The Issues

Who Will Get Joe Strummer’s Vote?

October 16, 2008 by Jim Connelly

Is it just me, or is this election making us all a bit crazy? I know that, for my part, I’m obsessively checking RealClearPolitics several times every day (thanks a hell of a lot for that, Tom!!), memorizing their Electoral College counts, not to mention that on my commute home last night, I actually listened to the third debate instead of the Dodgers game.

Of course, that commute was made much longer by the residual traffic created by the Dodgers game, which is never fun.

It has been like this forever. In fact, I’m not actually sure that I can remember a time before this campaign started. Way back in March 2007, (over a year and a half before Entertainment Weekly said the same thing on their cover) I asked if this campaign was going to be the best reality TV show ever, and I think that it has ended up that way.

One small problem: I hate reality TV.

Why I Won’t Miss iTunes

October 1, 2008 by Jim Connelly

So here’s the deal: The National Music Publisher’s Association has said that they want to increase the royalty rate for each legal download from $0.09 to $0.15 per song. Apple has responded by threatening to shut down iTunes.

I assume that “iTunes” means “iTunes Music Store,” and this has nothing to do the the TV Shows, Films and Applications that also go through iTunes, because, well, that would just be stupid.

I’m not here to argue the merits of what one side will say is only a six cent increase and the other side will say is a 66% increase, nor am I going to point out that this is Apple’s way of saying that if they don’t continue to get exactly what they want, they’re going to take their ball and go home.

But I will say this: if the iTunes Music Store went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t even be a blip on my radar.

New Study Reveals Parents Television Council is Totally Into Sex and Violence

August 5, 2008 by Jim Connelly

I want a new job. I want to go work for the Parents Television Council, and spend my time watching and cataloging sex & violence on prime-time television. This is what they do. They watch TV, looking for sex and violence, and when they find it, they tell the world. It’s awesome.

They’ve just released a study with this alarming headline:

Happily Never After: How Hollywood Favors Adultery and Promiscuity Over Marital Intimacy on Prime Time Broadcast Television

Here’s the deal: at the beginning of this TV season, they watched 207 hours of prime-time network television, painstakingly waiting for some kind of sexual reference by a character, and then thinking long, deep and hard about what kind of sexual reference it was.

How The Bootleg Series 8 Will Lead to More Bob Dylan Piracy

July 31, 2008 by Jim Connelly

Bob Dylan Bootleg Series 8: Tell-Tale Signs So first, the good news, courtesy of the A.V. Club: Bob Dylan is putting out The Bootleg Series Vol 8.

This one — subtitled Tell Tale Signs — concentrates on rare and unreleased music from 1989 – 2006, and can actually be seen as a companion to the very first Bootleg Series, especially since one of the songs on Tell Tale Signs is another version of “Series of Dreams,” one of the more talked-about tracks from that first collection, put out nearly 20 years ago.

It probably goes without saying that I love Dylan’s Bootleg Series discs, even if they contain songs I’ve already heard, because not only is the quality top-notch, there are always surprises. I’m very much looking forward to discovering what this one has in store. Best of all, as anybody who has the Genuine Basement Tapes knows, there’s always more where that came from.

Yet, this time, there is a problem.

Why Heidi & Spencer Are The Final Proof We Should Get Out of Iraq

July 23, 2008 by Jim Connelly

So here’s the deal: apparently Hills twits Spencer Pratt & Heidi Montag are planning a trip to entertain the U.S. troops in Iraq. Normally, a story like this would immediately be tossed into my “who gives a rats ass” pile and I’d go back to obsessing over the new Paul Westerberg & Hold Steady albums and wondering why more people aren’t watching The Middleman.

However, it struck me that Heidi & Spencer being allowed to go over and entertain the troops is actually the most compelling reason yet to immediately bring our boys back home from Iraq.

If Heidi & Spencer are going to Iraq, it means that we’ve been there for so long we’ve run out of actual, real entertainers for our troops.

