Medialoper

We're Not Who You Think We Are

Music

LaLa Love You

by

Sometimes new media media ideas get retrofitted into older media. A perfect example of this is a start-up called LaLa, which takes distinctly new media concept — using the Net to share files — and applies it to an older technology, the Compact Disc.

Part MySpace, Netflix, eBay and iTunes, La la incorporates pieces of each: Users list online the CDs they both want and have. In the process, they find others who share the same taste in music. Then, when one user requests a CD that another person owns, the owner drops it in the mail in a pre-paid envelope. The receiver is billed $1, plus 49 cents for shipping; the shipper pays nothing.

It’s devilishly simple, of course, and 100% legal.

[Read more…] about LaLa Love You

My Sony Settlement, Part 1

by

I was one of the unlucky people who happened to purchase a copy-protected CD from SonyBMG last year.  It was the Foo Fighters album On Your Honor, and I remember at the time cursing the fact that I couldn’t rip it to put it on my hard drive to listen to at my leisure.  Turns out that was the least of my worries, as they also left my hard drive vulnerable because they decided that the simple act of purchasing a CD from a band I’ve always liked meant that they could do anything that they wanted to do with my system. 

Gee, thanks SonyBMG!! Thank you ever so much for that!! And by the way,this whole fiasco actually kept me from buying another SonyBMG album that I had borrowed and actually quite liked: My Morning Jacket’s Z. Sheesh. No wonder people like Kirk have given up purchasing physical CDs, even while the record companies try desperate measures to force people to do just that. 

In any event, thanks to the EFF call to get the settlement, I am now going to get whatever restitution that I am offered, and I thought that it might be fun to track the process.

 

[Read more…] about My Sony Settlement, Part 1

Physical Artifacts For Virtual Music Collections

by

It’s almost hard for me to fathom now, but there was a time in my life when I owned over 5,000 albums. My record collection took up most of my living space for many years. My eventual transition to CD narrowed that number considerably, to just under 1,000 albums. Now that I’ve made the transition to digital music I have access to 17,000+ songs on a network attached storage unit, and there’s almost no evidence of my music collection anywhere in the house.

The paradox of digital music is that while listeners are now exposed to a larger quantity of music than ever before, there are very few physical artifacts associated music anymore. The iPod has become the primary tactile interface that music lovers use to select and listen to music. Visual design is less important than ever, and liner notes have practically vanished.

As Gray McCord of M3 design noted during the Smaller, Faster, Lighter session at day 2 of SXSW:

The experience of music has been reduced to a data management activity.

McCord is working on a concept for a new type of music packaging that could be used to represent digital music in a physical world. The concept looks like a cross between a traditional LP cover and a book. With plenty of room for art, liner notes, lyrics, and more, the packaging could restore a vital part of the popular music experience that has gone missing in the iTunes era.

McCord noted that several ways that the packaging might benefit the music industry:

  • Improved packaging could revive the retail experience by giving shoppers a way to interact with digital music in a traditional record store.
  • Could ultimately lead content providers to use less draconian DRM schemes since consumers would be more likely to buy the physical product.
  • Would also encourage consumers to purchase entire albums instead of downloading individual songs.

Or the RIAA could just go about business as usual and pretend that nothing has changed since 1956.

Unfortunately, if I were a betting man I’d have to put my money on the later.

Labels Make Another Dumb-Ass Move

by

According to the New York Times, in a desperate attempt to goose CD sales, major labels are considering stepping back a decade, and experimenting with the concept of not releasing advance single downloads from upcoming albums.

So just as iTunes hits it’s billionth download; and it’s clear that people are embracing downloading as a viable option the major labels decide, welllll, that ain’t good enough.

  [Read more…] about Labels Make Another Dumb-Ass Move

Major Labels Colluding? Same As it Ever Was

by

Have you ever wondered why it costs roughly the same for you to purchase a CD of, say, Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde — an universally acknolwedged classic of 75 minutes of sublime music, and Bob Dylan’s Down in the Groove — a universally acknowedged piece of crap that barely breaks a half-hour?  As a music fan, of course, you’ve probably come to expect that all albums, then CDs, then downloads all cost pretty much the same. It’s just that some enrich your life forever and others get you maybe a buck and for sure a snide look from the guy at the used CD counter. 

In a lot of ways, this pricing is kind of like paying the same amount of money for a McDonald’s hamburger and a Prime porterhouse at Morton’s.  Only in entertainment do we risk essentially the same money for such wildly varying degrees of pleasure.  Part of that is wrapped up in our understanding of art:  not even the greatest are great every time out — and of course, to be fair, even Down in the Groove no doubt has its defenders — but part of that is wrapped up in the methods of those who control the distribution.  

