Interesting note on the state of applications: I was about to fire up a spreasheet app to do the above calculation when I decided to see if the internet could do the necessary work for me. Short answer: Yes. It’s the future, baby!
The trailer does look good. My problem is with the name. I was going to complain that the plural of quantum is quanta but that’s the wrong way round. The real issue with Quantum of Solace is that it’s far too close to The Phantom Menace and we all know how that turned out.
Since my car radio broke a year ago I’ve seriously dropped out of the new music scene. While I have a music player, I only play my old stuff on it. Despite my enthusiasm for last.fm, if I can’t get at it when I’m out and about — when I’m most likely to be listening to music — it’s not much use to me. Roll on pervasive wi-fi. More recently, I’ve spent much more time listening to podcasts, especially when I’m running.
Tim W’s recent post on downloading new music sparked a conversation with Tim S a couple of weeks back. If you download music without paying, is that stealing? Tim The Latter’s point was that if the music in question is available legitimately by paid download or on some other medium then it is without doubt stealing. I put this to Tim The Former, who countered that if you can get it without paying then why not?
My position on the whole subject has moved over time. A few years back I used the excuse that by downloading I was helping spread an artist’s work to a wider audience. This is a pretty weak argument, though, because if everyone applies it equally, nobody pays.
Another justification is to say that it is a victimless crime — only the record label is losing money — but this argument is false too. Firstly, a small percentage of the money on sales does go to the artist. Secondly, artists generally have to sell a certain number of albums to comply with their contract with the label. By not buying you’re reducing the likelihood that their contract will be extended, meaning less new music from them.
A lot of people consider record label contracts to be unfair as the label keeps something like 90% of the profits. However, you have to realise that they operate like venture capitalists. Most bands signed do not become profitable and have tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds invested in them that the label does not see a return on. So each successful artist may be bankrolling ten loss-making artists. Is this is a fair system? I’ll get back to that later.
These days I try to work things out from a starting point of “don’t rip the artist off”, especially if I want them to produce more work. So, this means that I don’t (in general) download anything without paying and if I do then I go and buy the CD.
Another aside: I think the days of me buying CDs is drawing to a close. I recently ripped all our CDs and packed them up into the loft so we could reuse the shelf space. If that’s how I’m going to live, what’s the point in getting a CD in the first place? I know people say “but I like to have something physical and I like reading the sleeve notes” but be honest and tell me how often you do that in practice.
So, when would I consider downloading and not paying? Well, what if it’s a well established artist who clearly won’t be hard up in retirement and who is unlikely to produce much in the way of new work? For example, let’s say The Rolling Stones. In this case I think it’s more conscionable, particularly the older work that they’ve earnt from for 20, 30, 40 years already. What I try and bear in mind is the original intent of copyright: To promote the creation of new works by granting the author exclusive rights for a limited term, at which point the work passes into the public domain.
The standard copyright term has been extended over the recent decades under the influence of businesses who wish to extend their revenues on older works. Personally, I feel the balance has shifted too far. Music copyright already runs for 50 years but lobbying groups continue to push for further extensions.
Creative Commons provides an alternative: Some Rights Reserved. This gives people an easy way to share pretty much any type of work but retain selected rights such as being attributed as the author or to prevent commercial use. One way I use this is to license my photos on Flickr for use by others under the CC Attribution-Share Alike license.
As you might expect, there are music download sites such as Jamendo and Magnatune that allow you to freely download and share music. Because the music is licensed under a CC license you can do really cool things like include the music in not-for-profit productions (such as your own podcast) or plonk a music player right into your blog just like this:
How is this not ripping off the artists, though? With Magnatune you can stream the music for free but you pay anywhere between $5 and $18 — the exact amount is at your discretion — for a permanent, high quality, DRM free download. Better still, half the purchase price goes directly to the artist. Jamendo is even more liberal in that you can download immediately and then donate after the fact; an even higher percentage goes to the artist here. The interesting thing about this model is that an artist can sell considerably less “units” to make the same money as on a record label’s contract, meaning they can get by on smaller fan base. I like the egalitarian nature of this.
Apart from the occasional exception, you won’t find “regular” artists on these sites. Their regular record deals won’t allow them to CC license their music. It’s early days for me in the world of CC music, so I can’t vouch for the quality yet. I’ll let you know how I get on. I’m hoping this will give me a way into some new and diverse new music.
A couple of weeks ago I came to the realisation that Louise and I don’t use our CDs any more. We have a big old glass cabinet hanging on the wall, half full of CDs and half full of DVDs. The former are almost never taken out. The only music we tend to listen to is on the radio or on our MP3 players, typically in the car. So why are we wasting space on storing these CDs when there were piles of DVDs stacked up around the TV?
Thus started my Ripathon, wherein I ripped every CD in the house, including all the weird and wonderful discs previously banished to the loft. After several weeks of fitful work I am finished; I am the proud owner of 1400 tracks and Louise has a more impressive 2400. Or in time terms, it would take me four and a half days of continuous play to listen to my collection, or six continuous days for Louise.
I now have the largest playlist of my life to listen to. I’m about 220 tracks in, rating the tracks as they go by. For a long time I resisted the urge to get into the whole “star rating” idea. Being a bit obsessive, I worry about issues such as the difference between two stars and three. And you mean I have to decide this 1400 times?! Why can’t the machine learn what I want to listen to? Oh well, better a half-good playlist today than a magically learning system next year.
