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Interview with MusicNet Chief
prostoalex writes "Alan McGlade, chief of MusicNet, which sells subscriptions to its digital music catalog, talks about his view of digital music market, expectations and life in general."
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fp
Have you ever had Premier Post? This post brought to you by the letters F and P.
What with this and PressPlay, the options seem a bit limited. They try to prevent you from burning songs etc etc. If your subscription runs out all your songs are now worthless.
People will find a way around it, once it enters "meatspace" (i.e. the air) it can be recorded on a non DRM medium.
Why do they keep trying to screw both the end users and the artists - I think it is time for a revolution within the recording industry...Let's sort this out once and for all!
The first post cold have been mine. I was too busy flaming linux faggots :(
What the fuck happened here? Have the trolls been beaten?
I'd like to be first to give up the fight. You win, slashdot crew. It's not that you're my better, it's that I'm tired of playing with you. It was fun trolling you, but now you're just not being fair. I'm not going to list the reasons since they have already been enumerated by my colleagues, so let it suffice to say that I think you suck.
I hope you realize what a bland place slashdot has become now. Sure, there are no trolls, but now it's all karma whores sucking the mods off. If that's what you want, that's fine, I'll take my business elsewhere. In exchange for me going away, I ask that you change the slashdot motto to "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone".
I don't actually believe anyone will read this, but I just wanted to make my point. Until recently, I was free to do that.
--
SweetAndSourJesus
Whats black, blue and green and doesnt like sex?
The Girl Scout locked in my basement.
Whats the worst part about having sex with a six year-old?
Getting the blood out of your clown suit.
Whats the best thing about getting a hand job from a five year-old?
That little hand makes your thing look really huge.
Guy comes home from work to find his girlfriend sitting on the porch, crying.
Whats wrong, honey?
Im leaving you! I just found out youre a pdophile!
Pdophile? Why, thats a pretty big word for a ten year-old.
How can you tell when your sisters on her period?
When your dads dick tastes like blood!
Two pdophiles are lying on a beach tanning, one turns to the other and says, Excuse me, youre in my son.
What is the sickest sound you hear when fucking a nine year-old?
Her hips snapping!
What is the best sound you hear when fucking a 13 year-old?
Her hips snapping!
Whats 18 inches long, blue, veiny, and makes a woman cry?
Crib death.
How could the mans seven year-old son tell that his dad had fucked his eight year-old sister? His dads weiner tasted like blood!
Watson returns home to find Holmes in bed with a child. He shouts, Is this some sort of a schoolgirl?
Holmes replies, Elementary, my dear Watson.
So I was having sex with my girlfriend, and I decided I wanted to get kinky and try and do her in the ass. So I slipped around back; she looked over her shoulder at me and said, My, how presumptuous of you. I said, Presumptuous? Thats a big word for a ten year-old.
Two guys are walking down the street when a beautiful woman passes. The first guy says, Damn! Id love to tear her clothes off, do her in the rear, smear my fces all over her, slice off her breasts, chop her into little pieces, put her in a garbage bag and toss her into the river!
Second guy says, Yuck! Youre a sick bastard!
First guy says, Whatre you? A fag?
A kindergarten teacher is asking the kids what their father does for a living. All the kids answer except for Little Johnny. The teacher asks Little Johnny what his Dad does and Johnny replies, My dad is dead.
The teacher says, Thats terribile, but what did he do before he died?
Little Johnny replies, He turned blue and shit all over himself!
A guy calls in sick to work.
Whats wrong? asks the boss.
Im sick, the guy replies.
You sound all right.
No, Im really sick. Believe me.
Listen, you were fine yesterday, and we have a lot of work today. I want you in here. You cant be that sick!
Dude, I just banged my sister. Dont tell me Im not sick.
A little girl accompanied her father to the barbershop. While her dad received a haircut, the little girl stood next to the barber chair, enjoying a snack cake. The barber smiled at her and said, Sweetheart, youre going to get hair on your Twinkie.
I know, the little girl replied. Im gonna get tits, too.
An older man and a small boy walk hand in hand through the woods.
Boy: These woods sure are spooky!
Man: You think youre scared, Ive gotta walk out of here alone.
Whats the difference between Neil Armstrong and Michael Jackson?
One walked on the moon, and the other rapes little boys.
Has anyone read Michael Jacksons new book, The Ins and Outs of Child Rearing?
Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and a golden delicious apple?
A: I dont cum all over the golden delicious apple before I take a bite out of it.
Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and my girlfriend?
A: I dont kiss my girlfriend after sex.
Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and a table?
A: You cant fuck a table.
Q: Whats special about a dead baby over all other forms of life?
A: You can achieve deep throat from whichever way you enter.
Q: What do you have when you have four dead babies, take away two, and add five more?
A: An orgy!
Q: Whats better than three 14 year-olds?
A: 14 three year-olds.
Q: Whats white and bobs up and down in a babys crib?
A: A pdophiles ass.
Q: Whats the safest way to play with a baby?
A: With a condom.
Q: Whats more fun than feeling up a dead baby?
A: Feeling up a dead baby with three nipples.
Q: What does a baby and a Pinto have in common?
A: Theyre fun to ride until they die.
Q: What do you get whan you dislocate a dead babys jaw?
A: Deep throat.
Q: Whats the difference between a baby and a grandmother?
A: Grandmothers dont die when you fuck them in the ass.
Q: Whats the best sound in the world?
A: Hearing dead babys hips crack under pressure!
Q: Whats worse than a having sex with a dead baby?
A: Having sex with a dead baby filled with razor blades.
Q: How do you stop a baby from choking?
A: Take your dick out of its mouth.
Q: Whats worse than finding a dead baby on your pillow in the morning?
A: Realizing you were drunk and made love to it the night before.
Q: How do you make a baby cry twice?
A: Wipe your bloody cock on his teddy bear.
Whats better than sex with a twelve year-old boy?
Absolutely nothing.
- posted by poopbot: because even your grandmother can use lunix
ZNGDWMjUPs Post #313
It was a beautiful September day in 1984 in Palo Alto, California.
Ann Davidson, an attractive 48-year-old mother, was spending it
with her older son Ben, 21, a junior in college who was home for a
visit. A big family dinner was planned for that evening. It was
wonderful having Ben home, Ann thought. They'd had lunch together,
gone shopping and were now rushing through the supermarket to get a
few last-minute items.
Earlier in the day Ben had said that he wanted to tell her
something. The Davidsons had always been close, and Ann figured it
was something about college, where Ben was pursuing a performing
arts degree. It was 5 pm when they carried the bags of groceries
out to the parking lot.
