもw。です。
just do it ;)
Minoru Yokoo
Today at 2:23pm
僕ちゃん元々火狐愛用者だから。今はね、火狐でしょ、網景でしょ、あと唄鳥というのも試しているところよん。
野生冒険とかはもう本当に極たまぁにしか使わない。だって性転換手術しないと枝折の自由貿易できないんだもん。
でもドングリコロリンにまだ求婚できないんだよなぁ、だって情報ガンジガラメじゃない。輸入はできるけど輸出できない。
ちょっと出島だよね。
僕ちゃんは火狐の操作棒に「ドングリコロリン接続」をもうけてあります。今のところこれでいいかなぁ、別に商業目的のデナイザーじゃないから見てくれは今のところどうでもええし。
でも今おもろいのはググル・アナリテイックス。まだ火が浅いから判断できないけど、普通のispが提供するようなスタットよりは全然いいし、わかりよい。
んでも、ググは相当情報押さえてるね。
今はthink outside the boxな感じぃ？
y bttr gt yr sht rght
i've been proactively looking at the new 2.0 stuff (can someone please come up with better marketing terms than "2"?), i dunno, "web next", oh, that's a dead computer. sorry. "next in the pile" "next in line" "next in the queue" "next to die"?
anyway, it's like going through demos. there is interesting shiiit out there. that tumblr.com thing i posted yesterday (http://minoruuuu.tumblr.com/), it's good, i've finally found something that fits someone with an attention-deficit-disorder (add). or "i can't sit down and wait for people bebacuse i have a big ego problem" like me. it's not fast enough yet, but it's miles better than the current delicious or other social bookmarking sites. then i found something else this morning, which might be better from an overall perspective.
it's that fast. and to think, kids will be used to this stuff.
but, i think one should allow data import and export as a prerequisite really. i mean, i got TONS of shit. i am bookmark king amongst my berry narrow circle of frenz, i ain't going to import and export that sheeet manually now, no f-way.
i guess the internetz is finally becoming what people were talking it was going to be in the late 90s. it doesn't have the same "holy fuck" sensation it gave me when i first exchanged an onine chat with a person i know in 94 (thanks zak), but it's a different and pleasurable sensation. at least i don't have to spend $500 a month on phone bills (yes, i did that for the first 3 months of being online and don't ask me about how much i paid my isp, they were charging by the minute....... no, only a bit of it was porn, most of it was chats and stuff like the residents website, mondo2000, etc, remember that?).
myspace is lame, i can't do shit with this blog when i want to split, so i am x2 posting elsewhere and i can control that other half. same as the DRM debate.
facebook is a bit stiff. it's a different thing that you can't really compare to myspace. but the apps are nice, though again, it's like the "listen to my demo" scene, too much sheeeet.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f8b11252-25a7-11dc-b338-000b5df10621.html?nclick_check=1
MySpace to follow rival’s lead
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: June 28 2007 22:05 | Last updated: June 28 2007 22:05
MySpace is likely to change its technology strategy to allow other online companies to “plug” their web services directly into its social networking site, according to Chris DeWolfe, one of its founders.
The move would mark a new step in the evolution of social networks into fully fledged internet platforms, while opening a new front in the battle for audience share among the web’s fastest-growing companies.
The expected change in approach is a reaction to the success of rival Facebook, which last month unveiled a similar step to open its network to outside developers. Although it has less than half as many users as MySpace in the US, Facebook’s approach has won it strong backing from other consumer internet companies, which hope it will give them an easier way to reach the network’s 27m members.
and the race is on
http://www.mxplay.com/
make an osx player, nitwit!!!!!!
looks like tomorow's coming sooner than you may think.
phones, internet, computer, wifi, ps3, wii, xbox, mbox, etc. doesn't really matter that much, they're all just different methods of distributing and carrying the same thing. water.
October 10, 2007
Does this seem familiar to you?
er, it does to me!
yeah, yeah, yeah, i need to get out of the whole 80's thing. ok, i'll listen to more woodie gutherie! i'll recite george orwell. happy now?
the RIAA Victory sounds like the perfect subject
for Suicide to make into a song.
What Passes For A Music Business Victory These Days
Let’s review the particulars of the verdict.
--Jammie Thomas is a 30-year-old Native American single mother of two. --Who lives in Brainerd, Minnesota, a small rural town best known for being the partial setting of the Coen brothers' movie Fargo. --Who was found guilty of filesharing 24 songs. --For which she now owes $222,000.
The Complete Beatles in One Hour
i think the de-compressed orange juice stuff sounds beautiful.
The Complete Beatles in One Hour
All The Beatles UK LP releases compressed at 800% into a one-hour MP3.Here's the album list (all the UK LPs):
Please Please Me
With the Beatles
A Hard Day's Night
Beatles for Sale
Help!
Rubber Soul
Revolver
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles (White Album)
Yellow Submarine
Abbey Road
Let It BeYou'll notice that Magical Mystery Tour is missing as Mr. McLaughlin claims it was released in the UK as two EPs.
WFMU Listener Editor B took portions of the file and decompressed them back to tempo. They sound amazing:
i put on women’s clothing and hang around in bars
but i'm a lumberjack and i'm ok
oh dear
p-p-p-pork!
wasn't that a monty python trademark?
old school tape edit
protools edit
EMI TR90
studer c37
<3 <3 <3 <3
<3 <3 <3 <3
this is what the beatles used
<3 <3 <3 <3
<3 <3 <3 <3
ampex
wax cylinder
wire recorder
LET'S FACE IT
NONE OF THIS DIGITAL SHIT IS REAL IT DOESN'T CRY, IT DOESN'T HIT YOU, IT'S AN IT
IT ONLY HELPS YOU GET TO A POINT WHERE YOU WANT TO BE. BE IT POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE, THAT'S YOUR PROBLEM.
duh! it was SO SIMPLE
fyck it was sooooo DEAD SIMPLE, i should of known!!!!!
OK, HOW MYCH SOFTWARE DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR "PERSONAL" COMPUTER?
NOT A COMPUTER OWNED OR SUBSIDIZED BY A COMPANY????
do you have POPULAR SOFTWARE installed in YOUR PERSONAL COMPUTER? (Y/N)
HOW MUCH IS MICROSOFT OFFICE? $390
how often do you use office?
HOW MUCH IS ADOBE PHOTOSHOP? $630
how often do you use photoshop?
HOW MANY CD's DO YOU HAVE?????? (INSERT NUMBER, NO, REALLY)
HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU LISTENED TO THE CD's? (INSERT NUMBER, NO, REALLY)
HOW MANY GAMES DO YOU HAVE?
HOW MANHY TIMES HAVE YOU PLAYED THE GAME???
HAVE YOU EVER TRIED HAVING A LITTLE TRUST IN PEOPLE AND OPENING UP THE SOFTWARE AT A LOWER PRICE OR SHAREWARE???
DEPENDING ON;
AMOUNT OF USE
CONTEXT OF USE
INCOME
ETC, ETC, ETC?
YOU PROBABLY GET MY DRIFT NOW.
IT IS SIMPLE. MUSIC AND GAMES IS JUST PLAIN SOFTWARE. WE KEPT CALLING IT "SOFTWARE". BUT DO WE TREAT IT LIKE SOFTWARE?
IS MICROSOFT OR ADOBE INCREASING THEIR SHARE IN SOFTWARE WITH THEIR PRICING AND DRM? (PROBABLY NOT. IF THEY ARE, I AM TOTALLY WRONG)
WILL YOU RISK USING MORE "CHALLENGING" SOFTWARE IF IT WAS READILY AVAILABLE AND AFFORDBALE? (I WOULD)
got one! it's DEAD FUCKING SIMPLE
it's DEAD FUCKING SIMPLE!!!!
hmm
i think think there may be more to the story.............
1-4-G
http://minoruuuu.tumblr.com/
i thought that was wonderful, really
so, i woz checking out to see if there are any "blackmarket" editions of the "album" floating around.
i go to oink.cd which i am a member of. VERY useful. anyway, they had a link for "inrainbows".
click it, see what it does. i think that's wonderful, really. it's a group of music fans actually saying something.
got it, hithats and cymbal washes
ok, i've got the album, it's pretty good. i bought it.
D Muzak
so i'm not going to go on about lyrics and such, i don't listen like that. but it's a good length, long and short enough.
iit getz better from like track4 onwardz. track 2 sounds like a japanese band. heard that structure and melody line.
will it change my life? no fucking way.
(but i am nearly 40, in the music "biz" and waay tooooo jaded)
will i listen to it again? probably, maybe.
(i am playing it again now, you win, radiohead!)
are they better than the beatles? no.
(they defined so much in terms of writing and sonic perspectives, it is VERY hard to compete with them. they kind of wrote the bible. comparing your music to the beatles is NOT FAIR, so let's not use that cliched comparison over and over. do you compare your child to someone else's? get over it)
i'm not a simple music fan, i know about the machines at play too well.
but this album may change your life. music is a non-linear experience. apart from whatever minutes of time one is immersed in it, the experience transcends time. like i said, i am not a typical buyer.
i like the album, i think it sounds like a band.
Perzonal Attraction
though i do know about the machines, they don't get in the way of my hearing unless i hear something i feel jealous about.
with this album, it's the "processing" mostly on d drumz. is that mic'ing? soundz like it. the hihats and ride cymbals give me the horn. jazz like sexay. it's NOT EASY to get that kind of sound, so stop banging on them brand spanking new cymbals expecting to get the same sound.
you'd expect the performances and sounds to be more than adequate with a band of this calibre, so what stands out to me and what makes it different from another british electric folk influenced bookend band is the processing. that's what makes it 2007, really.
does that department go to the axe and boards bloke, stage left? i'm sure he gets the horn when he's on ebay.com, vintageking.com, soniccircus.com, etc...........
i hearz some nice crusty action using human voices with, i believe that might be a granular synthesis unit............ oh, i <3 big knobs. having good compositions help too.
it's got like nice sonics. what is that compressor though.......... doesn't sound american. it's almost abrasive, dry........ ssl? there's a lot og sonics going on, it sounds like from my laptop speakers.
VALU
is it worth 40 quid? hmm...................................................... i better wait for the visual porn to arrive to comment.
is it worth 1p+45p "processing"? yes.
how much would i pay for download only after having heard it? hmm, $2 for 160kbps.
i might pay a bit more if it sounded more robust with like 320kbps. but let's not confuse. yeah, i'd pay $2 in a heartbeat and i'd think about $3. actually, make it $3. maybe $4. i would pay $5 for a FLAC or lossless format so i can get the horn with the hihats and cymbals. but i'm weird like that.
"this is my point" what is the value of music? doesn't it change every fucking time you have a listen? do you attach a value to your girlfriend when you're getting along and not getting along? i hope not. it ain't fucking linear!
i dunno about 160kbps, it makes it sound a bit lightweight. but as a standard format, 160kbps "may" be adequate. must google that.
no, this isn't the post about making money.
Make Money From Music
Watch these clips
THINK, IMAGE
please wait til my next post
October 9, 2007
(s) mash
formal complaint to radiohead
dear radiohead,
ok, so i thought i bought your kp discobox for the fixed amount of 40 UK Pounds Sterling.
i felt excitement in the air, being loved by wonderful boys from the united kingdom. rule britannia.
being a par of the teh big experiment.
big, classic power chords and string sections and fanfare.
canned styrofoam.
but you did not write back to me, at all. i felt really lonely and desserted.
you didn't call me for a week. were you out to the pub? was that cucumber sandwich really tasty?
so yesterday, i had to take keyboard in finger and write to you, to seek attention.
you're going to release your latest effort accumilated love in a few hours, i want you to treat me just the same way you do as the other girls you're seeing. but, i only want you to see me. me.
this morning, you wrote to me "oh, it's from radiohead!" but what i saw was a letter, the same letter you write to all the girls you've been seeing.
i'm all for open relationships, but please, at least write to me the moment you recognized that i am in your life and that you are a part of mine.
i thought you wanted me for who i am and not my body.
love,
too much caffeine.
Big Ups to ICR and Grand Royal (rip)
I know a lot of my peeps are aware of this dude, Ian C. Rogers. Majordomo, Grand Royal (r.i.p).
He seems to work at Yahoo now.
All I can say is, that Ian is right. Now that my memory has been triggered, I remember the mp3 saga. I try to be fair with ANY new technology (look, it's human mentality leading to group activity that makes anything bad, it's perspective based. Technology is just a fucking machine, wake up) and remember discussing it with some "geek" friends, ie, recording engineers, producers, etc.
Let's try not to apply any human (often greed) based filters on this. Look at it as connecting the dots. The dot is your point of input/ouput.
Let the data flow. If you're afraid, try with harmless stuff. Demo's outtakes, crappy stereo recordings of live shows. Put tags on them, follow their movement. Applications that enable that are readily available. If you don't know, just ask me or anybody that's willing to on the internetz. I'm just starting the day and I'm not humane enough to type all that crap.
I'm having more thoughts. Exciting day.
http://www.fistfulayen.com/blog/?p=127
Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses and Content vs. Context, a Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends
"Hello. My name is Ian Rogers. I’ve been building digital media applications since 1992, dropped out of a Computer Science PhD program to tour with Beastie Boys in 1995, and have been purchased by both AOL and Yahoo! in the ten years since then, with a stint running the new media department for a record label in the middle. Currently I work at Yahoo! Entertainment on Yahoo! Music."First, a question: How many of you have tried Amazon’s MP3 download service?
Back in 1999 I ran Winamp.com for Rob and Justin. Napster came on the scene and we thought, “Wow! There’s a market for MP3s!” We had millions of people using Winamp, visiting Winamp.com for skins and plugins — it was by far the largest community of MP3-lovers. We naively and enthusiastically suggested to labels that we’d be a great place to sell MP3s. The response from the labels at the time was universally, “What’s MP3?” or “Um, no.”
Instead they commenced suing Napster. We were naive to be sure, but we were genuinely surprised by the approach. Suing Napster without offering an alternative just seemed like a denial of fact. Napster didn’t invent the ability to do P2P, it was inherent in TCP/IP. It was like throwing Newton in jail for popularizing the concept of gravity.
Nullsoft subsequently built and prematurely released a program called Gnutella which became the basis for true P2P of the coming years. When Tom Pepper told Time Magazine that Gnutella was for “sharing recipes” he really said it all: This is so much bigger than just sharing music. This is physics. It’s trivial for one person to transfer bits from one person to another. Trivial. Unstoppable. PUT YOUR ENERGY ELSEWHERE, we thought out loud.
I caught a lot of heat from my music industry friends for Nullsoft’s Gnutella leak. In a long and impassioned email in 1999 I wrote to everyone I knew in a band, at a label, or music journalism (whatup, Jay!) and urged them to sell their content to their users in the format they were asking for: MP3. Make it easy, I wrote, and convenience will beat free.
Well, we (you included) did lots of other things instead. While running “New Media” at Grand Royal I released the first day/date digital/physical release with At The Drive-In’s “Relationship of Command”. Thanks to EMI requirements (hi Ted! hi Melissa!) it was DRM’d WMA and we sold about 12 copies in the first month, probably all to journalists. Years later I helped Yahoo! build Yahoo! Music Unlimited, a Windows Media Janus DRM-based subscription service. Record labels for their part participated in no end of control experiments: SDMI, Liquid Audio, Pressplay, Coral, etc, and they continue to this day.
But now, eight years later, Amazon’s finally done what was clearly the right solution in 1999. Music in the format that people actually want it in, with a Web-based experience that’s simple and works with any device. I bought tracks from Amazon (Kevin Drew and No Age), downloaded them, sync’d them to my new iPod Nano, and had them playing in my home audio system (Control 4) in less than five minutes. PRAISE JESUS. It only took 8 years.
8 years. How much opportunity have we lost in those 8 years? How much naivety and hubris did we have when we said, “if we build it they will come”? What did we spend? And what did we gain? We certainly didn’t gain mass user adoption or trust, two prerequisites to success on the Internet.
Inconvenient experiences don’t have Web-scale potential, and platforms which monetize the gigantic scale of the Web is the only way to compete with the control you’ve lost, the only way to reclaim value in the music industry. If your consultants are telling you anything else, they are wrong."
I realy liked Grand Royal back then. As one of us put it "their public image became too large than what they really were", but at the bit where I crossed paths with them, around 1996 via Buffalo Daughter (myspace), the vibe there was crazy but exciting. Through this involvement, I made friends that I will remember and hope to keep in touch, for a long time to come.
Anyway, read Ian's post.
