Kevin Kelly on the Next 5,000 Days of the Internet-TED, 2007:

Kevin Kelly gave this talk at TED in 2007.  It’s worth watching.  

He touches on a number of things ranging from history of the Internet and Moore’s Law to the future ubiquity of Cloud Computing and Kurzweil’s “Sigularity.“ 

He covers concepts like the Semantic Web, and the give-and-take between privacy and participation with relatively light language that any lay person should be able to understand.  This is an interesting and entertaining little presentation.  Thought I’d share.

ASCAP’s “Bill of Rights for Songwriters and Composers”

This is what ASCAP, which I am a member of (I’ll report on whether or not that was a good idea in the future), has recently put forth as its sort of manifesto for the digital age.  I will be adding strike tags to indicate the parts I would like to see removed, for the sake of freedom of culture, ethics in general, or for other reasons.  

“Just as citizens of a nation must be educated about their rights to ensure that they are protected and upheld, so too must those who compose words and music know the rights that support their own acts of creation. Without these rights, which directly emanate from the U.S. Constitution, many who dream of focusing their talents and energies on music creation would be economically unable to do so - an outcome that would diminish artistic expression today and for future generations.   

At this time, when so many forces are seeking to diminish copyright protections and devalue artistic expression, this Bill of Rights for Songwriters and Composers looks to clarify the entitlements that every music creator enjoys. 

1. We have the right to be compensated for the use of our creative works, and share in the revenues that they generate.
2. We have the right to license our works and control the ways in which they are used.
3. We have the right to withhold permission for uses of our works on artistic, economic or philosophical grounds.
4. We have the right to protect our creative works to the fullest extent of the law from all forms of piracy, theft and unauthorized use, which deprive us of our right to earn a living based on our creativity.
5. We have the right to choose when and where our creative works may be used for free.
6. We have the right to develop, document and distribute our works through new media channels - while retaining the right to a share in all associated profits.
7. We have the right to choose the organizations we want to represent us and to join our voices together to protect our rights and negotiate for the value of our music.
8. We have the right to earn compensation from all types of “performances,” including direct, live renditions as well as indirect recordings, broadcasts, digital streams and more.
9. We have the right to decline participation in business models that require us to relinquish all or part of our creative rights - or which do not respect our right to be compensated for our work.
10. We have the right to advocate for strong laws protecting our creative works, and demand that our government vigorously uphold and protect our rights.”

PHP Application Turns MySpace Friends Into CSV - View/Mine in Excel Spreadsheet Etc

My friend threw together an app that scrapes your MySpace contacts and puts useful info into a reusable format.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE. (ZIP FILE)

UPDATE: It’s also available as a Torrent via The Pirate Bay. Please consider seeding this. It’s a tiny, tiny file.

Here’s the Read Me info I just put together to go with it:

“LOGIN_EMAIL”
and
“PASSWORD”
and change those.
LEAVE THE QUOTES IN PLACE
Save the file.
Upload these two files to your server.
point your web browser to http://where-you-put-the-file-on-your-server/ms_test.php
and what will result is a CSV file of all your MySpace friends and their demographic information. Also included is the URLs to “send message” etc, and some other useful things.
View the source of the page and copy it into a PlainText text file
Name the text file with the extension .csv
Now you should be able to work with your myspace friends in Excel

There is nothing malicious about this simple application. No viruses, spyware etc. It only does what it’s supposed to do: scrape your friends so you can more easily work with your social network data.

If you are of the camp that feels that people scraping their own myspace contacts is unethical, I suggest that you consider that all the pages are already available and the data they contain is rendered in HTML which can be freely accessed already. This is just a tool to make it easier to get the useful data separated from the clutter.

Finally, this is possibly against MySpace’s Terms Of Service, so use at your own risk.

MySpace iPhone App Coming Soon

This looks cool. Thanks, Arin for the heads up.

I wish it wasn’t necessary for developer to build their own APIs for these social sites like myspace. I wish there was just a comprehensive API to begin with.

Should I join ASCAP? pros and cons (beta)

I’m worried that new innovations in music discovery might not be able to play ASCAP music because of the cost. I heard that this might be the case for small internet radio stations… I’m still trying to get to the bottom of this.

