Preoccupations

Last.fm stats

I'm at FOWA, London, and have just listened to Matthew Ogle and Anil Bawa Cavia from Last.fm:

• 15 million tracks scrobbled per day 
• 175 tracks per second 
• >6 billion tracks scrobbled since 2003 
• 15 million unique users a month 
• 10 million artists
• 70 million tracks
• 700,000 tracks streamable 
• 17 million items tagged 
• 145,000 "artist wikis"

It was an excellent talk, going into attention data and the attention economy of Last.fm, and the future of Last.fm's web design (more personalisation, ambient findability). Definitely one to listen to again (an mp3 is promised of each of the talks); Lars has already got a mindmap up and there's a fuller account here from Nodalities. In fact, Nodalities is blogging all the talks on the hoof — so go there! Right now, Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon, has started …

 

Technorati tags: Last.fm, Audioscrobbler, scrobbled, FOWA, FOWA 07

Steve Jobs: DRM

It's everywhere … very fast. And that's hardly surprising … Steve Jobs' statement on DRM needs to be read in its entirety, but it begins:

Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.

And concludes:

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music. 

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player. 

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free  and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system. 

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies. 

Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries.  Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free.  For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard.  The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company.  EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company.  Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace.  Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

Commentary/reaction/notable reports thus far: 

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs called on major music companies to stop requiring Apple and other companies to sell songs over the Internet with antipiracy software, calling the technology ineffective at deterring illicit copying of music. WSJ 

He calls it Thoughts on Music but it’s more like the Jobs Manifesto. I’ve never seen anything like this from him but Apple-ologists will know better. paidContent.org

Steve Jobs just shot a cannon ball across the music industry's bow.... Stunning! Somewhere Cory Doctorow is smiling! Jason Calacanis

(I'd love to have Cory's take on this.) 

In an open letter, the Apple CEO said his company is the wrong target for people who are concerned about DRM. "Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free", he writes. It is the record labels who insist on making Apple's iTunes store and other online stores resell their music encumbered with DRM - and yet ninety per cent of the music they sell themselves via CDs is free of restrictions, he notes. In recent weeks, Apple has come under fire from consumer groups and regulators in Norway, the Netherlands, Germany and France for its refusal to unlock the iTunes store so that its songs can be used on other MP3 players besides Apple's iPods. But Jobs thinks this is unfair: customers are served well in the current market, by competing manufacturers, each with their own "top-to-bottom" proprietary systems, he argues. As for consumer lock, the vast majority of songs on MP3 players are DRM-free. Only three per cent of songs on iPods have actually been purchased from iTunes, Jobs says. The Register

In effect (and Apple fans please don't get upset with this phrasing of words), this article is a piece of propaganda from Apple. The position is that Apple and Steve Jobs hate DRM just as much as you and I, so they will gladly support the abolition of DRM - if the big record companies choose to do so. Apple is positioning itself on our side, in the war against DRM. This is all very well, and a very commendable stance from Jobs and Apple. But I'm left feeling that surely there's more Apple can do to fight DRM than to simply give a hospital pass to the record companies? Apple is after all totally dominant in the online music industry, so it now has considerable power of its own. They are not totally at the mercy of record labels.... are they?! Because that's what this article from Steve Jobs makes it out to be. Read/Write Web 

The reason Jobs has taken this unusual step is, one assumes, because Apple is under increasing pressure from European and other governments to "open up" its iPod/iTunes system. There have even been threats to ban the system if it remains closed. Over the last few months, the stakes have gone up as antitrust lawsuits have been filed against the company in the US. For Apple, DRM's strategic costs have simply come to outweigh its benefits. So Jobs is formally whacking the ball into the record companies' court. It's their system, he's saying, not ours. One hopes that this may finally get them to realize that DRM is simply a millstone around the neck of their business. Nick Carr

Technorati tags: Steve Jobs, DRM, music industry, iTunes, iPod

Gabby

To the Cobden Club (Kensal) last night to hear Gabby. After last year's shocking diagnosis of cancer of the thyroid, and subsequent treatment, Gabby is again playing and singing. She held the Cobden crowd and her voice is better than ever.

She has a website, you can buy her CDs here and keep an eye on upcoming gigs here. (I didn't take any photos last night, but there's a handful of my shots on Flickr from an Oxford gig last year.)

Gabby's talent was very evidently noticed last night — you could feel and see the room shift its focus and lock on to the singer-guitarist — and she had a lot of compliments paid afterwards. Great things ahead.

Technorati tags: Gabby Young, Cobden Club, gigs

Ondes Martenot update!

In March last year I wrote something about the Ether 2005 Festival and the evening with Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke. In that posting:

Ondes Martenot: what a world is here! Much information on the web, so for starters only: obsolete.com (the Keyboard Museum); Wikipedia; Claude-Samuel Levine's ondes Martenot site; Christine Ott (contemporary ondes Martenot artist); Sound on Sound (interesting article about the instrument, the Cornish company, Analogue Systems, and their 'French Connection' "version" of the ondes Martenot, as commissioned by Jonny Greenwood).

