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Tag Archives: Music
GR Shared Link - Obama loves Wonder, Dylan, Springsteen… Sheryl Crow
June 26, 2008 – 10:46 pm
New music
July 5, 2007 – 10:37 am
Thanks to a tip from Si Johnston, I just checked out a BBC recording of Foy Vance playing one of his songs, accompanied by an orchestra.
I’d describe him as kind of an Irish Bruce Springsteen with a deeper storytelling style. You may not be into it, but I liked it, so I thought I’d share it here.
Bob, say it ain’t so
September 3, 2006 – 2:45 pm
I knew that this was coming, but I never figured Bob Dylan would be a part of it.
Of course, I doubt Bob himself even knows much about it. It’s much more likely due to his record label (Columbia), which is owned by Sony.
After all, anyone remotely interested in tech news recently knows the lengths Sony is willing to go to enforce copy protection schemes, and now it sounds like they’ve found a willing partner in Apple, who will go above and beyond copy protection, helping to provide lock-in support, like we’ve talked about before.
iTunes DRM jacks up wedding
August 20, 2006 – 11:01 pm
Yes, that’s right (well, kind of). I was at a wedding tonight where the ceremony had started; everyone had walked down the isle except for the bride. The “other people walk down” music faded out and everyone stood to wait for the bride to come down, and…
… waited some more - in silence. After a while, everyone was feeling a bit awkward, especially the bride standing there waiting to walk down, and the guy running the music was scrambling away at his computer. Eventually another song came on (although you could tell it wasn’t the one they originally planned on) and things proceeded from there.
Later I found out what had happened. They wanted a particular song for the bridal entry, so someone went on iTunes and bought it. They probably tested it out during rehearsal and everything was fine. The problem came when they got to that day and all the songs were packaged up (probably via a USB stick or something) and handed off to be played on the computer that the DJ rig was hooked up to. Of course, when it got to that song, up comes the password prompt for the original downloader’s account, which the guy apparently did not have. Doh!
PS - Before Dan gets too excited - yes, I know that this isn’t Apple specific just because it was iTunes, and yes, I know there are many workarounds for this, and they should have burned a CD instead of actually playing songs directly off a computer in the first place for an event like this, but the main point is about how over-zealous DRM can really have crappy results. This guy paid his money to iTunes, and he’s probably only ever going to play that file one or two times in his whole life, but they still have to make darn sure that he doesn’t play it on more than one computer.
Is it just me…
June 26, 2006 – 11:39 pm
or is Seasame Street nowhere near this cool anymore.
I love that they do the super-extended jam version; for some reason I just can’t see them doing that anymore - definitely not on commercial TV, and probably not even on public TV kids shows.
Also, I love how much fun Stevie Wonder always looks like he’s having when he’s playing.
As if Sony wasn’t in enough trouble already
November 13, 2005 – 5:22 pm
From De Winter Information Solutions:
The spyware that Sony installs on the computers of music fans does not even seem to be correct in terms of copyright law.
It turns out that the rootkit contains pieces of code that are identical to LAME, an open source mp3-encoder, and thereby breach the license.
This software is licensed under the so called Lesser Gnu Public License (LGPL). According to this license Sony must comply with a couple of demands. Amongst others, they have to indicate in a copyright notice that they make use of the software. The company must also deliver the source code to the open-source libraries or otherwise make these available. And finally, they must deliver or otherwise make available the in between form between source code and executable code, the so called objectfiles, with which others can make comparable software.Sony complied with non of these demands, but delivered just an executable program.
It’s funny how Sony claims to be installing (and hiding) this software on people’s computers in order to protect against copyright infringement, but the very applications that they are using to do so violate this principle.
My opinion on the “music scene”
November 10, 2005 – 11:32 pm
Just in case you guys don’t keep up with the comments in Nathan’s blog, (and because it kind of ties in with my last post), I’m posting the comment I just made over there about how I wouldn’t care too much if filesharing does actually end up bankrupting the record industry as we know it.
I’d love for the financial motivation that churns out a lot of the crap that we get these days to dry up and to be left only with authentic musicians who aren’t doing what they do to be the next big whatever, but just because they have something to offer, and they’re going to do it whether there’s a chance of making a million bucks or whether it costs them out of their own pocket because they’re passionate about what they want to say/give. Sure, a lot of it wouldn’t be as “polished”, and there would still be a decent percentage of stuff that a lot of people won’t like, but at least more of it would be “real”, whatever that might mean.
Not only would it be great for the independents out there, but even the “big” bands could probably do a lot of stuff that they either can’t get away with on their current label, or at least aren’t willing to risk.
Especially with technology advancing like it has in the area of digital audio recording, I think that there is less and less of a need for help with stuff like studio time in a decent studio, so all the record labels really have to offer artists these days is marketing. I could certainly live in a world where the marketing was left to the fans sharing the music they like with their friends, in person or online.
Sure, this would put a bit of a crimp on the cash flow of the big artists currently, but they would always have live show & merchandise sales, as well as people (like you guys) who like the physical albums. It won’t make up the difference, but I’m pretty sure that any band or artist who would stop making music altogether if there wasn’t a possibility of a lucrative label contract is a band/artist that I can live without hearing.
The music industry insanity
November 10, 2005 – 12:50 pm
The Hidden Cost of Documentaries
By NANCY RAMSEY
THE moment seemed innocuous enough.Michael Vaccaro, a fourth grader, had just left P.S. 112 in Brooklyn and was headed home with his mother. Two filmmakers were in front of him, their camera capturing his every movement on video, when his mother’s cellphone rang.
“It was such an indicator of today’s culture,” said Amy Sewell, a producer of “Mad Hot Ballroom,” the documentary that follows New York City children as they learn ballroom dancing and prepare for a citywide contest. “Michael’s mom had just asked him how school was, her cellphone rings, she answers it, and the look on his face says, ‘I don’t get to tell my mom about my day.’ “
In addition, the ringtone was “Gonna Fly Now,” the theme from “Rocky,” and the neighborhood was Bensonhurst. “How perfect was that?” Ms. Sewell said.
Perfect, but a problem. Had the ringtone been a common telephone ring, the scene could have dropped into the final edit without a hitch, the moment providing a quick bit of emotional texture to the film. But EMI Music Publishing, which owns the rights to “Gonna Fly Now,” was asking the first-time producer for $10,000 to use those six seconds.
Ms. Sewell considered relying on fair use, the aspect of copyright law that allows the unlicensed use of material when the public benefit significantly outweighs the costs or losses to the copyright owner. But her lawyer advised against it. “I’m a real Norma Rae-type personality,” Ms. Sewell said, “but the lawyer said, ‘Honestly, for your first film, you don’t have enough money to fight the music industry.’ ” After four months of negotiating - “I begged and begged,” Ms. Sewell said - she ended up paying EMI $2,500. (Total music clearance costs for “Mad Hot Ballroom,” which featured songs of Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee, came to $170,000; total costs over all were about $500,000.)
As much as I like Starbucks and Alanis,
May 31, 2005 – 7:23 pm
On June 13, 10 years to the day Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill came out—the second biggest album ever by a female artist—the java corporation will begin peddling a new acoustic version of the 16-times platinum CD. Hear Music is banking on Jagged being its bestseller since Ray Charles’s spectacularly successful Genius Loves Company. The coffee establishment even worked out an exclusive if controversial deal with Morissette’s label, Maverick Records, to carry it for six weeks before it’s available in other stores.
“Your Alanis plan is not very cool,” the president of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores, Don VanCleave, wrote in a vitriolic open letter to Starbucks.