02009-07-24 | Internet, Music
Digital music suffering from entrepreneur drain | Beyond Binary – CNET News
Pakman agreed that such influencers are a key factor. “Bloggers are the music critics (of today),” Pakman said.
Yeah, yeah, bloggers replace journalism, bloggers replace music critics, Flickr-members replace photographers, Facebook and Twitter networking replaces meeting friends for a pint…
There are critics who blog, but in general I would not consider bloggers the music critics of today. Bloggers have more in common with the guy in the local pub who tells everyone willing to listen about his musical preferences.
02009-07-06 | Art, Internet, Music
Chase Jarvis Blog: Priced To Sell: Gladwell vs. Anderson Considering Photography
“…And there’s plenty of other information out there that has chosen to run in the opposite direction from Free. The Times gives away its content on its Web site. But the Wall Street Journal has found that more than a million subscribers are quite happy to pay for the privilege of reading online. Broadcast television—the original practitioner of Free—is struggling. But premium cable, with its stiff monthly charges for specialty content, is doing just fine. Apple may soon make more money selling iPhone downloads (ideas) than it does from the iPhone itself (stuff). The company could one day give away the iPhone to boost downloads; it could give away the downloads to boost iPhone sales; or it could continue to do what it does now, and charge for both. Who knows? The only iron law here is the one too obvious to write a book about, which is that the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws.”
Counter to some predictions, photography and video are are not bound to ‘Free’. I’m in agreement with Anderson that ‘Free’ is most certainly carving out its space–even reasonably so–in every digitally based industry, but I’m in complete alignment with Gladwell that the two markets ‘Free’ and ‘Not Free’ can and will continue to co-exist reasonably nicely. The trick is/will be in finding the balance.
Read the whole piece here. A lot of very good food for thought.
02009-05-30 | Internet, Music
From the BBC:
BBC NEWS | Programmes | Click | Spotify streams for music lovers
Music streaming service Spotify is only a few months old but it has already attracted much attention from music lovers.
The site allows its members to create and listen to heir own playlists of songs streamed to them online.
The same peer-to-peer technology as found in file-sharing is used to deliver near-CD quality and tracks that playback almost instantly.
The service is free for listeners willing to hear audio and on-screen adverts (which appear between roughly every five songs), although users can otherwise pay £10 per month for a premium service which enables them to listen to songs without adverts.
And from guitarist Robert Fripp:
Robert Fripp’s Diary for Thursday, 21st May 2009
The industry-word is that Spotify currently has little advertising to support it & few punters are signing up for the subscription service. In my view, Spotify provides an exemplary model of how the new, emerging music industry of digital provision works against the interests of music’s originators & generators.
02009-04-21 | Buddhism, Internet, Reading, Travel
I am already on the third installment of John Burdett’s Bangkok series, a book called Bangkok Haunts – I am reading the Kindle version on the free Kindle for iPhone application. In what seems to me typical Thai fashion the book is able to move effortlessly between violence, sex and spirituality. Here is a snippet from a conversation between the main character of the book, a cop in Krung Thep, and a monk:
Saved? There is nothing to save, my friend. You cannot caste yourself into the Unknowable in the hope that gesture will buy you salvation – you have to jump for the hell of it. In a nirvanic universe there can be no salvation because we are never really lost – or found. The choice is simply between nirvana and ignorance. That is the adult truh the Buddha urges upon us. We are the sum of our burning. No burning, no being.
When I traveled in Asia for a year, a long time ago, I was constantly amazed and delighted by the ability of so many people (((seemed like everybody was able to do that))) to switch from the mundane to the spiritual and back in no time at all. Spirituality is not reserved for a fixed hour per week, but is constantly present and referenced.
02009-04-05 | Internet, Studio
Pop Music Is Like The Daily Paper
“When I finish something I want it out that day,” says Eno later, in a phone conversation. “Pop music is like the daily paper. Its got to be there then, not six months later. So we decided to release on our websites first, then put it on the commercial websites, then as a CD, then with different packaging. It’s just trying to see what works. The business is an exciting mess at the moment.”
From this article in the Guardian.
As usual it’s in the air and many musicians are picking up on it.
That’s why I started our subscription service. To share music from the archives as well as live-recordings, but also to introduce new stuff I am working on – immediately. (((like the Tears in the Rain recordings in 2006))). If I am excited about a new solo or band recording I want to share that at once, even though lots might change between that and the official release. It also allows you to witness the process of recording and then honing a piece of music, and note what changes and what does not.
02009-03-14 | Internet
Stephen Duros
It only took a year or two (internet-time)…