You fucking cunt.
don't fucking cry, you were ripped off! cause a riot!
Justin Norrie
October 6, 2007
AdvertisementHundreds of Australian teachers of English in Japan should "start making contingency plans", the Government has warned, as erratic behaviour by language school colossus NOVA this week fuelled more predictions of an impending collapse.
Dozens of foreign staff at NOVA, which employs more than 1000 Australians, have reportedly been given eviction notices because the corporate giant has failed to pay the rent on their apartments, despite in some cases deducting it from their wages.
Japanese students were in tears outside the biggest NOVA school in Fujisawa, south of Tokyo, yesterday, after arriving to find the school had been evicted from its building for defaulting on rent.
Nova, the disgusting chain of English schools. Seriously, if I looked like a token honky in this hood (sorry, no offense boys and gals), I would of really done well there. You look like a foreigner (gaijin)? HIRED.
DON'T FUCKING CRY ABOUT IT, YOU WERE RIPPED OFF. REVOLT, RIOT, SUE THEM!
I KNOW JAPANESE ISN'T AN OFFENSIVE CULTURE OR LANGUAGE, BUT STOP BEING PASSIVE (OR PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE) AND STOP GETTING MIND RAPED. BECOME AWARE. GET WITH THE SYSTEM AND THE LINGO OF AN ONLINE CULTURE. LEARN ENGLISH IF YOU REALLY WANT TO AND NEED TO, NOT BECAUSE THE MAJORITY SAYS SO. MOTIVATE FROM WITHIN. NOT SOME CHEERLEADER/GROUP/HERD MENTALITY. GAWD. FUCKING KILL ME, NOW.
this is some risky shit (so says the conservative me)
http://www.projectplaylist.com/
so it's basicallty got a robot engine and scans the internetz for mp3's, looks for tags, id's them, put them onto a database and you bung on an user interface that you can use to create playlists and slap 'em on to your myspace and stuff. all based on dodgy looking ads.
Project Playlist’s Gets $3M To Keep Experimenting
Project Playlist calls itself a “social music experiment.” In other words, it’s just one of the many options available when it comes to adding an embeddable music player to MySpace or Facebook profiles. Its simple player lets users aggregate free MP3 files available on the Net and put them together in a widget that can be posted just about anywhere. This week the company even announced a version of Project Playlist for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone.
The Beverly Hills, Calif.-based startup has raised $3 million in funding, according to PE Hub. We tried to contact the company to find out more about their Series A round, but to no avail.Project Playlist makes some money through advertising on its site, and spends on “performance royalties” paid to performance rights organizations. These orgs, in turn, dole out undisclosed sums to songwriters and music publishers. The more their songs appear on playlists, the more they get paid.
Even though the company pays musicians and publishers, as with any music player, copyright is a serious concern. Project Playlist doesn’t host music content (it plays files hosted on third-party web sites), and claims it maintains no editorial oversight over what gets posted by its users.
the ads are well dodgy, but so are myspace ads. try it out yourself.
it's definitely a confused world for music right now. if you didn't notice.
i think i'll dig out my cassette deck (that i've only been using to put vocals and guitars through) and that big cardboard box full of cassette tapes, some even from the 70's. i used to tape radio 1 shows. listen to classic dave lee travis or something and cry.
Geek 4 Life.
Game theory/Prisoner's dilemma
so http://www.endofcontrol.com/ gave me a slappy slap slap. the guy just lays it out flat. it's like arthur ashe comes up to john mcenroe at a davis cup final and says to him during the break "wake up, you piece of shit". i better say "yes sir, yes sir, three bags full sir!" (not exactly coldplay/keane material and stop emoting at the end).
anyway. here are some more ponderings and waste of internet bandwidth.
i am optical and wifi, so no problem!
Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is often used in the context of economics. It studies strategic interactions between agents. In strategic games, agents choose strategies which will maximize their return, given the strategies the other agents choose. The essential feature is that it provides a formal modelling approach to social situations in which decision makers interact with other agents. Game theory extends the simpler optimisation approach developed in neoclassical economics.
Many points in this article may be difficult to understand without a background in the elementary concepts of game theory.In game theory, the prisoner's dilemma (sometimes abbreviated PD) is a type of non-zero-sum game in which two players may each "cooperate" with or "defect" (i.e. betray) the other player. In this game, as in all game theory, the only concern of each individual player ("prisoner") is maximizing his/her own payoff, without any concern for the other player's payoff. In the classic form of this game, cooperating is strictly dominated by defecting, so that the only possible equilibrium for the game is for all players to defect. In simpler terms, no matter what the other player does, one player will always gain a greater payoff by playing defect. Since in any situation playing defect is more beneficial than cooperating, all rational players will play defect, all things being equal.
The unique equilibrium for this game is a Pareto-suboptimal solution—that is, rational choice leads the two players to both play defect even though each player's individual reward would be greater if they both played cooperate. In equilibrium, each prisoner chooses to defect even though both would be better off by cooperating, hence the dilemma.
In the iterated prisoner's dilemma the game is played repeatedly. Thus each player has an opportunity to "punish" the other player for previous non-cooperative play. Cooperation may then arise as an equilibrium outcome. The incentive to defect is overcome by the threat of punishment, leading to the possibility of a cooperative outcome. If the game result is infinitely repeated, cooperation may be a Nash equilibrium although both players defecting always remains an equilibrium.
recorded music for free? maybe.
UPDATE.
i need to reaccess my perspective on this. seriously.
this is making sense to me. http://www.endofcontrol.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
i'm pretty skeptical about this.
Charlatans To Give Away New Album
"U.K. alternative rock veterans the Charlatans will release their new album as a free download with modern rock radio network Xfm's Web site, xfm.co.uk, in early 2008.
The band's new single "You Cross my Path" will be released as a free download from Oct. 22. The single and the as-yet-untitled album -- the band's 10th studio set -- will also be available from the Charlatans' website, thecharlatans.net, as well as the Xfm site. Xfm have also scored the first radio play of the new single on its "Music: Response" show after 8pm on Oct. 4.
"Why would you volunteer to join the army for 10 years unless you had no choice?" said the Charlatans' manager Alan McGee in a statement. "Record companies are kind of like the army -- very regulated. We were really excited when Xfm got behind us and were as enthusiastic about the download as we are -- they are the first people to embrace music for the people. The band will get paid by more people coming to gigs, buying merchandise, publishing and synch fees. It's the future business model."
if you can afford to take the potential risks, it's worth trying.
for me, the process of becoming with music is something similar to a relationship. kind of like you're trying hard to charm up a woman. curious. you see a beautiful woman, you think "oh, i want to know more". so you ask her out, get rejected and make the wrong decision. or try again. you succeed. take her out, read books, get inspired, etc. you try to become a better person. at least i do. so, you're in fact, spending $ to gain an experience. an experience of finding yourself, improving, questioning, loving yourself. that experience is yours and yours only.
i think that's how you build up a music/book/art collection. your own knowledgebase. the goods are a reflection of your thoughts and images. one gets inspired by whatever starting/reference point you have (be it the beatles, miles davis, rolling stones, rolf harris, john denver, cliff richard, stockhausen, etc), then you start to pave your own road. so the net result is yours and yours only. some may venture out to other forms of expression, some may not have time for pursuit and just quit at age 25.
for me, finding something, the mystery of it, was always part of the fun. it's definitely not a "community" thing for me. i do not wave the lighter at shows. i would maybe share opinions with likeminded cynical friends, but i don't talk about the "naff" (that's "uncool" for the yanks) nostalgia based music i may still like, like, er spandau ballet or whatever. but the reason i like spandau ballet is that when i was a kid in england watching top of the pops, sb were using synthesizers, which were really cool back then, they wore skirts, and they had makeup. anything different, so that i could talk about it or impersonate it at school the next day. or a few months later, they're all sweaty and g.a.y. like. so in an ashamingly embarassing way, i have fond memories of them. kind of like girls you fancied in the old days, but you'd never will now. your values evolve over time. nostalgia. time stamped. not many people hate their entire past.
>>>>insert your identity and value of music here<<<<
(there's probably no single answer. can it be narrowed down to two? or three?)
if you have it for free, that means there's no build up. no wineing and dining, no romance. once it's over, you can walk out. but she may still ask you to buy some underwear. it's like you can date angelina jolie when you feel majestic and then date britney if you felt really disrespectful of yourself. and all you need to do is buy a bit of cloth. that's a bit too roman empire for me. this may work for single territory, but what about international? different cultures, manners, habits. this still why the world is still interesting.
when was the last time the charlatans toured japan? does xfm exist in japan? (no). are you going to do a deal with another company for it in japan? (you can't, because i would of downloaded the songs from xfm whilst still being in japan. if xfm monitored ip and prohibited me from getting it in japan, i would still be able to get it via black/grey market methods and FREE). where's the tour support for japan going to come from? how are you going to pay the people to promote the japan tour? or have they just given up? what about china? india? markets that are just waiting to be connected? am i look at it from a potentially flawed perspective?
so i hear britney's single is number one on itunes. it means there are tons of people that either symphasize to her, just plan curious, or have some weird fetish. or just plain like the song, but the decision to click "buy" is probably based on a non-objective triggered thought.
i dunno, i'm one of them masochists that actually need to climb mount everest to feel the exstacy. once it's over, men are not about the horn. on the few rare occasions where i had free-for-all, i try it out a bit, get indluged, but then, always, the horn just doesn't work. i find some knob to twiddle or go on to the next.
at least that's what happens to me, i dunno 'bout you though. still not sure if the human mind works like that.
how much is right? well, i've been downloading a lot recently. not a LOT, but i've probably invested enough money into my music collection pile to warrant a few downloads, thank you very much. but the method is far easier, quicker and convenient than going to a record shop. not because it's free. it is the user interface. if i had access to the same content, for say a $30/month subscription, i would do it. but unfortunately, i live in japan, which is online purchase hell.
for me, once i set my aim on something, i want it. i don't want ketchup or fries with it. i want it direct and i want it now. which is probably why i fail with women, but....... anyway, downloading music is far more convenient. i don't really need the artwork (yes and no), that's all sugar frosted stuff now, ever since cd. i mainly just want the music.
going out, getting on the train (cos my local shop is utter shite) to shibuya, whatever, trying to find it, the shop attendant is useless, they don't have it........ that just does not give me the horn.
on the 'puter;
- i can find the music i want, pretty quickly
- i can find the background info on it quickly and far more accurately than some untrained 18 year old shop attendant (no offense, but you got to know your baseball cards and let's face it, you were hired either for your good looks or cheap labour, sometimes attitude). discography websites, wiki's, etc
- any views you may have on the music is yours and you can share that with your virtual friends
- it's hard to keep track of what i bought, but that's not difficult to achieve
oh, how much would i pay? i think we're talking about maybe half of what it is now for starters. so $7 or $6 for an album, $0.5 for a song. if that seems to work, then stagger it. back catalogue (which would of recouped by then, or define back catalogue as "recouped") would be cheaper, say $2 for an album, $0.2 for a song. put a limited creative commons license on it, let the users spread it. blog it, myspace it, youtube it, social it.
heck, maybe even offer them a % cut, an incentive to spread. but don't let that be the only reason. it will saturate the "spreading" quality in no time. expertise is still required.
use the back catalogue to drive the initiative. show the tradition and history of music. with upcoming web interface technologies, the visual and communication methods are already available or will become available. make the internetz abound and aplenty with the sounds of music. spread the data, it wants to flow. let the obscure artists and musical genres have their moment of opportunity, their say, before they die or lose interest in doing it because "the business sucks". a lot have passed already. use youtube.com, use any means of communication necessary. recycle. it's already being spread around via illegal downloading anyway. give the kids better quality audio than 192kbps. give them pictures, give them trading cards. give them something to talk about. let the legacy live on.
subscription. let the user determine if they want to subscribe or not. some may only want to buy a song a month. some may want to buy 300 songs a month. keep the options open for the user. service business. not an enforced marketing business. you can make your own customised sneakers now. why not music, is it that much more harder? i would imagine not.
then, for new stuff (there is good stuff out there), an important issue is startup and seed money. career advice.
a combination of some giveaway, some brand driven initiatives, some ad revenue methods. venture capital for musicians.
but for new artists, who need to establish a foothold and start the ball rolling, keep the option of charging regular price as mentioned above. they need to get in shape and get trained. they need good coaching. proper artistic and business management, agents that would locate deals. proper a&r, old school. not the "ok, let's protools that and auto tune this, stick this song and that song".
a lot of music has shelf life and it's the initial point of impact that is often important. maximise it, especially with new acts. deal opportunities. look at radiohead. how much discussion, disgust, worship and publicity has it brought to the internetz in a week?
were they being unfaithful to their fans? were they trying to rip them off? probably not. your girlfriend is leaving you, with your child. and in this case, one of the most desirable. not because she found someone she could milk for life, because she opted for her own independence and taking her own responsibility. you're freaking out. she's willing to live seperately and have a crack at it, but long term chances are slim. an american woman just said no too.
people still want to be shocked, amazed, entertained. they want a good tune, be entertained, forget their now and make a memory out of it. they want a reference point. "hits" will probably exist but in different forms and scale.
exclusivity of music rights may be a dead horse. or territory for that matter. the territorial restrictions are coming down day by day. deal terms. perpetual deals are pointless if you can't sell the stuff after what you thought was the "sell-by" date. maybe someone else can receycle it. but why do labels need to make money off of that recycle process?
maybe this means that the ownership of the masters should belong to the artists. not the labels. let the artists take responsibility of their own actions. and their music.
the label is probably a service business now. a PR company. not a wine tasting session. the roles may of have reversed. maybe the labels are the ones that get paid royalties from the artist. territory by territory. each territory has it's own distinct set of rules and tendencies. experience, perspective and execution wins here.
publishing and mechanicals, that's a different ballpark. probably opportunities aplenty.
anything that comes from deals other than sales of recorded music, such as ad or brand revenue, don't put all that cash into the label's pocket, cos what is a label now? put that mirror and razor or crack pipe down and put that hard earnt $20 bill into hiring a dedicated PR person, put it aside for touring, or buying drinks for your interns and stagehands (i remember those middle aged people that bought me food and drink 20 years ago). not up yer bum.
traceable, transparent. accountable.
those who want the artwork, merchandise, etc. create music salons where you can gather amongst your collector selves and socialise. look at the beautifully cut grooves on that limited edition (or bespoke) vinyl. most people want fast food. but some actuallty want quality. don't deny them their right or opportunity to engage. the mini vs. bentley. prices for physical will have to go up, but offer the user more. more art. more content.
this may be what is known as a venue. or a club. rough trade are doing what seems like good things at their new rough trade east shop (at least on text it looks good). if so, open up the lobby to commerce. a market and a place to interact, watch, listen and inspire. byoms (bring your own memory stick), fill it up, buy the cloth. a hipper version of the wfmu record fair?
don't saturate the physical experience, the sensation. that first live show is important to anyone's life. it could be that show you play tomorow.
collect user data. google analytics. user data is now worth $. relying on one outlet of information/product/data (ex. myspace) is probably a bad idea.
as for data formats, that is debatable and probably must synchronize with bandwidth demand, audio quality and data storage trends. maybe watermark it, but don't copy protect it, that is a pain in the arse. let the data flow, not stop and perish. whether you sell that on the net or via the phone, or wifi, those are simply different methods of data transfer. not really the main issue.
i know it's a different method of accounting and recouping and rights ownership, but it's not entirely reinventing the wheel, is it? it's just taking the muck out and being careful and hopefully wise.
for the musician, none of this really matters. for the most part, they don't get into it for the money. they need to make the music. if they can't sell it, they'll just keep on doing it. just like the days before edison.
can some clever accountant type please calculate this for me and see if it works?
maybe i need to think more radically
repost: Timeline by Bob Lefsetz
JANUARY
Eric Nicoli fires Alain Levy and David Munns. Desperately trying to save his own job, the biscuit king axes the architects of PolyGram's success. A company that was stolen from under Levy and company by Universal when the Frenchman spent too much time and money trying to enter the movie business, where any savvy soul knows it's primarily about library and distribution, which PolyGram didn't have. Although Levy and Munns preached revolution, one would be hard pressed to call their management style evolution. Venerable label Capitol Records is shut down. A fitting end cap to the closure of Tower Records as the sun set on 2006.