"Mom, there's something I really have to tell you," Ben said.
"What is it?" She smiled as they loaded the groceries into the
car. "Mom, I'm in love," Ben said nervously. "And his name is Alan."
Ann looked up at her son in shock. At first she could not believe
what she was hearing. Was Ben telling her that he was a
homosexual? Tall, dark, handsome Ben, who had so many girlfriends
in high school? How could this be? Ann said little as they drove
home, but her mind was racing as she turned the news over in her
mind. "I had a momentary, fleeting feeling of disgust," she
admits. "I had flashes of images of him making love to a man,
which made me feel very uncomfortable; I did not know what to say.
I felt disappointed, hurt and upset. We had to go home to this
big family dinner, and I had to put on a cheery face -- but I could
hardly look at Ben."
That was how Ann Davidson learned that her older son was gay. As
it turned out, she was one of the last to find out. That night,
when she and her husband, Julian, were finally alone and could
talk, she discovered that Julian already knew. He had not told Ann
because he wanted her to hear it from Ben himself. Their other
son, 14-yea-old Jeffrey, had known longer than either of them. Ben
had told his brother sometimes earlier that he suspected that he
might be gay. After he fell in love with Alan, Ben introduced him to Jeffrey.
Julian Davidson, who is a 55-year-old research scientist at
Standford University, discovered Ben's homosexuality inadvertently
from Ben's physician, a family friend. One day when Julian asked
casually about Ben's health, the doctor said Ben was fine, but that
his "changing life-style" had occasioned some concern. "I didn't
say anything more, and the doctor didn't say anything more," Julian
remembers. "He thought I knew, and I had only suspected." Not
long after, Julian brought up the issue to Ben directly, and Ben
told his father the truth: After a painful struggle he had
recognized and accepted his homosexuality. He had met and fallen
in love with Alan -- and for the first time in his life, he said,
he was happy. For the Davidsons, at first, there was sadness. "I
was not devastated," says Julian, "but I was concerned for several
reasons. First, I realized Ben was in a minority that tends to be
persecuted; second, he won't have any children' third, AIDS -- I
really hope he does not get sick." Julian also feared that, as
men, he and Ben would lose something -- "it might seem "as if we
belonged to different breeds."
In the days that followed, Ann too worried about Ben and herself.
"I thought other people would dislike him, reject him, and I didn't
want him to part of a despised minority that people call names. I
worried about AIDS. But mostly, I worried that he'd be lonely and
hurt and rejected. For myself, I worried what other people think
of me as a mother."
So began an emotional two-year journey for the Davidsons as they
denied, talked about, cried over, grappled with and finally
accepted their son's sexual orientation. They say that they have
come a long way, that most of their early fears have given way to a
new sense of love and pride in their son. Today they counsel other
families who are trying to understand and accept gay children. For
these parents, like the Davidsons, one of the early hurdles is
learning what homosexuality is and how to seperate reality from stereotypes.
Alfred Kinsey's studies on sexuality in 1947 and 1953 showed that
about 13% of all men and 7% of all women were exclusively
homosexual throughout their lives. This figure, still acepted by
social scientists today, means that in the United States about 23
million people are homosexual.
But Ann and Julian had never known anyone who was openly gay. They
had accepted the stereotypical images of homosexuals: limp-wristed
men or masculine-looking women. Because Ben didn't fit the
stereotype, they secretly tried to convince themselves that he
wasn't really gay.
Says Ann, "I thought, 'This is a phase.'" But as she gradually
accepted her son's homosexuality, she wondered if there had been
indications during his life that she had ignored.
She thought about his childhood. His kindergarten teacher had told
Ann that Ben did not play with typical "boy things." Instead, he
was creative and artisitc. "I don't believe that every soft,
creative boy is going to be gay," Ann says now, "but my feelings
always were that he did not play easily with other boys. He always
made friends with mavericks, loners. He did not play ball; I had
to push him into the Cub Scouts. So I always had these fears, not
that he was homosexual but that he was alone and isolated."
For a while, she blamed her husband for Ben's homosexuality.
"Julian was very preoccupied with with his career when the children
were small. I wanted Julian to be around more. So when this came
up, I, of course, said to him, 'You see!'"
After Ben "came out" to his mother, he and Ann talked it out. "I
realized I had always pushed him to be more of an all-American boy.
As a result he always felt that I did not approve of him and
rejected him," Ann says. "I saw that now that he didn't have to
hide this big part of his life, Ben was happier than he'd ever been."
The talks were a turning point for Ben and his parents. Ann and
Julian, married 24 years, could not envision Ben's future: "The
idea of a promiscuous, anonymous sexual lifestyle turns me off,"
Ann said. But Ben was able to reassure them, explaining that he
was commited to a long-term relationship, just as they were.
Ann also had to grapple with her feelings that homosexuality wasn't
"natural"; she felt it had to be a conscious "choice" that Ben had
made. Yet after talking to Ben and reading about the subject, she
came to believe that homosexuality is an "orientation," determined
early in life by factors that are not yet understood.
Gradually the Davidsons realized that Ben had not chosen to be
homosexual any more than they had chosen to be heterosexual. In
fact, he had tried for years to convince himself that he wasn't gay
and to behave as he thought "real men" behaved. But then the
burden of the secret became too heavy. He wanted to be honest with
himself about who he was.
Julian did not have a great need to talk about Ben's homosexuality
except with Ben and Ann. But Ann felt terribly alone and she did
not know where to turn for support. Finally, she told one friend,
the mother of a lesbian. "I felt so isolated with this secret,"
Ann said. "She was the first person I went to because she wouldn't
criticize me as a mother. She had always talked very openly about
her daughter, for which I am very, very grateful. I now think it
is extremely important for people to speak out, for gays to come
out and for families to come out. The more people who do, the less
aginizing it is to go through the adjustment."
Over the course of that first year, Ben's relationship with both
parents -- to the surprise of all three of them -- improved. "The
easiest part of it is that I really love this boy," says Ann.
Julian's fears that they would grow apart as men were not realized.
In fact, for Julian, his son is more enjouable than he's ever
been. "Ben has become easier to get along with and much easier to
talk to. He's finally found himself and that is a beautiful thing
to see. And it helps that his lover is a fellow I've come to like a lot."