In this case, that would be the major labels — these days they are configured as such:  SonyBMG, Universal, EMI, and Warner — in the past, configured differently, but it doesn’t really matter.  What matters is, no matter how they are configured, from the consumer standpoint they’ve artificially set the prices to be the same, regardless of quality, regardless of manufacture cost, regardless of length (except that a 80-minute double-CD could be sold for twice as much as a 78-minute single CD), regardless of just about anything.  As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end amen.

 

[Read more…] about Major Labels Colluding? Same As it Ever Was

You Could Be (On)line

by

I heard a new Guns n’ Roses song on KROQ this morning. It was the lead single from the 15-years-in-the-making Chinese Democracy. The hosannas at whichever evil-multinational major label that swallowed up Geffen records must have been deafening when Axl finally stumbled in — bleary-eyed from a 72-hour meth-fueled final mixdown — and said in no uncertain terms: “Release this, motherfuckers!”

Yeah, not so much. The song I heard this morning was one of three tracks that have been leaked (or is it “leaked”) to the Internet, and the official release date of Chinese Democracy remains a mystery, or as the joke goes — sometime after actual democracy in China. What’s so extraordinary about this is how unextraordinary it is anymore. The only thing surprising is how long it took for any of this music to actually hit the Net. Axl must sleep with his laptop under his pillow.

We all know the drill: big artists like Radiohead get their tracks stolen (or is it “stolen”?) and posted on some rogue website or newsgroup; the word spreads at netspeed; and pretty soon everybody who wants to has dug up the songs, which might even get played on the radio. Then, the lawyers send their threatening letters and the band pleads with their fans to please not listen to what are always described as unfinished demos or rough mixes. The fans, as always don’t care: they’d rather spend hours on forums discussing the virtually indistinguishable differences between the rough mixes and the finished product, which they rushed out and purchased or downloaded the day it came out, just like they were going to. (Unless the leaked tracks sucked total ass, in which case the artist and record companies had no right to try and charge for them anyway!)

Meanwhile, smaller bands like Arctic Monkeys or Drive-by Truckers use the internet as an organic part of their marketing strategy, actively posting tracks on their websites or MySpace long before they are supposed to be released, knowing that hardcore fans are going to spread the word if the music’s any good.

So in the case of these Guns n’ Roses songs — “There Was a Time,” “I.R.S.” (the one I heard on KROQ) and “Better” — which was it? My guess is that they were a trial balloon, leaked on purpose to see if there was any interest, and if people thought that they were any good. (It’s not really within the purview of Medialoper to do music criticism, but this particular ‘Loper always thought that it was Izzy’s songwriting and Slash’s guitar were what made Axl’s terminal assholishness so great back in the day, and they are both long gone. So, interesting song, but not necessarily caring.) Considering that there is no doubt that people are still interested in this music, it might actually signal that an album is due. I’m sure that Axlologists are debating that point right this very second.

Either that, or Tommy Stinson leaked them. That would be OK, too.

RIAA: Ripping = Ripoff

by

Over the past quarter-century or so, I have purchased the following incarnations of The Who’s Live at Leeds:

  • The vinyl album
  • The import version of the vinyl album (for the cool poster, which is still on my wall)
  • The cassette tape (road trip!)
  • The original CD issue (because vinyl is dead, mannn!)
  • The CD reissue (remastered! with extra songs!)
  • The “Deluxe Edition” 2-disc CD reissue (full live version of Tommy!)

And these are the ones that I remember! However, despite the fact that I’ve spent approximately $70 for this music over the years — and only once got that amazing poster, BTW — , apparently the RIAA has decided that they reserve the right to tell me when it is legal to rip it for my own personal use. Since this reversal of what they said as recently as a year ago, there is no doubt that they are going to eventually make it retroactive. I mean forget my iPod, or my hard drives, or even my CDs, are they going to get a warrant for those Who compilations I made and remade obsessively throughout the 80’s? Crap! I don’t even know where they are!

And forget The Who and Live at Leeds (or who’s next, which I’ve also bought a half-dozen times, too), what about all of those records that I purchased only once or twice? Especially the ones that I only bought twice, because those usually had songs that I loved and went on any number of mix tapes that I made for myself and — ohmygod!– other people. Oh no! I gave music to other people!