MAY
Apple launches iTunes Plus. Which has no economic impact, since sale by track is not the future. Anyone clamoring for DRM free tracks is stealing them anyway. But what is important here is EMI's willingness to move. Sensing disaster ahead, Nicoli tries to pull a rabbit from the hat, tries to move the company forward. Although more drastic measures are necessary, this is a signal moment in the history of the music business. Suddenly, the labels are playing offense. Sick of being beaten up and seeing their revenue erode, they're willing to enter the twenty first century, to try something. Universal gets all the credit, with its bullying of iTunes/Apple/Steve Jobs, but it was Nicoli who took action. Not that it was enough to save his job.
JULY
Prince gives away his album with the "Daily Mail". Retailers cry foul. Only one problem, no one's on the retailer's side anymore, nobody cares. It's a big box world, only the heartiest of indies is surviving, and they're a major label afterthought anyway. As for the consumer, he can suddenly find all those wares no stores stock online, whether it be for free via P2P or pay via iTunes. He's not complaining. He's happier than a pig in shit. He can take his now giant collection wherever he wants via iPod.
Prince makes more money than he would have retailing his CD. It's great fanfare for his month long stint at the O2 Arena. The only ones pissed are the old guard. The aforementioned vocal retailers, and the labels...especially Sony, which thought it had a deal for the U.K. with the diminutive superstar. The old guard says music is being devalued, but with more music in the hands of more people for less money and the artist richer and happier, where's the problem?
SEPTEMBER
Rick Rubin is profiled in the "New York Times". Those in the know wonder if the "Times" is relevant when it comes to the music business, especially since it quotes the now out of the industry David Geffen. Although desiring to appear forward-thinking, Rubin is mocked for his focus on the label's building, as if it's still the seventies. But Rubin does put the word "subscription" on the lips of every old wave player in the business. As if Napster wasn't failing in front of everybody and Rhapsody's footprint wasn't tiny. But, suddenly, the oldsters are waking up, thinking something's got to change.
SEPTEMBER
Britney Spears is a laughingstock on the MTV Video Music Awards. MTV cites a ratings increase, the show is pummeled all over the Web, which now functions as the public square MTV tells Madison Avenue it is. This is the nail in MTV's coffin, even though the station doesn't realize it. You know you're in shit shape when Justin Timberlake complains that you don't air enough videos, because when he broke through with 'N Sync you already showed very few clips. His complaint is equivalent to drivers bitching about the phasing out of vent windows. They're never coming back and neither are videos on MTV.
SEPTEMBER
Amazon launches its music store. Universal believes it's fucking with Apple, but the only relevance of the launch is the hastening of the demise of DRM.
OCTOBER
Radiohead distributes its album direct to fans, at a price they determine, even zero. Suddenly, a tidal wave erupts. Jamiroquai and Oasis, also out of their deals, are said to be following suit. The Charlatans just give away their album completely. In nine months, music has gone from something you pay for, at CD prices, whether it be for the complete album or tracks at the aliquot price, to free. The major labels are to blame, for sticking to the old model rather than monetizing the new, but it seems too late now. Acts want to do it for themselves. We may not know for months how successful this Radiohead model is. One doubts the band will release sales figures. But, the acts won't go back to the majors unless they get much better deals and transparent accounting. For even if the album is free, they can make a fortune on touring and merchandise. The album is the loss leader.
OCTOBER
The Eagles release their album via Wal-Mart. You get the saturation advertising of the majors without a major involved. Whether or not tracks ever become hits on the radio, the band will profit handsomely, since Wal-Mart has made a guaranteed purchase, using the band as a way to get people into their stores to buy more merchandise with higher margins. Suddenly, the major labels don't look like they're in control anymore.
THE FUTURE
Rapid change. More has happened in the landscape of online music/distribution in the past ten months than in the previous seven years. Tower Records has closed, CD sales have tanked, iPod penetration only increases, the majors can keep their heads in the sand no longer.
The Minnesota courtroom victory is the last hurrah of a failed strategy. Lawsuits might not be abandoned, but they will be back-burnered. The majors have to figure out a way to get people to pay for music. And the only way to do this is to create an attractive value proposition. Don't be surprised if in the next twelve months some form of P2P is licensed. More probable is an expansion of the eMusic model, wherein for a low price you get a bushel of unprotected MP3s.
Who blinks first?
Certainly not Universal. Doug doesn't do anything without a check. Hell, this is the guy who held up Microsoft for a piece of the Zune! If you follow him, you're in trouble.
Warner's Bronfman pleads a digital strategy but insists on higher per track prices and DRM, both anathema to an increase in online revenue/a solution. Will he wake up? Or will he focus on taking Warner private again, with the stock price so low.
Sony BMG. Sony's a wreck and BMG's purely old school. It's not clear who could put forth change even if it was desired.
EMI? The smallest company, with the worst assets, EMI must change, or merge, or die. Merger is going to be tough, certainly without more major label decline. IMPALA alone will make approval difficult. Nothing inspires change more than imminent death. New ideas will come from EMI, if at all.
But suddenly, all the movement is coming from acts. The acts are all making their money on the road, which the majors have no control over/interest in. This road revenue allows them the ability to experiment.
The acts are leading. Look to them for new ideas. They might not all be right, but after Prince, Radiohead and the Eagles, no one's afraid to take the leap anymore. Just today Trent Reznor went on his own.
The acts will give their music away for free in order to generate ticket sales. This leaves the majors out, unless they find a way to monetize music. The old way obviously doesn't work, otherwise all the acts wouldn't be deserting them.
We've finally got a game here. Frustration is dissipating, action is beginning. A new landscape will emerge. Probably run by new players. King will be the Web filters, in bed with the acts. The majors may just end up as licensing houses. Unless they're willing to give up their old model to get into the new world.
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http://www.endofcontrol.com/
http://www.endofcontrol.com/
Thank god I'm not "that" mad!!!!!
of course i'm not mad, i'm just curious and reactionary
it's FREE!
oh, for those curious. i am on the market. both professional and personal.
October 8, 2007
Lessig on "corruption"
larry lessig wiki
sourced from joi ito.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/11/AR2007071101996.html
Lucasfilm's Phantom MenaceBy Lawrence Lessig
Thursday, July 12, 2007; Page A23In May, Lucasfilm announced plans to enable fans of the "Star Wars" series to "remix" "Star Wars" video clips with their own creative work. Using an innovative Internet platform called Eyespot, these (re)creators can select video clips or other content and then add images or upload new content, whether images, video or music.
A dark force, however, has influenced Lucasfilm's adoption of Eyespot's technology. A careful reading of Lucasfilm's terms of use show that in exchange for the right to remix Lucasfilm's creativity, the remixer has to give up all rights to what he produces. In particular, the remixer grants to Lucasfilm the "exclusive right" to the remix -- including any commercial rights -- for free. To any content the remixer uploads to the site, he grants to Lucasfilm a perpetual non-exclusive right, again including commercial rights and again for free.
Upload a remix and George Lucas, and only Lucas, is free to include it on his Web site or in his next movie, with no compensation to the creator. You are not even permitted to post it on YouTube. Upload a particularly good image as part of your remix, and Lucas is free to use it commercially with no compensation to the creator. The remixer is allowed to work, but the product of his work is not his. Put in terms appropriately (for Hollywood) over the top: The remixer becomes the sharecropper of the digital age.
i've met pg. wonderful person. he owns part of ssl. now, that, along with ny owning a part of lionel trains, is a boy's wet dream.
i dunno 'bout you, but the klf seems more relevant now. not the music, yer bloody twat, that was all, you know. but the thought behind it. maybe it was all the drugs, who knows. i'd love to have a cuppa with bill drummond though.
the problem is
http://dtybywl.tumblr.com/post/14704288
何を歌っているのか、ぼくには全然理解できなかったが、ロバート・ワイアットの声が始まると涙がこみ上げてきた。ロバート・ワイアットの音楽の力だ。何十年経っても変わらない、音楽で何かを変えられると思っている人の力だ。
original quote source
残念ながらこういう風に聞ける人は少ないし、そこまで啓蒙しよう、という動きは極稀ですよね。
これだけじゃ飯食えないんですよね。でも、外部では日本という国のパブリック・イメージは内部より期待が高い。よって、期待と実態のシンクはずれているし、点と点が結ばれていない。これは音楽だけじゃないでしょう。野球選手も日本を出る必要なければわざわざ出ないですよね、多分。
自分のスタンスを説明するだけで疲れました。
this is creative, dude
http://www.c505.com/vvvvvv/projects/ascii_rock/index.html
who cares about the midi sounds? replace it.
http://www.c505.com/ was interesting too.
japanese, it seems.
language recognition. patterns from data, not text from data
http://longtailworld.blogspot.com/2007/10/trying-out-proximic-googles-potential.html
Yesterday, I read Merc's article about German startup called Proximic, and I found its 'pattern proximity' technology quite intriguing, especially because I write in Japanese.
While Google looks at the words on a Web page, Proximic looks for patterns of characters. That means Proximic's approach is completely language-independent, so it works as well with German and Chinese as it does with English. - "Tiny start-up rival to Google?" -SJ Mercury News
bilingual article, dude. don't deny the fact that some people swing in various ways.
i find that the possibilities give me the horn.
not sure how they exactly do this (if i knew, i would be in the it biz, mate), but is this a form of data modelling?
it does make sense to me, and i've just installed the plugin. for something that has just started, it looks pretty interesting.
so, the next time i have to find that uber rare akg d30 microphone from some desolate radio station in russia (and yes, i did find one, no, a rockstar beat me with his $. boys like to collect baseball cards, by any means necessary)
day 3
it's spreading to the next wall now. i will probably do this for a few more days. it's a really good thought cleansing process.
this brought a slight tear to my eye
日本中心に観点を持っているとこういう話は皮膚感覚が無いのでしょうが、私の場合は正にこの時代にこの場所で育ったので。ナショナル・フロント（通称NF）は私にとって、文章上の出来事ではなく、体感した現実です。通学電車の中、バス停、今で言うコンビニにて、道ばたにて。「黄色くて、目が線」の小学生にとっては怖いものでした。でも、こういう軋轢から生まれたものが沢山あるのも事実。自分の感覚もここにて刺激されました。自分の2 Tone好きは偶然ではありません。
実感湧かないでしょうが、映像から垣間みてください。まずは音楽と切り離してみてください。それが毎日学校へ通う小学生、または青年の日常だと想像してください。因に、これは英語がろくに話せない頃に体験しています。そりゃあ英語話せるように頑張るでしょう。
何故ああいう音楽が生まれたか。より理解できると思います。様式やシステムだけを取り入れるのではなく、その背景を理解（想像）すると、よりヒューマニティーへの深みが生まれるのでは。
The day I realised music could change the world
Billy Bragg Monday October 8, 2007 The GuardianBack in the late 70s, I was working in an office, a place of casual racism and homophobia. I never spoke out against it because I felt I was in a minority and didn't want the grief. On the streets, the National Front were marching through immigrant neighbourhoods, stirring up trouble and trying to divide communities.
I may well have carried on turning a blind eye were it not for the Clash. When their name was added to the bill of the first Rock Against Racism carnival in April 1978, I knew I had to be there. When I arrived at the rally, in east London, I was amazed to see 100,000 young people just like me - one for every vote the National Front had won in the council elections the year before.
I came away with a strong sense that this was where my generation was going to make its stand. Just as youth in the 50s had marched against the bomb and the longhairs of the 60s had opposed the Vietnam war, we were going to define ourselves in opposition to discrimination in all its forms.
Rock Against Racism was a watershed in the development of multiculturalism in this country and from its celebratory concerts sprang Two Tone, Red Wedge and the world music scene. We fought the narrow-mindedness of the National Front by widening our cultural horizons.Now, new bands are lining up with Love Music, Hate Racism to take on the resurgent BNP. That heady mix of pop and politics will inspire another generation of songwriters to take on the issues of the day while their detractors carp as they carped of old. But does music make any difference?
Well, it was the music of the Clash that got me to the Rock Against Racism carnival. However, it wasn't the songs they played that day, or the speeches that were made from the stage that changed my world. It was being in that audience. I went to work the next day determined to speak up against the racists, confident in the knowledge that I was not alone.
· Billy Bragg will be named the Classic Songwriter at today's Q Awards.
logical
very.
you can't keep shaking the tree. get out of that mode of self-denial.
you got to stop and let it grow.
which way, i really have to fucking clue.
but maintaining a stance of "er, i dunno, er, download, er, cd, er, drm, er no drum, er, er, er" is not going to take anything, anywhere.
make a decision and act on it. now.
i don't care if a lawyer or an accountant makes that decision. they know more about the limits and capabilities of law and money more than i ever will.
but don't let drummers do the decision making. please don't. bad choice in the 20th century, band choice in the 21st.
once the larger companies make their minds up, then work-for-hire people such as myself, can actually think about what to do within the given circumstances.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sony BMG chief out to make his mark
By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in London
Published: October 7 2007 22:10 | Last updated: October 7 2007 22:10
Rolf Schmidt-Holtz became chief executive of Sony BMG in February 2006 in unpromising circumstances, and has faced a threat to his company’s very existence ever since.
Last week, that challenge was lifted when the European Commission cleared the 2004 merger of Sony and Bertelsmann’s recorded music businesses for the second time. The review was a “distraction”, Mr Schmidt-Holtz admits, but then insists “we are moving on.”
Mr Schmidt-Holtz is out to show he can find a new business model for an age of bewildering digital developments and plunging CD sales.
“Somebody needed to step up and say, ‘Guys, this isn’t good enough’,” he says. This has involved some blunt messages to senior executives. “We had a situation where the executives thought they were artists.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
makes sense
boooooring. but does makes sense. i think it's these kinds of decisions, good or bad, that are required. not going back and fourth from point A to point B and not reaching where you want to be.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sony BMG seeks shareholder deal
By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Media Editor
Published: October 7 2007 22:12 | Last updated: October 7 2007 22:12
Sony BMG has proposed a compromise to its two shareholders that could allow the recorded music group behind Justin Timberlake and Bruce Springsteen to get into the more reliable business of music publishing, which generates revenue every time a song is played.
Sony, which owns half of the company, has been building up Sony ATV, its publishing joint venture with Michael Jackson, funding acquisitions of prominent catalogues of music under Marty Bandier, its new chief executive.
Concern that Sony BMG and Sony ATV could find themselves competing in auctions for collections of copyrights appeared likely to frustrate Sony BMG’s hopes of stabilising its volatile recording business by building the steady cash flows offered by music publishing.
Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, Sony BMG chief executive, told the Financial Times however Sony and Bertelsmann, the joint venture’s other partner, were “really close” to agreeing a proposal to allow him to pursue publishing revenues.
“The shareholders are talking at the moment and I’m confident we will find a solution,” he said.
The proposal would allow Sony BMG to pitch for the publishing rights of its own recording artists, he indicated, “but it does not mean I have it in mind to compete with my shareholder for major catalogues.”
The compromise would also make it less likely that Sony and Bertelsmann would have to fund big catalogue acquisitions. Bertelsmann sold its BMG Music Publishing business to Vivendi’s Universal to reduce debt last year, and neither shareholder has shown much appetite for additional investment in Sony BMG. Mr Schmidt-Holtz said the proposal would allow him to pursue an organic expansion in publishing and defend his existing roster of artists. “I have a lot of artists who are also songwriters, and I have to keep them in my company.”
Mr Schmidt-Holtz’s comments come days after the European Commission dismissed a court challenge launched by independent record labels. A negative ruling could have forced Sony BMG to unpick the 2004 merger that created the group from the recorded music businesses of Sony and Bertelsmann.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
October 7, 2007
i think he had a good day
that post with shampoo got me thinking a bit about bands i'd worked with. or missed working with.
amongst them was a band called "the fall". (in)famous. i did one album with them "cerebral caustic" when was it, 94 or 95? sold like 1500 or 2000 copies.
it wasn't much of an engaging process to work with the band, but i got to talk to the man, mark e smith once on the phone. he sounded like this, but worse. kept calling me sir. and i was this 26, 27 year old kid. this is probably mes on a really good day.
you know why british tv commentators sound like this? it's probably because of that stc/coles ribbon microphone they use. sounds like biscuits. not cookies, biscuits.
and i guess a lot of us have our own stories on the fall.
viral.
and the stories are all probably all true!
i've never seen them play live. they (well, him, really) came once in the 80's i think.
i know a known local ligger in the scene was wanting to have them play in tokyo.
douchebag
dude, i used to live in williamsburg. on bedford and south 3rd or something. how hipster is that, dude? i spent a very romantic 911 with a hunk of a man there. and also learnt how to recite the whole the blueprint album by jay-z. just by sleeping.
this video's been watched like close to a million times. god, i have no friends that tell me these things. i am officially out of the race. duba dbuba izzo, duba duba izzo........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3r7nu8G2yU
that's what i'm talking about, "user initiated/particpated video".