The time finaly arrived for Ann and Julian to meet Alan. They all
decided to go out to dinner together in Santa Cruz, where Ben is in
school. By the time the evening of the dinner arrived, all three
Davidsons were extremely anxious. "Alan, bless his heart, broke
the ice," Ann remembers. "He said, 'Boy, this is strange.' And
then we could say, yes, it really is, and we were fine. I look
back on it now and I say, 'What was the big deal?' but I truly
didn't feel that way then." Last fall Ann and Julian moved into a
three-bedroom house in Bethesda, Maryland, so that Julian could
work at the National Institutes of Health. Ann, still confronting
unresolved questions about Ben, heard about an organization called
Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. or "Parents FLAG," as it
is commonly known.The group was an eye-opener. Both parents and gays come to
meetings to discuss the issues concerning homosexuality, including
how to tell family and friends about it. Ann met many gay people
and their parents, and she was, in her words, "overwhelmed by the
normalcy of these people." She experienced the most important
important emotional boost Parents FLAG offers: "You learn you are not alone."
Julian started attending Parents FLAG with her, and by spring, the
two of them were participating in workshops for kids and parents.
Julian thinks that a child's homosexual orientation may be more
difficult for fathers to accept than it is for mothers. "It seems
to me it's harder for fathers because of the whole macho thing.
It's not 'carrying on the line.' We don't have as many fathers as
mothers in the Parents FLAG group, which is an indication, I think,
that men find coming to terms with it mire difficult." When he
counsels other fathers, Julian says, "I make positive comments.
People complain about how hard homosexuality is to accept. I don't
find it to be easy, but I try to stress that there is a worthwhile
side to this."
Ben says he's very proud of his parents. "I felt compelled for the
sake of my own integrity to tell them." he says. "It was
something that was making me happier than I'd ever been, and I
didn't want to degrade my experience by having to lie about it to
them. I now feel much closer to both my parents."
For Ann and Julian there are still parts of Ben's life that are
difficult to accept. They worry about AIDS, though that is not a
concern for the moment because Ben is involved in a serious,
long-term relationship with Alan. As Ann puts it, "I think if you
asked me if I would prefer that Ben be heterosexual, I would say
'Yes,' because it is a much easier life. But I think it will be O.K."
Most people when they move into a house will hook up cable and pay for it, right?
... 2 CDs? Not the best comparison I'd say.
Riiight. At $40/month I'm willing to pay for cable, that buys me about
Never argue with an idiot, he'll just lower you to his level and beat you with experience.
It's obvious that these kind of services are doomed to fail. Kazaa and its ilk will coast on by, by the many people who love to download porn and such using it. Of course, as we all know, with the advent of DVD albums and the portable DVD player, it will be harder and harder for us to crak music. Celine Dion's CDs are among the first to be uncrackable and the coming of more can only mean that the MP3 sharing will decline into nothing. Who likes old music, anyway... digital or not, it's a well-known fact that music loses over 95% of its' popularity (online and offline) after approximately 8 months of release.
So, paying for music again is in order. Who cares? Well, Linux users. Linux, which has low quality DVD writing drivers will evidently not be the operating system of choice for the multimedia user. IF you all actually informed yourselves you'd know that the paid services provided by those music companies have the songs readily encoded in both CD-compatible and DVD compatible formats.
What's up, Doc?
I've been trollin' on slashdot so early,
I've been trollin' here since my momma was a baby,
Just because the site is homo
that don't mean you can't troll
Logged-in or AC
*Logged-in or AC*
You got to got to troll
*You got to got to troll*
Logged-in or AC
*Logged-in or AC*
You got to got to troll
*You got to got to troll*
All you ever need is to be dumb and crappy
*All you ever need is to be dumb and crappy*
All you ever need is to be dumb and crappy
*All you ever need is to be dumb and crappy*
Remember to get mod points the key is to suck up
Mod the bad ones down to keep the good ones from going up
I can sell a crappy linux box like this
*I will try to sell a crappy linux box like this*
I can sell a crappy linux box like this
*I will try to sell a crappy linux box like this*
I never dreamed it would be like this
Slashdot encourgaing trolling at number 0
The post over here is total junk
*The post over here is total junk*
CowboyNeal is one sick fuck
*CowboyNeal is one sick fuck*
Oh yes, trolling is a lot a lot of fun
I've had some yucks and now I'm on the run
Logged-in or AC
*Logged-in or AC*
You got to got to troll
*You got to got to troll*
Logged-in or AC
*Logged-in or AC*
You got to got to troll
*You got to got to troll*
haha let me tell you something I've never told before
I will try to troll everything, everything
*I will try to troll everything, everything*
You will try to troll everything, everything
*You will try to troll everything, everything*
Karma, karma, karma is nothign that you need
*Karma, karma, karma is nothign that you need*
Karma, karma, karma is nothign that you need
*Karma, karma, karma is nothign that you need*
Heh heh, Cmdr Taco will be very proud of you
Let me know if you ever troll another site
I will help you, or you will help me
*You got that right teacher, thanks alot!*
-Parappa
This violates our civil liberties, plain and simple. See the following for more information.
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
If they people can't make money, no one will make music. Making great music takes BIG money, that's why CDs cost $20+. You all seem to think music just comes out of thin air.
How many subscribers do you hope to have in a year?
I don't give out subscription numbers.
Translation: We don't have that many. It's embarassing.
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
I urge you all to save Internet radio by sending a free fax to Congress. There's not much time left.
Hello slashdot creatures,
It was brought to my attention that my name has come up in recent slashdot posts. It's true, I've been away for a LONG time. I am a VERY busy person, enjoying every single minute of my completely unique and never-to-be-repeated-for-all-eternity life. I have little time to waste with you idiotic freaks. Nevertheless, I am taking this opportunity to GRACE you with the knowledge that I will once again TRY to take a few minutes out of my beautifully constructed life, to post here with my profound grammatical insights.
You might be saying, "Teh Grammar Patroll, how are we to gain the benefit of your wisdom, if we don't know when or where you will post?" You might also wonder to yourself, "Teh Grammar Patroll, how can you help us with our written communication skills, now that slashdot is limiting people to two logged-in posts per day?"
Those are good questions. Unfortunately for you, I cannot give you advance knowledge of my posts. I'm not superstitious by nature, but I guess in this case a certain amount of "luck" will take you a long way.
As for the second question, again, you will just have to get along with whatever I can give you. It's not my fault slashdot "editors" are so short sighted.