Well, there is plenty of evidence out there against me, so I might as well admit this: of the hundreds of cassettes and CDs that I’ve made over the years, not all of them were for my personal use. Some of them were for personal gain. Not financial gain, but something even worse: sexual gain. I totally stole music from R.E.M. and U2 and Nirvana and Bob Dylan (which never worked) and The Rolling Stones and The Replacements and Whiskeytown and so many many others just to get girls to like me. I exploited these artists; their blood and tears and their years and years and years of toil and sweat for my own selfish purposes, never once even thinking that someday, the RIAA might decide how completely wrong and illegal anything even remotely close to my activities were. Me and my stupid mind! Stupid! Stupid!

So I spent hours, days, weeks, months, years copying vinyl to cassette, CD to CD, mp3 to iPod, never once realizing that — instead of this copying of music I so stupidly, foolishly, selfishly thought that I owned just because I spent my own money on it — I should have been buying the actual albums and cassettes and CDs for these people. Sure, it would have been impersonal, and I — like many other idiots — thought that there was some kind of art in recontextualizing songs for other people, but it would have been legal, according to the RIAA.

There is no way of getting around it — despite the fact that I have purchased thousands of albums and cassettes and CDs and downloads over the years, as recently as last week — in the eyes of the RIAA, I am nothing but a common criminal. And since there is nothing I can do about it, and they are no doubt gonna get me anyway, I figure that the least I can do is stop spending all of that money on music.

A Bit of a Ruckus

by

Normally, I am against music downloading services that don’t allow you to easily transfer music from one device to another — hello Napster 2.0! — because if I paid for it, I want to own it. However, there is a service called Ruckus, which is targeting college campuses with what I think is a win-win concept. After a school signs up for this service, students can download a player and access a library of songs for free. The only catch is that the songs aren’t portable. You can’t copy them to your iPod or burn them to a CD. Normally, that’s a sticking point for me, but not this time, and here are a couple of reasons why:

First of all, the songs are free and legal, meaning that students can experiment and discover new artists and songs without financial and legal risk.

Secondly, if a student wants to pay for a song to which they have full copy & burn right, they have that option, right there from Ruckus. Clearly, the thinking is that the easy access to experimentation can and will easily transmogrify into fully portable and paid-for downloads in the future. Especially after the students discover the music that will affect them for the rest of their lives. As someone who has been hunting new music all of his life and is more than willing to pay for the things that I’ve come to love, this makes complete and utter sense.

Is Google Music Next?

by

Forbes is reporting that Wall Street analysts apparently have reason to believe that Google is developing a music service in an attempt to take on iTunes. As a result, these same analysts are maintaining an “outperform” rating and a target stock price of $550.

It sorta makes you wonder if these analysts have actually used the Google Video service – or iTunes for that matter.

As Jim just noted in his most recent post (see below) even Google has realized they’ve botched the beta launch of their video product. They’re nowhere near having the user experience or seamless end-to-end content delivery that iTunes offers it’s users. One can only imagine that a Google music service would be even more of a mess (after all, they’re likely to have more content).

On the other hand, a Google music service that allows musicians around the world to easily add their music to a global marketplace, set their own pricing, and deliver music in a DRM-free format might just work. It wouldn’t necessarily be an iTunes killer, but it could be a profitable service that competes in a parallel universe that iTunes isn’t necessarily interested in (ie, music by unsigned bands).

The Curse of Availability

by

Interesting thinkpiece in the today’s PopMatters about how the explosion of alternate versions, deluxe reissues and bootleg recordings could possibly alter and in some cases, diminish our original perception of a particularly beloved piece of music.

This has, of course, been going on since the earliest days of the CD reissue, but as record companies struggle with the new paradigm of anything anywhere anytime, they often release two or three different versions of an individual album within the space of a few months.  This is often frustrating to the people who ran out and bought the original version, only to have it become obselete a few months later.  Perhaps, though, it brings in those who were on the fence in the first place.

In the meantime, did the fact that I’ve been collecting live Wilco bootlegs for a decade end up enhancing or diminishing the pleasure I got from their recent live album? (Enhancing, but only because I know that Wilco is one of those bands who does something different each time out.) Will the eventual issuing of the Basement Tapes in their full ragged splendor be an event or a ho-hum because nearly everyone who cares already has downloaded or copied all of those dozens of recordings?  Barring some new treasure trove, or absolutely perfect sequencing, I’m guessing the latter: not because the music isn’t great, but precisely because it is so great, I’ve already wringed nearly everything from it that I’m going to.