Then, I did come across these ASCAP contracts for new media channels… it’s about $1000/year minimum. This sounds high to me at first for a totally underground, out-of-my-bedroom type of channel, but then I got to thinking… A fast, enterprise-speed server, which is what I think you’d want if you were going to do something like an internet radio station, will probably cost you $100/month… So basically, if you were doing that and you wanted to play ASCAP music (and not get your pants sued off) you’d be doubling that amount… say $200-$300/month…

Then

I found a cool internet radio station called erika.net (that does play ASCAP and BMI music) and it turns out I wasn’t too far off. They say on their site that it costs about $400/month to keep their service going.

to be continued…

Voluntary Payment for Music vs. Music-Like-Water Approach Part 1

Part One - Some Background. Long Tail, Net Neutrality & Free Culture

First, let me apologize for how long this damn thing is. Unfortunately, I need to make sure I get everyone on the same page more or less as far as what I see as the important ideas/themes to consider when looking at the current condition of Music (and all other Media). If the set-up is old news to you, bare with me while I school everyone else for a second.

Second, if you’re interested in what is going on with all this stuff, you really ought to check out the book: The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution by Dave Kusek. The first six chapters are available as a podcast in the iTunes Store HERE (iTunes URL Link). And a variety of links to where you can purchase the entire Audiobook can be found HERE.

This is where I got the idea of “Music Like Water.” In the first chapter of the book, Kusek talks about how in the future, music will flow like water without the constant interruptions we experience now when we have to buy or download it or move it from one drive to another. Music will just be there waiting. Like water through a faucet, it will pour. It will be as abundant and as varied as we like. I believe, as long as the Net remains neutral, this is inevitable.

Right now of course, that’s not at all how it works. But if you’ve got your ear to the tracks you can hear it coming. Digital Media, The Web, Search, Recommendation Systems, Social Software, RSS/Atom feeds, P2P technology, increasing connection speeds, accelerating processing power, the cheapening of storage - We are clearly on the threshold of a paradigm change. This is a particular moment in time when some very exciting things are happening with regard to how media is curated, discovered and distributed, not to mention how it’s created.

This stuff is much bigger than just music too. Of course all of these concepts carry over into Film, News, Literature, instructional products, the list goes on, but even beyond all that, this is a profound moment in history because the very process by which Human Culture grows, changes and spreads is changing because of the Internet and the invention of digital product. Anyone with access to blue-collar amounts of money can create media. Since increasingly anyone can participate in the cultural dialog, people are. This phenomenon is causing the few companies and institutions that have had most of the control over Culture in its many forms for all of living memory to lose market share as they increasingly find themselves in competition with Everyone and Everything else.

The “Everything Else” is also called the Long Tail and is examined by Chris Anderson in his book, “The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business is Selling Less of More.” This is a good book to read or listen to because it brings to light an important fact: There is more value in the sum of all the less-popular and niche products than there is in just the “Top Hits” we’ve grown up with.

The “Everyone Else” is me and you. What we are participating in here is what Lawrence Lessig calls the Read/Write Web. Rather than a one-way, or Read-Only form of media, digital media and the Web are very conducive to dialog. One example of this dialog is sampling in music. Another is the blogosphere. And there are many, many more. The Hands-On, Read/Write, Two-Way “remix-culture” that we are finding ourselves in suddenly makes you and me part of the “Everything Else” I mentioned a moment ago.

In this way, we are taking market share from corporate media and so corporate media is losing influence over our Culture and losing Money as the value they can offer advertisers is falling. And guess what. They want to stop it. That’s exactly what the Net Neutrality debate is about. If the Net becomes un-neutral, it will be like handing the freedom to participate that we now enjoy over to companies that stand to gain from preventing our participation in Media, and our access to a variety of media products.

If you want to learn more about Two-Way Media and how Corporate Media is trying to control it, go read or listen to Lawrence Lessig’s book: “Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture.” It’s free!

Almost everyone I know uses illegal means to access media products at leas some of the time. Often it’s just too inconvenient to get media the legal way. Actually it’s often not even an option.

The traditional purveyers of Culture are losing money because of this. Media have been selling eyes and ears to the advertisers that fund them since before your parents were born. It’s not paranoid conspiracy-theory-speak when I say that the corporate media want to maintain control over the Culture Markets.

MORE ON THIS TO COME.  In the meantime, check these out:

Trent Reznor Talks to CNET About Saul Williams Release

NIN Releases Ghosts Volume I for FREE 

Recent Post of Mine Comparing Press About the Radiohead “In Rainbows” Release to the Release of The Saul Williams’ Record

New Kind of Film Festival - From Here To Awesome

• No submission Fees
• Filmmakers actually make money
• Filmmakers retain all their rights
• Prize: Global Distribution

For more info, visit From Here To Awesome

I Scraped My MySpace Friends. Scrape Yours!

Is there a way to download MySpace Friends? Not officially.I used “O-Community” to scrape my friends out of myspace and I used TextWrangler to turn the file into a series of <a> tags within <li> tags that include the XFN rel=”friend” attribute. I will be looking into how I might publish this information in a more relevant structure/format, probably as SIOC or FOAF data, if I can figure out how to do that.

