Category: music

don’t hate the player, hate the game

This is a bad take. 

As the kids say, don’t hate the player — hate the game. You waxed rhapsodic about listening to vinyl and digging into liner notes and production details. I remember that too. Listening to music in those days was an immersive experience. You looked at the art, read the cover, spent time with your friends, all empowered by music that you could relate to. 

But what happened between those rose-colored days and Spotify? (FYI: other services pay more, use those.) CDs happened. The shortest-lived and most cynical music format ever devised cheapened music by making it reproducible/playable anywhere (Theodor Adorno got it). The record industry wanted us to replace all our much-loved LPs with the new shiny thing and as CD sales took off, they cut back on vinyl. Did demand drop? Of course. But did they make an effort to keep vinyl alive, maybe as some kind of audiophile format? They did not. And just as important, they took away the visual/social aspect of music listening away by shrinking the form factor of the package. They could have sold CDs in 12 inch square packages with all the artwork and preserved that part of the experience for music lovers. But the people running the industry are not music lovers: they are business people, shippers of units and seekers of bonuses. 

The fact the vinyl is making a comeback tells us that music lovers are still out there, valuing the experience of physical media. 

As for the arguments that music is too easy to make/too easy to listen to, let’s look at the second one first. You might as well complain about radio (remember that?). But yes, pocket sized listening devices from the walkman to the iPod and smart phone have made music accessible in ways no one could have imagined. 1000s of songs in your pocket is great. Before streaming services, we used iTunes or whatever to load our devices. Was that bad? So it’s not the accessibility but the commoditization of music that’s the issue. And the people who run Spotify have made no secret that music is just a product, like water from the tap. They just want to meter that flow, no matter the source. How do you fix it? Artists take their stuff off the streaming services that they don’t vibe with. Not all can but there are some big names who could. They have the power. 

As far as music being too easy to make, I was struck by the piece of viewer mail you chose to share from someone who said they didn’t understand how to make music. You know why they believe that? Because they watch this channel and hear that message. In just this video, we’re told that it’s really hard to get a good drum sound, that amp modelers are homogenized crud, that singers don’t have to sing. That’s the message, that making music is best left to a bunch of old druids and wizards who know How To Do It. Why tell people that? I record ideas for my own amusement and I never quantize the beats. I might not be 100% in tune. Some great tracks were made with out of tune instruments and beats that were not precisely on the beat. But then I am not being managed by some industry head with a quota to fill. 

As for the tragic quality of today’s music, I listen to independent music all day long when I am at home and it doesn’t sound the same from one track/one artist to the next. New original sounds without gimmicks and gatekeeping are out there, KEXP.org is one source and I’m sure there are others. When I lived in Atlanta, WRAS was a good source, might still be. 

So, yeah, this is a bad take. Hating on music fans and musicians is not the way. 

File under: more money than sense

Why I should care about what a guy who went to private school (Lakeside) then dropped out of harvard thinks about public schools eludes me. Bill Gates thinks he can replace dedicated, committed passionate teachers with DVDs? That all kids are motivated and ready to learn from such a sterile medium?

Diane Ravitch (@DianeRavitch)
10/14/10 9:18 PM
Read this great letter to Bill Gates, by NYC teacher http://tinyurl.com/2fseghd

expectations

What if schools/districts could deny service to kids they were unequipped for or just didn’t want to deal with? That boy who can’t stop his mouth, no matter what consequences are applied? Send him home. The girl who never follows any of the instructions and chats with her friends, dragging their performance down as well? Gone.

Now this is obviously a bad idea for all concerned. The children affected by this would be worse off. And parents have an expectation that when their otherwise healthy children reach school age, they’ll be in school.