Now, via John Coulthart, I've come across Peter Pringle on the ondes Martenot ('explores - mostly through archival photos - the simultaneous development and presentation of the ondes Martenot and the theremin by their respective inventors: Maurice Martenot and Leon Theremin'):

The theremin has a "sister instrument" whose construction was based on the same electronic, "heterodyne" principles as those used by Leon Theremin. Conceived and designed by the French cellist and inventor, Maurice Martenot 1898 - 1980 … he built his first instrument at roughly the same time as Leon Theremin was working on his own prototypes. He called his invention the "ondes Martenot" … There was no contact whatever between Maurice Martenot and Leon Theremin until they were introduced in New York City in 1930. Their inventions were totally independent of one another and, by 1930, both men had already introduced their respective instruments to the world.

There are, indeed, some wonderful photographs ('I am indebted to Maurice Martenot's biographer, Jean Laurendeau') on the three pages Peter Pringle has put together, one of his own favourites being this one (click through to visit this, page 3 of his ondes Martenot entry) — 'taken at the World's Fair in Paris, 1937 (at which Maurice Martenot was awarded "Le Grand Prix de l'Exposition Mondiale"). The ensemble consists of eight ondes Martenots, a percussionist and a pianist, and is conducted by Ginette Martenot, sister of Maurice':

There's 'a short mp3 sample of ondes virtuoso, Jean Laurendeau, playing the Concerto for Ondes Martenot and Orchestra by Jacques Hétu' here (mp3).

Peter Pringle also has a page on the theremin cello, 'one of the five musical instruments invented in the early 20th century by Leon Theremin (the other four being the theremin, the theremin keyboard, the rhythmicon and the terpsitone)'.

Technorati tags: ondes Martenot, theremin, Maurice Martenot, Leon Theremin, Jonny Greenwood

Last.fm

Subscribe to Last.fm? Take a look at the new beta (as of 20 October). Events System (something of Sonic Living comes to Last.fm!):

See your friends’ events, and pick a location to create your recommendation calendar. Know an event not shown here? You can add it. 

Currently showing recommended events within 155 miles of London. (change)

Taste-o-meter ('Visiting other user pages now shows the tastometer box, which tells you, at a glance, how musically compatible you are with the profile you are viewing'):

More here on these developments and on the new Flash player ('You can choose exactly how to play your music – flash or last.fm software'), the reintroduction of free downloads and the redesigned music pages.

If all goes to plan, the update will be rolled out to everyone 'towards the end of next week'. Last.fm continues to surprise, delight and impress.

Technorati tags: Last.fm

SpiralFrog

My first thought when hearing of SpiralFrog? Same as Publishing 2.0:

You’ve got to pity the poor advertiser faced with figuring out how to allocate ad dollars across all these new media.

But I was also excited. Anything that appears to break the ridiculous status quo of the music industry is bound to set expectations going. However ... questions certainly remain.

BBC News reported:

'Vivendi Universal, the world's biggest music group, has signed a deal to make its music catalogue available on a free legal downloads service. Under the agreement, Spiralfrog will offer Universal's songs online in the US and Canada. New York-based Spiralfrog will launch its service in December and make its money by carrying adverts on the site. Spiralfrog aims to take on market leader Apple's iTunes service, which charges 99 cents per song in the US.'

And CNET:

The downloads could be played on the PC or transferred to a portable device, though notably not Apple Computer's iPod.

(The FT also has a piece.)

Nice to see Apple, iPod and iTunes under pressure, and it was easy to take Universal's move as heralding more of 'content … at no cost'. But there's cost and cost, and this does appear to cost — in DRM:

Spiral Frog will offer a desktop downloader for Windows Media Files (no iPods!) that can be listened to on one PC and two portable devices. Here’s the kicker - you must log in to the Spiral Frog service at least once per month, and see their ads, or your files will stop playing! The details aren’t fully set in stone, but it will be something like that. There will be links to third party sites of the record labels’ choosing if you’d like to buy your freedom to at least skip the ads. TechCrunch

I'm also wondering how SpiralFrog will deal with payment to artists, but more than anything else I can only second what TechCrunch says: 'It will be an exciting day if the major labels come up with something truly more compelling than piracy on one hand or coercion on the other - but I don’t think this is it'.

Technorati tags: music industry, downloading, DRM

BPI gets go-ahead to sue AllofMP3

BBC report here:

The British recording industry has been given permission to sue Russian music website allofmp3.com in the High Court. Members of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) want to prove the site, which offers downloads for as little as five pence, is illegal. They were given the go-ahead to sue the company last week, and say proceedings will be issued in Russia this week. The operators of allofmp3.com deny the recording industry's claims that their site is not licensed to sell music.

