Sacrilegious to some, fascinating to others I guess. CDRs could certainly do with being made a little more interesting.
Link: product page
Via: Tokyomango
I just stumbled across this video on an MP3 blog and think it’s absolutely brilliant. It cycles through and literally explodes a small number of key pieces of music playback hardware, ending up with what my awfully limited knowledge of Spanish translates as ‘music is never going to die’ (la musica nunca va a morir). It appears to be an ad for a Spanish design/music/technology magazine. Do follow the link below to watch it all!
(Oh and seeing one of the old cassette players with the piano keys and integrated mono speaker (do they still make them?) reminds me that I used to borrow my dad’s one - a weighty brushed metal and black plastic affair protected by a leather outer cover - and take it to school. In particularly boring lessons I’d plug in a mono ear piece, snake the wire through my jacket, plug it into the cassette recorder secreted in my school bag and listen to my recently recorded John Peel compilation tapes. This was, for sure, before the mainstream popularity of Sony Walkmans. I never did get caught…)
Link: dailymotion.com page
Via: Original Funk Music
Cory Doctorow writes:
Eboy has posted a new graphic entitled “Tower of Incompatibabel” that very neatly makes the connection between DRM and proprietary formats and the dystopia that followed the fall of the Tower of Babel.
Link: eBoy page
Via: BoingBoing
Record Labels Contemplate Unrestricted Digital Music
As even digital music revenue growth falters because of rampant file-sharing by consumers, the major record labels are moving closer to releasing music on the Internet with no copying restrictions — a step they once vowed never to take.
Link: NYT article
EMI Considering Dropping DRM From Its CDs
EMI Group Plc said on Monday it was reviewing its use of the controversial content protection technology used on CDs, known as digital rights management (DRM), but has not scrapped it altogether.
Link: Reuters article
Via: Gizmodo news item
Trying to find a comfortable foothold amidst all the change is the challenge facing music labels, stores and consumers.
(…)
And perhaps downloaders haven’t given the future of their music collection enough thought. The longevity of downloads as a musical collection is surrounded by questions. Computers and hard drives become obsolete; new systems of delivery will inevitably be born.
Link: Chicago Sun-Times article
Via: Digg
Music revenue overall fell 3%. The NYT article quotes the chief exec of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry fulminating yet again about file sharers. He states that more than 10,000 court actions have been taken against file sharers across 18 countries. I’m not going to dive into the file sharing debate here, but the fact that music revenues are falling cannot surely be attributable in any significant way to piracy - the range of media available to consumer is hugely more diverse now than, say, 15 years ago when DVDs and video games were much smaller markets than they are now.
I wonder whether there’s any comprehensive research about the entertainment industry and the changing formats available?
Link: “>NYT article
Link: Playlist article
200,000 songs initially + no DRM + encoded at 256kbps = a good idea.
Link: Engadget article
His short term advice: “People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then.”
Amen. (Although I believe ripping CDs is in fact something of a contested area…)
I’ve bought exactly three songs from the iTunes Music Store since 15 August 2004: Mamma Mia by Abba (for my children), ‘Round Midnight by Thelonious Monk (research purposes) and La Paloma by someone I’ve never heard of (to be played at my father-in-law’s funeral). If memory serves, I’ve encountered problems with at least two of those tracks: most recently, I tried to burn a CD of songs for my children using the same machine I’d bought the mp3 on and iTunes refused to burnt the Abba song. Quite apart from such irritations, I’m old-fashioned enough to want to hold something in my hand when I pay money for it.
Via Techcrunch.
LONDON (Billboard) - Physical singles may be losing the war against digital formats, but the U.K. market has found an unlikely hero to lead the fight: good, old-fashioned, 7-inch vinyl.
Via Yahoo News (and maybe City of Sound)
In the above titled blog post Byrne considers the increasing prevalence of MP3s and their relationship to better sound sources such as CDs and vinyl:
Read a book called Capturing Sound by Mark Katz, which details how (mainly recording) technology changed music. Some of the information makes perfect sense in retrospect, but one often doesn’t ask oneself why or how music came to be the way it is, and his insights illuminate some of those mysteries.
He doesn’t reach any definite conclusion, but makes some interesting observations along the way including the huge impact that hearing new music even on a “crappy-sounding transistor radio” can have. It’s sometimes assumed that new technologies will replace old ones entirely, but it’s often the case of course that the end result is greater choice and diversity. I enjoy the convenience and choice that listening to music on my iPod on the move gives me, but at home I listen to CDs and have also returned to occasionally buying vinyl for the first time in more than a decade. Byrne doesn’t entirely fall into this trap, but nearly does.