Freakonomics behind Radiohead's free album?
I am pretty bored of all this Radiohead fiasco to be honest.
But I liked Freakonomics (ta for the tip, E!) and occurences such as Radiohead is proof that the music business is pretty stale bread.
As an industry, music offers no new exciting perspectives on human interaction (and all these years, the naive me thought it was all about offering excitement, be it good or bad. yes there is a sinister me as well). It is definitely lagging waaay behind in the thought process of contemporary society. Aaanyway one to read with your coffee/tea.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Freakonomics behind Radiohead's free album?
By Simon Goodley
Last Updated: 12:40am BST 08/10/2007
"Just as you'd expect from a bunch of public schoolboys, Radiohead appear rather well read. They're a big rock band – so famous that even I've heard of them – formed while attending Abingdon School in Oxfordshire and who now have begun a fascinating piece of economics coursework.
From this week, those wanting to listen to the boys' next LP, In Rainbows, can pay as much or as little as they like for the album, which will be available to download on the band's website.
It is a classic honour system, most famously described by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner in their bestseller Freakonomics (which inspired this stunt, some eggheads insist)."
more continuation
oh oh, we're in trouble
http://neojaponisme.com/2007/10/04/boybands/
this is definitely a "don't even fucking discuss it" issue in the "biz". totally "taboo". video link. video link. pretty fucking revolting, if you ask me.
their production methods were in line with methods applied by phil spector (huh? do i see a connection here?) and motown in the 60's, manufacture or die. i knew a guy that used to engineer these songs and what happens is, the songs come in and are performed and recorded, belt conveyer style, and i mean shitloads of songs, not like we'll take 3 months to do an album, more like 3 days. then after the "karaoke" is complete, the songs are assigned singers. the running joke amongst those in the trenches is how much work one had to go through to make these songs presentable or, what your fake name was on the credits (some "credible" guys did these sessions to pay the bills). the vocal fixing was prior to auto-tune, protools dudes. so none of that cher shit. so it's eventide, ams, varispeed. fuck, i don't see them anymore, but there was this really useful thing called a "vocal selector" in tokyo studios. made by a company called current or was it studio system labs. and you only saw the vocal selector in japan (and i've been to big studios in the us and uk). the vocal selector did just that. helped you go through the masses of vocals. and it of course sync'd to smpte (aka timecode), japanese anal perfection, as always. you had to go as far as syllables at times, eat your heart out, roy thomas baker. worked wonders with the ssl and sony pcm3348. oh the good old days of tape.
taboo i knoe, but since i am in a complete "i don't fucking care what you do to me" mode, i just had to post it. the world is getting flatter, day by day. amazing. right on. big ups and whatever trendy prop word you want to use.
otherwise, i am moving my blog back to my domain and whatever i post here will probably not be thought related.
oh oh, we're in trouble. shampoo
sold a million, them. i woz after them when they were on icerink (boufant headbutt, wunnit, prob have some copy in some stinky cardborad box), talked to the managaer on the phone (pre internet, dude) and was told "we're going major, darling". if you play your cards right, tiny masters of today have a chance at the same kind of slot, but let's not burn out. if they're big in japan, buy me din din, r.
update: found boufant headbutt
they had a single before this, never could buy it.
huh
really interesting. go and read the full article.
http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2403
Youth, Intimacy, and Blood: Media and Nationalism in Contemporary Japan
"Put simply, we are witnessing a shift from an age of Nielsen ratings to an age of Google relevance. In the world of Google, value is measured not by “how many view,” but by “who is linked to whom.” We see this shift in the explosion of uses of the digital technology that have not, contrary to some initial predictions, replaced mass media, but which continue to evolve in often unpredictable ways as part of emerging communities of communication.
The Internet era is still in its infancy, yet even so we are witnessing the rapid growth of alternative communication channels, including in Japan, blogs, BBS sites such as 2 Channel, social networking online spaces such as Mixi, and the viral video site YouTube, used widely in both Japan and the US. With these, and with peer-to-peer software that enables unauthorized file sharing of media including music albums and anime programs (often translated by fans), it is increasingly important that the value of media should not be associated solely to the number of people a particular message reaches, but perhaps more importantly, in terms of the sense of social connection which media messages generate. The idea of social intimacy is meant as a shorthand to acknowledge that the attitudes of close friends are likely to carry much greater weight than a newspaper article, essay, or editorial. Now that media companies themselves aim to mimic the social networks of friends, might this alter the relationship between media and nationalism? "
ooh, depressing, innit?
From The Sunday Times October 7, 2007
The day the music industry died
There is no money in recorded music any more, that’s why bands are now giving it away
Robert Sandall
Having waited four years for their heroes to finish another record, Radiohead fans were understandably excited last week to learn that the band’s seventh album, In Rainbows, will finally be released on Wednesday. But what really rocked the fanbase – and heightened the air of gloom enveloping the global record industry – was the news that In Rainbows could be preordered and downloaded perfectly legally for as little as 1p at Radio-head.com.
Currently out of contract and thus entitled to dispose of their recordings as they see fit, one of the most popular bands in the world had decided to let the fans decide how much their latest album was worth. An MP3 file of In Rainbows would have no price tag. Honesty boxes, it seemed, were the new rock’n’roll.
If the Radiohead faithful appeared somewhat nonplussed by this move – “The danger is that people will stop seeing their music as important,” one fan posted in a blog; “I will gladly pay $20 knowing the artist will get the money,” pledged another – the band’s strategy was anything but mad, and not even that revolutionary. Last week the Charlatans announced they would be giving away their new album as a free download. Earlier this year another rock band, the Crimea, did the same.
In July Prince arranged for 2.5m copies of his new album to be cover-mounted on a Sunday newspaper and issued several hundred thousand more free of charge to anybody attending his London concerts in August. The scale of this charitable epidemic can be measured by a quick browse of the Free Albums Galore blog that lists more than 800 albums by a range of artists – from the Beastie Boys to some unsigned metal bands – all of which are free to download.
What looks like commercial suicide is, in today’s reality, sound business sense. Records, CDs or downloads now have all become downgraded to the status of promotional tools – useful to sell concert tickets and fan paraphernalia. While there is still good money to be made in music, and particularly on the concert circuit, the record business – blame it on piracy, too many CD giveaways or the advent of the recordable CD – is a busted flush.
A revealing story doing the rounds in America tells of a young rock band who decided to stop selling their CDs at gigs after they discovered that by offering their CDs for $10 they were cannibalising sales of their $20 T-shirts. The truth now is that a rudimentary cotton garment with a band logo stamped across it that has probably been manufactured for pennies in a Third World sweatshop costs about twice as much as an album recorded in a state-of-the-art western studio. And even at that price, recorded music isn’t selling.
Album sales are currently in freefall all over the world. The 10% drop in the UK over the past year is dwarfed by a 15% slide in the US, 25% in France and a whopping 35% in Canada. The bankruptcy this summer of the CD retail chain Fopp, HMV’s announcement that its profits halved in the first six months of this year and Richard Branson’s recent decision to dump the Virgin Megastores – which have reportedly lost him more than £50m in 2007 – are only the most visible signs of a crisis that has rocked the music industry on its axis.
The point isn’t just that people are buying fewer CDs; they are paying as much as two-thirds less in real terms today for the music they listen to on their iPods than they used to when the compact disc first took over the market. Twenty years ago a chart CD cost about £14. Today you can buy the same in a super-market for £9.
The online market may have grown recently, but not enough to fix the hole. Here, too, margins have shrunk. A download of a single track now costs 79p against the £4 a CD single cost in 1999.
The impact on the bottom line of the record labels has been catastrophic. When EMI’s subsidiary Virgin put out the Spice Girls’ debut album in 1996 the company cleared roughly £5 in profit on each copy sold. That margin has since shrivelled to around £2 – and only then for albums that are significant hits. Industry insiders estimate that only one of the new British acts that has “broken” in 2007 – the pop diva Mika – will actually make his record company any money.
This has not gone unremarked in the City. When the private equity firm Terra Firma bought EMI recently it paid about a third, in real terms, what the company nearly fetched 10 years ago when a sale to its competitor Universal was mooted. That decline mirrors what has happened over the same period to the retail price of new CDs, and it also reflects the scale of the cull of EMI’s workforce, which has shrunk in 10 years from more than 10,000 worldwide to about 4,000 today.
The mood of panic is palpable, and there are no obvious solutions in sight. In America the recently appointed co-chairman of the Columbia label Rick Rubin, formerly a record producer by trade, has spoken of his ambition to turn the company around by refocusing it along the lines of a cable TV business – making Columbia’s entire catalogue downloadable to customers who pay a monthly subscription.
Another senior figure at Columbia has dismissed this plan as “potentially the last nail in the coffin”. The recent establishment of a “word of mouth” department at the label reflects the loss of control felt within a business that has lost a grip on its market.
One – fading – hope of the major labels is that they can somehow grab a share of the profits their artists make elsewhere. When Robbie Williams resigned to EMI in 2002 for a reported £80m this new deal guaranteed the label a piece of the action from Williams’s highly lucrative concert tours. But many young artists since have become wary of such composite arrangements. Some have decided to bypass the major record companies altogether.
One of the hottest new names to emerge here this year, the rave metal band Enter Shikari, refused to sign to anybody and in March released their debut album, Take to the Skies, on their own label Ambush Reality. In the past these tiny, so-called indie labels have usually been funded by majors anxious to covertly purchase credibility for their products with a young audience traditionally distrustful of big music corporations.
But that is not how it is with Ambush Reality. The marketing of Take to the Skies was largely down to the band themselves, who have played nearly 700 gigs since forming in St Albans in 2003. Word of mouth, coupled with a band presence on MySpace, has done the rest.
In November 2006 Enter Shikari became only the second unsigned act after the Darkness to sell out the leading London rock venue the Astoria. Take to the Skies entered the album chart at number four in March. In May they undertook a major tour of America – the first British band to do so without the support of a big record company.
This upending of the music business was neatly predicted back in the 1990s by the guitarist of the American hardcore band Anthrax who described their new album as “the menu; our concert is the meal”. This comment recalled the Beatles’ producer George Martin’s observation about his protégés’ first LP, Please Please Me from 1963. It was, Martin said, “just a memento of a concert”. Now, likewise, bands sell CD recordings of their performances at the end of the night.
The reprioritisation in recent years of live music over the recorded variety has been dramatic. Attendance at arena shows rose here by 11% last year. By the time 2007 bows out, 450 music festivals will have taken place in the UK.
Every week brings news of another frenzied assault on the box office. Last Monday Ticket-master reported that 20,000 tickets for the Spice Girls’ first reunion concert at London’s O2 arena in December sold out in 38 seconds, with 1m fans registering to buy. Three weeks back more than a million clamoured for seats at the forthcoming Led Zeppelin reunion. Glastonbury disposed of its 135,000 weekend passes for this year’s event within two hours – taking more than £21m in the process.
Ticket prices, especially for Alist artists, have soared as the price of CDs has tumbled. You could have bought Madonna’s entire catalogue for less than half what it cost to see her perform at Wembley Arena last summer where the best seats in the house went for £160. With the Rolling Stones at Twickenham a view from the pitch would have set you back £150.
Now that live music rules, nobody bothers to complain about what it costs any more. Euphoria at the news earlier this year that the Police had reformed obliterated all concerns that it cost between £70 and £90 to see them play at Twickenham in September. I spoke to many fans at one of those gigs; not one complained about the ticket price.
In the light of these numbers, the probability is that music fans now are spending more money on their passion than they were in the heyday of the CD. They have rediscovered an ancient truth that music is, at root, a communal experience as much as it is something that goes on between your ears.
Interestingly the band now tolling the death knell of the record industry, Radiohead, seem currently to have mixed feelings about live work.
“They probably will be playing some dates next year,” a spokesman said last week. “But Thom Yorke doesn’t like touring much.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Web 3.0, the "official" definition.
Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.
Web 3.0, the "official" definition.
Web 3.0, the "official" definition.
Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.
bee gees
one of the bee gees with barbara. great song (seriously)
spoon - you got yr cherry bomb
spoon - you got yr cherry bomb
i saw them play a couple of years ago, very good band.
it is a shame they don't even have an album out in japan.
madness
madness, one step beyond 1980
baggy trousers
camden town, london
camden town, music
jsl, camden
jsl, camden 2
i woz there when they made this. and yes, the teacher looked scary
jsl, acton
fucking memories. fucking memories.
day 2
Successful Web Analytics Approaches by Avinash Kaushik
Successful Web Analytics Approaches by Avinash Kaushik
Oppression
some japanese actress with feelings. 2007
PiL [Public Image Ltd.] - "Check it Out" Interview 1979
PiL [Public Image Ltd.] - "Check it Out" Interview 1979
sparks, beat the clock, 1979
sparks, beat the clock, 1979
the who, the kids are alright, 1979
sham 69, hersham boys, 1979
sham 69, hersham boys, 1979
john wayne, 1907~1979
john wayne, 1907~1979
apocalypse now, 1979
apocalypse now, 1979
Gilles Villeneuve 1979 Zandvoort
Gilles Villeneuve 1979 Zandvoort
yellow magic orchestra, 1979
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Magic_Orchestra, 1979
joy division, 1979
joy division, 1979
quadrophenia, 1979
quadrophenia, 1979
ITN news at 545, 1979
ITN news at 545, 1979
just after the strike
sir freddie laker
jim callaghan
margaret thatcher
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (assiasinated)
anna ford gave me the horn
sony walkman 1, 1979
sony walkman 1, 1979
Linton Kwesi Johnson - Inglan Is A Bitch 1980
Linton Kwesi Johnson - Inglan Is A Bitch 1980
National Front March, 1970s
National Front March, 1970s
Love Thy Neighbour
curry & chips, 1969
October 6, 2007
wow2
src="http://widgets.alexa.com/traffic/javascript/graph.js">
wow
http://dtybywl.tumblr.com/
if you think i blog too much, this dude.
he is actually a friend of mine, we worked in the century prior to this, right at the end.
we used to have this tv show on the internetz. i forget how i got the gig. used to do it once a week on saturday nights, i think it was. it was LIVE. it was also extremely LOW TECH (man, we started with like one mackie mixer and a karaoke mic, NO JOKE). we had no mic stands, so i had to tape mics onto cans and stuff. and then hide them. then i think it evolved to like a yamaha mixer that i could actually send the guests a monitor mix (WOW dude) then i could kill feed back with the built in graphic eq. then i think we had more karaoke mics, or was that shure? don't remember. then i think we got a compressor at the end, so i could at least tame levels (if you know tech talk, i was crankin' the gain, so that i could get away with minimal mics. i suppose that would be like exposure in camera talk? got get maximo light?).
the computer was some windoze piece of shit that this guy operated.
anyway, we had some strange lineup of guests, including famous politicians to musos. he and another strange dude was doing that choosin' and the callin'
looking back at it, it was a fun ghetto. i bumped into the guy at a yann tomita show (which is so rare you can count them with two hands, probably). we're one of those online frenz, i guess, but he only lives like 15 mins away. i am a laizy pees of cit.
now the dude has a blog. above link. it's like full of stuff, might give you the horn. it gives me a little horn, but that's the beauty of art. one thing ain't for everyone.
xoxo
Google Analytics - Rules for Revolutionaries
price
ask a non music fan. i asked my father, who definitely is not a music fan.
m: "so, you're watching telly. there's some piece of music (a song) that caught your fancy"
f: "ok"
m: "how much would you pay for it?"
f: "i wouldn't know how to buy that"
m: "not an issue, let the hardware fucks buiild a button says "buy this". moot point"
m: "ok, how much then? 100 yen, 500 yen, 50 yen? 20 yen?"
f: "er, 20~30 yen".
that's about 25 cents. this is from a person that has not bought a CD apart from some bad quality classical music box set (not the music, the packaging).
stimulation
day 1
Globalization and the Flow of Knowledge
The obstacles in a DRM-free world
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7022157.stm
BBC NEWS
The obstacles in a DRM-free world
In the global market online sales shouldn't be limited to one country, argues columnist Bill Thompson.
The restrictions placed on downloaded music files using one of the various digital rights managements (DRM) systems have always annoyed me.
I'll generally buy a CD and rip it as a high-quality AAC file rather than pay out for a song I can only play on selected devices or copy a few times.
Existing DRM-free services like eMusic, or those with some non-DRM inventory like MusicNet and of course Apple, are out there but don't cover a lot of the artists I like and have nothing like the inventory you'd find in a decent record shop.