Slashdot doubts the likelihood of this action sticking. WiredFire has an interview with with Matt Phillips, Communications Manager of the BPI. (These links all via ORG-discuss, the discussion list of ORG.) AllofMP3's press statement about recent developments (statement dated 6 June, 2006) is currently here. Earlier (also 6 June) BBC report about the BPI and AllofMP3 here.

I've posted about AllofMP3 before: AllofMP3.com: bursting the mould? (4 January, 2006); Best on-line music site? (25 March, 2004).

Some thoughts from the WiredFire interview:

Whether the BPI action is likely to be that successful is open to widespread conjecture. On the surface they would appear to have quite a solid case under UK civil law, given that their site appears to be targeting English consumers. But enforcing any judgement overseas is going to be an altogether different issue – especially if AllofMP3.com can demonstrate that they have been complying with the laws of their own country and that their export market is incidental to their primary business model.

Perhaps the biggest clue as to their future intentions is detailed within their press release:

“On September 1, 2006 the changes to the Russian copyright legislation will come into force. Since January 2006 the site has been making direct agreements with rightholders and authors at the same time increasing the price of the music compositions and transferring the royalties directly to the artists and record companies. The aim of AllofMP3.com is to agree with all rightholders on the prices and royalties amounts by September 1, 2006.

We believe in the long term and civilized business based on respecting the law, considering the customers' demands as well as the interests of both national and international rightholders”.

… Whatever the outcome, we feel that it is about time that the true cost of digital music is properly reflected in the retail price. Ridiculous statements such as those made by Mark Richardson that “the cost of distribution for downloads is actually higher than for CDs” do nothing to attract any sympathy from those of us who have spent not inconsiderable fortunes in amassing our modest CD and DVD collections. Whilst the BPI are to be commended for their more realistic approach to digital file transfers than their US counterparts, the RIAA, their curious choice of allies in the form of Mark Richardson of Independiente Records is certainly doing them no favours.

Also in the WiredFire interview:

Jamieson went on to criticise iTunes for their use of non interoperable DRM, calling on Apple to open up its software in order that it is compatible with other players. "We would advocate that Apple opts for interoperability."

Technorati tags: AllofMP3, AllofMP3.com, BPI, RIAA, RIAA,  iTunes

Matisyahu

To the Hammersmith Palais last night to hear Matisyahu, Hasidic reggae artist. I'd heard both Live at Stubb's (Dance Music has a short review) and Youth: his voice is terrific, the rhythms (with the forward guitar sound) immediately engaging. Pitchfork produced a snotty review of the latter; the Guardian had a brief but appreciative mention of it.

Notoriously, last December Sam Endicott said:

Matisyahu - just your average Hasidic reggae rapper. Yeah, you heard me. This guy is a straight-up Hasidic Jew from New York who busts mad flow over dancehall and reggae beats. This is the future of music.

Last Sunday's Observer had a lengthy interview with Matisyahu, and ten days before that there was this interview in the Guardian. PopMatters reviewed an Iowa City gig (January 2005):

He was dressed in the conventional Hasidic style. He wore a black fedora, dark suit and a white shirt whose tail stuck out revealing his tzitzits (fringes of his prayer shawl) underneath.

Matisyahu's vocal style resembled chanting more than conventional singing. He began each song in Hebrew, and then repeated the words in English. He introduced many of the songs as "written as a song of praise by King David," but he rarely sang an entire psalm. Instead he would just sing the opening four or five lines, and frequently restate short phrases and sounds as if they were a holy mantra.

There was a great similarity between Matisyahu's utterances and typical reggae lyrics. For example, when the Hasid began singing "Chop 'em down, chop 'em down, chop 'em down" over and over again, one could not help but be reminded of Bob Marley's classic "Small Axe". Other songs repeated lines like "Raise me up from the ground / I've been down too long", and "I will fight with all of my soul / all of my heart / all of my might" both of which are reminiscent of common reggae tunes. This is not accidental, as reggae uses the same Old Testament sources as lyrical inspiration.

Perhaps the strangest resemblance, which seems somewhat coincidental, has to do with both the Jamaican and Yiddish patois' use of the exclamation "oy". Matisyahu would croon "oy, oy, oy" in three/four rhythm between the verses -- something reggae artists commonly do, but in a slightly different way, more like "oy, yo, oy, yo" (think of Marley's classic "Buffalo Soldiers").

Matisyahu also preached to the crowd. At one point he got down in a catcher's crouch and started to sermonize. "According to Hasidic philosophy, every person, every being, even every inanimate object has a soul, an inner rhythm, a life force," he said. "This is the part of Hashem (the Lord) that makes us all one, a unity, and brings us light. Our job is to illuminate the darkness with our light. It is our true mission."