Which brings me to another point. Why do I post here? Again, good question. 99.9% of you contemptible creatures do not even deserve to receive the benefit of my knowledge. If I met you on the street, I would not bother to give you the time of day. I can't say with 100% certainty why I post here - I suppose even a misanthropic technical writer can have a soft spot for his fellow humans, even if he does find them utterly repulsive. I do admit that part of why I post here is to at least try to do my bit to reverse the complete lack of competence among todays "writers" and self-proclaimed editors. You might joke about me and my posts but I'm telling you, you will get NOWHERE in this world if people don't listen to you, and nobody is going to listen to you if you cannot communicate without sounding like an uneducated embicile.
Another, slightly more lighthearted reason why I post here is to demonstrate - as if we needed any more demonstration of this - that slashdot's comment moderation system is ill-conceived, broken, and ultimately worthless. Are my posts off topic? You bet they are, punk. My posts are also the most thoughtful, informative posts you will find on this website, bar none. My posts DEFY moderation. I labor on, in the hopes that the owners of this site will see the folly of their ways, and at least try to listen to what their readership is telling them instead of going off on their Jerry-Springer "whatever, dude" power trips (that means you, Taco). This is probably a complicated exercise in futility on my part, but hey, I have to try.
So take heart you hateful, worthless, witless little drones, and look for more of my posts in the near future.
Take care,
Teh Grammar Patroll
PS I'm sorry to tell you that I have NO time to read and respond to your replies to my posts. In the vast majority of cases, your messages are UNWORTHY of a response from me. In any case, slashdot is going to limit me to two posts per day, and why would I waste them on you?
It's been said before, but I'll say it again: www.emusic.com has it right.
$15 or $10/month (depending on whether you sign up for 3 months or a year), for
all-you-can eat, no digital "rights" managment, mp3 format music.
You believe the cable analogy will apply to music downloads?
I could see a similar thing happening in the music space. What's the business model of Kazaa or Morpheus? How will they make money to support being around long term if the idea is to steal it and give it away for free? And for the average person, you see more spoofing where files were named the same thing, but it wasn't an actual Eminem song, or it was just a couple seconds of it. And the file quality isn't consistent, the directories sometimes are wrong, you get viruses. If we actually offer a product that is extremely convenient, seamless to use, the file quality is guaranteed, the download times are optimised, and it comes with lots of other unique features that make a seamless experience. Would people be willing to pay for that? Absolutely. Over time will it marginalise pirate services? I think so.
Is this guy serious. He likens music trading to the cable tv industry where the value added services provided by cable over tv (better quality signal, improved channel guides, more content, etc) can be provided by his service to cause people to convert from pirating mp3s. First of all, I do not see how he expects to create anything better than mp3 because of the sheer entrenchment that this format has. The quality out there is the generally 128kbit which is not necessarily the greatest but the general populace decided that it was the best bitrate for them. Be it speed of download or that audiophiles aren't all that plentiful. The reasoning does not matter. It simply means that people have already decided what format they want.
McGlade is never going to provide enough value added services in my opinion to actual sway most of the people out there. I believe that the best the music industry can hope for is that people who listen to mp3s enjoy them enough to purchase the albums. He can't provide more content since all the popular songs are the ones distributed on the p2p systems. He might have a chance with the less popular ones.
Channel guides have an interesting correlation. If they can make it easier for people to find songs they enjoy listening to then they may be able to get people to subscribe just to find more songs they enjoy. People will pay for that service. They will not however pay extra for "untethered" (non-DRM media).
my 2c
Until someone gets a universal database that works, with per-song pricing, I don't think anyone will budge.
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Can You Get to That?
The Cosmology of P-Funk
Scot Hacker
Excerpted from Pagan Kennedy's
Platforms: A Microwaved Cultural Chronicle of the 70s
For the religiously inclined, P-Funk [1] offered up an entire array of minor gods, an intangible and omnipotent metaphysical reality (the funk itself), and a whole flotilla of ministers (actually a loose-fitting assemblage of crack musicians and crackpots dedicated to the administration of an entire cosmology). The roots of this church lay deep in the African polyrhythmic pantheon; its disciples ("Maggotbrains" or "Funkateers") consisted of anyone who sought a quasi- cohesive view of a universe which included a god who danced, and who knew that having a loose booty to shake was as crucial to the keeping of the faith as the rosary was for the Catholic.
While their ministers were many -- a constantly evolving line- up guaranteed the elasticity of the band -- it is undeniable that high pope George Clinton wore the miter. From the cryptic, ridiculously bent versifying of the liner notes to the album sleeve art production (which narrated the genesis and mission of the band in a series of ongoing, albeit disjointed cartoons) to the inception and direction of the outrageous stage production -- a black sci-fi extravaganza / space party that could cost upwards of $350,000 [2] -- Clinton wielded the scepter of Funkentelechy, and wore the righteous robes of the Afronaut (actually Holiday Inn bedsheets covered with Crayola scribbles).
But what was the aim of this religion without proscriptions? To what heaven, to what Nirvana did it aim? Like good gnostic Bacchanalians, P- Funk had the good epistemological taste not to define their vision of the great beyond too specifically. With commandments like "Shit! Goddam! Get off your ass and jam!", you knew that whatever, and wherever "the beyond" was, it was going to be funky.
But you knew very well what was going to take you there: the same vehicle from which George descended out of a massive blue denim cap and down to the stage in bad-ass righteousness: The Mothership. Just as protestants distinguish between the icon of the Messiah and the true, ineffable spirit, we knew that George's silver saucer was but a model -- a mechanical and ideological messiah figure represented in the terms of the day, as the glory of UFO contact for a generation reared on honky Star Trek and honky Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But it didn't matter whether The Mothership was a prop [3], because the hallmark of a myth is that you don't go peering around behind the curtain -- you simply believe. As usual, P-Funk co-opted the pop mythology, made it black, and made it intergalactic -- in this case the mythos of (funky) contact.
And so shows began with the descent, and ended with the subsequent Assumption, of what was at once a symbol and a reality: Clinton's arrival on the scene in his glorious ship through backlit fog and the incantations of the crowd: "The Mothership connection is here!" Disciples held aloft the Mothership mudra in invitation: index and pinky fingers extended upward, the rest of the fist curled. Was this an extrapolation on the black-power fist?, i.e. black power plus archetypal twin steeples-toward-God? Perhaps, but this mudra goes farther back than that. In yoga, this posture of the fingers is held in stillness to channel Chi into the body through the arms and into the chakras. Tibetan art and sculpture sometimes depicts goddesses with one hundred arms in a vertical fan arrayed around the body, each hand signalling the imminence of the Mothership. In the sign language of the deaf, the same hand symbol means "I love you," and is also seen depicted sometimes on stickers attached to the bumpers of deaf people's cars (ostensibly as a signal to cops and emergency vehicles that the driver may not hear the sirens) but more likely as the signifier of membership in the society of riders of the everlasting funk wave -- to demonstrate that deaf people are cosmic love surfers. Funk doesn't have to be heard because the aural music is only a physical manifestation of the yet deeper, noumenal galactic vibe, which is always felt by one whose receptors are tuned to Channel One.
