Radiohead Gets the Whole Nine Inches

So Reznor thinks that Radiohead is getting too much credit because the industry and consumers (some call them fans) cannot exactly differentiate between a breakthrough business model and a slick marketing campaign. From the Ars Technica article,

"I think the way [Radiohead] parlayed it into a marketing gimmick has certainly been shrewd," Reznor said when speaking to Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Michael Atkin. "But if you look at what they did, though, it was very much a bait and switch to get you to pay for a MySpace-quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale."

...and...

When Atkin asked whether the labels would learn from successes like "Ghosts," Reznor didn't sound enthusiastic. "The level of ineptitude I've seen at the major labels is stunning. The people in charge of a lot of the digital technologies and the aspects that are decimating their business that I've seen are people that seem to not even be on the Internet."

Either way, while I agree with Reznor's calling out Radioheads sneaky actions, at least its a sign that the Industry is finally willing to compromise a little bit.

HD DVD Death by Duel

So Toshiba might be pulling the plug on their HD DVD format, or so says The Hollywood Reporter. Here are a couple reasons why I think they lost:

1. Toshiba has no videogame machine that supports their format (ie. PS3)
2. Unlike Sony, Toshiba has no significant movie experience or studios to back them up
3. Movie deals have been leaning more towards Sony's Blu-Ray
4. Blu-Ray simply sounds cooler than HD DVD. It sounds fresh, since we have been bombarded with the "HD" letters for several years now
5. Technologically, there is no contest.
6. There is no significant price advantage.

Engadget sums it up in much finer detail, but basically, Sony is clearly winning almost all fronts.

The Irate Flashbulb Pirate

IDM / Breakcore musician The Flashbulb, a.k.a. Benn Lee Jordan, speaks out against major digital distributor Itunes for selling his music without paying him a dime in compensation.

Jordan turns to Bittorrent as an alternative form of distribution following along the lines of the non-conformist footsteps of superstars Radiohead (although the concept was born long before R. did so last year). The "Buy it if you like it!" model is picking up steam and several artists across the genre board are finding this alternative quite viable.

Here are two of my favorite quotes from the Torrent Freak Q&A session with The Flashbulb.

"...So, my new album currently has 6381 downloads at the time of this interview on what.cd alone. Using that deceitful equation, my losses are over $100,000. If I wanted to, I could subtract those losses from my profit and completely get out of paying any income taxes. It makes sense from an evil, corporate, criminal-minded standpoint, right?"

and...

"...The thing RIAA is scared of is that their billion dollar backbone can no longer shelter people from exploring music themselves. Their business plan had evolved into telling the world what they will want to listen to and buy, and now they’ll have to actually compete with talented artists again..."

Keep on Keeping on Mr. The Flashbulb.

The Future of Music & Copyright

Ars Technica is and continues to be my favorite tech timesink. The music industry is wising up and talking real solutions. From the article, "Debating copyright reform: time for compulsory licenses?"

"Imagine a world where you could legally acquire and listen to as much music as you want for a flat fee. How you got the music—iTunes, Rhapsody, Usenet—and where you listened to it wouldn't matter. Your monthly license would give you carte blanche to snarf up as much music as you like. "

I would like this very much. If the system could be designed to keep track of every play and the audience and have proper royalty distribution with a market driven price, then I would be in heaven. something like last.fm meets soundscan :P

Going Digital

2007 definitely has seen more experimental business models for music distribution than any other year to date. Digital music: 2007 year in review written by last100 editor Steve O'Hear rounds-up how the industry has continued to use DRM, the deployment of new mobile stores and services, and pay what you want schemes spearheaded by Radiohead.

I am a bit worried about O-Hear's proposition that the music tax, basically a flat rate service for ISPs and cell phone carriers to access major record labels music services, will be pushed heavily in 2008. I would like my carrier (if they do try something new for a change) to allow an opt-out, since most of the music I listen to is not coming from the Majors lately and I wouldn't be too happy about paying money for something I am not listening to.

Community Music part 1: Foafing-the-Music

I have evangelized about Last.fm for some time now, and am still an avid fan of scrobbling tracks to help refine their music recommendation database. Hence I present to you a several part series on Community Music. There are other programs worth their salt deserving your attention, if you like finding the music you never knew you loved.

FOAF

Foafing-the-Music, created by "Grup de Recerca en Tecnologia Musical, MTG", comprised of a group of over 40 researchers from diverse disciplines at the "Departament de Tecnologies de la Informació i les Comunicacions i de l’Institut Universitari de l’Audiovisual de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra"

Stated on the site (with a little translation by yours truly) "The group's prime objective is to find the balance between basic and applied investigation and at the same time, to promote an interdisciplinary investigation that incorporates both scientific/technological and humanitarian/artistic origins."