But are there no expectations, other than an arbitrary number of birthdays, that determine eligibility for school attendance? If a child is interfering with other students’ experience — holding up the whole class for parts of the day, preventing lessons from being taught in an orderly, damaging materials — what recourse does a school or teacher have? At what point does the burden of failure point to the home and the lack of preparation/socialization there? Bearing in mind that students are only in school 6 hours a day, the same kids don’t get to school until they’re five years old. What work has been done to prepare them for

  • working with others
  • taking instruction from someone other than a parent
  • taking care of classroom materials, as opposed to easily-replaced household goods?

I’m not arguing for expulsion of the students who need school most: that would be cruel, both now and down the road. It would have consequences for the rest of their lives. But by the same token, what kind of shared responsibility can be forged between parents and teachers to help those who need it most? No expectations can be put on the students. But what of the parents’ responsibility to their children, to make them ready for the challenges ahead? Who knows them better on that first day? Who knows how they’ll react to the many new stimuli — bells, new routines, room changes, new faces and voices — better than their parents? And how do they pass along that information? I’m sure every teacher loves hearing how special little Johnny is or how Jane is surely gifted and will be moving on to a more challenging classroom/better teacher in no time.

But what practical issues of routine and ritual are shared? What kind of hours does little Johnny keep? Is he accustomed to sleeping til 9 and staying up til 10 or later? Does he eat meals or just graze through the day? How prepared is little Jane, academically: is she reading at all, writing, does she like to sing, does she know her colors or letters (the underlying question here is: how much time have her parents spent on these areas? How much will she be behind the other kids whose parents have done some of this?)?

The idea of a partnership between parents and teachers is one that doesn’t get a lot of attention. I think it should. When I realize my neighbors have declined to show up for curriculum night two years running, I wonder if they know what message that sends to the teachers and their only child? The teachers put a lot of work into their short but dense presentations, on top of a full day’s work, and with the promise of more work via the various online methods available today. We specifically went to see the teachers and get any insight we could into materials and subject matter, grading policy and other expectations. We came away pleased and prepared to work with them. Who wouldn’t want that?

quote of the day

[I]f you set out to raise children, that’s exactly what you end up with — children in adult bodies, with the judgment and mental capacity of elementary-school kids. The goal should be to raise functional adults who will be capable of taking care of themselves when you’re no longer available to do it for them.

[From Making Light: Litchfield means “Graveyard”]

Maybe this is what Warhol meant when he said “Since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they’ll just have to learn how to be babies longer.”

a rump party of stupid god-botherers

Republicans have gradually been losing the egghead vote. I wonder how that translates into their ability to recruit strategists and “thought-leaders” who can work on the campaign, policy and media sides and help to lead them out of their current slump.

[From FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: The Decline of The Conservative Intellectual]

If you need any evidence, here’s something from something that calls itself “American Thinker:”

One image alone was released from the expensive photo op that terrified New Yorkers last month. Out of God only knows how many images taken during the mission, only one was chosen. It speaks powerfully to the American public — in symbolic language.

wingedvictory.jpg

The ominous and imposing aircraft dominates the scene in such a way that, in gestalt parlance, no one could mistake the figure for the ground. The figure is an aircraft that serves as Air Force One, representing the Messianic omnipotence of the Obama presidency. Below it, part of the background — a small and less relevant thing in comparison to the aircraft — stands the Statue of Liberty, representing the individual freedoms that Americans have come to treasure and enjoy.

[From American Thinker: The Visual Subtext of the Statue of Liberty Fly-by Photo]

via

talking truth to power

The House of Representatives will vote this week on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Senate will vote next week. These bills will help make pay equity a reality, not just a theory. Let’s make sure the House votes FOR fairness to women and FOR helping American families.

[From I Am Progress: I Make – Get Out of the Way of Fair Pay Campaign]

My response, added to their canned letter:

Please vote YES to pass the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. As I look around our community, I see my neighbors, your constituents, working hard to make ends meet. In these tough times, it is especially important that women, especially moms, are paid fairly for their work.