Jayne asked me if this all meant that I’d start downloading tracks instead of buying CDs. I’m not entirely sold, mainly because you don’t get entirely the same quality of sound (theoretically) from an MP3 as you do a CD. In addition, I prefer to use Vorbis in place of MP3, which gives you better sound quality compared to an MP3 of the same file size. That said, with the death of DRM, I’m a lot more prepared to court the idea.
All this, of course, doesn’t help me get at the boxes of vinyl stuck up in the loft. Given that I’ve touched these, I think, on one occassion in the last ten years, I’m also wondering if it’s time to sell my 1210s. I’ve held off doing this (if it’s not stating the obvious at this stage) for a long time. For much of this time I’ve considered teaching some of my old skills to Ben or Jessica in a few years from now but the more time passes the more I wonder if the world has moved on…
I was just ploughing through my Google Reader backlog when Ben walked up and asked, “How do you make it go up and down?” He was referring to the page on screen.
“I use the mouse wheel, you know, on the mouse. The little wheel you use to make things go up and down.”
“Can you use the arrow keys?”
Without waiting he reached out and sent the page flying across the screen. Laughing he said, “Why does it go up when you press down?”
I had to stop for a moment and suddenly I was thrown back to the mid-eighties and the first time I used an AMX mouse with AMX Pagemaker on our BBC Master. The problem is, to go down the page you press the down button but in doing so the page appears to move up the screen.
Clearly our brains are wired the same way.
While writing this post I had music on random play and it produced a surprisingly good track transition: From Hemp by Living Colour into Into Temptation by Crowded House with a three second crossfade. Not perfect but not bad for a random selection!
Louise and I are really enjoying Flight Of The Conchords on BBC4. I was going to try and describe the program but I think I’ll use the power of YouTube to do my work for me.
So, to round off my triptych of pointers to cool websites this month I’m going to suggest you check out last.fm. It’s an internet based radio station that you can listen to through your web browser or through dedicated software. You start by entering the name of an artist you like and then it plays tracks by similar artists.
The real coolness starts when you create an account — everything you listen to is recorded in your profile. You can skip over or even permanently ban tracks you don’t like. In this way the system learns what you like. Over time it starts coming up with recommendations for you and finds other “neighbour” users on the site who share your tastes. Then you can tune in and listen to what they’re listening to. What a great way to discover new music!
I’m really only scratching the surface here, too. You can download plug-ins for your “normal” music player (e.g. iTunes, WinAmp, Songbird or even your iPod) so that what you listen to “normally” is recorded in your last.fm profile. You can create groups. You can see when your favourite artists are playing nearby. You can add your recently played tracks to your blog. You can make recommendations to your friends. You can clear out your profile and “start again”. You can even listen to my very own radio station.
I have long been opposed to DRM on music downloads, which is why I’ve never bought music online (and yes, I am aware of options such as eMusic). So I was thrilled to read today that EMI has agreed to release every song in its online catalogue without DRM. This means that tracks I download can be copied as many times to as many places as I like — just the same freedoms I enjoy with a good old CD and without being prejudged as a criminal by the record label.
The new album by The Cooper Temple Clause, Make This Your Own, was released on Monday. You can listen to Damage, Homo Sapiens and Waiting Game — along with their entire back catalogue, it would seem — on their web site. You can also watch the videos for Homo Sapiens and Waiting Game on the ubiquitous YouTube. I’ll even make it easy and point you to the right place at Amazon and Play.
If you like the new artwork on the album and their web site you might be interested to look at some more of Richard Sweeney’s work. The “sliceforms” are particularly cool!
A piece of trivia for you: The Cooper’s track 555-4823 is named after a telephone number in Back To The Future. Now you just know you’re going to have to watch it again to find out who it belongs to…
In a recent email conversation, Tim W asked me what I thought of the latest Zero 7 album, The Garden. Well, if ever there was some blog fodder…
As I mentioned recently, I’ve been listening to this album a lot and really like it, but to do a proper job I took the time to listen to the previous albums, Simple Things and When It Falls. I’ve stayed clear of other reviews on the web, so not to colour my take on things.
Personally, I think each album builds on the last, so my favourite now is The Garden. Simple Things is a good album in its own right, definitely leading the way in (for want of a better term I’ll call) chill out. It’s a wonderful mix of vocalists and soft, natural and (mostly) layed back sounds.
When It Falls, by comparison, feels more focused but still keeps all the winning elements. Consequently it has some genuinely beautiful, stand-out tracks like Home and Look Up, which is why I rate it higher.
Where When It Falls feels like a progression, The Garden is more of an evolution. From its opening bars, harder edged synths come in to play. I like this, however, as it acts as a great compliment to the normal palette of more fuzzy sounds. It’s also more energetic, again a good thing from my perspective. Sia Furler returns for a third time, so Zero 7 fans will still feel at home, but this album also sees Jose Gonzales on a number of tracks. You’ll know him from That Bravia Advert With All The Bouncy Balls. Top track: Seeing Things; seems simple at first but works into your head like you can’t believe.
So, my advice would be if you have one of the albums and like it, go pick up either of the others. Tim said that he liked Simple Things so much he was affraid of spoiling it if the other albums weren’t so good. I know that feeling. Tim, no need to worry.