If the Mothership beckoned us aboard, where would it go? Certainly not to Palm Beach, Florida, to see Tony Orlando and Dawn. Not to Vegas to watch Tom Jones, although he's funky too, in the same way that Velveeta is funky because it's mucilaginous. Let's supppose for a moment that the Mothership returns metaphorically to the motherland, to Africa. Maggot Brains didn't come to America on the Nina, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria, and they ain't going back on them, neither. When Cap'n George is at the helm, you know you're going to ride in outrageous style to your repatriation. The Mothership takes off in the middle of a concert in Detroit and lands in the middle of a Yoruba fertility dance. The scenery changes ever so slightly, but the song remains the same.
This repatriation theme dovetails nicely with a semiotic breakdown of the dual meaning of "funk". The musical definition is apparent -- it is that which moves, irresistible, an ineluctable conclusion of motion ("dedicated to the preservation of the motion of hips"), and of course it's always On The One. The other usage of the term refers to the smell of funk -- earthy musk, the purple smell of global vagina, the source of jazz in sweat, saxophone jism, the smell of spontaneity and origination, funk giving birth to funk, the fertile rhythms of the song cycle life and death, conception and birth in dirt and secretions, the visceral funk of sweat and sex, pussy rotation, the stank thang, the glory of juices in vapor reacting at base level in the gut, gut bass thumping spleen... in all fertility awareness the funk figures as smell, cosmic progenation, funk of dame nature in labor harmonizing with funk of loose booty boarding the Mothership, the smell that leaves us "standing on the verge of gettin' it on."
So when I say that the Mothership represented a vehicle of repatriation, I don't mean that P-Funk were Zionists -- quite the opposite -- they took all the cheese America had to offer and ran with it, taking the fashions and technology of the day to their ultimate, preposterous conclusions, amplifying the aesthetics of the 70s into a throbbing, fish-eyed cartoon of itself, and in so doing glorified American culture and their role in its continuing evolution.
Thus, as platform shoes were becoming merely popular, P-Funk was giving us the amplified version, wearing knee-high silver boots with nine-inch heels ("hoofs decked out for atomic toe-jam action") back when Gene Simmons was still playing air guitar in his mother's bathroom mirror. When the revitalizing puissance of pyramid power began to take hold in the collective consciousness, P-Funk gave us a stage show that included a Claes Oldenberg-like floppy pyramid (what could be funkier than a soft monolith?) When A Clockwork Orange brought the cod-piece to our attention, Clinton had to wear one the size of a loaf of Wonder Bread, covered in rabbit fur, natch. When the boxy virility of the Cadillac trickled down to the working class as a symbol of status and cool, George Clinton began arriving on stage in a likewise soft-n-floppy silver lame' roadster, the engine compartment of which opened like coffin doors to reveal George in full funkateer regalia, dripping in feathers and ermine, ready to rise from the dead and do it to you in your earhole.
No, it was not a question of repatriation. P-Funk's brand of black freedom was not Malcolm X's. Returning P-Funk to Africa would have been like returning Ling-Ling the Panda to China. The Mothership, as a symbol of the P-Funk gestalt, took funkateers out of the disco-dominated dance scene which smelled clean and felt rigid, and returned them to the belly of the cosmos, where it smells skanky and feels rubbery. The Mothership symbolized the possibility of a spiritual, not a physical, return to blood and to roots, to the swirling gasses and dust of galactic conception, to the smell of freshly plucked wild yams, amorphous and still covered in the funk of the earth; of a return to a cut-loose, stink-up-the- place, get your ya-ya's out, freak on down the road domain where "Funk is its own reward".
P-Funk seemed to believe that music wasn't so much something that you made with your instruments as it was something that you caught with them, as if funk was out there in the form of an ambient residual energy left over from the big bang. It was as if their basses and horns were finely tuned, specialized antennae dialing into cosmic leftovers. Funk became a unifying presence -- the godhead as manifest to anyone willing to laugh and boogie at the same time. "One nation under a groove, gettin' down just for the funk of it."
Despite all of their self-inflatulatory bravadaccio, P-Funk were nevertheless unflaggingly humble before the great unnameable face of the big cookie. Such humility is a necessary underpinning to any sincere encounter with or metaphysical proclamation on the nature of mind- universe. Without it, they would come off as self- serious charlatans, wielders of the scepter of pompousness. But their cosmology combines the best of the principles of the world's great gnosticisms. The sense of undifferentiated cosmic unity inherent in Buddhism, the paradox, humor, and dance of Sufism, the ecological implications of quantum mechanics via the implicate order of the universe's interconnectedness, and the surrealism of psychedelic awareness. "We're just a biological speculation, sittin' here vibratin', and we don't know what we're vibratin' about."
"Everything is on The One y'all, can you get to that?"
When The One comes down, and bulbs of sweat pop from Star Child's brow, and the bass thumpasaurus slaps its cosmic tail against a lighted dance floor, every boo-tay in the house meets its neighbor as hineys mash together in plush synchronicity. Being "On The One" means never having to call your choreographer, because he would only mess things up. The unity of the dance is given unto the dancers...it is not their responsibility to keep in step, but their priviledge to have "The One" channeled through the band's antennae and onto the dance floor. Even if you have no intention of dancing, your protons are going to go ahead without you. It can't be helped.
But "The One" is of course also the cosmic one, the unified field of awareness, or in Hindu terminology, Shiva, the dance itself. Funk is like the carrier wave which is channeled through the eye of the floppy pyramid, through Clinton's multicolored dreads and through sunglasses that could shame Elton John. Throwing down on The One with every coil of DNA at their disposal, flopping plasma braids, flopping groove lines like fish out of water funking on deck, they did for togetherness what disco could only dream. P- Funk was the "us" to disco's "me". The ego wasn't the thing... the thing was the funk. To strut and to partake, not just to strut. The "partaking of" was the reason that P-Funk had the essence of religion when disco did not. It was a "participation in", and the crowd could be as bad-ass as the band. By coming to jam along, you were taking sacrament, not stage. There were no John Travoltas because Travolta had the moves but none of the soul. P-Funk was all soul, although even they couldn't begin to tell you what soul was. "What is soul? I don't know! Soul is a hamhock in your cornflakes... Soul is a joint rolled in toilet paper... " But whatever it is, they had it because they were it, and they were it because they partook of it.
