Posts with tag "music"

Why is a company that geotards the world worth $35 million in funding

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Posted 1409 days ago

blackmail I love Pandora, or at least I did until they were forced to geotard their music service to US web users – the rest of the world was basically told to go fuck yourself. The thing is I would love to be able to still use Pandora – hell I’d be more than willing to pay a yearly subscription as long as I could use PayPal.

But unfortunately the music industry and their greedy beyond belief trade groups in any of the countries Pandora might want to branch into are demanding outrageous royalty payments that would literally bankrupt the company. Even in light of these totally unreasonable demand Pandora is still able to raise money.

Making music production a social event

Category: Technology
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Posted 1433 days ago

I first have to give a big hat tip to Steve Clayton for posting about this originally back on Sunday. The post told about a band called FirstOfTheGiants and how they were going to be selling shares in their next album release.

Yup you heard that right. Selling shares.

Now I dropped by their site and even though I didn’t have a chance to listen to it first I bought a copy of their single called Hypochondriac. At the time of purchase though, and my misunderstanding, I didn’t get a download link for the single as I thought I might have. This was cleared up in a follow-up email from band leader Stephen Powell who said the only downloadable version at this point was via iTunes.

So why is a Google music search in China cool but not for the rest of us?

Category: Technology
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Posted 1510 days ago

big_4 I’m kinda surprised that the fact that Google will be providing a music search with the blessing of over a 140 plus music labels, including the Big 4, in China but the rest of us have to watch from the sidelines hasn’t gotten wider traction. Sure there are alternatives, for as long as they last before getting sued into oblivion by those very same Big 4 labels, but they definitely wouldn’t put a candle to what Google would be able to do.

In a weekend post on The New York Times Google says the following

Well Colour Me Unimpressed – Pandora Gets Another Stay

Category: Technology
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Posted 1694 days ago

Please don't shoot - yet Before anyone starts jumping down my throat about how great Pandora is, how bad the RIAA is or how this is all about restoring our rights as consumers let me say this….

Pandora is a great service; and one that the other 95% of the world would love to use as well but that isn’t able to. I; and the rest of the world outside of the US, loved using Pandora up until it was chopped off at the knees by the music industry as they used copyright laws and their royalty system like a chainsaw. Even though this latest call to arms was due to yet another trade association trying to kill off any competition it doesn’t change the fact that this Pandora publicity is only a minor part of a much larger issue.

The actual Webcasters Bill that is being raised above the crowd like some flag of victory doesn’t change anything even it is passed. Take a look at the summary of the actual bill for the short form explanation of what the bill actually does (you can read the whole thing here)

SUMMARY

H.R. 7084 contains technical amendments to the Small Webcasting Settlement Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-321) which will permit commercial and noncommercial webcasters to negotiate royalty rates and terms other than those determined by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) in its May 2007 decision. That decision was the basis for legislation introduced last year and is currently subject to a legal challenge at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has, thus far, upheld the market rates and terms set by the CRB.

The key line here is …which will permit commercial and noncommercial webcasters to negotiate royalty rates. Wow, now US webcasters can negotiate with music labels outside of the US centric royalty structure contolled by the music labels. Well big whoop-di-doo – just because you have been given a right to negotiate doesn’t mean that the bloodsuckers on the other side of the table give a shit about your offers or that they will even come to the table. As with all things to do with the music labels and the RIAA (and now the NAB) they don’t care about what the webcasters want. They only care about how much money they can suck from you even if it means you going bankrupt.

The fact is that webcasters are being held up against the wall with a gun to their heads. They are being forced into a position where they have to pay more in royalties that what they can ever hope to pull in by advertising or subscriptions combined and still make a profit margin. It doesn’t matter if it is a serice like Pandora or a music loving fan streaming their favorite music on the web and not making a cent. Even though Corvida in a post on ReadWriteWeb liken this latest event to being a huge success; which I highly question, she also points out that this is only a stopgap measure

While this is a huge success for web radio broadcasters, it’s not everlasting. The Act will allow web radio broadcasters to negotiate with the music industry only while Congress is out of session. They have until February 15th to settle upon a new royalty rate. While four months may seem like a long time, we understand how much of a hassle the music industry can be to the world of all things digital.