I wish FaceBook & MySpace allowed you to download a spreadsheet (excel or whatever) of all your contacts and their demographic information like Age, Gender, Location Etc. Some other formats I would like to be able to download my contacts in are RDF/XML, vCard, CSV Etc…

Actually, it is explicitly against MySpace’s and FaceBook’s Terms Of Service to do what I have done here. Scripts and Bots are prohibited. Perhaps this will change some bright beautiful day in the future.

We need to be able to mine the ‘Data of Our Lives,’ including of course the contacts we make through Social Software services. We also need to be able to Back-Up all our Data.

If you would like help scraping your MySpace friends, drop me a line and maybe I can help out.

1. retard a ..
2. no profile
3. Matthew
4. Leandra
5. Matt
6. Giraffe
7. Arin Crumley
8. Susan Buice
9. Elijah
10. Big Love
11. John
12. OG Readmore
13. Kim
14. Four Eyed..
15. aletia
16. JB
17. Tom
18. hachurui
19. Ehly
20. Bianca Ba..
21. philipb
22. johnny
23. Vodka Tan..
24. Stephanie
25. Stefi
26. alien
27. tamiko
28. kefentse
29. sonja
30. Sonoma Co..
31. Miss White
32. Jamal
33. Chicago U..
34. Alexandra
35. Molly
36. monkey gl..
37. RUN
38. Mandy
39. GODFATHER
40. connie
41. The Datas..
42. P.P.A.M
43. mikehedge..
44. megadethk..
45. Cat
46. molecules
47. Simply Pa..
48. First Tim..
49. Jessica E..
50. Sarah Miller
51. rigel. th..
52. Erik
53. EVERYBODY..
54. bad kissers
55. Aaron
56. Velvet Ha..
57. Malik
58. brian
59. wei
60. selena
61. RADFORD
62. marissa

House of Representitaves Says Colleges Responsible for Piracy

I hate how our Congress slips irrelevant terms into legislation all the time. “College Affordability? What do Piracy, P2P and File-Sharing have to do with the affordability of ‘Higher Education?’

From CNET (I really like CNET lately):

“The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a higher-education funding bill that includes controversial new antipiracy obligations for universities.

The 354-58 vote to approve the College Opportunity and Affordability Act leaves intact an entertainment industry-backed provision, which makes up just a tiny part of a bill that has ballooned to more than 800 pages.

It says higher-education institutions participating in federal financial aid programs “shall” devise plans for “alternative” offerings to unlawful downloading–such as subscription-based services–or “technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.”

Bollocks.

If you look at the Yeas and Nays, you’ll see that the majority Yea votes were Democrats.  Actually, the only Nays were Republicans!  This is a good example of the Democratic party falling inline with Anti-Freedom, Pro-Corporate interests. I’m saying this only because many of my friends are self-proclaimed Left-Wingers and it is often assumed that the Left is more Pro-Freedom. Not so fast.

RIAA’s Cary Sherman Talks About Network Filtering

From the Public Knowledge Blog

Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA speaking at the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee’s State of the Net Conference

I want to find the full length version of this. UPDATE: The entire video is available HERE. (Unfortunately it’s a RealPlayer File, and it doesn’t play back properly through my MOTU 828… The fix for this is to switch to built-in speakers. Lame. Through my 828 the sound is all garbled and slowed down and only comes out through one channel.)

There’s also a complete Mp3 download HERE.

I heard part of the panel thru an audio stream that stopped about ten minutes in. For this reason I can say at least that the jump-cuts in this youtube video aren’t edits to bend the meaning of what Cary Sherman is saying. They’re just speeding it up. I’m looking around for the full video. I can tell from what I heard that this is an enlightening panel with a nice selection of speakers on it.

Panel:

• Mia Garlick, YouTube
• Greg Jackson, University of Chicago
• Gregory Marchwinski, Red Lambda, Inc.
• Cary Sherman, Recording Industry Association of America
• David Sohn, Center for Democracy & Technology (moderator)
• Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge

Scott Westerfeld, DJ Spooky & More on TTBOOK This Week

In case you missed it and you probably did if you’re the type of folk that will read this, I wanted to steer you toward the last episode of the PRI show, To The Best Of Our Knowledge.

Their Podcast is broken down by segment and can be found here (itunes store url).

Part one, is about apocalyptic settings in fiction… I really thought the last part was interesting. An author named Jonathan Lethem Scott Westerfeld wrote a novel, apparently for teens, about a scenario in the future where Social Currency via the Web is everything (or something to that effect) - a sort of Social Software Hell. The interview touches on some ideas about privacy and technology and also why Teens may relate so well to dystopian settings. All very interesting to me.