And I know that you can take the songs you buy from the iTunes Music Store and burn them to CD and then re-import them, but doing so further reduces the quality of the music you're listening, especially when compared to a CD. It also takes time.
Buying music on subscription is a dangerous habit, as customers of Virgin Music found out recently when they were told that their song collections would become unplayable once the store stops operating.
Locked song
Anyone who had purchased a locked video from Google's Video Store had the same experience earlier in the year, and others will certainly follow.
Even the rights you think you have can be taken away if a song is locked using DRM.
Who is to say that Apple, in their infinite wisdom, won't decide that you can't burn their Fairplay protected files to CD any more? After all, they have already reduced the number of times you can burn a particular playlist once, so they have a track record in changing terms and conditions.
News that Amazon was to launch a music download service was therefore well-received in my household
Bill Thompson
My son, less willing to defer his gratification, does buy some songs directly from iTunes, and I've already had to cope with the hassle of moving his song library from his old PC to his new Mac Mini.
Windows DRM is just as bad, creating obstacles to copying files or playing them on different devices or computers, and generally getting in the way of the experience.
So I prefer CDs. And of course if I have a CD, complete with cover image, sleeve notes and any extras, then I can always re-rip it if my files get inadvertently deleted.
News that Amazon was to launch a music download service was therefore well-received in my household, even it is only a beta service with a relatively small catalogue. It promised a competitively-priced music - especially at the current pound/dollar exchange rate - and best of all the songs were in MP3 format with no DRM.
I have an Amazon.com user account as well as one at Amazon.co.uk, partly because a lot of my favourite writers, like Louise Erdrich and Joan Didion, get published there early and partly because four or five years ago Region 1 DVDs of children's movies like Pokemon and Toy Story appeared a lot earlier than the European versions.
Multi-region player
I've got a multi-region player, and my son - the same one now listening to Korn at full volume - loved them both.
The new store is easy to find from the home page, so I decided to buy Amy Winehouse's Back to Black for $8.99.
I installed the Amazon MP Downloader, noting with interest that there were Mac and Windows versions available from the start, but nothing for Linux.
The downloader simplifies the process of getting a whole album's worth of songs and adding them to your existing music library, whether you're using Windows Media Player or iTunes. Reports are that it isn't as seamless as buying from iTunes, but that the convenience of having unencumbered song makes it worthwhile.
Unfortunately I only have reports to go on, because when I tried to buy my chosen music I was asked for address details for my credit card, even though I have one on file with the store.
And then I found that I could only proceed if I had a US address, and had to abandon the attempt.
I'm disappointed, and annoyed. This is a store which happily sends me DVDs that are region-encoded for the United States and Canada only.
It will even ship me books from publishers who are not authorised to sell in the UK under the contracts made with authors and agents.
Yet it seems that the record companies are able to exert a level of control over mere bits that not even the largest film company can manage over physical DVDs, and Amazon has accepted the constraints.
I could get round it by asking one of my US-based friends to front for me and use their credit card.
And even if Amazon is using some sort of geo-location technology to stop non-US downloads it would be as easy to get around by faking my IP address as it is to persuade the BBC's iPlayer that you're safely in Surrey no matter where you actually are.
But that isn't the point.
Amazon is a phenomenally successful retailer and it understands customer service better than almost any company I have encountered.
Last week my friend John didn't get the copy of Halo 3 he had ordered, so called them to ask what was going on. Not only did they phone him back when they promised to do so, they sorted the problem within minutes and sent him e-mails to confirm the situation.
If anyone can take the record companies and the current online music retailers and show them how it should be done then it is Amazon.
But if the record companies continue to push their old-world business practices, insisting on territorial limits and other restrictions, then even Amazon will find it impossible to save the music industry from the implosion which lies ahead.
Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7022157.stm
Published: 2007/10/01 12:32:26 GMT
© BBC MMVII
fuck
there's shitloads of good new music!!!!
why is it that they don't sell?
why? why? why?
spiral frog
friendly conversation. なんでもブログ！根性ブログ！押忍！
11:20pm September 12th
http://invites.mashable.com/
みましたぁ？
http://www.dapper.net/
これおもろそうなんだけど
Today at 6:29pm
ヨコーさんは
何かサービス企画や立ち上げ準備など
されてるですかこの頃は？
Steve Ballmer 曰く
http://dtybywl.tumblr.com/post/14181632
確かに、ねw
Today at 6:38pm
今は特にプランはないですけど、頭は無茶苦茶動いてますね。例の＞＜関係を見ていただければ（一部隠してるけど！）。いやぁ、まじで人生設計しようかなぁ、と。ほら、僕って「こういう」人間じゃないすか（爆笑）。何かね、大袈裟にしたくないんだけど、自分の存在価値に適したものって何かなぁ、と。音楽関係は確かに適しているけど、産業としてあまりにも幼稚（言いたくないけど）だし、世の中の動きにシンクしていないのがものすごく見えてきて。あと、日本語の伝達スピード、これがなぁ、と。善し悪しの問題ではなく、コンピューターに依存している世の中で、道具を使わざるを得ないのは必然であって。その中ではやはりデータを最大活用するのが宿命だと思うのですが、何か「とろくねえか、これ？」と思うことが多々。というか。これを書いているだけで英語だと多分半分の時間でできるんですよね。今キーワードを色々書いて、壁に貼付けて、パズル作ってます。アルバム作るのとあまり変わらないかな。翻訳とかも似てる。素材ー混沌ー整理ーちゃぶ台ひっくり返すーまた整理／編集ーお化粧。ちゅうか、あと３ヶ月これやったら気狂うなぁ、と思ってぇ（笑）。今は風呂入らない以外は全然正常。
お元気？
Minoru Yokoo
Today at 6:42pm
リンク、おもろいね。確かに。だからおもろうないのかね、これ。ちょっとイメージしょうかなぁ。
だから、日本語ってもうちんたらしてて、曖昧じゃない。それこそファジー。何がファジーなのかしらんが。んで、包みこむというか、「民」的な言語。みくしーね。
んで英語はある意味ミニマルというか、根本的に「己」から来る言語。マイスペ、顔本。
んでも、コンピューターはアルファベットなのよねぇ、この束縛から逃れることはできないわけで。
だから、女子高生とかが絵文字とか？使うの。あれって合理性を求めているだけなのかなぁ、と。
Minoru Yokoo
Today at 6:44pm
ただねぇ、携帯とか。どうかなぁ、と思うんだけど。携帯で音楽聞きたい？ヘッドフォンで耳潰したい？
そうなるのは世の中の勝手だけど、普及して数年以内にとても大きな問題になるよ、ヘッドフォンは。
んで音楽の価格は適正な状態にないことはほぼ確信できた。それが日本語で議論されていないだけ。
日本語のサイトあまり読まないから、おもろいのあったら教えてください。
Minoru Yokoo
Today at 6:47pm
http://www.heynielsen.com/
これ、ビシバシ招待可能。そこそこおもろい。
あ、ある意味考えてるかも。メールくださいな、携帯の番号送るから。me@minoru-yokoo.com
なんだ、あのリンク＞？＜君のブログじゃん。相変わらずぶっ飛んでますねぇ。携帯は090-xxxx->>>>。
あたしのもたまにチェックしてね。movable typeだから使いこなせなくて、文字ばかりだけど。www.minoru-yokoo.com/chronicles
Minoru Yokoo
Today at 7:06pm
たびたびゴメン。サービスとかは、この間まで関わっていた（それでアメリカ３ヶ月行ってたよん）んだけど、俺がブチ切れたので（黙ってりゃいいんだけど）、僕からエンガチョして。だから、頭でっかちに知ってるよ、ベンチャーキャピトルとかぁ、弁護士とかぁ、ベンチャーシーンにうろちょろするグルーピーとあんま変わらない男芸者とかぁ（爆笑）。
October 5, 2007
http://www.heynielsen.com/
http://www.heynielsen.com/
got invities if yer need it. should be easy to get though.
oh and whoever it is, please don't call me at 4am.
i'm a good boy right now. i am in bed by midnight, up by 6 or 7am. i am in hermit mode as well. i look disgusting. definitely not allowed in public. just because i don't have a life or you "i forgot what the time difference was", does not mean you can wake me up.......
and the ring on my phone is pretty annoying, it's def leppard, rock of ages with that "unnan ning nang nong nang nong nang" voice in a loop. see? pretty annoying.
now, if you can't calculate the time difference, please learn.
all you need to know is;
if you're in the uk, pleaase add 8 hours ahead or 9 for winter time.
if you're in the east coast of the us of a, japan is 13 hours ahead, summer, 14, winter.
so, say it's 3pm for you. flip it, add 1 and move it forward a day. 4am.
if you're in the west coast of the us of a, it is 16 hours ahead for summer time and 17 hours for winter time.
so, say it's 5pm for you. flip it, add 4 and move it forward a day. 9am.
all the other time zones are within +/- few hours of each other. the above three are the only ones i remember, and i've been doing fine for the past 20 years.
that wasn't so painful, was it?
Is Greed Good?
Scientific American Mind August 2007 Issue
Is Greed Good?
Economists are finding that social concerns often trump selfishness in financial decision making, a view that helps to explain why tens of millions of people send money to strangers they find on the Internet
By Christoph Uhlhaas
Could you buy a used car online, sight unseen and without a test-drive? How about a plane? A vehicle changes hands on eBay Motors every 60 seconds, including one private business jet that sold for $4.9 million. Every second buyers collectively swap more than $1,839 for products through eBay, sending money to complete strangers with no guarantee that the goods they buy will in fact arrive, let alone in the condition they expect.
As a rule, they are not disappointed. To some economists, this is a borderline miracle, because it contradicts the concept of Homo economicus (economic man) as a rational, selfish person who single-mindedly strives for maximum profit. According to this notion, sellers should pocket buyers’ payments and send nothing in return. For their part, buyers should not trust sellers—and the market should collapse.
Economist Axel Ockenfels of the University of Cologne in Germany and his colleagues have spent the past several years figuring out why this does not happen. It turns out that humans do not always behave as if their sole concern is their personal financial advantage—and even when they do, they consider social motives in the profit-making equation. As Ockenfels has discovered, a sense of fairness often plays a big role in people’s decisions about what to do with their money and possessions, and it is also an essential part of what drives trust in markets full of strangers such as eBay.
Ockenfels’s Equity, Reciprocity and Competition (ERC) theory, which he developed with economist Gary Bolton of Pennsylvania State University, states that people not only try to maximize their gains but also watch to see that they get roughly the same share as others: they are happy to get one piece of cake as long as the next person does not get two pieces. This fairness gauge apparently even has a defined place in the brain. On eBay, however, fairness takes the system only halfway, researchers have now learned; eBay’s reputation system is critical for augmenting the level of trust enough for the market to work.
Circumstance also sculpts behavior, studies have revealed, regardless of natural character traits or values. That is, whether a person is competing in a market of strangers or negotiating with a partner can make a big difference in whether fairness, reciprocity or selfishness will predominate. In fact, the ERC theory hints at ways to alter economic institutions to nudge people to compete—or cooperate—more or less than they currently do.
Playing Fair
Economists have long been studying volunteers in the laboratory to determine how and why they make financial decisions. In competitive markets, from the U.S. Stock Exchange to auctions at Sotheby’s, people generally act like Homo economicus, behaving in ways that maximize their own profits.
But inherent selfishness cannot explain behavior in other settings. Take a child who has been given a bag of jelly beans, which her left-out sibling is eyeing jealously. Many children would voluntarily share the candy just to be fair, even though that would mean fewer jelly beans for them. Mathematicians who practice game theory see something similar when they ask people to bargain in a test of social motives called the Ultimatum Game. In this two-player game, player A is endowed with a certain sum, say, $20, if he agrees to share some of it with player B. If B accepts A’s offer, the money is divided accordingly. But if B rejects the offer, both players end up with nothing.
In Ultimatum Game studies, researchers have found that the average offer is about 40 percent of the sum and that the most frequent split is 50–50, analogous to a child giving her sibling half or nearly half of the jelly beans she received. The recipient, B, usually accepts such roughly equal offers. When A offers less than one third of the total, however, B usually reacts with scorn and scraps the deal. This response seems nonsensical to someone who is only out to maximize profit. But it is more logical if people have a competing social concern: fairness. If individuals want a fair split, then accepting significantly less than that would mean forfeiting that objective.
A motivation for fairness also seems to be an important factor on eBay, in which the “Buy It Now” format—or an auction with just one buyer—resembles an Ultimatum Game; a seller offers an item at a price that a buyer can accept or reject. To test this hypothesis, Ockenfels and Bolton recruited 100 German university students with selling experience on eBay, divided them into 50 buyer-seller pairs, and asked the sellers to hawk $20 certificates (funded by the researchers) to their assigned partners on eBay.
Consistent with previous Ultimatum results, the most popular selling price was $10, which would result in an equal split of the experimental pot. All but one buyer accepted this offer. Prices above $17 were uniformly rebuffed as too greedy, and some also refused costs between $10 and $17, refuting the idea that monetary incentive alone governs the deal. On the contrary, in this bargaining situation an equal split maximizes profits, Ockenfels says, because buyers generally will not accept unfair offers and sellers seem to realize that. “Fair dealing pays off,” he concludes.
Different Strokes
In many cases, however, people will forgive a biased outcome if it comes about by chance rather than through a deliberate act. Ockenfels and Bolton recently asked volunteers to play an Ultimatum Game variant in which player A chooses to split the money either 50–50 or 80–20. If the choice was 80–20, 41 percent of recipients refused the offer. But only 7 percent rejected the 80–20 split when it came from a robot acting at random. This result, Ockenfels says, suggests many people will accept unequal deals as long as all participants have been given a fair chance.
Not everyone is the same, of course. The demand for such procedural fairness, in which people get equal treatment even if the outcome is unfair, may have a cultural component. Anecdotal evidence suggests, for instance, that Americans may be more concerned with procedural fairness than Germans are. Germans seem more likely to insist on equivalent outcomes, Ockenfels says. Individual differences matter, too. Some people are very sensitive to being cheated, whereas others are far less bothered, even nonchalant, when they receive unequal treatment.
That said, discerning values from behavior is often hopelessly confounded by circumstance, Ockenfels says. When he and Bolton asked people to compete for their $20 certificates in experimental eBay auctions with one seller and nine buyers each, they found that the selling price zoomed above $19, a far cry from the equal split that pervaded the previous one-on-one game. Homo economicus trumped fairness in the auction, because a fair player has no way to strive for equity in a situation in which each person must overbid the others to get anything at all. “In markets, all people behave selfishly, but that doesn’t mean they really are,” Ockenfels comments. “The institutions make you behave in certain ways.”
Building Trust
In the researchers’ experimental auction, trust was not a factor, because the (presumably trustworthy) experimenters vouched for the $20 certificates. Yet trust is a critical issue on eBay, in which sellers are anonymous and have little pecuniary incentive to actually ship the items they have sold.
To figure out why they ship anyway, Ockenfels, Bolton and Penn State business professor Elena Katok asked 144 university students to play a trust game that mimics the situation on eBay. In the game, a seller and a buyer each start off with the same sum, say, $35; that is the payoff when no trade takes place. The seller also has an item to be sold for $35, but its value to the buyer is $50, so a trade nets the buyer an extra $15. The seller pays the shipping costs here, $20, so a trade also nets the seller an additional $15. But if the seller fails to ship an item, the seller receives a $35 bonus and the buyer loses the entire endowment. If the buyer chooses not to take this risk, no trade occurs.
In this game, the outcome is fair after either a successful trade or no trade—but most advantageous to the seller if the seller fails to ship. Homo economicus would thus never ship, and no rational buyer would buy. But 37 percent of the sellers were willing to ship, the researchers found, suggesting that some sellers were motivated by an intrinsic sense of fairness and some buyers had bet on that. And in a modified trust game that endows the buyer with an extra $70 regardless of the outcome, the researchers predicted that fair-minded sellers would not ship, because that choice would equate buyer and seller sums at $70. As expected, many fewer sellers (only 7 percent) decided to send the fictitious goods, signifying that the main reason for trustworthiness is fairness.
Rumor Has It
Nevertheless, sellers must ship as much as 70 percent of the time for buying in such a game—or on eBay—to be profitable, according to Ockenfels. How does eBay boost trust to that level? The answer: feedback. On eBay, sellers and buyers can evaluate one another after a transaction has been completed, and these evaluations are made public for future buyers and sellers. “This reputation system functions like an organized rumor mill and replaces the gossip systems of the off-line world,” Ockenfels explains. Because a bad reputation scares off future buyers, even strategic and rational sellers have an incentive to be trustworthy.