(Imagine that, there is an English link.) "The MTG was created in 1994 by its current director, Dr. Xavier Serra, as one of the research groups of the Audiovisual Institute, a centre for interdisciplinary research in the different areas of Digital Media."

The initiation ritual is the usual. Pick a sign-in name, password, and then add your affiliations (Last.fm, Blogger, Facebook) After a couple days we shall soon see if this foafing thing works out in the next part of the series. The foafers promise to provide links to the following:

- similar artists,
- new music releases from iTunes, Amazon, Yahoo
- album reviews
- mp3 download locations
- podcasts
- automatic playlists
- incoming concerts

all relevant to my taste

However, as I begin to wait for the program to do its magic, I must admit that Last.fm already does all these functions when you take into account user posted dj sets, and concert information.

How Would Music Change With This Technology

I found this the other day and wondered what if...

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/65



A couple musings...

Imagine using an ipod like this...

Scalable virtual DJ mixers...

Making a map of your music collection with conncetions outlined (similar keys, bpm, artist name, record label, etc...

The Last Stand

These days the dotcom boom means you write up an application, get an audience and sell it for at least 9 digits. Such is the case with Last.fm, the online radio stream and music recommendation service.

I had in previous posts suspected an eventual buyout by one of the mega corporations. Well, its official. CBS has bought Last.fm for $280 million. Many users seemed concerned with this development since new ownership might mean losing what made it so good in the first place.

Here are some sources that reported the story:

Music site Last.fm bought by CBS (BBC)
CBS Buys Last.FM, an Online Radio Site (New York Times)
Wikipedia.org

This, of course, is an attempt from CBS to gain some marketshare in the exploding multimedia market. This is a time when horizontal media integration becomes crucial for the Majors. While compared to the likes of Myspace, the numbers in Last.fm seem much smaller, albeit more loyal: 15 million regular users vs. Myspace's 180 million accounts (including fake porn sites and repeat accounts.)

As a DJ this is a valuable tool for finding music, like a personal guide at a music store. I hope this move will give them more leverage to then get more music for the radio stream while limiting the 'alterations' to the music recommendation system (conflict of interest: why recommend something you don't own?). Check out my last.fm page to find out what I'm listening to.

Save the Internet part 2

Welcome back,

this is the battle: one youtube video fights to protect the people, the other video fights to protect corporations that happen to have the same rights as people.

take a guess on who is defending who in these videos:



and...



Maybe the Internet should be treated as a public utility like water or electricity, or maybe kept private like oil or airlines.

discuss...

New Medium Music

I found an interesting analysis by Calvin K.M. Lam and Bernard C.Y. Tan, titled: The Internet is Changing the Music Industry, beating the dead horse, I know.

However, there are many people that know only what the mainstream media has promoted, usually in the form of a good guy vs. bad guy deal.

It is only 7 pages long for the impatient ones out there, but this is not the kind of story that can be compressed into a seven second soundbyte. This is my favorite quote:

"What is more worrisome to the music industry is not the advent of MP3 or copyright issues but the emergence of a new Internet distribution channel, dictated by consumers."

The Last Music Resource You Will Ever Need

Database technology can work to help us find new music, events, and people. Last.fm is among the most popular new-edge programs that merge Internet radio with music recommendation services. Most of the site is free, but as usual a couple perks come with spending less than $10 a month, mostly intel for the heavy researcher.

A user signs-up by installing an application on their computer that records what music that user is playing. Then, through the process of collaborative filtering, it finds similar users and genres for the user. They call it scrobbling.

Last.fm's 'about us' section couldn't say it better:

Last.fm taps the wisdom of the crowds, leveraging each user's musical profile to make personalised recommendations, connect users who share similar tastes, provide custom radio streams, and much more.

You will meet people based on how their taste relates to your own or to whatever you search for. I tried tripping up the system with the most obscure artists I could think of, but I got several recommendations hitting the bullseye every time.

RIAA Petitions Judges to Lower Artist Royalties

There are times when yours truly loses it. When 'respectable' news organizations such as CNN and the New York Times lose their objectivity to bottom lines you wonder if the people will ever know the other side.

Here are the links to the story and its repostings
original: The Hollywood Reporter
IGN
Engadget
Tuaw.com
Tinimixtapes

...among many, many others...

On CNN for example, when you search for "file sharing, all you see is "File Sharing going to the Supreme Court", "Music Companies Take Crackdown to Campuses", always one sided in the interests of big business.

Here is the final broken straw in my quest to understand whether piracy affects media industry as much as we are told it does. This story's headline, you will never see it on a major news site.

The RIAA is so confident in their resources and models that they have the gall to play both sides (the consumer and musician) against each other for their own special interests, making more money for the owners of the Big Labels.