The other segment is about plagiarism and there is various anecdotal fuel for discussion there too.

It’s amusing to me that I would find it strange that both of these topics, Intellectual Property and Privacy, be touched on by a radio program in the context of being completely unrelated. I’m so used to thinking about these two topics as parts of the big can of worms that is the Digital Age we’re just starting to come to grips with.

Swedish Cops Charging The Pirate Bay: “Conspiracy to Breach Copyrights”

The Pirate Bay is an infamous (or just fairly reliable) BitTorrent Tracker that has previously been completely out of range from legal action by the RIAA and others because they are in Sweden where the law apparently doesn’t consider BitTorrent illegal.

The site actually even throws a giant bird at all the lawyers that send them cease and desist letters and other threats, often responding with childish obscenities.  And they post it all on their site HERE.  Pretty audacious (and funny).

According to TechCrunch, according the The Wall Street Jounal,

Based on evidence collected in a 2006 raid on the offices of The Pirate Bay, Swedish prosecutors say that by the end of January they expect to charge the individuals who operate the file-sharing service with conspiracy to breach copyrights.

The Pirate Bay’s operators say they are expecting the charges and will prepare their defense with the aid of government-funded lawyers for a trial later this year. “We’re not worried,” says Fredrik Neij, a Pirate Bay co-founder. “We think the law is on our side.”

The Pirate Bay’s operators say they have been followed in recent weeks by camera-toting private detectives in foreign-registered cars. In September, they filed a police complaint claiming that MediaDefender, a U.S. counterpiracy company, had been hired by several Hollywood studios and music companies to hack into their site and shut it down.

MediaDefender, which itself was hacked by a shadowy group last year, denies the accusation. “We’re a reputable public company,” says Chief Executive Randy Saaf. “We’re not going to be doing hacking. That’s silly.”

Broadcast Flag Mandate for Digital Cable, Video Devices Etc

from the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Today, you can use any device you like with your television: VCR, TiVo, DVD recorder, home theater receiver, or a PC combining these functions and more. But if the broadcast flag mandate is passed, Hollywood and federal bureaucrats will get a veto over innovative devices and legitimate uses of recorded programming.

The mandate forces all future digital television (DTV) tuners to include “content protection” (aka DRM) technologies. All makers of HDTV receivers will be required to build their devices to watch for a “flag” embedded in programs by copyright holders.

When it comes to digital recording, it would be Hollywood’s DRM way or the highway. Want to burn that recording digitally to a DVD to save hard drive space? Sorry, the DRM lock-box won’t allow it. How about sending it over your home network to another TV? Not unless you rip out your existing network and replace it with DRMd routers. And forget about using open source TV tools. Kind of defeats the purpose of getting a high definition digital signal, doesn’t it?

Responding to pressure from Hollywood, the FCC had originally mandated the flag, but thanks to our court challenge, ALA v. FCC, it was thrown out. But that doesn’t mean the danger is behind us. Hollywood has headed to Congress to ask for the flag again. Take action to stop the flag now!

Pirate Bay Music Discovery System. Rad.

Back in the good ol’ days, a few weeks ago, when oink was still around, there was a firefox plugin called oink plus that pulled together similar artists, MySpace and LastFM pages for the artists Etc.  It was rad.  Maybe this will be rad too.

From TorrentFreak:

“The Pirate Bay just rolled out a new feature to their music section that makes it easy for users to find similar artists, more albums from the same artist and upcoming concerts. The data they are using comes from the popular music community website last.fm and is fully integrated into the website.”

(I love that they used Prince as the example.)

Illegal Sharing May be Bad Bathwater. But P2P is a perfectly good little baby.

Mark Cuban recently blogged that he thinks ISPs should block P2P. …Period. His idea being that P2P usage is hogging up all the precious bandwidth, and in turn, slowing down the Web.

I don’t want to bother with taking apart all the things that Mr. Cuban said over there, because I think they’re mostly completely ignorant things to say like

“…To help those of you who cant understand how to distribute audio on Google Video, here is a hint: Re encode it with a little video, a couple pictures, whatever. Then it it wont be an audio file, it will be a video file.. Ta da . You get distribution by the best distribution network on the planet, for free.”

There are so many reasons why that statement makes me want to break something. Oh well

Let me focus on this instead:

Cuban’s point of view reflects some common misconceptions.

Misconception 1: P2P and File-Sharing are a bad things.

Peer-to-Peer, or P2P, describes a number of technologies for using IP to network computers. Of these, some of the most frequently talked about in the mainstream news are the Gnutella Network (Kazaa, Limewire Etc) and BitTorrent.