The jury's still out: 'The Crown Heights pioneer of Hasidic reggae is certainly bringing something new to the table' (Ben Thompson); 'Matisyahu earns respect as more than just a novelty act' (Steve Yates); 'it's treacle jammy stuff; with all those natty drum fills, MOR progressions and lockstep dub grooves, the good will goes to shit' (Sean Fennessey); 'it comes honey-sweetened and easy to swallow' (Thomas H Green).

And then there's this:

Earlier this year, Madonna sent word that she'd like to invite him to her Seder dinner at Passover. However, Madonna, by virtue of being herself, goes against Matisyahu's beliefs: according to Hasidic Judaism, women are not allowed to sing in public. ('Um, yeah,' he confirms uncomfortably, 'it's something that we wouldn't really support.') He didn't go to the Seder, needless to say, and seems embarrassed when the subject is mentioned.

Last night was packed. Never before have I seen such a Jewish presence at a gig, and the floor in the main knew the songs word-perfect — this man already has a cult following. The evening rocked and the final number, 'King Without a Crown' (lyrics here), was a tour de force that roused the audience to new heights. The 2006 tour has its own Flickr road journal. My photos are here.

Technorati tags: Matisyahu, gigs

Josh Ritter

John Burnside introduced me to Josh Ritter. Last Friday night at the Empire (Hammersmith) was good. Two songs really stand out: 'Girl in the War' (mp3) and 'Thin Blue Flame' (mp3). These both appear on his third and most recent album, The Animal Years.

Of 'Thin Blue Flame', Marc Hogan had this to say on Pitchfork last year:

"Thin Blue Flame" made me shiver when Ritter debuted it June 2 in Brooklyn-- still does. The Idaho native's mountain-twang logorrhea sprawls over ten minutes ("Singing about vengeance like it's the joy of the Lord"). His clean strums are similar in tone, harmony and scope to Sterling Morrison's on "Heroin", while Brian Deck's glasses-clinking production heightens the immediacy of an already-urgent composition. 10 minutes older and who-knows how-much wiser, the song ends in the lonely feedback of watchful, world-weary humanism: "I stopped looking for royal cities in the air/ Only a full house gonna have a prayer".

And the NYT:

The album's tour-de-force is the nine-and-a-half minute "Thin Blue Flame," which ponders destruction and rebirth with an inexorable crescendo and, for most of the song, just two chords. "In darkness he looks for the light that has died," he sings, "but you need faith for the same reasons that it's so hard to find."

From 'Girl in the War':

Paul said to Peter you got to rock yourself a little harder
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire
But I got a girl in the war Paul her eyes are like champagne
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain

Face Culture has an online video interview with Josh Ritter here.

Friday's gig concluded with a beautiful, unaccompanied, acoustic performance of 'Can't Leave This World Behind' from the Golden Age of Radio:

Lawrence, KS (Can't Leave This World Behind)

Dirt roads and dryland farming might be the death of me
But I can't leave this world behind
Debts are not like prison where there's hope of getting free
And I can't leave this world behind

I've been from here to Lawrence, Kansas
Trying to leave my state of mind
Trying to leave this awful sadness
But I can't leave this world behind

South of Delia there's a patch out back by the willow trees
And I can't leave this world behind
It's a fenced in piece of nothing where I hear voices on my knees
And I can't leave this world behind

Some prophecies are self-fulfilling
But I've had to work for all of mine
Better times will come to me, God willing
Cause I can't leave this world behind

This world must be frightening everybody's on the run
And I can't leave this world behind
And my house is a wooden one and its built on a wooden one
Seems I can't leave this world behind

Preacher says when the Master calls us
He's gonna give us wings to fly
But my wings are made of hay and corn husks
So I can't leave this world behind

Just 29, Josh Ritter seems to be on the cusp of a very interesting development as an artist. Another one to watch.

Technorati tags: Josh Ritter, gigs

AllofMP3.com

Every so often, there comes a wave of alarm that rolls its way across the web proclaiming that AllofMP3.com has gone down — for good. TechCrunch ran with the story yesterday, and I picked it up via Alex. The story had the appearance of this-time-this-could-be-true because of the news about the new lawsuit, and other sites weighed in.

As of tonight, the site is up but not accepting orders. I continue to think that AllofMP3 is a disruptive challenge to the music industry of great creative potential:

AllofMP3 is surely now so well-known and celebrated that it must represent a challenge to the RIAA, the BPI, the IFPI et al that can no longer be met just by drawn out legal actions across different countries. That's the dull reaction of retreating, defeated and dying armies. The more meaningful challenge is to the business model of the music industry and the blue ocean opportunity here is striking: 'We argue that beating the competition within the confines of the existing industry is not the way to create profitable growth' (with thanks to Tom Peters).

