Slashdot Mirror

johnny maelstrom writes "Pitchfork has an article on how being unable to write about technology has dumbed-down the media. It's quite interesting to see that the formulaic writings in the technology media and the assumption that we don't all get it has lead to a stagnant media. They call for the next Bangs or Thompson and a revival of Gonzo. From the article: 'They [the audience] want a tastemaker, a voice of authority, who can put it all in perspective and knock our heads together with his or her crazy-yet-dead-on arguments. But I think I've found the answer: We don't have a new Bangs or Thompson yet because pop culture today is primarily a technology story. And we don't know how to write about technology.'"

An anonymous reader writes "The music recommendation/music discovery space seems to be heating up this year. Two big recent features on music recommendation engines: ExtremeTech has a round-up and reviews of eight leading services. Of the eight, Last.fm emerges as the winner: "Last.fm is by far the best out there, possessing a huge library of music, a great community, and a recommendation feature that will blow you away." Meanwhile, Pitchforkmedia.com just ran an in-depth feature about the hows and whys of music recommendation software, that tells the story going back to the '90s, and interviews people at Last.fm, Pandora, MusicIP, and the startup Echo Nest: '"Our hope is to answer every possible question about music that ever existed. If we can pull that off, then I think we're doing very well," says [Brian] Whitman.'"

Kate Thompson writes "Alice Taylor at Wonderland writes that BBC Radio 1 is coming to Second Life, with a virtual festival and simulcast this weekend to coincide with Radio 1's One Big Weekend event. Second Life users can catch live performances in-game by acts including Muse, Razorlight and Gnarls Barkley. Pitchforkmedia.com also reported on the rise of live music in Second Life a couple of weeks ago, focusing on the launch of Muse Isle and the swarms of coffeehouse performers playing covers every night in-game."

putko writes "Chris Dahlen has written about BigChampagne, a company that looks at peer-to-peer downloading to provide marketing data to record companies. By analyzing what folks are downloading, when and where, BigChampagne can tell the record companies what people like, what other records they like and other information critical to deciding how to allocate marketing dollars. As mentioned in the article, record companies started using this information (secretly) even as they were trying to stop filesharing via the courts."

Nick Weidner writes "Indie music website Pitchforkmedia.com asks, 'What if John Cage had owned an XBox?'. The article compares today's game soundtrack composers to ambient artists such as Brian Eno, and discusses experimental soundtrack techniques with Jesper Kyd (the Hitman series), Peter McConnell (Psychonauts) and Russell Shaw (Black & White, Fable)." Meanwhile over at Wired News they are reporting on the suppression of musical creativity the designers had to build into Star Wars Galaxies, for fear that copyrighted works would be played in the galaxy far, far away. From the article: "If we allowed someone to play anything they want, they could play a song by Madonna and then we'd have licensing issues...We don't want to give them the option to try, because the bottom line is, if we open that gate, they will go through it". The latter situation is a real problem for the substantial population of players who enjoy the non-combat activities that SWG offers. Because all the music that entertainers can play has to be designed by SOE staffers, and 'okayed', there are long periods of time where no new music is introduced to the game. Given that every player has to interact with musicians at some point in their career to heal combat stress, it makes for a grating and uncomfortable experience to constantly be exposed to the same music (for players in both the band and the audience).

Alex Reynolds writes "'Are pop critics doing a good job? What does it mean to do a good job as a pop music critic? What is the difference between good and bad pop music criticism?' Loren Jan Wilson's innovative Pitchformula project takes the archives of music criticism and journalism from the popular Pitchfork web site and analyses them for commonalities in content, determining what attributes make for a 'good' or 'bad' evaluation. From this data, Wilson sculpted his compositional and performance technique to write rock music that should win critical acclaim."