There are others though. Many, many others. For instance, if you use AIM and while chatting, you decide to send a picture to your buddy, you are using P2P. I’m pretty sure (correct me if I’m wrong) Vonage, Skype and other VOIP services are also examples of P2P.

And in fact, BitTorrent is being used for a number of lawful purposes including legal distribution of software and video and audio content.

“File-Sharing” and “P2P” are very broad terms. Using one of these broad terms when you are referring only to the specific instance of a technology that you do not approve of is misleading and/or ignorant. It’s a bit like referring to pornography websites as “The World Wide Web.”

Misconception 2: There is a shortage of bandwidth.

There is not a shortage of bandwidth. If you consider that practically every one of us has a wire coming into our homes that is carrying 100 channels of full-rez video that are always on, 24 hours a day… Yes, all 100 of them are on all the time even when you’re not watching them… Then you might start to wonder:

“Why do they say we have a bandwidth problem?”

or

“Why are Cable TV and the Internet Separate when with Cable’s speed and the internet’s freedom, [...yada yada...]?”

and eventually you might find yourself thinking about:

“What would happen to the Television Advertising Market if all the TV shows were just watched via the Web? Would that be bad for cable companies or good? Where would all that money go? “

Or even

“Is it possible that there’s an actual reason that our Internet Connections aren’t fast enough to replace Cable TV yet?”

“Is this like a conspiracy theory or something?”

Now would be a good time to learn a thing or two about theThe Net Neutrality Debate. Pay close attention to what the Cable Companies seem to be after. Can you see what they want to do? Can you see why?

As you observe the bizarre feeding ritual of the greedy cable company, keep in mind, some of us are hogging all your bandwidth with our P2P technologies, so your research might get slowed down a little bit .

War on Culture: Prince joins the Dark Side. Prince, You’re a tool.

Prince is on the other team. The pro-control, pro-ownership-of-culture team. The team that likes to sue music fans.

Stolen from CNET

• The rock star has hired Web Sheriff, a British-based company that specializes in hunting down pirated content on the Web, to launch a legal campaign against companies that wrongfully profit from the artist’s work, according to John Giacobbi, Web Sheriff’s president.

Stolen from Wikipedia.org

• On September 14, 2007, Prince announced that he was going to sue YouTube and eBay because they “appear to choose not to filter out the unauthorized music and film content which is core to their business success.” A representative told Reuters, “The problem is that one can reduce it to zero and then the next day there will be 100 or 500 or whatever. This carries on ad nauseam at Prince’s expense.” ^{[29] [30]} Doug Lichtman, a lawyer for Prince released a statement saying, “above all, copyright law can welcome only those with pure motives. Those who abuse the law’s caution have no claim for its mercy.”

Major Record Labels, RIAA, It’s Over.

Brilliant blog post by Rob over at DemonBaby.com titled “When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide“

Quote:

“So the next question is, what now?

For the major labels, it’s over. It’s fucking over. You’re going to burn to the fucking ground, and we’re all going to dance around the fire. And it’s your own fault. Surely, somewhere deep inside, you had to know this day was coming, right? Your very industry is founded on an unfair business model of owning art you didn’t create in exchange for the services you provide. It’s rigged so that you win every time - even if the artist does well, you do ten times better. It was able to exist because you controlled the distribution, but now that’s back in the hands of the people, and you let the ball drop when you could have evolved.”

At the end of a long, delicious read, Rob writes:

“1. Stop buying music from major labels. Period. The only way to force change is to hit the labels where it hurts - their profits. The major labels are like Terry Schiavo right now - they’re on life support, drooling in a coma, while white-haired guys in suits try and change the laws to keep them alive. But any rational person can see that it’s too late, and it’s time to pull out the feeding tube. In this case, the feeding tube is your money. Find out which labels are members/supporters of the RIAA and similar copyright enforcement groups, and don’t support them in any way. The RIAA Radar is a great tool to help you with this. Don’t buy CDs, don’t buy iTunes downloads, don’t buy from Amazon, etc. Steal the music you want that’s on the major labels. It’s easy, and despite the RIAA’s scare tactics, it can be done safely - especially if more and more people are doing it. Send letters to those labels, and to the RIAA, explaining very calmly and professionally that you will no longer be supporting their business, because of their bullish scare tactics towards music fans, and their inability to present a forward-thinking digital distribution solution. Tell them you believe their business model is outdated and the days of companies owning artists’ music are over. Make it very clear that you will continue to support the artists directly in other ways, and make it VERY clear that your decision has come about as a direct result of the record company’s actions and inactions regarding digital music.