Before jumping to the conclusion that I'm just mad about people getting rich read this: look at how the music revenue is distributed, and then you will realize how much of a bureaucracy the arts have become. The RIAA is doing nothing to help the artist or the consumer. Online Piracy seems like human nature's way of leveling the playing field.

The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis

This study has been kept away from the mainstream for some time now. It is published in the Journal of Political Economy based in the University of Chicago, and has been shedding light on a topic conveniently assumed to be as simple as an evil vs. good battle.

The article has resurfaced on technology related sites including slashdot.org arstechnica.com, and tech.netscape.com among others.

The Federal Trade Comission used this study in their 2004 conferences titled "Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Technology: Consumer Protection and Competition Issues." Check out some of the other presentations and make your own judgement in which direction the FTC is 'leaning' the research.

Abstract:

For industries ranging from software to pharmaceuticals and entertainment, there is an intense debate about the appropriate level of protection for intellectual property. The Internet provides a natural crucible to assess the implications of reduced protection because it drastically lowers the cost of copying information. In this paper, we analyze whether file sharing has reduced the legal sales of music. While this question is receiving considerable attention in academia, industry, and Congress, we are the first to study the phenomenon employing data on actual downloads of music files. We match an extensive sample of downloads to U.S. sales data for a large number of albums. To establish causality, we instrument for downloads using data on international school holidays. Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Our estimates are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the decline in music sales during our study period.

Quote:

"With no clear theoretical prediction, the effect of file sharing on sales is an empirical question. Most of what we know about the effects of file sharing is based on surveys. The evidence is mixed. File sharers generally acknowledge both sales displacement and learning effects, and it is unclear if either effect dominates."

Vanity Fair presents: Pirates of the Multiplex

Vanity Fair has provided quite an insightful current events article in the war between Big Media and The Pirate Bay. Illegal media downloads have been the hot topic for some time now, yet this article manages to refresh the current state and update with interesting tangents. Here are some quotes:

Pirates of the Multiplex

One person who is relishing the idea of asymmetrical warfare with the M.P.A.A.
is Pirate Bureau chief Rasmus Fleischer. "Mark Getty [the photo-archive mogul] said that intellectual property is 'the oil of the 21st century'—and oil apparently means war," states Fleischer. "Copyright is so incompatible with so many cultural and technological developments. This is going to be a growing
problem for years ahead."

"The modern M.P.A.A., as if to prove itself capable of a more nuanced approach to the file-sharing threat, recently collaborated with the Boy Scouts of America, who are now offering a merit badge for anti-piracy activities. "

Among the few senior entertainment executives who have been able to absorb this seemingly basic aspect of human nature is Anne Sweeney, president of DisneyABC Television. In her keynote speech at the October 2006 MIPCOM audiovisualcontent market in Cannes, France, Sweeney broke ranks with her boardroom peers to make a bracingly pragmatic statement. "Piracy is a business model," Sweeney said. "It exists to serve a need in the market—consumers who want TV content on demand. And piracy competes for consumers the same way we do: through quality, price, and availability."

And now that iTunes has leveled the distribution playing field to the great disadvantage of major labels, Birgersson poses the question "What do you need these multi-billion-dollar companies with all their skyscrapers for? We shouldn't sacrifice a lot of these gains to prolong that system for another few years."

Sweden's "Broadband Jesus" appears to be suggesting that the sun is setting
on the era in which Ben Affleck got paid $15 million for Paycheck.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

It is important to know where your rights begin and end, as a DJ, journalist, and even a casual person wrapped in this ubiquitous inescapable media tortilla.

Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Defending Freedom in the Digital World

"From the Internet to the Ipod, technologies are transforming our society and empowering us as speakers, citizens, creators, and consumers. When our freedoms in the networked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense."

"EFF broke new ground when it was founded in 1990 — well before the Internet was on most people's radar — and continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today. From the beginning, EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights."

Everything Changed with the Internet (part 1)

The days of raiding the crates for music are over. The internet has allowed many of us to discover many non-mainstream forms of music. We otherwise would have never known any better because there are few places that cater to the niche markets.

Just go to any music store in a mall and you will find just a handful of albums, usually produced by large record labels or sub-labels within them. The changes in the supply of music are allowing us to truly have a better selection. The large traditional music stores are complaining that the internet is stealing all their income, but ask yourselves this:

If our disposable income has changed little over the past couple years, and we now have more choices of media to spend our money on (videogames, DVD’s, computers, I-pods, etc) then isn’t it reasonable to argue that the declining income of the music industry giants is not as tied to piracy as it is to more competition from other media?

What about South Florida. How are we changing the way we purchase music? Ill ask some people in the industry and let you know within the next couple days.