I would suggest that the last sentence is nothing short of a big understatement given that this doesn’t change the fact that the music labels and the RIAA would be just as happy to negotiate webcasters out of existence and royalty rates are their best weapon. Like Paul Glazowski points out over at Mashable

Rates which, in short, are what can either ensure the continued existence of such services or drive many to go belly up just as their collective popularity is increase

In addition this does nothing to address the biggest problem for webcasters in the US – they are being cut off from the rest of the world. They can cut all the royalty deals they want and exist on literally penny profit margins but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still isolated. As a result both the webcasters and the users are being held ransom by the music labels and the RIAA. So remember this while you are all slapping yourselfs on the back over this short lived victory – it doesn’t matter to the rest of the world because nothing has changed.

So, This Is What You Get For Being Honest

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Posted 1695 days ago

While those bastions of the music and video entertainment continue to pursue both locking down their products with draconian methods and letting their various lobbying trade associations practice being SWAT teams, the people who try to be honest are getting royally screwed. EA is using SecurROM as part of the security measures for their newest game Spore which is leading them into a SonyBMG like class action lawsuit. Each of the major players with online music stores that have been blessed by the music industry each have their own DRM methods of locking down something you have tried to be honest and pay for.

The problem is that by trying to play the game and be honest, you are leaving yourself open to being ripped off in some fashion or another. This isn’t even taking into account the various methods used to maximize entertainment industry profits by geotarding online services like Pandora or even the industry’s own glowing example of technology being done right – NBC’s Hulu. Because the entertainment is acting more like a modern day protection racket, people who are more than willing to pay for services are being told to go away. In the case of Pandora; an online music recommendation service, everyone from the RIAA and music labels wanted to close it down. Even though those parties appeared to come to some sort of agreement that would let Pandora live another day it appears now that yet another trade association is trying to torpedo the agreement.

For gamers it typically has been a case of addon security measures that are provided by third party companies and included as part of most game installs. While this has meant anything from something as simple as entering in a serial key during the install or making sure that the game CD is handy at all times in case the game is coded to run checks these methods have really been nothing more than a minor pain in the ass. Typically as soon as a game is release in no short order you can find a crack or a no-cd solution online. So while most game producers have been satisfied with this type of solution there is the chance that as more producers move to online distribution they might also look to similar DRM measures as employed by the music industry.

What happens however; as is being seen with the online music DRM, is one day the game suppliers; or third party DRM verification providers decide to shutdown those DRM verifying servers. As Tiktaaklik said today on the NeoGAF web forums (a video game industry discussion community)

Why does this matter and why is it posted in the games forum? Well the games industry is currently massively moving toward downloadable content, and while this movement is 100% necessary and has had a huge positive impact on gamers, providing us with games such as Braid and Castle Crashers which would not otherwise been financially viable, there has been little thought toward the long term implications of this.

Wii owners that have had their systems bricked will attest to the fact that it can be a huge pain and inconvenience to get their games they’ve downloaded back, and you really have to wonder how long will Microsoft and Sony support their respective networks and games. Will there be some future where it is literally impossible to play Braid or CastleCrashers or PixelJunk Monsters?

Thanks to console rom dumpers nearly the entirety of gaming history is available to us. With a little searching for example, you can easily find and download the entire Famicom disk system library (it’s about 10MB worth of data) which is genuinely a smart thing to do, considering that the hardware itself is notoriously failure prone. Hold your replies for a minute, we’re not talking about piracy, at this point I’m just talking about basic historical preservation.

So I’m wondering, how about our new era of downloadable games. As the above article shows one could easily see a future where XBL is simply turned off. Will gamers resort to buying used Xbox 360 harddrives in the hope that there is a Castle Crashers on there?

We’ve already seen games disappear. Metal Gear Solid 3′s online component was turned off by Konami after a very short time, and while it’s been replaced by the similar MGS4 online, the fact exists that you can now never play MGS3 online ever again. With online PC games hackers have frequently created ways to host their own servers and so online games will be able to exist long after their companies stopped supporting them, but online console games? I’m not sure.

After all, this is something that has hit the online music buying customer already with companies like Yahoo and Microsoft announcing that their DRM verifying servers were going to be taken down; effectively rendering all the music bought through them as being dead in the water. While both companies had to relent to public pressure over the move they did it in different ways. Yahoo on the one hand basically recommended that you pirate the music you already paid for; or take the offered replacement value coupons from RealNetworks Rhapsody service, while Microsoft has postponed the shutdown until around 2011.