Of course, what is really needed is a linkage between Congressional pay and the minimum wage. Currently, a congressmember makes about 14 times per hour what a minimum wage worker makes, and that does not include the various other benefits of office a representative or senator can claim. I would like to see one of my national representatives make this connection, between the compensation paid to those at the bottom of the ladder and those who speak for them at the top of it.

The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act are two important steps needed to make sure women are paid fairly in the workplace. These proposals will help to make equal pay for equal work real, not just in theory, but in practice. Your YES vote on these proposals will show your commitment to fairness and to American families.

Thank you.

But what will Cory Doctorow complain about now?

As of two minutes ago, it appears you can now buy music from iTunes from your iPhone over EDGE and 3G, not just Wi-Fi.

Even better: all the music in the store appears to be DRM-free now [emphasis added]. I’m guessing Phil Schiller will announce it later on in the keynote. Maybe this is the “one more thing”?

[From Daring Fireball Linked List: DRM-Free Music at iTunes Store]

money that’s not worth making

I found a gig on Craiglist for a “mystery shopper” assignment, one of those deals where you visit a local business, complete some transaction, and report on how it went. I wasn’t 100% convinced I was comfortable with it, but that soon changed once I got the store list: Wal★Mart and one of those check-cashing outfits.

Hmm, I won’t set foot in a Wal★Mart, and certainly not to act as a spy for their less than stellar employee policies. And those check cashing joints give me the creeps: they take advantage of people who can ill afford it, and I don’t want to be part of that.

It was never so clear what these companies — the mystery shopper outfits — are about: they enable absentee owners to keep an eye on things without having to actually be in the store. The whole customer experience is boiled down to some reports on how fast things move, how accurate, and in some cases how patient (one of the later assignments is to try to get the employee to lose their cool: how uncomfortable would that be?). Some holding company in a distant state or country is hiring these companies and making decisions based on those reports.

You would never see a locally-owned and operated business using these services, as the owners are there. You can assume that the money paid to an outside consultant is money that doesn’t go to training or raises or any incentives to make the experience better: it’s really about finding the lowest cost per transaction, with a certain standard of quality. One more dehumanizing aspect of capitalism, perhaps?

Not for me. I’d rather dig ditches.

iTunes library, fixing a broken one or moving one

find your Music folder/directory where these files live: you are looking for iTunes Library and iTunes Music Library.xml The XML file is a backup of the other file, which is the one iTunes uses: iTunes Library: data iTunes Music Library.xml: XML document text Move the iTunes Library file aside (rename it, put in your home directory, whatever)…. An example: <key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/private/Network/Servers/shuttle/usr/local/share/mt-daapd/media/Abbado_Berliner%20Philharmoniker/Mahler_%20Symphonie%20No.%205/01%20Trauermarsch.%20In%20Gemessenem%20Schritt.%20Streng.%20Wie%20Ein%20Kondukt.m4a</string> A quick and dirty way to do it on the command line, ie, in the Terminal?


I see some discussion about fixing busted iTunes libraries, either when moving one on the same computer or migrating to a new one. Here’s what I have found works for me.

Bonus: no slow AppleScripts or payments (donations cheerfully accepted and squandered). After almost 3 1/2 years more than four years, this continues to be a widely-read posting and still seems to work. I thought it was made obsolete with iTunes 8 or somewhere along there… As it’s been viewed more than 111,000 times and been found useful a few of those times, I wouldn’t object to a donation. But rather than spend your money, you could do me a favor and help yourself at the same time. Click that link and if you buy something at Amazon.com, they’ll send me a penny, maybe more. No obligation but also no cost to you.

As an aside, if you are going to comment along the lines of “I just moved my music from one Mac to another and nothing broke so why is this so complicated?” please don’t bother. The title specifically mentions a BROKEN library, you dig? Or perhaps your library has outgrown the current location and you want to move it but retain access to it as your primary library and keep all your playlists and history. That’s what this post deals with, not replicating a working installation, but changing one to suit a new environment or fixing a botch attempt at it. Peace.
And for goodness’ sake, read all the comments: some good stuff down there. Sadly, I had to throw away all the comments, as I disconnected them from the posts they were in response to.