I was interested to read in the Register last Friday that:

According to XTN, Apple's iTunes Music Store accounted for 44 per cent of music download purchases in the UK last month. AllofMP3.com came in second, with a 14 per cent market share. That puts it ahead of Napster (eight per cent), Wippit (six per cent) and MSN (six per cent) among the nation's top-five digital music suppliers.

Technorati tags: AllofMP3, AllofMP3.com

Radiohead on tour

Caught up with them yesterday at the Civic Hall, Wolverhampton. Outstanding evening. A list of 50 songs for the tour, about 25 of which are played on any one night. The new numbers evidently surprise, stretch, please and move the audience.

The Telegraph reviewed the first of their UK tour stops, Blackpool, here, the Times here and the Guardian here. From the Times:

Enthused by the prospect of unseating our expectations, it was with relish that they delivered the UK premiere of Bangers And Mash — a collision of dystopian Motown beats and Colin Greenwood’s sinuous Roxy Music-style bassline, which saw frontman Thom Yorke singing from behind a small drumkit.

Radiohead have long been mining pop gold from places other bands wouldn’t think of looking and a brace of other new tunes suggested that they’re not about to stop now. Nude was a scratchy, esoteric nocturne that saw Yorke turn in a superb, soulful semi-falsetto. For a minute the hitherto unheard 15 Steps sounded like a mess of sluggish beats and clapping, until Jonny Greenwood chipped in with the sort of mellifluous guitar melody one might more commonly find on old Nigerian pop records.

And from the Telegraph:

Over their two decades, they've amassed such an arsenal of awesome songs that they can alter their setlist radically each night. Indeed, Radiohead's greatness can be judged by the songs they don't play, as much as by the songs they do. No Surprises, Fake Plastic Trees, Karma Police, Street Spirit, Just - these are some of the past 20 years' most extraordinary tracks. All are left out.

Disappointing? No - because they still offer a sublime Paranoid Android, a majestic Planet Telex, a towering There There, a crushing My Iron Lung. They've simply written more good songs than they've got time to fit in - and this is a two-hour show. There are few, if any, bands today about whom the same could be said. It's doubtful that, say, Red Hot Chili Peppers could satisfy a stadium if they discarded Under the Bridge, Give It Away and By the Way.

Six songs are new. A return to the driving emotional rock of The Bends? Or a Kid A-style plunge into the unknown? Both, but more of the former. For example, Bangers 'N' Mash, which is fast and tetchy, with frontman Thom Yorke hammering at a drum kit while singing. (Yorke has always liked prog-rock, but few can have foreseen the day he'd turn into Phil Collins.) Then there's Bodysnatchers, which suggests a livelier Joy Division, with Yorke twisting and jerking in the demented puppet-on-strings manner of that band's singer Ian Curtis. Nude is the kind of ballad Radiohead practically patented, building - like Exit Music and How to Disappear Completely - from a subdued start to a climactic wail. Arpeggi is pacier, with a shrill guitar line of the sort U2 pioneered on their Joshua Tree album. By contrast, 15 Step is computerised experimentation, and at the end sounds a bit like the similarly avant-garde Idioteque from Kid A being sucked down a plughole. House of Cards is odder still - if only because it's so uncharacteristically pleasant and light.

All very promising.

It's about time I thought of improving my camera (and my technique), but such as they are my photos from the evening are on Flickr. Concerning Thom Yorke's album, The Eraser, see this Guardian piece.

Technorati tags: Radiohead, gigs

On Music

Armando Iannuci, speaking at the Royal Philharmonic Society awards last Tuesday, as reported in yesterday's Observer:

We need to wake up to the fact that people are now asking basic questions. Why are we musical? Why did people write symphonies? Why do we have the string quartet? They seem child-like, these questions, but they're there to provide us with the opportunity to enthuse and explain and demonstrate the answers we first stumbled upon in our musical journey and which encouraged us to make that journey in the first place. …

I think we should at all times keep trying to ask and to answer the most basic of questions about music, about the arts. What are they there for?

For me they're not there for any other reason than to remind us that, no matter where we are, whether we're learned, in prison, poor, successful, alone or average, our material circumstances are not all that we have, that we can see beyond ourselves, that we're human and are therefore dignified. That's my answer. I'm sure each of you has a different one. I just wish we all had more opportunities to express them.

Music

Over the last holiday I picked up on a number of bands and albums. To start with (and most surprising), the new Neil Diamond album, 12 Songs: the product of collaboration with that interesting producer Rick Rubin, it's an affecting CD … I never thought I'd be recommending a new Neil Diamond album! There's an interview with Diamond here (Guardian) and in a short review Neil McCormick (Telegraph; longer Telegraph profile of Diamond here) makes some good points. Then I came across Secret Machines' Now Here Is Nowhere. I need to catch up with their new release, Ten Silver Drops — Observer piece here. I enjoyed the new Flaming Lips' album with its splendid title, At War With the Mystics, but the best discoveries have been Willy Mason (supporting Radiohead on their upcoming UK tour) and his album Where the Humans Eat (Pitchfork review), and Josh Ritter's new album, The Animal Years. On the latter, I'm particularly struck by 'Girl in the War' (mp3), and look forward to catching Ritter in London in May. I'm quite sure I'll be writing much more about Willy Mason once I've had the chance to hear him in May, too.