2. Support artists directly. If a band you like is stuck on a major label, there are tons of ways you can support them without actually buying their CD. Tell everyone you know about them - start a fansite if you’re really passionate. Go to their shows when they’re in town, and buy t-shirts and other merchandise. Here’s a little secret: Anything a band sells that does not have music on it is outside the reach of the record label, and monetarily supports the artist more than buying a CD ever would. T-shirts, posters, hats, keychains, stickers, etc. Send the band a letter telling them that you’re no longer going to be purchasing their music, but you will be listening to it, and you will be spreading the word and supporting them in other ways. Tell them you’ve made this decision because you’re trying to force change within the industry, and you no longer support record labels with RIAA affiliations who own the music of their artists.

If you like bands who are releasing music on open, non-RIAA indie labels, buy their albums! You’ll support the band you like, and you’ll support hard-working, passionate people at small, forward-thinking music labels. If you like bands who are completely independent and are releasing music on their own, support them as much as possible! Pay for their music, buy their merchandise, tell all your friends about them and help promote them online - prove that a network of passionate fans is the best promotion a band can ask for.

3. Get the message out. Get this message out to as many people as you can - spread the word on your blog or your MySpace, and more importantly, tell your friends at work, or your family members, people who might not be as tuned into the internet as you are. Teach them how to use torrents, show them where to go to get music for free. Show them how to support artists while starving the labels, and who they should and shouldn’t be supporting.

4. Get political. The fast-track to ending all this nonsense is changing intellectual property laws. The RIAA lobbies politicians to manipulate copyright laws for their own interests, so voters need to lobby politicians for the peoples’ interests. Contact your local representatives and senators. Tell them politely and articulately that you believe copyright laws no longer reflect the interests of the people, and you will not vote for them if they support the interests of the RIAA. Encourage them to draft legislation that helps change the outdated laws and disproportionate penalties the RIAA champions. Contact information for state representatives can be found here, and contact information for senators can be found here. You can email them, but calling on the phone or writing them actual letters is always more effective.

Tonight, with Oink gone, I find myself wondering where I’ll go now to discover new music. All the other options - particularly the legal ones - seem depressing by comparison. I wonder how long it will be before everyone can legally experience the type of music nirvana Oink users became accustomed to? I’m not too worried - something even better will rise out of Oink’s ashes, and the RIAA will respond with more lawsuits, and the cycle will repeat itself over and over until the industry has finally bled itself to death. And then everything will be able to change, and it will be in the hands of musicians and fans and a new generation of entrepreneurs to decide how the new record business is going to work. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s fact. It’s inevitable - because the determination of fans to share music is much, much stronger than the determination of corporations to stop it.

_____________________________________________________

If you enjoyed this article, please:

to help spread the word.

(The old non-direct Digg page is here. Digg appears to have finally lifted the block from this URL - thanks to everyone who emailed them!)

Labels: music, politics, rants”

[end of quote]

Nice, and nicely done, Rob.

Arists’ Royalties. CD Sales. Record Deals. Real Numbers?

According to the information I can find, the official breakdown of where the money goes, in a typical CD Retail scenario is as follows (I copied this from this page, although there are many more floating around with the same numbers). This breakdown of the cost of a typical major-label release by the independent market-research firm Almighty Institute of Music Retail shows where the money goes for a new album with a list price of $15.99.

• $0.17 Musicians’ unions
• $0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
• $0.82 Publishing royalties
• $0.80 Retail profit
• $0.90 Distribution
• $1.60 Artists’ royalties
• $1.70 Label profit
• $2.40 Marketing/promotion
• $2.91 Label overhead
• $3.89 Retail overhead

These numbers don’t look that great to me, as an artist. And I believe the reality of the industry is even worse.

The problem is that this set of numbers comes from a selected scenario, not a typical scenario. I’m guessing this is an average or something. Keep in mind that most acts that get ’signed’ aren’t mega-stars. Perhaps the average makes the typical look a lot better.

EDIT: I have no idea how or why this seems to be the prevailing breakdown of where consumers’ money goes when they buy records.

In addition, t The way I have come to understand it is that the Label keeps the band “in debt” to the label, by spending too much money on their behalf. Also, it is my understanding that one such expense, marketing, is often pooled amongst several bands. So the label often spends all/most of the marketing expenses for many acts on only the few that it believes in most.

It’s hard to find information on this stuff.

Steve Albini wrote an article about the unfair practices of the majors in which he does a case-study of a typical record deal. Be warned, Albini’s article actually takes a few minutes to read, and it actually needs to be read to be understood.

I’m gonna go ahead and paste in the numbers from his article here (It’s long, but that’s the way it is). From Albini:

“There’s no need to skew the figures to make the scenario look bad, since real-life examples more than abound. income is bold and underlined [underlines removed], expenses are not.