And this is why disco was so often soulless: it didn't stink! Disco has no smell because it is clean, a product of the deodorant movement, revelling in crystal clear white polyester, cocaine, and mirrored balls, in perfumes that mask and repress the funk in its carnal primality. Sure there is sex in disco, but it is nude, not naked, without clothes, but never exposed. It relies on the veneer of soaps on the body as much as it relies musically on the whitewashed veneer of danceability. Beats without The Beat. The sweat is not integral to the music, as it is in funk, in jazz.
Colonel Tom wiped Elvis' forehead after each song; the sweat was there because Elvis worked, to be sure, but its presence was denied in the classic Victorian tradition by way of its immediate elimination from the stage. For P-Funk, sweat was the nectar of the scene, was the oil that lubed the gears of the galactic funk machine, funk is "Cosmic Slop". Rather than deny its grip, P-Funk wallowed in the aroma, celebrated it, acknowledged its putrefying stupefaction quotient as part of the equation. Witness this celebratory testimonial to the deep and effervescent mojo of a (presumably) just-danced-in pair of panties from the grind/groove "Funky Woman": "She threw them in the air (funky woman), the air said this ain't fair! She hung them on the line (funky woman), the line it start to cryin'..." While these accolades may sound at first more like insults, the ineluctable wisdom of Star Child scripture must be perpetually borne in mind: "And all that is good -- is funky."
Let's illuminate the point further with an analogy to biker consciousness. To deodorize the funk would have been tantamount to stripping the Harley-Davidson of its characteristic irregular heartbeat. Harleys appeal to some bikers for just this reason: they are machines that rumble in a time zone of non-euclidean geometry, whose engines sound like free-jazz drummers. Hondas are efficient, but they lack that stochastic quality; the rhythm of their internal combustions can be predicted. Disco and funk have a similarly parallel relationship to one another. Disco sacrifices the pulse of the earth, a pulse which stinks of life, in exchange for the efficiency of the drum machine or the metronomic drummer. Because it is of the earth, funk's wave is not predictable like disco's or house music's -- it is elastic, organic, unpredictable and gooey. Funky music smells funky because it is a secretion, and not a form of logic.
So P-Funk has returned to claim the secret of the pyramids, partyin' on the Mothership, gettin' down in 3-D, to save a dyin' world from its funkless fate. How were P-Funk accorded this special priviledge? According to the liner notes from Standing on the Verge of Getting It On,
On the Eighth Day, the Cosmic Strumpet of Mother Nature was spawned to envelope this Third Planet in FUNKADELICAL VIBRATIONS. And she birthed Apostles Ra, Hendrix, Stone, and CLINTON to preserve all funkiness of man unto eternity... But! Fraudulent forces of obnoxious JIVATION grew; Sun Ra strobed back to Saturn to await his next Reincarnation, Jimi was forced back into his basic atoms; Sly was co-opted into a jester monolith and... only seedling GEORGE remained! As it came to be, he did indeed begat FUNKADELIC to restore Order Within the Universe. And, nourished from the pamgrierian mammaristic melonpaps of Mother Nature, the followers of FUNKADELIA multiplied incessantly!
Mother Nature gave us the funk because she loves us, and here is where Clinton and Nietzsche rub booties. Compare: "What is done out of love always occur beyond good and evil" (Nietzsche). "The concept of FUNKATIZATION was declared a Universal Law by Mother Nature, and therefore exempt from control by the Forces of Good, and those of Evil" (Clinton). So to be in love is to be in funk is to retain our natural state, i.e. to remain beyond the possibility of valuation. But, alas, we live in a world far removed from the benificence of perpetual love and funk -- we live in a world where humans pit themselves over and above Nature, and thereby incur the bummer of the Placebo Syndrome. It is thus our responsibility to evangelize on behalf of nature, that is, to bring an awareness of the funk we were born in back to the world. The squirm of a rubbery bass line and the generous application of the Bop Gun's stroboscopic, pulchritudinous salve to the scabbed and Placebo- pocked Nose Zone has the potential to bring us to a utopia of funk beyond what Nietzsche calls "valuation" and what Clinton calls "exploitive jivation."
Funkadelia is upon thee!...Verily, those soulfulifically jaded swashbucklers of agitproptic burnbabydom have descended from the Original Galaxy Ghetto to cleanse thy wayward souls through music worthy of the immortals themselves!...that what shall penetrate thine ears shall truly be a gas!...For the truth is the way, and Funkadelic is verily the truth! Awake not, and earth remains as this solar system's space strumpet...sour milk from the breast of Mother Nature!...The ass thou pimpest shall be your own! Cease all manner of exploitive jivation!
If Clinton sounds some kind of intergalactic messenger, or a prophet sent to us from the beyond, or a reincarnated shaman, that's because he is. And he's not the first to visit upon us a similar wisdom. He considers himself to have been spawned by the Cosmic Strumpet, along with Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and Sun Ra, in what must have been a furious blast of raw funk -- the Trans- African continuum rupturing at the seams, spewing these messengers in a single time-cycle into our life-stream for reasons outlined in Clinton's copious testament. Among his fellow emmissaries, he seems to have the most in common with Sun Ra, although Ra has been more subtle in the delivery of his message (perhaps he was allowed this because he, for the most part, addressed the generation previous to Clinton's -- a generation not already jaded by rock-and-roll bombast, machine-gun television, and the socio-politics of LSD). Both Clinton and Ra prescribed "Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy", both preached the origin of funk in the furthest recesses of the galaxy, both employed kinekaleidoscopic theater in their shows, fusing outrageous entertainment unabashedly with the most profound of philosophies / cosmologies. "Sun Ra? Yeah, he's out to lunch all right -- same place I eat at!," Clinton has remarked.
As if raw funk wasn't enough, Clinton's lyrics and profuse liner notes also took on social, political, economic, and environmental issues. The core of his message paralleled hippy ideology (by the mid-70s a dwindling phenomenon), but transcended it in virtue of its ability to laugh at itself. His style was simultaneously insane and right on.