The social software scene of music listening has its Pandora fans and its last.fm fans. I use last.fm, but this post (via Matt Jones) caught my eye:

People say that the top-down, made-by-those-who-know-what’s-good-for-you approach is now outmoded, but in this case it seems to have what folksonomy will never get us: the element of surprise.

So I was very interested to hear via Techcrunch that the recently launched mashup, PandoraFM, that allows users to submit their Pandora feed(s) to last.fm, now has official Pandora backing. I played with PandoraFM  (in its earlier incarnation) and came away thinking it had a lot of potential. The bugs of the early version, now Pandora has released its API to PandoraFM, should soon be a thing of the past.

Update! Gabe Kangas, the originator of PandoraFM, has posted about the new form of the mashup:

Well, sorry about the lack of warning. www.real-ity.com/pandora is no more. pandorafm.real-ity.com is the future! The name change really means very little though. … there are some … nice features I think you’ll all like. This includes using feeds of information from last.fm to seed Pandora stations. … The other new feature is “tracking” where it tracks what previous artists you’ve listened to and can click on one of them to reseed Pandora if you really like it and want to create a new station with that one. Neat! OH oh and yeah I added a url based interface to creating new stations that will submit. I thought it would be cool if you’re like “Hey man check out this new band called The Rockers, they play electropunktripska” so you want them to hear music like that so you can send them the link http://pandorafm.real-ity.com/?artist=The+Rockers.

And then, another sign of the battle that's been coming for some time now: news that Nokia has just released its latest edition of PC Suite, with the emphasis on … music.

• Transfer music to your phone with upgraded Nokia Music Manager
• Faster music and video file conversions

Check out the new Music Manager — smartphones vs the iPod …

As if all that wasn't enough, the most astonishing bit of news — via Memex 1.1. The right-wing, US Cato Institute has produced a report (pdf; summary here), Circumventing Competition — The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that concludes:

The Founding Fathers gave Congress the right to recognize copyrights in order to “promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts.” It hardly promotes progress to give a handful of companies the ability to tightly control how consumers use copyrighted content. Rather, progress is promoted in a technological marketplace of interoperable products, consumer choice, and fierce competition. The anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA betray the constitutional vision. They impede rather than promote the progress of science and the useful arts.

Technorati tags: Neil Diamond, Secret Machines, The Flaming Lips, Willy Mason, Pandora, last.fm, PandoraFM, PC Suite, smartphones, Nokia

YouTube

Be it Frank Zappa specials, such as I am the Slime and Mike Nesmith and Frank Zappa on 'The Monkees', or Captain Beefheart — Lick my decals off, baby … or the loftier heights of The Hearts of Age (Orson Welles) and Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren), YouTube is going to become compulsive viewing. (All links via del.icio.us, the first three via Merlin Mann, the last two via Warren Ellis.)

Wikipedia on The Hearts of Age:

The Hearts of Age is the first film made by Orson Welles. The film is a four-minute short, which he co-directed with William Vance in 1934. The film stars Welles' first wife, Virginia Nicholson, as well as Welles himself. He made the film while attending the Todd School for Boys, in Woodstock, Illinois, at the age of 19. The plot is a series of images loosely tied together, and is arguably influenced by surrealism. The film is rarely seen today, but many point to it as an important precursor to Welles' first Hollywood film, Citizen Kane.

Meshes of the Afternoon, to my shame, is a discovery. Better now than never. Wikipedia here. An Uruguayan site here (Spanish). (Both these links via absurdita, who uploaded the film to YouTube.) IMDb entry here.

Technorati tags: Orson Welles, Maya Deren, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, YouTube

Mobile MySpace

Back in January, I noted the stupefying success of MySpace. Now comes news that it's set to go mobile:

CNNMoney.com — MySpace unwired:

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch hopes to extend MySpace's influence beyond the PC. Today, the popular site is expected to announce a partnership with Helio, a wireless carrier backed by Internet service provider EarthLink (Research) and SK Telecom, a Korean wireless carrier which operates what's viewed in the industry as the world's most advanced cell-phone network. This spring, MySpace and Helio will launch a service that will let users access MySpace from their mobile phones.

For MySpace, the deal is another move to keep its users bound tightly to it, communicating with friends or listening to music from artists featured on the service. Such innovation should help MySpace avoid the fate of social-networking pioneer Friendster, whose users ended up going elsewhere when it failed to introduce new features.