Advance: $ 250,000
Manager’s cut: $ 37,500
Legal fees: $ 10,000
Recording Budget: $ 150,000
Producer’s advance: $ 50,000
Studio fee: $ 52,500
Drum Amp, Mic and Phase “Doctors”: $ 3,000
Recording tape: $ 8,000
Equipment rental: $ 5,000
Cartage and Transportation: $ 5,000
Lodgings while in studio: $ 10,000
Catering: $ 3,000
Mastering: $ 10,000
Tape copies, reference CDs, shipping tapes, misc. expenses: $ 2,000
Video budget: $ 30,000
Cameras: $ 8,000
Crew: $ 5,000
Processing and transfers: $ 3,000
Off-line: $ 2,000
On-line editing: $ 3,000
Catering: $ 1,000
Stage and construction: $ 3,000
Copies, couriers, transportation: $ 2,000
Director’s fee: $ 3,000
Album Artwork: $ 5,000
Promotional photo shoot and duplication: $ 2,000
Band fund: $ 15,000
New fancy professional drum kit: $ 5,000
New fancy professional guitars [2]: $ 3,000
New fancy professional guitar amp rigs [2]: $ 4,000
New fancy potato-shaped bass guitar: $ 1,000
New fancy rack of lights bass amp: $ 1,000
Rehearsal space rental: $ 500
Big blowout party for their friends: $ 500
Tour expense [5 weeks]: $ 50,875
Bus: $ 25,000
Crew [3]: $ 7,500
Food and per diems: $ 7,875
Fuel: $ 3,000
Consumable supplies: $ 3,500
Wardrobe: $ 1,000
Promotion: $ 3,000
Tour gross income: $ 50,000
Agent’s cut: $ 7,500
Manager’s cut: $ 7,500
Merchandising advance: $ 20,000
Manager’s cut: $ 3,000
Lawyer’s fee: $ 1,000
Publishing advance: $ 20,000
Manager’s cut: $ 3,000
Lawyer’s fee: $ 1,000
Record sales: 250,000 @ $12 =
$3,000,000
Gross retail revenue Royalty: [13% of 90% of retail]:
$ 351,000
Less advance: $ 250,000
Producer’s points: [3% less $50,000 advance]:
$ 40,000
Promotional budget: $ 25,000
Recoupable buyout from previous label: $ 50,000
Net royalty: $ -14,000

Record company income:

Record wholesale price: $6.50 x 250,000 =
$1,625,000 gross income
Artist Royalties: $ 351,000
Deficit from royalties: $ 14,000
Manufacturing, packaging and distribution: @ $2.20 per record: $ 550,000
Gross profit: $ 7l0,000

The Balance Sheet: This is how much each player got paid at the end of the game.

Record company: $ 710,000
Producer: $ 90,000
Manager: $ 51,000
Studio: $ 52,500
Previous label: $ 50,000
Agent: $ 7,500
Lawyer: $ 12,000
Band member net income each: $ 4,031.25

The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month. The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will insist they spend more time and money on it. Since the previous one never “recouped,” the band will have no leverage, and will oblige. The next tour will be about the same, except the merchandising advance will have already been paid, and the band, strangely enough, won’t have earned any royalties from their T-shirts yet. Maybe the T-shirt guys have figured out how to count money like record company guys. Some of your friends are probably already this fucked. “

Power To The Pixel - Complete Video Coverage is Online

Interested in how Digital is changing the Film Distribution landscape?

So was everyone who attended Power to the Pixel.

Those who went had to shell out £35 (as of today, that’s $73US).

But you can watch all the talks and panel discussion for free!

Interesting stuff. Arin Crumley has it all up over on his new site, arincrumley.com

Got some time to fill with passive digestion of educational video content about all things digital-distribution-of-independent-film? Pull up a chair!

Exclusive Deals and Walled Gardens of Data

The Age of Irreversible Statements?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while.
Practically everything we do online is not only not private…

But Also…

Practically everything we do online is potentially permanent.

The stuff that we post to the Web using Standards like HTML can be cached. And the items we upload to a company’s server are, well, on their server, so we really don’t have control over what happens to them.

I imagine a scenario in which a presidental candidate is asked by a member of the press:
“Isn’t it true that when you were 20 years old, you did a strip tease to a Britney Spears song in your bedroom, recorded it with a video camera, and posted it to the Web?”

Next time you’re poking around on the Web, and you find yourself peering into someone’s bedroom, or reading a very personal blog entry written by some young stranger, think to yourself:
How could this effect this individual’s standing in the future world? What information is this individual giving away that he or she might regret later?