First, what I have discovered about how iTunes manages music collections. There are two files it uses, one that is binary (ie, machine readable for faster performance on searching, sorting, add/edit/delete operations) and one that has the same information but in a human readable format (for a certain subset of humans who can read XML natively). The XML file is written from the binary file as a backup (check the dates to confirm).

Picture 16.jpg

iTunes will try to open the binary file when it starts up and if it’s not readable, it will re-create it from the XML file. That’s what we’re using to fix the damage or make any sweeping changes.

First, close iTunes. You’ll be working with files it uses/writes to and you’ll muck things up if you makes changes to files it has open and then your changes get clobbered, leaving the binary and the backup unusable. Don’t do that.

  1. find your Music folder/directory where these files live: you are looking for iTunes Library and iTunes Music Library.xml
    The XML file is a backup of the other file, which is the one iTunes uses:
    iTunes Library: data
    iTunes Music Library.xml: XML document text     [NB for Windows users: you will be looking for iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Music Library.xml.]
  2. Move the iTunes Library file aside (rename it, put in your home directory, whatever). Create an empty file with the same name (or simply mangle a copy of it: seriously: this is where the backup copy comes in). If you are in the Terminal, you can just use touch(1), as in touch iTunes\ Library. You can also just open a file in whatever other editor you like and save it as iTunes Library.
  3. You’ll need to edit the XML file, in a text editor, not a word processor (not Word, as if I have to explain that). vi, emacs, pico, nano, TextWrangler, BBEdit, TextMate on the Mac side, NotePad/WordPad, et al on the Other Side. You are going to search and replace the current location with the new one. Every file/track/song has it’s own stanza in that file and within that, there is a Location key. You need to replace the old one — as an absolute path — with the new one.
    An example: <key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/private/Network/Servers/shuttle
    /usr/local/share/mt-daapd/media/Abbado_Berliner%20Philharmoniker/Mahler_%20Symphonie%20No.%205/01%20
    Trauermarsch.%20In%20Gemessenem%20Schritt.%20Streng.%20Wie%20Ein%20Kondukt.m4a</string>    Picture 17.jpg
  4. A quick and dirty way to do it on the command line, ie, in the Terminal?perl -pi -e.backup s|oldpath|newpath|g iTunes Music Library.xml
    perl -pi.backup -e s|oldpath|newpath|g iTunes Music Library.xml

    This will create a backup file (cleverly called “iTunes Music Library.xml.backup”)

  5. Now, test it. iTunes needs to find that iTunes Music file and since it can’t read it (it’s empty or damaged), it will create one from the backup you just edited. Give that a minute or three to complete. See if your files are found and playable. This should also keep your playlists (which are just another XML stanza with the elements being track ID numbers).

This has worked for me more than once and if it’s reproducible, it should work for you. But note that I recommend a backup copy of the XML file. You can go back and re-do it from scratch if you get into trouble.

And I expect this is extensible in many interesting ways, like merging libraries from different users (something with diff and patch, perhaps?), switching from one repository to another (maybe a large home repository and a smaller traveling one). I’m not clever enough to figure those out, but if anyone else does, I’d love to hear about it.

[update] This looks interesting:

I had to do some more things with my iTunes library lately – like extracting all that ratings and exporting them into a new music player software I liked to test. I therefore wrote myself a little tool in C# that does the job of reading in the whole iTunes library and giving you programmatically access to that library. It only needs to have read access to the Mediathek.xml file iTunes stores in it’s music folder and you from there on can work your way through the bazillions of music tracks you may or may not have in your library. It even does the find-and-replace job a bit easier than the solution mentioned in the article above.