The move also gives News Corp a foothold in the rapidly growing mobile market. More than 60 million teenagers now carry cell phones, and most take them everywhere they go. MySpace Mobile, which is a free service, could turn into another lucrative advertising venue for News Corp.

Technorati tags: MySpace, Helio

last.fm / Pandora

Streampad blog — last.fm vs. Pandora:

Pandora is a Web1.0 company. Don’t let the Flash fool you. They have a top down approach to choosing which music is right and a belief that eyeballs on their site alone will be enough to sustain them.

last.fm is a Web2.0 company. They leverage people (also known as the edge, user-generated, wisdom of the masses) to choose the right music. As a result, their database of songs is significantly larger than Pandora’s. Are they better at choosing music than Pandora? It doesn’t really matter. They are both pretty damn good. But last.fm has a scalable model. Pandora does not. In terms of an economic model, neither is doing anything but losing money, I assume.

Last.fm has all the community aspects. Pandora just added a “sharing” feature, if you could call it that. They allow users to “bookmark” a song which sets up a page where they and others can listen to 30 second samples of their bookmarked songs. 30 second samples will never, ever cut it. Last.fm clearly wins here. I will not even mention the audioscrobbler service (which is much more important to me than the radio service).

Looking back on this post, I now realize how much more I like last.fm as compared to Pandora. Their problems are purely technical. Their head is in the right place. Pandora has the technical stuff worked out. Their head is just on backwards. Technical problems are usually easier to fix than philosophical/economic ones.

Technorati tags: last.fm, Pandora

Intellectual Property: a Digital Rights Campaign

I'm grateful to James Governor for digging a bit further than me, visiting the National Consumer Council's website (as opposed to stopping with the BBC's report — see below). The NCC is dedicating time and energy to digital rights:

There is a new section to the website which summarises the NCC's work on innovation and intellectual property (IP). We argue that the view of consumers — as being at the end of the value chain, choosing from the products and services offered by providers — is outdated, and that this is reflected in IP law...

More information about the NCC's work on IP here:

Traditionally, businesses and policy-makers have tended to think of consumers as being at the end of the value chain, choosing from the range of products and services offered by providers. This does not describe how value is created in a modern economy and the role consumers can, and do, play in innovation and the co-creation of products and services.

This outdated view of the role of consumers is reflected in intellectual property (IP) law which gives rights to owners to control the use of innovations and ideas, and describes public and consumer fair access and use rights as exclusions and exceptions.

In addition, powerful business lobbies have been able to exert considerable influence on the development of IP law. This has increased the level of protection of IP rights and reduced public and consumer access and use rights.

This is not just bad for consumers, it is bad for society, as it constrains the ability of everyone to access important resources, and stifles the sorts of consumer creativity that can enhance economic growth.

The NCC has a page about the Digital Rights Campaign of the Bureau Européen des Unions de Consommateurs:

On 10 November 2005, BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation, launched a campaign for consumer rights in the digital environments calling for the following rights to be enshrined in EU law:

• the right to choice, knowledge and cultural diversity
  
• the right to the principle of 'technical neutrality' — defend and maintain consumer rights to the digital environment
  
• the right to benefit from technological innovations without abusive restrictions
  
• the right to interoperability of content and devices
  
• the right to the protection of privacy
  
• the right not to be criminalised

In addition, the declaration calls for:

• industry to desist from legal action against P2P downloaders to allow the market to find solutions for the on-line development of audio/visual distribution
• action to ensure that DRM users respect consumer privacy and fair use rights

The set of six bulleted points constitutes the BEUC's proposed Consumers' Digital Rights.

James quotes the BEUC's position statement:

BEUC believes that the European publishing sector is crucial to the building of a knowledge-based economy. However, blindly ‘enhancing’, ‘supporting’ and ‘extending’ the copyright protection regime may confer unjustified monopoly privileges, impede competition, potentially impose unfair costs on consumers and risk to inhibit creativity. Do we want a society in which the free exchange of ideas - on which our society thrives - remains possible or do we want access to content curtailed by excessive copyright regulation and abusive use of DRMs? The report correctly states about copyright and DRMs that “widespread acceptance by consumers is still lacking”. The reason for this is (at least) twofold: Firstly, DRMs are restricting consumers legitimate use of copyrighted (and non-copyrighted) material. According to the Commission, publishers also regard DRM as a technology with increased control over content and more precise definitions of the rights associated to the assets they commercialise. These “rights” go beyond what is asserted by intellectual property law and we deplore the lack of discussion on potential adverse effects on consumers, and the eventual need to guarantee consumers rights in relation to the works they legally purchase.

He also found their online petition. To echo James: please go sign it.