To quantify the power of this rumor mill, Ockenfels and his colleagues compared market activity among strangers matched for 30 rounds of transactions without a feedback mechanism against a similar market that included feedback. They found that the feedback system elicited significantly more buying—56 percent—as compared with buying without it—37 percent. More shipping also occurred, rising to 73 percent—above the threshold for trust to be profitable—as compared with shipping for transactions without the reputation system: these hovered around 39 percent. The results indicate that feedback can fill the trust gap in a market such as eBay’s, multiplying the impact of intrinsic trustworthiness.
But the feedback system is imperfect. About 98 percent of ratings on eBay are positive, according to Ockenfels, suggesting that some disappointed eBay buyers do not post negative ratings. Buyers may fear “revenge feedback,” when a seller retaliates for a bad rating with a negative rating of the buyer, claiming that the buyer paid late or with a bad check, for instance. Indeed, in Ockenfels’s experiments, many of those who are not happy with a trade do not give feedback at all.
This lack of feedback is obviously not good for the reputation system. So Ockenfels and Bolton, along with economist Ben Greiner, now at Harvard University, have been working with eBay to design choices that induce people to post truthful and detailed negative feedback. eBay’s revised format, Feedback 2.0, debuted April 30. It lets buyers rate transaction specifics such as accuracy of an item’s description, seller communication and shipping speed, in addition to the overall rating of positive, neutral or negative.
The extra detail increases the feedback’s value to future buyers. And to help allay worries of retaliatory feedback, buyers give their ratings anonymously. Furthermore, sellers can see the detailed ratings only after providing feedback of their own, preventing retaliatory feedback even if the seller later intuits which buyer posted a poor evaluation. What the new system cannot prevent, however, is one-time cheaters. Buying a car or plane online is still pretty risky.
Ockenfels is not about to do that. He visits eBay only occasionally, to buy things for his two children. And if you notice an auction with “aockenfels” as the seller, you have probably stumbled on an economics experiment.
© 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
court-victory-for-music-labels-wont-save-their-industry
$10k per song. hmm, expensive buy.
why not pick on people of more suitable size? oh, like computer manufacturers? or ripping software?
yes, let's blame computers and software!!!!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/05/court-victory-for-music-labels-wont-save-their-industry/
October 5 2007
Court Victory For Music Labels Won’t Save Their Industry
Erick Schonfeld
The music industry won the first file-sharing case to go to trial yesterday when a jury found a Minnesota woman guilty of 24 counts of copyright infringement. The $222,000 verdict comes to $9,250 for each of the 24 songs at issue. Perhaps this is how the industry hopes to keep the price of music from going down to zero.
The music industry is hoping that this out-sized verdict will make song-sharers think twice before downloading that next free tune. If anything, though, this case tells music sharers what not to do if they want to avoid getting caught—like having the same username, “tereastarr,” on the file-sharing networks as you do on your e-mail, IM, and other online accounts.
Over the past four years, the RIAA has sued 26,000 of its customers, but it won’t get the same windfall from all of those cases, since most settle for about $4,000. This was the first to go to trial. So the verdict (if it is not reduced on appeal) sets an important precedent. All the music industry needs to do now is win another 52,000 lawsuits with the same size penalty to match its revenues of $11.5 billion last year.
Someone should create some software for the RIAA that automates the serving of subpoenas, because they really have to step up their efforts if they want to save their industry. Or, the industry can spend its time and money trying to find new business models that encourage and profit from the way people actually listen to music today—on their ipods, streaming from the Web, shared among friends and peers. As music goes digital, it becomes more fungible. People are going to do with it what they want because they can. The law may be on the RIAA’s side, but the market is against it.
wow, like, van halen, dude
like they're finally back with dave, dude.
http://jfindley.smugmug.com/gallery/3484303#196173590
like, the detailed photos are kinda amazing, dude. like back to the future, dude. awesome, dude.
http://vhnd.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43908441@N00/
like, ed's got a new geetar coming out, dude. and an amp too. awesome, dude.
4 kick drums, dude. budweiser. dude. dude. that's so rad. dude. dude. awesome. dude. dude. dude.
dude.
links
http://www.songbirdnest.com/
this is a browser. it's got a music player interface. i'm trying it out at the mo'. needs tabs.
http://www.soi.wide.ad.jp/class/20060008/slides/04/index_28.html
this is some lecture/class i found when i was googling "ubiquity". hmm. ok, there are people aware of the language (cultural) restrictions inheritent. has anyone got some super duper techno for this?
i could be doing this blog in japanese, btw, but english is SO MUCH FASTER as a language for thought processes. like english is a motorbike, japanese is like a lorry/truck. they both serve purpose as a vehicle, but different applications, penetration points. no, can't do it in 2 lingos, sorry, no one is paying me!
October 4, 2007
before i go away.
oh, i might as well. i'll tell you one of my biggest sources of inspiration. i've never met him, but i've heard of him and know who he is. he's in new york.
i am merely a combination of him, bob and a lot of curiosity.
out of sync
Hi Bob,
My friend Tommy LiPuma got my son Leo into your newsletter and Leo sent me the Wendy piece -- I can't tell you how many people are discovering my old Blue Thumb material and Arista material and god knows even the old Capitol material these days. A day doesn't go by without an email (anybody can figure out I'm at bensidran.com) from an old fan ("you changed my life"...."your music pulled me through") or a new one. I'm finally getting paid on my old songs -- mechanicals anyway; the majors still won't admit we were fucked by the deals we made and there is no way we will ever get royalties for those records; occasionally I get statements from Sony BMG that indicate I am deeper in debt than last time -- but my new stuff is actually making a nice taste. I couldn't be happier and I couldn't agree with you more. It's a new day and the artists won. I continue writing and recording and putting it up on itunes and people keep finding it. I remember a meeting with Clive Davis back in '76!
; the gist of it was that I didn't want to be famous bad enough so there wasn't anything he could do for me. (That was when his motto was "Arista -- where careers are launched.") He was right of course. I wanted to make a living; he wanted to make a killing. I've gone on to a good life. As the Jews say, Dayenu.
Best,
Ben Sidran
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
enough ranting
been tracking and overdubbing waaaay too much.
started out analogue on the 2 inch and like, went to digital (ooh, unlimited tracks!), then the hard drive crashed, the backup wasn't current, then some kid down the road nicked a cdr copy, started mashing it up, you know, like really doing it. i liked some of it, keep that.
it's time for creative editing and a mix. but once it's gone through the microphone, none of it's real.
maybe i'll see you at mastering.
hopefully it'll be done by someone capable.
satan is real
you stupid cunt, cunt.
reading between the lines: being a fucking band
pretty much what i imagined their thought process to be. they're just a fucking band. a fucking band. and the release seems to be just that, a band that completed their software, wanted to alpha and beta test it as shareware, before it got packaged into high street product.
too many people in the business, don't understand how bands think and act. how records are made. and what the thought and physical process is. i've met so called "a&r" people that had NO clue as to the process, all they did was line up popular songs and go "here, copy that". that is how "out of sync" the business is, from the public, and from the "source", the software "developer".
there's some kind of werid filtering going on, after the master is turned in, or with some cases (often in japan), the "a&r" is at the studio, messing with it. this is where some of the classic "us (band) and them (record company)" clashes start from. those moments of "huh?" "what?" those blank stares.
i am not debating what is right or wrong (it really depends), but i find, that in most cases, the more you try to alter the original intent, or thrust, the more unnecessary time is spent (time is money), which often leads to unnecessary stress and emotions. believe me, i've gone there too many times. which is why i keep going on about the "source". as i stated in the liars post previous to this, in their case, all i did was to "drink their intent" via jeremy and try to make it happen as quickly and without pain as much as possible. if that means shouting at someone without the band noticing, i will and have done it. anything that gets in the way of creativity, gets it.
get it right at the source. as someone involved in music and i am not in a band or a songwriter, all i can do is assist in amplifying the "source". now, if you have difficulties understanding the "source", you're kind of half blind and possibly making decisions that may not be suitable. dare i say, irresponsible.
the "business" is painfully missing a link, between the "source" and commerce. they are supposed to be done hand in hand, but oftentimes, it seems to be done in isolation from the "source". these things happen, probably in any business.
but the music business is about selling human intent.
in a can. or 1's and 0's. or in sweaty form. or in a t-shirt.
yes, you can go out for a meal with 40 quid, get real dude.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=10&title=radiohead_exclusive_interview&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
NME: Have you found it difficult to find the inspiration to make a new record, given that you don't currently have a record label?
Thom Yorke: "It's really liberating not to feel part of the record company structures. It should be an extremely positive place to be in but I think at the moment it's like the cartoon bit when Roadrunner comes of the cliff and keeps running - then looks down.
"It's an extremely strange situation to be in, and one of the things you discover really quickly, when you discover you're not committed to anything, is that you need some level of commitment because otherwise you just start fucking about, which is what we did for ages.
"You have to wake up and think of the new bands who are trying hard while we spend a year mucking about not doing anything in particular. We have to get out of that frame of mind."
"I always wanted us to be in a situation like Tom Waits was when he stopped for a long time and came out and did 'Swordfishtrombones' and 'Raindogs'. He started again and was doing a lot of that from his own studio in his own time at his own pace and it seemed to be a world apart from anything else that was going on.
"I think that was just him finding his own space, and removing himself from the bits he hated about where he'd been before. And I think that's what we're in the process of doing."
NME: So this feels more like starting again, rather than a full stop?
Thom Yorke: "Yeah. And it's trying to work out how that works. That level of freedom is like being in mid air."
NME: What's he brought to the sound? Nigel Godrich had a very unique production…
Thom Yorke: "It's very different. We're still trying to work out whether it's right or not to be perfectly honest, because at the moment what we need is someone who is what I'd call a tutor - who is a guy you're answerable to."
Colin Greenwood: "We need an A&R man - for the first time in our career we don't have a record contract and we need an A&R man. We don't want a record deal, but we want their A&R."
NME: Are you planning on signing another record deal?
Thom Yorke: "What's cool about it is once we have something that makes sense we have the luxury of going to people and going, 'We've got this, do you want it?', and there being no additional baggage.
"Record deals should be like that anyway. The days of the development deal, like major record companies using tax avoidance schemes to invest in new bands then dropping them like a shot, it's not really necessary anymore."
NME: Would it feel right not to have a label at all? Is that something you'd consider?
Thom Yorke: "I don't think we'd have a deal in the old sense."
"Personally, one of the things I find the hardest is being part of the whole Radiohead thing and I'm not really interested in that any more. I'm trying to work out what exactly it is that keeps me wanting to do it. None of us really want to be part of that band, like that any more, just because it's a particular monster. And you don't want to be in this situation where you're just feeding the monster. It should be the other way around, whatever that means!"
NME: Do you mean that you feel consumed by the size of the band?
Thom Yorke: "Only on bad days. It's just baggage really, from over the years. You can't come out of it scot free, but it's really just personal blockages in my head. It's not a big deal, I just get shit scared, which is stupid really, because the whole point of starting up again like this is to get away from that."
Colin Greenwood: "If you're doing anything that's important or confronting, you're going to get the fear. That validates it in a way. For me the big thing about having kids last year is that, as a parent, you've got to have something that you do that you're happy about that defines yourself, because if you don't have that you're no good to anyone. In a good way it validates the passion you had for music.
"If Ed was here he'd be talking about that as well. Last couple of years he felt that Radiohead were just a bunch of baggage that he didn't need in some ways, and then last year he came to terms with it and realised that's part of who he is and what it is that defines himself. That's what he needs to do, and that's cool. Between all our records we tend to go away and come back. I think that's really important."
NME: There is talk of this download single… Is that going to happen?
Thom Yorke: "I don't know, it depends. I hope so - it's just finding something that makes sense. It's not supposed to be a big deal but it's difficult not to think like that because that's how I'm used to thinking about things."
Colin Greenwood: "It's amazing how much conditioning you have from being in a six-album record deal. We were talking about the whole download idea because there's something about it that's deeply wrong because it's something you worked on and you're giving it away for free, but you want to do something that's of the moment and immediate and share with people because that's what you're excited about now, not next year as part of a full-blown album release, and you want to do something that's not part of iTunes or something, or corporatisation, turning the internet into a record company. Something that's direct from us to you. It sounds cheesy."
Thom Yorke: "It's getting away from the preciousness of the whole thing. No fucking song and dance, it's not a fucking big deal, it's just a piece of music. We're not part of this big empire. It's trying to get away from that because it's the death of anything creative. And you see it in every artist, it's the same thing. At some point the monster takes over."
http://www.nme.com/news/radiohead/31555
Radiohead new album: 'band will sign record deal'
Managers admit they need 'infrastructure' to help put album out
2 hours ago
Radiohead's managers have said that the band will sign a record deal to release new album 'In Rainbows'.
As previously reported, the band are releasing their seventh album as a download first on October 10 and fans can name their price.
Managers Chris Hutton and Brice Edge spoke to BBC Radio 4's 'Today' programme this morning (October 4) about the release.
Responding to whether the band would sign a deal, Hutton said: "Yes, absolutely. We've got about seven days to sort it out. We tend to fly by the seat of our pants.
"The band think they [are] incredibly proud of this record and feel that it deserves to be brought into the mass marketplace. That's why we need a record company who have that infrastructure to deliver the CD."
The managers also denied that the album's unique selling point marked the death knell of the record industry.
"It's just another way of doing things," Hutton said. "Hopefully it will motivate artists and record labels to think about things a lot more and not accept the status quo."
Edge also said that the band had faith people would not just download the album for free.
"We're prepared to take a risk," he explained. "If your music is great, people will then pay for it."
Hutton added: "The wonderful [thing] is that the consumer can decide how much a download is worth. I'm not sure how much just a digital download is worth. I'm not sure 79p - the iTunes price - is the right price."
The band also defended the £40 price-tag of the discbox edition of the album.
Hutton argued: "£40 is huge value for money. How many drinks can you have for £40? Can you go out for a meal for that money?"
liars demos
http://www.mute.biz/liars/downloads/
register yourself to the system and download demos of songs included on the new liars album, "liars".
i helped to record some of the basics (drums, guitars, bass, keyboards, etc, mostly drums i suppose). my career is all over the place. i could be recording engineer, backline tech, a&r, webmaster, psuedo manager, interpreter/translator, office worker, dish washer, sex slave. i've done them all.
the demos. yup, that's what they are. i think they've been mastered a bit, but that's not really relevant at all.
the songs were pretty much mapped out before the proper recordings (which is where i came in and left).
i think these demos were done around nov/dec 2006. i am not involved in the demos at all.
i think co producer jeremy and i discussed what gear to rent via email and skype. jan/feb 2007. mostly from tokyo.
before berlin, i was in london for a bit. saw some old friends, did some meetings. got to visit 429 harrow road before it got demolished. mute records were one of my earliest musical influences around 1980 to 1982 (before that it was all abba, beatles, grease, saturday night fever and regular stuff), and the first album i ever bought with my own money was speak and spell (which i still have).
yeah, i had to send a whole suitcase full of gear via airmail ems from narita airport to london, because virgin were going to charge me like $1,500 overweight (i think the postage was around $300?). i did some prior research, but it turns out that berlin/germany does not have much in terms of recording equipment rental. so most of it was shipped from london and i brought some things (mics, a couple of api mic pre's we never used, guitar pedals) and jeremy had a few things too.
the demos. jeremy gave me the demos upon arrival to berlin. i loaded them onto my ipod and walked around berlin, keep forgetting the name of the neighbourhood, but it's former east berlin, where a lot of musos are based, not kreuzburg, not mitte, where twisted robot are based (hey fitz! no, i still don't know ghosts). late night, around 3am or something, listening to the songs (i might be wrong, but i think i hadn't heard a single note before that). i remember the streets of berlin having a very high resonance in pitch. stoned pavements. not concrete or asphalt. these things do make a difference you know. txt'd a friend about this resonance in sound, because it was something i hadn't heard in a while. went to bed.
next day, walked around town with jeremy and talked about approach. bought some junk gear, microphones. went to an electronics place, conrad, i think it's called, got some extras for sessions.
i still don't know what the song titles are, i am really bad with names. every recrording i've worked on, doesn't matter which band, i usually give a song my own working title. with liars, i think i kept saying "techno saviour" on the song with the pitch shifted guitar intro. jeremy gave me a scribbly note with song titles but i never read them, titles don't mean much to me, probably never will.
once in the studio, things went really quickly. some of the drums were done really quickly, in a matter of minutes. if you know the studio process, "minutes" is not a often used term in getting a recording done. "takes" yes, but not "minutes". i don't remember how many takes, it was that quick.
yeah, i read half way through no logo.....must finish that, along with other books in the pile
more bob. he sounds like a hippie at times, come on, dave matthews band?............. but you gotta credit them, they sure ain't stupid.