Is Playing Music on the Radio A Form of Piracy?

June 24, 2008 by Jim Connelly

Does playing someone’s music on the radio hurt them or help them? And is it a “form of piracy”?

I’m a lifelong radio listener. Not like I once was, of course, but I still listen, especially during my morning commute. A couple of weeks ago I happened to hear “The Step and The Walk” by The Duke Spirit on Indie 103.1, and fell instantly in love with it. So, is that a good thing or bad thing for The Duke Spirit?

A logical person would say that it’s a good thing for the artist. Right? I’d never heard of them, and now I have.

Of course, as we’ve seen many times before, the Recording Industry is not made up of logical persons. As a matter of fact, not only do they see no benefit in their artists being played on the radio, they want compensation.

Otherwise, “it’s a form of piracy,” and any argument that playing music is a form of promotion is a “red herring.”

Those aren’t my words, but rather the words of a spokesperson for a recording industry umbrella group with the hilarious name of musicFIRST.

Why is Prince Being a Creep About that Radiohead Cover?

May 30, 2008 by Jim Connelly

You’d think that it would be so easy: as a wink and a nod at the audience for whom he’s performing, Prince does a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” at Coachella, a bunch of cell-phone videos gets put up on YouTube, and everybody marvels — for the eighty zillionth time — at what a versatile mother-fracker Prince is.

And, oh yeah, what a great song “Creep” remains. Sure, it would have been cooler had Prince covered “Karma Police” or “Everything In Its Right Place,” (especially if Prince had changed the opening line to “Yesterday I woke up, you were sucking my lemon”), but, all things considered, “Creep” was good enough, and the whole thing just becomes part of the legend of both artists.

You’d think. But, as it turns out, things are a bit more complicated. Which since it’s Prince and Radiohead, makes a lot of sense, since inherent in the greatness of each artist is more than a touch of madness.

NBC’s Plan to Make The Zune Even Worse

May 8, 2008 by Kirk Biglione

The NBC programming that went missing from iTunes last December has finally turned up in the Zune marketplace. Fans of The Office, Heroes, and 30 Rock can once again pay to download episodes of their favorite programs — provided they own a Zune and a Windows PC.

Given the Zune’s miniscule market share it’s curious to see any network choosing Microsoft’s media platform over iTunes for paid downloads. When NBC pulled its programming from iTunes, network officials sniffed at the relatively small sales the Apple service had generated. By comparison, sales in the Zune marketplace are bound to redefine the term “nano”.

Clearly this move isn’t about selling digital content online. NBC seems to be more interested in punishing Apple for exercising control over iTunes pricing than it is in actually expanding the market for legal downloads.

How EMI Wants To Steal Your Music

April 24, 2008 by Jim Connelly

A while back, Kirk wrote an article called “Prepare for the Worst: 4 Simple Digital Media Backup Solutions.” One of the options was the digital Music Locker at MP3tunes, where you could upload your music and store it, secure and password-protected.

This is not file-sharing. File-sharing is, of course, the digital equivalent of what music fans have been doing since the dawn of time: turning other people on to music they love. This is really the exact opposite: it is more akin to locking your music in a safe deposit vault, where only you have the key.

Apparently, EMI didn’t think so, and sued MP3tunes, essentially trying to shut down online storage of music for any purpose whatsoever.

Has Spiral Frog Become An Essential Part of Your Life?

March 28, 2008 by Jim Connelly

Longtime readers of this site (that would be Will and John) know that there are consumer products to which we’ve never been very kind. These products include Microsoft’s Zune, anything from DuroSport Electronics and of course SpiralFrog, the major label-sponsored website that allows you to download DRM’d music for FREE! All you have to do is ignore some ads.

After first making fun of the concept, then making fun of the amazingly long time to market, and finally, making fun of the thing itself, I figured that I was done with ever writing about it ever again. Hell, I thought I was done with ever thinking about it again.

Until last night.