As the BEUC puts it elsewhere (1/ here and 2/ here) on their website:

1/
Under the heading of Digital Rights Management (DRM) new technologies are being used to limit or prohibit perfectly legitimate practices. “Exemplary" legal cases are being prosecuted and users threatened with huge penalties for downloading music or films on the Internet. The industry hides behind the artists that it claims to defend, alienating their fans and supporters. We know that there is a serious global problem of piracy. Consumers should not buy counterfeit copies of CDs and DVDs; too often these products are made in large numbers by organised criminal, and probably also terrorist, gangs. On the other hand, private consumers are not criminals or terrorists and the industry must stop portraying them as such. The time has come to guarantee consumers certain basic rights in the digital world, and to tell them what they can do with their digital hardware/content. This is our message in this campaign.

2/
We urge policy makers to endorse the 6 Consumers Digital Rights, and demand:

• A legal framework that will encourage new means of exposure and distribution of digital content, while guaranteeing remuneration to artists, creators and performers and providing consumers and the public with new means of access, discovery and new uses;

• A new balance between exclusive rights in the exploitation of digital content and public interest objectives in using and sharing such content, taking into account the new possibilities of content usage enabled by technical progress;

• That industry desist from legal action against P2P downloaders to allow the market to find solutions for the on-line development of audio/visual distribution that takes due account of the public interest and the interest of artists, creators and performers;

• Action to find solutions on how consumers can effectively exercise their private use rights and to guarantee that users of DRMs respect the legitimate interest of consumers in their personal autonomy and private sphere;

• Mechanisms to ensure that TPMs or DRMs, which restrict uses legally exempted from copyright or not falling under copyright, do not benefit from legal protection;

• A review of the EU legal framework on consumer protection and intellectual property in view of the 6 consumers rights demands expressed in this Declaration.

Technorati tags: NCC, BEUC, IP, innovation, DRM, Copy Rights

Copy Rights

James Governor's MonkChips — What about My Copy Rights? Towards a declaration of digital independence:

If anyone out there likes the idea of a call for Copy Rights, then let me know or blog about it or whatever. If the snowball rolls downhill then we can perhaps formalise a declaration of some kind …

I like. Plus, as was said at the inaugural meeting of ORG, we've got to find the language that will catch the imagination of the music-loving public: 'the importance of language in making an argument. Rhetoric and framing require strong simple images to fall back on'.

More about working towards A Declaration of Copy Rights at James Governor's site … towards 'a positive framework for intellectual property protection, rather than a negative complaint'.

Update — from BBC News:

A UK consumer watchdog has called for new laws to protect users' rights to use digital music and movies. The National Consumer Council (NCC) said anti-piracy efforts were eroding established rights to digital media. …

It made its comments to a parliamentary inquiry into technologies that limit what people can do with CDs, DVDs and downloaded media. In its submission to the inquiry, the NCC said many consumers were regularly running up against the restrictions record companies and film makers put on their products. The consumer group said people were finding that they could not make compilations for their own use or easily move digital copies between different devices.

In its statement to the inquiry it said the digital locks put on content were "constraining the legitimate consumer use of digital content". Also being undermined were rights established by consumer protection and data protection laws, it said. "Consumers face security risks to their equipment, limitations on their use of products, poor information when purchasing products and unfair contract terms," said Jill Johnstone, the NCC's director of policy.

She added that the group had little faith that self-regulation by media makers would protect consumer rights.

Technorati tags: DRM, Copy Rights, NCC

What DRM argument?

I enjoy both of Lloyd Shepherd's blogs. His work blog, given that he is Deputy Director of Digital Publishing at Guardian Unlimited, helps me see into the world of commercial publishing and follow the developments at his paper. His most recent post calls on Chris Anderson's question, 'how much DRM is too much?'. He goes on to say:

… let’s face it: we’re going to have to have some DRM. At some level, there has to be an appropriate level of control over content to make it economically feasible for people to produce it at anything like an industrial level. And on the other side of things, it’s clear that the people who make the consumer technology that ordinary people actually use - the Microsoft's and Apples of the world - have already accepted and embraced this. The argument has already moved on.

Hang on a moment! Who's had this argument? Did I blink and miss the great national and international debates? Lloyd asks:

… what are the best implementations of DRM out there, which balance the needs of the provider and the consumer without getting in the way of either? Does such a thing exist?

Ah, if only these kinds of questions were being asked by the DRM-generating industries in frank and open discussion with their customers and artists! That there have been more narrowly conceived commercial decisions and that these arguments have 'moved on' is evident almost everywhere one looks, and, as Lloyd acknowledges fulsomely, copyfighters and those who have a vision for the net (as something other than just another 'content distribution system') have been shouting about developments for a long while now. Here, DRM is of great concern, but it's the very nature of the net that is at the heart of the matter. Some recent examples … Julian Bond (yesterday, writing about Google's plan to open an online video store):

The fly in this ointment is indeed DRM. … Amazon, AOL, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Real and now Google have all jumped the fence and landed on the other side as content intermediaries no different from the old media business