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This is not a model for the future. This is a stunt by the most credible major band on the planet. As much marketing as revenue generator. Radiohead's image has been burnished for decades to come, people won't forget this giveback to their fans, this middle finger to the man. But this pay what you want model isn't going to save the recorded music business.
Is anybody interested in saving the recorded music business?
Certainly not Edgar Bronfman, Jr. He keeps testifying how he needs a 360 degree model to survive, that you can't make money off of recordings. Even though the company he purchased at a fire sale price did just that for decades. Did I miss a memo? Is recorded music suddenly WORTHLESS?
Then we've got Jimmy Iovine, branching out into movies and Vegas. If I were Vivendi I'd change his deal, make him a consultant. There are only twenty four hours in a day. Is Jimmy working for THEM or is he working for HIMSELF?
Hell, maybe Clive knows more about the music BUSINESS, but is the mainstream business the same one he's been functioning in for four decades? Or are we seeing a change as dramatic as that which he says began with Monterey Pop?
The acts changed, but CBS still sold recorded music. Clive didn't tell Janis Joplin her music should be free. Where's his business wisdom now?
Not that we should be looking for septuagenarians for answers...
But the Google guys... We won't let them in our business. Certainly not after the Apple debacle.
Oh, you know that Cupertino company. The one that RUINED THE BUSINESS! Yes, everybody wanted CDs and they developed this iPod contraption and now everybody wants files. Is this really Apple's fault? Or did they just seize an opportunity? More to the point, have the majors constantly SQUANDERED opportunities?
Is the Internet the end, or the beginning?
Is it really true that no one can get paid online? Or do we just need a better business model?
Do bands have to survive on tours? What about composers, non-touring artists...are they FUCKED?
The majors would say so.
But I want to see how they're perceived after this file-trading trial debacle. DID NO ONE AT THE RIAA READ NAOMI KLEIN'S "NO LOGO"? Major labels must avoid trials at all costs. Because it's not about the truth, whether someone pilfered music or not, it becomes a referendum on their practices, on their BUSINESS MODEL!
You get an inane attorney claiming ripping your own CDs is theft. God, that one made the rounds online in minutes. (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071002-sony-bmgs-chief-anti-piracy-lawyer-copying-music-you-own-is-stealing.html) What other ignorance and dirty laundry is gonna come out. The fact that labels make the lion's share of the money?
The public is no longer unsophisticated. One reason fans are paying Radiohead is because the money is going directly to the band. If they buy the major label product, they believe the money goes to the man, who is SUING THEM!
The fan has no interest in the label's business model. The fan is just that, SOMEONE DEDICATED TO A BAND'S MUSIC!
How do you get someone dedicated?
Is it about making a big noise? Then that guy who asked us all to save Britney on YouTube would be rolling in dough. Everybody on TV playing music would be rich. But that eighties model is dead. Exposure isn't everything, the kind of exposure is KEY!
How do you get your fans to trust you?
That's what all the bands are learning from the Radiohead model. If you're cool, people will give you ALL their money. But what does this do for labels? What does this do for BREAKING ARTISTS?
All we get from the labels is a big shrug.
People know Radiohead. How do we get them to take a chance on someone new, and PAY FOR THIS CHANCE? In a non-voluntary way. In a compulsory way. You want music, you've got to pay for it. Oh, maybe you can get it from your friends, but that's INCONVENIENT! How can we sell music CONVENIENTLY?
Tower Records died because it was easier to get it online. Not better, MP3s don't sound too good. But you can get them without leaving the house. How can we appeal to the customer's desires? Trying to convince them to overpay for crap is a nonstarter.
I could offer up some solutions, but the majors aren't listening. They've got the clout, and they're making music free.
Some kid, of the type who STARTED Google, is gonna figure out how to get his new band, which won't get MTV or Top Forty radio airplay, paid. This band will have direct communication with its fans via the Net. Maybe they'll have to give the music away for free now, but this won't be forever. They'll come up with a business proposition that is appealing. And the majors will be left out. They won't license their catalogs, so young 'uns will stop trying. And the acts they sign will be BETTER than what the majors purvey.
So this Radiohead Net model? It's less about a new way to get paid for music than a statement that the old model is dead. If tip jars were the future, we'd all be buying shareware instead of Microsoft Office.
There's a crisis. There's a riot going on. Music peaked when it was ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT! How come Radiohead got the message and no one who runs a major label did? How come it used to be impossible to get a GIG at a record store, where it was happening, and now the stores that still exist are peopled by automatons, buffoons out of a Judd Apatow movie? How come everything we believed in is now shit?
We can blame high concert ticket prices on Robert Sillerman. But who are we blaming the Net crisis on? No outside force. Just the usual suspects, running the major labels into the ground.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
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October 3, 2007
http://idonthaveacluebutamwilling.ning.com/
http://idonthaveacluebutamwilling.ning.com/
i've had enough of people just reading my posts and not responding. fucking pervs.
i am moving it here and it is invite only. it is closed circuit.
me@minoru-yokoo.com
more stuff
http://www.music2dot0.com/ link
Now that we are probably over the initial amazement and exuberance at Radiohead's innovative pricing and marketing model which seemed to involve virtually all of blogosphere, it may be time to look at further impact on the rest of the industry while we wait patiently for our donation enabled Radiohead downloads to materialize on 10 Oct.
The unbridled glee that greeted the Radiohead model was unabashedly accompanied by hopes that this would signal the death of the major labels.
Thom Yorke himself told Time shortly before Radiohead commenced writing songs for their new album,
"I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'F___ you' to this decaying business model."
It might be a bit over the top but one cant deny the mob instincts that give rise to such sentiments - and such is the hatred that the RIAA has aroused in the blogosphere that it would be advisable for all to exercise restrain and take a rational look at the implications in the cold light of day.
Though indie artists are sometimes loath to admit it, there are many that aspire to be major label stars, but now the stars themselves aspire to go indie with a major difference – they already have the fame and cash to stand on their own, and are in all senses of the word, truly independent. And ironically, these A-list artists including Radiohead, Prince, Paul McCartney, Garth Brooks and soon, probably Madonna too who are all weaning themselves off their labels.got a huge leg-up from their labels to get to where they are. And this is exactly the kind of position that lesser artists have to aspire to, and one of the fastest ways to get there would probably be by landing a plum major label deal.
However, it has to be realized that as more A-list artists go independent, the major labels are going to find it hard to keep up their investments and take risks with new artists without the supposed buffers previously granted by the mega-revenues pulled in by these A-list artists. It is believed that these revenues offset the labels' losses with money losing artists in their stable.
Mile Copeland, former manager of The Police famously claimed in 2000
"So where does the public get the idea CDs are overpriced? Don't they realize 19 out of 20 CDs released fail to make their investment back?"
So if this is really the case, the whole equilibrium in the existing ecosystem is going to be further messed up.
Though many customers and involved artists have the nagging doubt that some of the profits from the successful artist(s) are also used to enrich the label too, this greed factor has clouded the fact that there could possibly be some truth in this subsidy principle. Successful artist Trent Reznor himself expressed disgust at the practice,
"That money's not going into my pocket, I can promise you that. It's just these guys who have f—ed themselves out of a job essentially, that now take it out on ripping off the public"
Andrew Orlowski of The Register had a more damning view of the economics at play here,
"But successful artists have always been able to subsidise more interesting but less popular artists on the roster. …When the rich keep more for themselves, there's less for everyone else.
How ironic that these impeccable liberals should be endorsing trickle down economics and contributing to a wider disparity in wealth."
Martin Talbot, editor of industry paper Music Week re-emphasised the point in Time
"And without the income generated by big name acts, how will record labels support and promote lesser-known artists? If we keep moving down this particular route, companies will only release records that are sure home runs. That means either stuff by established artists or unknown artists doing cover versions. There is the danger that it will no longer be worth it for companies to invest in new, up-and-coming artists. And if record companies don't invest in them, who will?"
This is not to suggest that a Marxist approach of equality and subsidies has to be implemented – mind you, the music industry was at its peak during the excess and hubris of the Ahmet Ertegun, Clive Davis and David Geffen era which also coincided with the advent of digital technology via the CD and with it, massive profits from superstar acts.
Now with the second act of the digital technology era proving to be the sharp end of the double edged sword by which the major labels seem intent on performing harakiri, profits have eroded with even the golden geese fleeing the nest in protest at the fleecing. The question remains on whether the major labels are going to the hang on to the vestiges of a bygone era and business model or can they adapt and mould newer artists with better and fairer reallocation of funds – failure to adapt might necessitate a total collapse of the industry in order to allow the proverbial phoenix to rise from the ashes.
Until a clearer vision is obtained, artists would do well to be slaves to the tour bus and possibly day jobs too to sustain their art while keeping alive the oft unspoken dream of being an obscenely rich and famous artist who can afford to give away their music for free one day!
value
i was going to write it more properly, but this email is becoming a blog post. so off we go.
http://www.music2dot0.com/
like i said, it's how and when you seed. and where does the seed come from?
the radiohead model is NOT FAIR, their losses can be covered by touring and the FREE PUBLICITY gained. but life and society is not fair either. and they got there first on a mass scale and that is, commendable.
fuck, the music might not be that bad, either.
look at them, they don't know what to do with it. it's all "REVOLUTIONARY" according to them. no it's not. it's just fucking shareware that has a staricase development to product cycle.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-et-radioheadweb3oct03,1,4648862.story?track=rss
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/radiohead-album-price-tag-its-up-to-you/#comment-144040
the NME doing shitty press i understand, but COME ON, ny and la times? what the fuck!
http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/typepad/DqMf/%7E3/164642648/radiohead-round.html
i am pretty certain that a lot of people are paying FULL PRICE (FP? wtf is that, does that cover all production costs and shit, wow, that's probably like $0.5 million at least) because it is radiohead (a brand) and your purchase will be talked about at school, at work. yoiu're not being scrutinized, but you fel like you are. it's fear. like your friend, "a fan". i am not dissing them at all, that is the fan mentality (which i oftentimes seem to lack, actually). but fans are like junkies. they DON'T need the drug, but they kind of do. what drives that desire? "elaborate here".
ok, so radiohead became the drug via "traditiional" means. music is probably, a commodity. it's like a cigarette, chocolate, even that drink (though that has nothing to do with me). you DON'T NEED IT BUT YOU KINDA DO NEED IT. it's social lubricant. from that perspective, is paying $15~$20 of half arsed social lubricant worth it?
and why did it become half arsed? "elaborate here"
how can you put it back to becoming a smooother lubricant? "elaborate here"
these titles are a pain in the arse
now that i have had my anger management session, i am feeling a lot more creative, thank you very much.
all this writing i do, half of it has to do with traffic control of my mind. i just need to ouput. i have a fairly fast cpu but not a lot of ram or hard disk space. so once shuffle things around, it has to come out. i used to do this on notebooks and various text files but since i have my own domain and all that now, and google apps etc is pretty useful as a notepad, i have been doing it all online, lying down, a bit like hugh hefner, without the girls and the money. at least a man can dream. so, the writing is all blurby and messed up, i am very aware. i sometimes fix them when i read back, but otherwise, you're getting the real me in unedited form. and since maybe a year or so ago, my typing has gone waaaay worse, i dunno why. just so say that i am, most of the time, aware of my gramatical mistakes and typos. i am also giving out a lot of info that i have collected over time. i'm not giving out everything, i am not THAT stupid. besides, they're mostly things you can do yourself, if you have the mind and patience to sit down, analyze, and start googling. i am NOT an expert on these things, just concerned and extremely curious.
one of the reasons i am posting in public is that i have been involved in a plan, a plan i will not name or describe, apart from that a lot of the issues that is being dealt within within the music business and possible solutions, were considered earlier this year. i resigned my involvement from that plan about a month ago, which is about when i started to post in public. it is an outlet of furstration, thought, and probably a cleansing process. i am a fucked up guy (but not that fucked up, according to many), if i wasn't, i probably wouldn't be in the music business. i am writing down ideas and thoughts on various things as well, i may put them up, i may not. i am thinking a lot about culture and differences. this is a complex subject and unless i come up with simple explanations, i probably won't put it up. this explains all the yourtube postings. i am trying to thread my past, so that by using a medium such as youtube, i can at least try to analyze why i think the way i do and act the way i do. then, i am also doing little online experiments, that no one will notice. i am using very primitive methods and started a few days ago. if this reaps some result, all it needs is some manpower and an automated process.
meanwhile, i am seriously considering of leaving the music business. for various reasons. i am not sure. maybe i love this too much. maybe i have become too jaded. whatever. and that is why i type.
now that i shot my own foot, time for a career change?
oh i am feeling much better now.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Minoru Yokoo
Date: Oct 3, 2007 5:46 PM
Subject: Fwd: i just therew a bomb on my blog(s) hee hee hee
To: xoxoxoxox xoxoxoxox
oh well, time to look for a different career!
it is waaaaaay out of sync though.
i think it's simple. music has always been a "protected" business. as eguchi-san at xox once said (remember him? did you know he used to xoxoxoxo xoxoxox?)
"the music business in japan is the same size as the tofu business"
the supply and demand was simply one way. you eat what we feed you (as reflected in the lk biz model).
now, because of technology etc, it isn't so. all this is just a knee jerk reaction. based on fear to change and evolve.
i do understand the complications of human livelihoods at stake, including mine.
but, what happened to all the carriage drivers in the days of horses? they're probably playing guitar now.
m
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Minoru Yokoo
Date: Oct 3, 2007 5:27 PM
Subject: i just therew a bomb on my blog(s) hee hee hee
To: xoxoxoxo xoxoxoxox
the music business is FUCKING LAME.
walk down the street, go to your local mall.
go to shibuya/mishuku. williamsburg/east village. islington/notting hill. kreuzberg/mitte.
hang around. think about it.
what do people use to listen to music? what do YOU use to listen to music?
what is the music business preventing to sell? do you find that process of buying that silver disc and converting it to mp3 any fun? it's a WASTE OF FUCKING TIME.
are you going to manually convert your crude oil to petrol to use in your car, so that you can protect your oil refinery?
are you going to put protection on your computer files and protect it, so that when you decide to change computers, you can only copy the files in limited quantity?
you complain of petrol (ok, gasoline) prices going up, yet you try to keep your software prices stable? what is this, the japanese politics?
does it matter if the data is music, video, or text? what is music, is it something high up on an altar so valuable that you're supposed to worship buying a piece of it?
time is $. no wonder the shit ain't selling, it's all FUCKING OUT OF SYNC. kappish?
go ahead, shoot me, because i have just about had enough.
you know what?
the music business is FUCKING LAME.
walk down the street, go to your local mall.
go to shibuya/mishuku. williamsburg/east village. islington/notting hill. kreuzberg/mitte.
hang around. think about it.
what do people use to listen to music? what do YOU use to listen to music?
what is the music business preventing to sell? do you find that process of buying that silver disc and converting it to mp3 any fun? it's a WASTE OF FUCKING TIME.
are you going to manually convert your crude oil to petrol to use in your car, so that you can protect your oil refinery?
are you going to put protection on your computer files and protect it, so that when you decide to change computers, you can only copy the files in limited quantity?
you complain of petrol (ok, gasoline) prices going up, yet you try to keep your software prices stable? what is this, the japanese politics?
does it matter if the data is music, video, or text? what is music, is it something high up on an altar so valuable that you're supposed to worship buying a piece of it?
time is $. no wonder the shit ain't selling, it's all FUCKING OUT OF SYNC. kappish?
go ahead, shoot me, because i have just about had enough.
hello@minoru-yokoo.com
i.dont.know@minoru-yokoo.com
fuck.you@minoru-yokoo.com
about 10 mins in
Marc Andreessen's interview is pretty interesting. so is the sutff before that, depending on how you look at it.
October 2, 2007
Radiohead Economics and dngyrwnmthccktl
Radiohead Economics
rcrd lbl
http://www.ning.com/
http://www.google.com/trends/music
http://www.google.com/trends
http://alexa.com/
a+b+c+d+e=a-b-c-d-e
i was never good at math, you do it.