Now today we hear that Wal*Mart will also be shutting down their own DRM verifying servers and like Yahoo one of their recommended ways of not losing all that music you paid for is to burn them to CD – after which of course you can rip back to your hard drive but that makes you a criminal

If you have purchased protected WMA music files from our site prior to Feb 2008, we strongly recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you will be able to access them from any personal computer. This change does not impact songs or albums purchased after Feb 2008, as those are DRM-free.
[you can read the whole email from Wal*Mart on Boing Boing]

If you think that this isn’t something that won’t affect video then think again because it has already happened with Google Video back in August 2007

Google sent an email to anyone who purchased or rented digital videos on Google Video explaining, in a nutshell, that the service will be shut down and that videos will no longer be viewable. Google initially offered affected users up to US $10 in credit for use on its affiliated e-commerce sites, but only if the user purchases at least that amount, and only for 60 days. The ensuing wave of backlash induced Google to change its story: it is now extending the life of the service another six months (though not allowing further purchases) and offering full refunds in addition to the $10 credits.

It doesn’t matter where you look when it comes to buying your entertainment online there will always be a chance that at some point you could end up being screwed and forced into pirating the stuff you have already paid for – either that or buy it all over again. Sure there are an increasing number of DRM free music stores but that isn’t going to help the people who have already been sucked into the DRM black hole. Along with that the whole idea of DRM isn’t going away any time soon and as soon as they can find a more palatable implementation it will come back and we will be playing this whole senerio over again.

As far as I am concerned until four simple things are agreed to the entertainment industry can go screw themselves. Those things are

Absolutely no DRM on any products bought from the web or built into the computers or system software that we use.
Equality in payment methods for these goods – not everyone in the damn world has a damn credit card.
Stop with the stupid ass geotarding of services on the web – get a clue you industry idiots the web is global. The game has changed so grow up – catch up – and geotarding services is just another way to turn us into pirates
Once I have paid for something – piss off. I should be able to do whatever I like with that product. Just because it is digital goods doesn’t give you any special rights on how I want to use that product; or service.

DRM means Digital Rights Management – the only problem is that it is the person who is paying money for those products whose rights are getting pissed on and being made into criminals. Except the real crooks are the people trying to sell us products and then tell us that it’s not really ours after all.

Enough already.

From the Pipeline – 8.31.08

Category: Odds & Ends
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Posted 1721 days ago

Maybe because it’s the end of the month or maybe it’s because it’s a long weekend but either way what a bunch of goodies I managed to come across in today’s FriendFeed pipeline. so without any further ado … ….

Stair Porn [nw] :: Stair Porn – it might be something a little weird to get excited about stairs but some of these are just beautiful.

Little People [nw] :: Little People – ya this is the second blog main page but damn this is cool

The Daily Bunny [nw] :: The Daily Bunny – and a third time lucky but make sure you haven’t already had your cuteness overload for the day

spam architecture [nw] :: Alex Dragulescu – whoever said that spam couldn’t be beautiful

Smarter Hurricane Evacuations Could Save Lives [nw] :: redOrbit – With the Gulf Coast looking to be a watery ground zero once more stuff like this is needed

Watch Hurricane Gustav Live Online [nw] :: The Inquisitr – trying to find some good online video resources for keeping up with the hurricane news then Duncan has you covered.

The Beautifully Disturbing Aspect of FriendFeed and Social Media [nw] :: Socially Creative – a few words of wisdom for when you find yourself a little too infatuated with social media

35 Places To Download Free, Legal MP3s – Sorry, RIAA! [nw] :: Download Squad – now here’s a list to keep handy for when you are looking for new sources of music and legally at that.

chocolate peanut butter cake [nw] :: Smitten Kitchen – to hell with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups … this is the real deal

Intricate Rainforest Sculptures of Olinda [nw] :: Environmental Graffiti – wow … this is really kind cool in a natural way.

Another first for me

Category: Odds & Ends
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Posted 1724 days ago

Surprises come from all different directions and I had no idea when I wrote my Good Riddance to Albums post on Mashable yesterday that I would end up getting mentioned and quoted in a mainstream media newspaper blog. Turns out though that Jemima Kiss from the pda:the digital content blog on England’s Guardian site did just that. Her post continued with the same theme as mine suggesting that

The music industry has been fragmented as much as every other industry, and the labels should work with that rather than against it.

Thanks Jemima for continuing the conversation and for making my day.