BETTER YET,

Ask yourself:
How will our culture be effected by behavior like this? How will our expectations of one another change once all this publicizing of traditionally more intimate behavior makes its mark on us?

“Andrew, didn’t you write, back in 2007, a blog entry about something you were calling ‘The Age of Irreversible Statements’ and in that blog entry, didn’t you talk about a hypothetical strip tease, and link to a real one?”

Yes. And I can’t take it back. Even if I delete this post, it’s not necessarily gone. It’s out of my control.

This isn’t an ‘Orwellian’ vision. It’s not ‘Orwellian’ because this isn’t about top-down surveillence. It’s about what we call ‘Public’ growing in new ways, just as what we call ‘Ourselves’ or ‘Our Community’ is growing in new ways. And it’s not a vision, because it’s already happened. It’s continuing to happen right now.

more soon.

MySpace going OpenSocial. The plot thickens.

MySpace and Google Join Forces to Launch Open Platform for Social Application Development
RELEASE

I’m hoping that the move toward this common-API approach will put the various companies at ease a little with the idea of not having a monopoly on the users’ time and eyeballs. I’d like to think that we’re headed toward a world in which some of the useful data about end-users, that these services normally keep locked away, will start to become more available to everyone. I wonder why that sounds like such an outrageous idea.

Anyhoo, slightly open is better than totally closed. Halfway open is great compared to what we’ve had. OK. So where’s the MySpace widgets for WordPress. Let me know. I’ll be waiting.

Some companies on-board with OpenSocial:
Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

I wonder how English Professors feel about all these things.
“What’s your MySpace? Thanks for the add! [and so on]“

NIN, Trent Reznor says steal my music! (And Share it with your friends)

I’ve always had a lot of admiration for Trent Reznor, especially as a producer and proveyer of weird noises. He’s good at making weird noises. And I love weird noises.

In the beginning of this concert clip, he explains to the crowd that since the record companies wont lower their prices, fans should all just go ahead and steal the music.

The song they go in to after is neat too. I really like how NIN uses digital effects. I just might go *buy* that record. Nah. I’ll barrow it from one of my several million close friends online.

BTW
Reznor also publishes Garageband versions of songs for people to remix. Pretty cool. Yay for Nine Inch Nails! Forward thinking for sure.

Lawrence Lessig talks about “Read/Write Culture” & “Read-Only Culture”

This is a good presentation that he gives. About an hour long. It really changed how I think about creativity culture and ownership(intellectual property etc). Lawrence Lessig is the founder of of Creative Commons. This is important subject matter. It touches everyone.

Oink RUMORS demystified?

One of the moderators from Oink posted a blog entry to shed some light one what’s going on and what isn’t going on with regard to the shut-down of Oink’s Pink Palace and the seizure of Oink’s srvers. In a blog post titled “Sit Down and Shut The F*** Up,” someone calling him/herself ‘Paine’ wrote

I’m Paine. I used to be a moderator at OiNK.cd, until, as you know, we were shut down by the BPI and IFPI.

Now, there are far, FAR too many rumours flying around, and I wanted to set some shit straight.

1. There is no official OiNK IRC right now.

EDIT: Defunct. See newest post.

2. OiNK will _NOT_ be up today, or tomorrow.

We’re not magic. None of the moderators have access to the current code and databases right now — in fact, neither does OiNK himself, as his stuff was confiscated (remember the crap you saw in the plastic bags on the news?). People purporting to be TMT and/or OiNK are, to be frank, lying their fucking asses off.

3. There is currently _NO_ “oink legal fund”.

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT give ANY money to ANY of these fake funds you are seeing. They are scams. OiNK will not see a penny of this money, and neither will you.

4. OiNK himself is safe and well.

He’s fine and out on bail.

5. There is no “official” OiNK forum right now.

While there may not be an official forum, a lot of our ex-users are flocking to http://www.ohax.com/phpBB2/ — Some of the users on there are actually staff. However there are also people maliciously using that site to link to scam sites and other various filth.

Anyway, I hope that’s settled a lot of shit. If you’re in doubt I’m who I say I am, then don’t believe me. I encourage you all to exercise extreme caution when people are floating around throwing names about left right and center saying these things. The “TMT” on Dalnet was not our TMT. In fact, nobody has been in contact with him, and I expect it will remain that way for a very long time.

Edit: A few people have asked me if we logged the IP you snatched things from. The answer is no, we did not log snatch IPs.

Edit 2: This is an important one — Your passwords do NOT need to be changed, they were stored as salted MD5 hashes. All the authorities have is the hashes. The only way they can get the original passwords is via brute force. The chances of that are slim to none if you followed standard good password practice.

Nice to know!

Know?