????????????
hello@minoru-yokoo.com
i.dont.know@minoru-yokoo.com
fuck.you@minoru-yokoo.com
hmm............
this dude seems to really like the ad supported music model. hmm....... me iz ploseshingu, nau.
nanu nanu.
nanu nanu nanu.
this bit was bound to happen, but what next???
"established artists"
what's going to happen to my band then? i haven't formed it and i don't have songs!!!! i"ve got a riff.
it goes like this;
i do know the biz!!!! i need fans. now!!!
hehehe.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
article link
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Radiohead new album: music industry react to unique release
Experts predict 'In Rainbows' will 'change how people think about music'
01.Oct.07 12:09pm
Music industry experts are saying the unique way Radiohead's new album 'In Rainbows' is being released will revolutionise the way people think about music.
The band have not set a price for the download version of the album, leaving the "price" field blank, to let customers decided how much to pay for it.
Adam Benzine of music industry bible 'Music Week' said it will really shake things up in terms of album pricing.
"Radiohead have really put the cat amongst the pigeons with this one," he told NME.COM. "The album will revolutionise the way people think about music. It had already forced people to question how much music is actually worth. I saw a posting on a forum with a fan saying he would pay £2.50 for it!
"Radiohead have always been about asking questions of their audience. When they did their 'tent tour', they wanted to do a tour without any branding."
Benzine added that it will have a lasting impact on the future of the music industry.
"The timing of this comes when The Charlatans are giving their album away as a free download, Prince is giving a DVD away as a covermount free with 'The Observer' and Travis gave away a veritable Best Of free with the 'Mail On Sunday'," he explained. "This move continues the changing musical landscape for established artists."
Has free music become a listener's birthright?
"By Stuart Eskenazi Seattle Times staff reporter
Iron & Wine's "The Shepherd's Dog" was leaked in June.
A Sub Pop Records employee casually surfing various Internet music blogs last June came across it on a Radiohead fan site notorious for this kind of thing — an unauthorized free download of the entire Iron & Wine record "The Shepherd's Dog," which the label had scheduled for official release three months later.
For the Seattle-based label, the question never was whether the album would leak — anticipated releases pretty much all do these days. It was a matter of when."
"The recording industry is in a funk, dealing with sorely lagging sales and a generation of young consumers who consider free music their birthright. Now, it also must deal with the economics of new records getting leaked prematurely on the Internet.
Labels can fight the unauthorized release of their music as they have in the past with nasty court battles that tarnished the industry's reputation. Or they can go with the flow, staying one step ahead of the leakers. Common sense suggests that album leaks can benefit both the label and the artist by providing exposure to the music, building good buzz for an upcoming release (assuming it doesn't suck)."
i guess bob is saying the same thing, from a different perspective
i just heard that a friend of mine passed away. last time i saw her was about 18 months ago, we used to hang quite often in the mid to late 90's. she was a violin player, i remember helping out on odd bits for her solo effort and also helped the band she used to play with. that band's singer died a while ago. that band didn't do well commercially when they were around, but maybe death has a commercial charm, they became some kind of worshipped existence after his death, and actually sold records. that's when i realized, i'm not trusting the "fans". whenever i meet someone new and they mention that band, especially if they ask me all kinds of questions and go on about it, i don't care who they are or how rude i am (i am fully aware), i ask the question, "did you participate when they were actually around?". whatever the current system is for music production and distribution (it is a different model different in japan), it didn't help this band, or i, at all. i know how much i got from them.
but maybe i am wrong. maybe i should approach with a little more humanity. there is bound to be a lot of good coming out of this reshuffling of the guards.
once again, bob lefsetz.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So I'm driving down PCH and one of my favorite songs ever comes up on Deep Tracks, Pete Townshend's "Pure and Easy". Originally released on Pete's 1972 solo album "Who Came First", this is the extended eight minute take from the "Lifehouse Elements" CD that came out decades later.
Both versions have a homemade feeling. Like Pete cut them alone in his bedroom, which he kind of did. Neither release was accompanied by deafening fanfare. This was not a Who album, this was for FANS ONLY!
And I'm a fan. I traveled cross-country with "Pure and Easy". And "Let's See Action" from the same initial album. I know every word, every lick, every note. And I'm sure some of you out there do too. You know the simple secret of the note in us all. But most don't. My buddy riding shotgun had never heard this track, and he's about my age. I felt he'd missed out, but I didn't really care, I was in REVERIE!
And I started thinking how I'd like new music just like this. And then I realized that Pete had concocted a new Who album, just last year, AND NOBODY CARED!
You're supposed to sign with a major label, and they're supposed to carpet bomb your record into success. But their odds of doing so today are positively miniscule. For every Kanye West, there's a million other albums that no one ever hears.
Radiohead has a fanbase. Many people HATE the band. But that makes no difference. Thom Yorke and company don't give a shit about these people. They're not going to release four singles in an effort to get somebody's mom to buy their album at Wal-Mart. Radiohead is GIVING UP on the mainstream. That's one of the stories being glossed over here. They DON'T WANT the major label's effort, they don't think it'll pay off. As a matter of fact, they believe it will ALIENATE THEIR CORE FAN BASE!
Everyone's focusing on the bread. But you only follow the money if you're a businessman. Whereas Radiohead is comprised of artists. The music comes FIRST! What a concept. One that has been placed in the trash as the majors and the complicit media hype vapidity to the far corners of the earth.
Now if this were some flavor of the moment, throngs of people would be buying their new album download for 1p. They've got no relationship with the band. They're into the DEAL! Fans don't want a deal. They're willing to cough up all their money to cement the relationship. They need the eighty dollar box less to listen to than as badge of honor, to show their friends.
It's not about the penumbra, it's about the CORE! Satisfy the CORE!
Radiohead's core is not listening to Top Forty. They don't have a radio station on either AM OR FM. They go directly to the source. They need no filter. And Radiohead is going directly to them.
Radiohead is niche. And niche survives. And except for the occasional train-wreck, everything will be niche in the future. It will be less about converting new people than holding on to your base. And, new people will be brought IN by this base, via their evangelizing. You see Radiohead is akin to a religion.
It makes no difference that you don't like Radiohead. Makes no difference that they get no radio play. They've got their own cottage industry. Which they're managing brilliantly. Rather than burn out the field, they're not taking every opportunity, they're letting certain aspects lay fallow. Who are endorsements going to reach? Oh, you get a check, but the newbies aren't for keeping, and the core is thrown off. You're THEIR band, not Madison Avenue's, not Cadillac's.
And there's enough money in the core. Maybe not enough to get on the Forbes list, but what does that list represent, is that where you really want to be? Is our culture really winner take all? Is it really all about the money? Tell that to the Radiohead fan. He just wants to revel in the band's music. That's as good as sex to him. Maybe better if he's not getting any.
Think about that. Radiohead has created something its fanbase can't live without. And that's the music. It's a return to basics. We're back where we once belonged.
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honzi
r.i.p.
it was fun.
October 1, 2007
not so surprisingly
i think it's a pretty simple plan. it's probably not going to be like this, but the flow is, most likely, this.
STAGE ONE
i am a software developer. i create interesting software. i have enough savings not having to rely on others for software research, development and production. i finished the alpha version, like, the other day. i am very excited. so let's seed the alpha version and see how it works as software. it's stlll a bit wobbly, so we'll treat this as SHAREWARE. it's the same as any diy game.
i don't have to deliver the master to whatever label till i get the product version done.
i get to release my music when i want, how i want
(somewhat future and optimistic perspective) i don't have to deal with GLOBAL distribution issues
it's going to get copied and copied over and over ("i'll leak my own software, thank you very much. i won't be needing journalists that sell sample review cd's to review my stuff, i will let the people decide if my software is good or not").
(most likely not happening)
AND it gives us a bit of time to really fine tune the software ("oh, you know that screen? the colours are a bit wonky, so let's take that to howie to make it brighter. but you know the other screen? i want that a bit more lush, so let's take it to greg and have it re-done in time for the product version").
it's better than having the proper product version copied by someone uncaring.
core user: i can use this to chat up sarah down the road ("ooh, you're a bit geeky, aren't you? how much did ya pay for it? 1p??? 1 fucking pee? you're a cheapskate")
developer gets USER INFO and USER FEEDBACK. not just a name and an email address.
user info, level 1
copying level, 1
UPDATE. i just ordered the deluxe super duper burger with burp to go. here's the screen shot. the detected my ip automatically and said i'm in japan. correct. they didn't give me no chopstick options, but they told me to write down my mobile phone details. huh?!
\\\\\dude, sms ain't popular in japan. dude, if you're tracking ip address you could do better.dude.\\\\\
STAGE TWO
(probably not happening)
ok, software seems to be working, we had howie and greg fine tune the stuff and we even added!!?? different charecters???!!!
but you know wot, it's a bit boring to just see the stuff circulating in 1's and 0's. i made all these paper cutouts of all the charecters that comprise my vision, so can't we share this? so, those that would like to participate further, can obtain a beta version of the software. it costs a bit, but you will get exclusive get bits and pieces, like which compiler we used, all the little paper charecters and all that and it comes on floppy disk too, so you can flaunt it to your friends and play with it on your lovingly well maintained apple II or atari 1040stf (i miss you). cos it's on floppy, i can't really give it to chat up dorothy down the road but i can sure as hell talk to her about it ("bloomin' 'eck, you're a geek, get away from me!!!!" or "oooh, i find boys with floppy drives so sexxyyyy"). i can sell it on ebay too.
i still get USER INFO that is more than a name and email address.
user info, level 1
copying level, 3 (?)
STAGE THREE
ok, my software seems to work. i'm kinda bored about it, actually. i don't really want to deal with distributing this, phoning up sales offices, sales people and then doing interviews for perez hilton.
so i license product to traditional outlets. i'll give you some stuff you can use to promote it and i'll see you at the convention next year, right?
all these peeps i don't know who, will localize product on a territory by territory basis.
japan needs lyrics, bonus tracks, liner notes. china may want fancy photos of us smiling.
NO USER INFO. if there is, it will be LIMITED.
alpha version of software already in mass distribution (and i used that to chat up tracy down the road), can't use it to chat up gloria down the road ("wot, you been hybernating or summin?").
user info, none (??)
copying level, 1~2
STAGE FOUR
(you can do all sorts from here)
by this point, i have quite a bit of user info. i wonder what i can do with this user info............
hmm, my own radiohead.myspace.com, my own facebook application........ hmm...........
oh, i'm going on tour. got there great designs for some shirts. oh, i just made a new song. oh i just made a live album. hmm............
it pretty much sounds like any other software business. just getting to know the customer..........
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Radiohead Album To Get 2008 Physical Release
October 01, 2007 - Global | Retail
By Andre Paine, London and Jonathan Cohen, New York
Radiohead will follow up the exclusive download of their new album "In Rainbows" with a standard physical release in 2008, according to the band's spokesman.
Pre-orders for the digital album have begun at the band's Web site radiohead.com and it will be available from Oct. 10 as an MP3 download. However, today it emerged that a standard CD will eventually get a full release, although it has not yet been confirmed which label will distribute the album. EMI are believed to be one of the labels in the running for the job.
"Radiohead are currently planning a traditional CD release of 'In Rainbows' for early 2008," the band's spokesman told Billboard.
Radiohead are able to self-release their seventh album because they left their long-term label EMI in 2005. A special edition box set is also available to order, including a CD, double vinyl and a bonus CD as well as a hardback book. It will ship "on or before Dec. 3" according to the Radiohead Web site, although fans who pay £40 ($82) for the "discbox" will also get the download version to listen to while they wait for the discs to be delivered.
In a twist, fans can name their own price for the download version. "It's up to you," reads a disclaimer on the checkout screen.
"In Rainbows," produced by Nigel Godrich, is the follow-up to 2003's "Hail to the Thief," which debuted at No. 3 on The Billboard 200.
do it.
from bob lefsetz. is radiohead.com owned by the band? (according to whois.sc, seems to be so). if so, this seems VERY legit.
power, imagination, execution. it would be great if the music was good too.
oh, to make it clear, i am not supporting this as the ONLY model. i believe this is a VERY exciting age of contemplation, imagination, research, re-grouping, re-forming and most of all, EXECUTION. but the shit's got to be right at the source. at the fucking source. at least there is thought and consideration behind this (if true) both commercially and artistically. most of all, they care and offer some love and consideration. integrity. i think that's something very commendable. they care. they have faith. it addresses a lot of the problems that is inheritent in the music "business" today.
update: this seems to be very true.
i am not even a big fan of radiohead. seen them once, own two albums. but their pure simplicity is worth a lot of respect.
this is the real 360 degree deal. vertical and horizontal. it comes from the SOURCE. they wipe their own arse and they can probably take that risk.
i am quite excited. and i've only slept for 2 fucking hours today.
IT IS FUCKING REAL.
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003649114
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.inrainbows.com/Store/index.html
Is this real?
I'm standing in Gelson's, shopping for dinner, and my BlackBerry starts to go wild. All with the above link. About a new Radiohead record.
Then I get in front of a computer and I read that there's been a hoax. That the site purporting to count down to Radiohead's release is fake. But now everybody is saying the story at the ABOVE link is REAL! That the new Radiohead album comes out in ten days and you can pay whatever you want. It's even on the Record Of The Day site.
Huh?
I got a call from the AP just last week. Asking me what Radiohead would do. I said they'd use the English indie model. License the record to a major for a limited period of time for a ton of bread. You see majors OWN physical distribution. And that's where the lion's share of recorded music revenue still is, in CDs, at Best Buy/Wal-Mart and the other brick and mortars left. The majors can get the product in the store and you can get paid. They need the billing. You still can't do it alone, even though it's been thirty plus years since the Dead failed with "Wake Of The Flood". Hell, PEARL JAM made a deal with a major.
But what if they're not? What if RADIOHEAD is giving the major labels the middle finger? What if they're saying WE'RE RICH ENOUGH! That the Net allows you to go straight to your audience. FUCK the middleman who says he's so necessary.
R.E.M. went for the cash They could have gone indie. Turns out re-signing with Warner was a good move, for they never sold tonnage again, despite getting PAID for selling tonnage. Springsteen went for the check. As did Neil Young.
But none of the foregoing acts are in their prime. They're riding off into the sunset. They don't have a hold on the younger generation. Boomers in Bimmers are the fans of these acts, none of whom can sell big numbers anyway. They're all on victory lap tours, raking in the dough for retirement. Radiohead doesn't have their dough...shouldn't they be going for the CHECK?
Isn't that the majors' advantage, they've got the money, they can write the CHECK?
Who leaves money on the table. Certainly not the agents. They don't want StubHub to steal a single dollar from their bottom line. Fuck image and credibility, THAT'S MY MONEY! I'm gonna make a deal with Cadillac. I'm gonna whore my product out on TV. Radio won't play my music, I can't get it on the Top Forty, MY HANDS ARE TIED!
It's not like Radiohead's living in a different world. But they're playing by a different rule book. One that says the money flows from the music, that people have to believe in you, that you've got to treat them right.
Shit, you can barely get a ticket to a Radiohead show. The venues aren't big and the demand is incredible. They're doing it all wrong, don't they see??
Well, obviously they don't.
This is big news. This says the major labels are fucked. Untrustworthy with a worthless business model. Radiohead doesn't seem to care if the music is free. Not that they believe it will be. Because believers will give you ALL THEIR MONEY!
This is the industry's worst nightmare. Superstar band, THE superstar band, forging ahead by its own wits. Proving that others can too. And they will.
This is what happens when you sell twenty dollar CDs with one good track and sue your customers for trading P2P. This is what happens when you believe you're ENTITLED to your business. This is what happens when music is a second-class citizen only interested in the bottom line.
There's no testimonial to Jimmy Iovine on inrainbows.com. No thanks to Rick Rubin, never mind Lyor Cohen. Radiohead doesn't need those stinkin' badges. They're THINKING FOR THEMSELVES!
What did that button say back in the sixties? "Question Authority"? That's what Radiohead is doing here. They're not holding back, saying their hands are tied, but are forging into the future.
You can't make a TV show by yourself. Certainly not a movie. Not that anyone can see. But you can make a record all by your lonesome, it doesn't cost that much. And you can say exactly what you want, you don't need to clean it up for Wal-Mart. And, you can distribute it yourself online. That's what Radiohead is doing.
Will they make a deal with a major for physical distribution? Will they do it themselves? Or will they leave ALL that money on the table? Shit, that would blow MY mind.
http://www.recordoftheday.com/cgi-bin/rotd-mb/rotd_config.pl?read=123608
(You can pay as little as 1p for the download album, but a 45p credit card charge will be added.)
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