Piracy Isn’t The Problem

Category: Technology
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4 comments
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Posted 1733 days ago

Image via Wikipedia

I have read no less than three different posts today about music, Pandora, the RIAA and piracy. Well it’s actually only two real posts since Chris Pirillo’s offering was no more than a cut and paste of his conversation on FriendFeed. Along with his non-post post there was Cyndy Aleo-Carreira who looks to be filling in for Duncan Riley while he hobnobs with all the cool folks at this year’s Gnomedex. This was followed up with a post by MG Siegler over at VentureBeat.

Of course all this breast beating over the demise of online music services follows on the news of Muxtape supposedly running afoul of the RIAA and how Pandora is going to possibly pull the plug because of excessive copyright fees being collected by RIAA’s bum bosom buddy the SoundExchange. Of course the call to arms by the RIAA and SoundExchange is of course that they are only doing what they have to do to protect the musicians against music pirates. You know – those scum buckets who think that they can take whatever they want and not have to pay for it.

One of the most common arguments people seem to use as a way to combat the scourge of piracy is to price the products at a price point that is fair to both the artists and the consumers. Great argument but it falls apart on two parts

The artists under the current label management system which pays for the RIAA don’t have any say over the price of their products. While this might be changing as some bigger name in the business tell the music labels to kiss their asses the fact is the labels control the whole process.
Even if the prices are at a level that is considered reasonable for the quality of the music not everyone has access to buy the product online. The primary method of any purchases made on the web – including iTunes – is via credit cards or US based debit cards. Well guess what – not everyone lives in the United States and not everyone in the world owns a credit card.

While there are some alternatives to iTunes that do accept payment methods like PayPal they are few and far between (without googling name three such services) and then you have to hope that they even have the library of music available that will cover your interests.

As I read through all the comments from Chris’ cut and paste post it utterly amazed me just how many people equated pirating music with the person being cheap. The fact that we are willing to pay $3.00 for an over-rated cup of black swill from Starbucks and yet not want to pay 9.99 for a musician’s CD makes anyone who illegally obtain a copy of that CD as being cheap. Well I tell you what … the moment you make it as easy as walking up to a counter and ordering that CD and pay for it by putting my money on the counter then I’ll agree that those who steal it under those circumstances as being cheap bastards.

I also think that it is high time that we start making a strong distinction between the recording industry as run by the music labels and their RIAA lapdogs and the real music industry which is where the money we spend should be going to. As Cyndy Aleo-Carreira points out in her post on The Inquisitr

If the RIAA has its way, every music app, with the exception of basic consumer sales sites like iTunes, will be gone. In its zeal to recreate the past with a sales model that had the labels rolling in money and the industry controlled by the complicated and often incestuous relationship between radio and the labels, the RIAA would completely eliminate the technology that could make even the long tail of recorded music profitable

I would be willing to bet my next year’s almost non-existent ad revenues that there isn’t a musician around that wouldn’t love to see things like Muxtape and Pandora continue to keep doing the thing they do best – introduce us all to new and interesting musicians. Before Pandora was forced into a position of geotarding its service I can’t Pandora count the times that I came across music that I would have loved to buy either the single song or the whole album.

The loss of services like Muxtape and Pandora have nothing at all to do with piracy but everything to do with the recording companies, the RIAA and the government who depends on the massive amount of monies funneled into re-election campaigns. If anything services like Pandora would be a viable way to fight piracy especially if there was a way that anyone had an easy way to buy the songs they heard on the services like Pandora.

Will there be people who will always want something for nothing? Of course – that goes without saying but agencies like the RIAA and SoundExchange are not going to change that one iota. Digital goods will always be available through illegal means just as physical goods have always been available from the backs of trucks – nothing is ever going to change that. As MG Siegler points out in his post

But more, I’m perplexed. Both of these sites are absolutely brilliant for discovering and enjoying music — shouldn’t the labels and artists be embracing them? Figuring out how to make it work, rather than shutting taking them down?

Regardless of the spin campaign used by the recording industry and the RIAA the current situation of services like Pandora and Muxtape; and even Napster from some time ago, has nothing to do with fighting piracy but everything to do with maintaining their iron grip on their gravy train. It just so happens that the pirates are making us all realize just how screwed up the whole situation is. So in the end don’t be blaming the pirates or calling them cheapskates instead focus the anger and dissatisfaction on the recording industry for making it so hard to find the music we like and for all of us to be able to buy it.

UPDATE: Just after I hit the publish button on this I came across a post on The Technium called Why People Pirate Stuff – excellent follow up read