Category: it could be called work

High Stakes in the Music Business / Free music needn’t be stolen music:

For the price of three CDs in taxes, we can each get free access to anything we want to hear and have clear consciences. Not bad. Will it be easy? Nope: Big music will lobby against this system apoplectically and apocalyptically. The
fight will be a wonderful spectacle, scary and awesome to behold, but in the end artists and their audiences will both be better off. Bring it on.

Worth a read: the author suggests a new model, where we divide the amount the RIAA cartel booked as sales last year, divide that by everybody, and consider that — US$40 — a single payment for all the music you want. Never mind that CDs should be much less than $13 apiece (even if you can find them at that price).

And then there’s this from the late great Frank Zappa:

A Proposal For A System To Replace Ordinary Record Merchandising:
This was written in 1983? And we’re not all that much closer, even as his ideas prefigure today’s landscape almost eerily.

People today enjoy music more than ever before, and, they like to take it with them wherever they go. THEY CAN HEAR THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOD AUDIO AND BAD AUDIO . . . THEY CARE ABOUT THAT DIFFERENCE, AND THEY ARE WILLING TO GO TO SOME TROUBLE AND EXPENSE TO HAVE HIGH QUALITY ‘PORTABLE AUDIO’ TO USE AS ‘WALLPAPER FOR THEIR LIFESTYLE’.

What is an iPod or other mp3 player, if not the fulfillment of that idea?

The need for a combined anniversary gift (12 years today) and Mother’s Day gift found me at the Apple Store yesterday: I got the size right but not the color. Silver wasn’t on, and a tie between blue and green was resolved in person.

Pretty neat little things. Sadly, the lack of a Firewire cable and the fact that is connected to a 2000 model iMac DV (with 12 Mbit/s USB 1) makes things a little less than excellent. My FireWire cable works for the mini but I don’t seem to be having any luck with the USB cable.

So far, so good. I have about 2.5 Gb of music moved onto it. I really think a mini is enough for anyone but the obsessive or anyone who isn’t near their music collection for days at a time. You’re unlikely to get through that much music in a day or so . . .

At some point, it would make sense to merge all the music collections into one (I have one on my laptop, I have a backup downstairs, and now we have another that overlaps mine without being a subset of it). Perhaps I’ll see if Tiger offers a more robust automounter that Panther’s . . .

Banksy (23):

The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don’t go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit.

Trouble is, there are still quite a few (millions of) people who will reward someone for doing something devoid of meaning other than notoriety/fame.

Now playing: Do The Strand by Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music from the album “Street Life – Greatest Hits” | Get it

A meditation on exploring a once-familiar soundtrack from one’s earlier life:

Rogue Semiotics » Old songs:

I think there’s a pretty simple explanation. Much of musicality is prediction; like comedy, music satisfies by fulfilling expectations in often unexpected ways. The perfection of Bach is best appreciated when the listener is teetering on the edge of fully understanding the pattern. Things are clear without being obvious.

Old songs are obvious without being clear. You know moments perfectly, but can’t recall how the patterns go together. The moment one song finishes I know the opening of the next, but I don’t recognise the song itself for a while after. Everything is backwards. Songs are shorter than I recall, but the album longer. Worse. The songs are the same in their finest detail, but utterly different to their memory. It’s like waking up having fallen asleep on your arm. There is something there completely of you, but totally alien.

There’s something strange going on tonight. But I feel fine.

I was surprised at the Olde Diske used in this experiment (I feel a little older as a result). I have most of the band’s oeuvre in my iPod, so it’s not quite the same experience for me when I hear those familiar strains. I think early 70’s Yes would do it for me.

The other week, the folks at Boing Boing linked to this guy’s website and in no time, he had to take the site down and put up a placeholder like the one below:

Glenn Feron – The Art of Retouching:

Welcome to GlennFeron.com. Due to overwhelming traffic to this site, I’m
rethinking how to best show my work without going over my host’s traffic limits.

Given the draw was the images he had online as opposed to a more text-y site like this one, how much traffic does it take to capsize a site? I’m sure it varies by provider as well (how well-connected they are to peering points and larger pipes, how responsive they are to spikes vs real increases, and generally how agreeable they are).

I wonder if Akamai is missing an opportunity here . . .

This may be scriptable and therefore simple, but it would interesting to have iTunes automatically assign a playlist for the work of an artist. Suppose I want to use Party Shuffle with only a given artist as my source. Or perhaps I want a genre as soundscaping for an evening’s entertainment. Do I have to do all the work and build playlists for all this myself?

[IP] Religious leaders warn of Apple Computer’s “Satanic”daemon, Darwin :

“That suggests Satan to me, and I don’t think I’m alone,” James Dobson,
chairman of Focus on the Family, said during an interview on Fox News
Channel on Thursday evening. “Apple needs to realize this is offensive
to God-fearing Christians or face a boycott.”

good grief, there was some of this almost 3 years ago . . . .