The cover of America Eats its Young is a good example of the manner in which P-Funk takes the material America has to offer and turns it inside out. The fold-out cover depicts a dollar bill, accurately rendered in most details. The signicance of the "One"s at each of the dollar bill's four corners is not to be overlooked, and these are unaltered. However, the eagle in the Great Seal is clutching not branches of laurel and a fistful of arrows, but a hypodermic needle and an apparently kwashiorkor-emaciated child.
In the center stands Miss Liberty herself, eyes bloodshot, vampire fangs gripping the bloody arm of one of the children she cradles. Another child has half of its skull lopped off. The brain has been removed, presumably cannibalized by our most esteemed icon. The very fact that the cover is layed out as a dollar bill invokes Funkadelic's feelings about money -- that it can play the roles of both creator and destroyer... but mostly destroyer. While one track (called "Funky Dollar Bill") paints money as a grave threat in the wrong hands: "It'll buy a war / It can save a land / It pollutes the air / In the name of wealth / It will buy a life / But not true life / The kind of life / Where the soul is lost", another track ("Eulogy and Light") re-writes the Lord's Prayer as sarcastic honorarium: "Our Father, who art on Wall St., hallowed be thy butt... Forgive us our goofs, as we rob from each other... Thou maketh me to sell dope to small children... Thy destruction and thy power, they comfort me... My Cadillac and my pinky ring, they restore me to thee... And yay, though I walk through the valley in the shadow of poverty, I must feel their envy... For I am high, loaded, and all those other goodies... They go on with the Good God Big Buck."
In a paeon to the plight of the psychically brutalized veteran returning from Vietnam, "March to the Witch's Castle" describes the nightmare of readjustment after the happiest day in 13 years (Feb. 12, 1973 -- the day of the signing of the treaty which was supposed to have ended the war... but didn't). "Father, help him to understand that when his loved one remarried, she truly believed that he was dead, and would never return...Smile upon us, father, for we are weak, very weak." A rare moment of dead seriousness in response to that which can bear no humor. America truly was the Witch's Castle to returning soldiers. This was not a hyperbolically extended metaphor, but a direct and piercing picture of what was.
A somewhat more playful, but no less disarming protrait of the psychic investment in war is heard in Funkadelic's own "Revolution #9" a ten- minute, lyric-free sonic landscape called "Wars of Armageddon". Through the interplay of the long, slow-funk dirge, guitar screaming over the top, and an endless litany of disjointed sound effects (seemingly lifted right off one of those great sound effects records of the period), from low-ing cows to groaning orgasms to cuckoo-ing Swiss clocks, one can hear the collective psychosis, furious dementia, and the crumbling of sensible structure that accompanies the approach of demise, personal or public (and aren't they one another's crutches?). As for what kind of Armageddon Clinton is invoking here, we can only speculate. It could be Vietnam, or it could be our self-pimped biological demise ("The cathetic mumruffians of madness continue to hasten total biological Armageddon for the 'benefit' of consumerism...")
What is protest but a bowl of lame-duck pudding without suggested alternatives? Chocolate City is full of them, namely, recomendations on how to take over Washington, D.C.: "Yeah, they're still calling it the White House, but that's a temporary condition too," and suggestions on how to fill the new cabinet: "Mr. Stevie Wonder, Secretary of Fine Arts, and Miss Aretha Franklin, the First Lady." If Funkateers were running Chocolate City ("Hey, we didn't get our 40 acres and a mule, but we did get you, C.C."), would Watergate and Vietnam never have happened?
Sadly, their message didn't always get through to the pundits, and sometimes seemed to be swallowed up or obscured by the pageantry of the road show. In 1978, Bootsy Collins (master of the space bass) and Clinton were given a slap on the wrist by the Rod McGrew Scholarship Fund for Communicators with a Conscience, who apparently saw the group as a superficial glitter band, suggesting in no uncertain terms that the funkateers do something more ambitious with their popularity.
Direct attacks on the political machinery of the 70s crop up throughout the annals of the voluminous material P-Funk laid upon the earth. Nested deep within Sir Lleb's "Funkstrom Chronicles of Orbitron, [4]" a war is waged agaist the slime of 1974's political landscape. In this prophetic account, Clinton eradicates Nixon, Agnew, and the entire pentagon.
And by the gods, the P.F.T. berserker machine descended to even lower depths to battle with blasphemous malodorfied legions of maggot-coloured honkiteers! Guarding their reeking nest, the PIT OF PENTAGON, the foam- flecked degenerates filled the air with watergate buggers and ensnarling webs of mysterian tape reels! But, before our strength...their agnewesque attack vexed but their own destruction!
Naturally, the hero is awarded when "The Cosmic Strumpet of Funkadelia gazed uponst my sweaty bod with arduous satisfaction." However, in another display of final humility before the grace of TRIM in its eternal and universal manifestation (The Funk), he admits "I could handle it not!" Thus, able to take on the Pentagon but eternally humbled before the funk, the furthermucker (as critic Greg Tate calls Clinton) finds defeat in a penile shrivel before a yawning abyss of cosmic 'tang. As a result, he is returned to some kind of karmic holding tank, banished to live inside this mortal coil with only a booty to wave in salute toward The One: "I would wait in limbo for precious eons to become; HOT, NASTY, AND LOOSE!"
Although the mythology P-Funk propound, live within, and gas on may sound at first like an overblown reel at an animation festival for phreaks, everything within it has its place in a coherent ideology. Sir Nose, Star Child, and Dr. Funkenstein are not just leftovers from The Wiz, but a troupe of cosmic thespians who play out very definite roles in a more-or-less cohesive vision of what things are, in the face of what they could be. That is, they fulfill the same function as the villains and saviours in any religion or mythology. The only thing that prevents them becoming a religion in the usual sense of the word is the same thing that divides other cults and religions: size. When a cult becomes large enough, it becomes a religion, or at least takes on religious proportions. If enough people had really taken the P-Funk message seriously, there is no reason the movement wouldn't have grown from the status of a continually-beleagured fan club [5] and roving posse of fanatical funkateers to a fully-formed philosophy / pantheon / belief system that could have altered our spiritual landscape forever... or at the very least landed its own TV show.
Copyright ©1994, Scot Hacker
Footnotes
1) P-Funk is shorthand for one group that recorded under two names: Parliament and Funkadelic. To generalize crudely in distinguishing them, Parliament's music focused more or less on the dance floor, while Funkadelic had more of a psychedelic aspect. In general, Funkadelic were more serious than Parliament, but since most of the members were the same, there was a lot of crossover in style and message.
2) P-Funk's stage shows were actually written by Clinton, costumed by Larry LeGaspi (who was also haberdasher to The Who, Kiss, Patti LaBelle, and The Wiz), and designed by Jules Fischer, who also created sets for the Stones, David Bowie, and Kiss.
3) These days, it's not uncommon for the crowd to shout out, "Props! Props!" at P-Funk shows.
4) The ongoing, piece-meal, far-flung-yet-coherent narrative of P-Funk and its constituents' journeys, battles, and rank-yet- pneumatic sexual jamborees which is excerpted as if from nowhere and reproduced chunk- wise in liner notes. Perhaps these Chronicles exist in their entirety somewhere; perhaps they're the only remaining vestige of a long- forgotten transmission from Mothership Central -- the Rosetta Stone of funk.
5) The fan club, "Uncle Jam's Army," asked in its solicitations whether members wanted to be "duplicated, xeroxed, multiplied or divided" -- a phrasing which seems to ironically admit the danger of rampant clone-dom which lurks in organizing masses of people, i.e. the potential pitfalls of religiousification.
I just thuoght I'd let you know...
Why did /. even both with this one? The guy's just repeating the party line. Check some quotes:
Just like it wouldn't be hard to run a store where you just put everything on the shelves and people could just take what they want. You wouldn't stay in business very long, but it wouldn't be hard to do.
Confusing tangible property with music? That's the same mistake the record companies are making. You won't come up with any creative business models like that. In fact you'll come up with some pretty bad ones.
If somebody comes to our service and is looking for a song and they can't find it [...] they will now be forced off to a peer-to-peer site.
Forced to a peer-to-peer site? They are ALREADY on the peer-to-peer sites! What can you offer to "force" them to your site?
Well, I don't think you compete [with p2p], but you do create a service that has its own value.
Err, that's called "competing"..? I guess he assumes the p2p sites will all be shut down by the RIAA at some point.
What's the business model of Kazaa or Morpheus? How will they make money to support being around long term if the idea is to steal it and give it away for free?
If these guys can't make money, someone else will fill their shoes. Same as you, bucko. Better figure out how! And it's not "stealing" it's "copying".
[Everything MP3 already does just fine] are all things we have to do. But like I said, it's an evolution. You have to be able to download files permanently, burn them to CDs, transfer them to devices, use them on several computers, or else transfer them to other devices that can store and play back music. All those things will have to be part of that process.
Man, what is it with these guys. They think they are just wiping the slate clean and starting from scratch. What's the "evolution"? MP3 ALREADY DOES WHAT PEOPLE WANT. Do you understand?
MP3 files can be easily copied if they're not wrapped with any digital rights management. But if you have a DRM wrapper on an MP3 file, it wouldn't be readily accessible. It would have some restrictions in its use. You have streaming [...] which do have a DRM wrapper. So while you can download a file and listen to it, you'll be able to do various things with it.
Those sentences make absolutely no sense.. is he drunk??
And then you have what we call permanent downloads. In that case, you've actually purchased a track. Even if you no longer are a subscriber you can continue to use the music as you want because you purchased it.
Cool! Your service offers the same functionality as wax cylinders from 1895. Sign me up!
Digital/online music is all about making it easy for people to do the right thing!
No way would I sign up for some service where all my music could vanish if I miss a monthly payment! Neither would I sign up for some service which locked the music ONLY in my laptop and ONLY allowed me to play it under cirumstances that the RIAA deems acceptable!
The reason that online music has not fullfilled on it's promise so far is not because of the software isn't good enough or because no company has been managed well enough, it's because of greed on the part of the studio's. I'ts intimated in the story too....
As a consumer, I want lower prices overall, and I want more of the percentage going to the artist. I'm fed up with paying $15.99 for CD's while the RIAA gripes that they are being "ripped off". They are the one's ripping the artists off. I'd double again their percentage ( from $0.50 per CD to $1.50) if the industry produced a $9.99 CD. I'd pay $9.99 if it ment that I could download once and have rights to burn a spare for my car. The RIAA would save A BUNDLE under such a model, no physical media until my house, so RIAA pays almost nothing for distribution. I'd pay it because it's the right thing and because it's easier than driving over to the music store...
Problem is, they want more.....MUCH more!....RIAA want's to control HOW you listen...how often you listen, what equipment you listen on...they want to turn music into a "Pay-per-hear" system...(pay for home, pay again for car...pay again for friends house...pay each time you listen...etc)....Like the DVD, they also want to control what country you can listen in....I'm fundamently opposed to such a system, once I pay...it's mine to listen anywhere I am....I have lifetime rights to listen.....
Then there's the issue of "first sale" and RIAA's desire to get in on the used CD market.....charge twice for the same product...you no longer have rights that you would have with books....
I'm guessing that businesses like this (pressplay, music-net, etc) will exist only in the "shadow" for a while yet....the Record industry is not ready to turn anyone with a real business model loose yet....they are too busy hedging their bets right now.....I'm guessing that this outfit doesn't even have a long term contract to the music that they do stock for download. I'm guessing that it could be revoked in an instant if the studios wanted to...then they'd be out of business....and I've paid money for DRM with a company that doesn't exist anymore and rights which are not going to be honored by anyone....
I'll keep ripping and burning my own until the RIAA/Labels give me an alternative that I can accept....if not a better value, at least one that keeps the status-quo...
After years of collecting CD's many in my collection are so scratched that no matter what audio ripper I use, I can't get a decent .wav to encode from (poor poor Portishead), to bad there wasn't an initiative to enable people that own these CD's to be able to download the content of those albums free of charge through software verification. But then of course your buddy would ask you to borrow your CD so he could do the same. But I'm sure something could be done.
Well? It isn't.
You can not stop us.
We have the AC.
You die now.
Are you scared?
Death to commander Taco
Death to Cowboy Neal
Goatse is great.
Scream insanity! Now break!
Liberate your mind in two clicks or less.
.
Slashdot is loosing it. This guy is a no name looser. I've never heard of him, and the next guy you will interview is my garbage man. This is getting ridiculous. We need better guests.. This is an international site.
The same is not true for radio "programs", which normally shuffle schedules around and talk over songs
Except for talk radio. Perhaps the pop music radio stations do, but NPR and other talk radio networks generally don't. Recording "All Things Considered" or "Dr. Laura" is what the "radio TiVo" devices are designed for.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Making great music takes BIG money, that's why CDs cost $20+.
CDs cost $20 not because of production costs but because of Clear Channel's near-monopoly on bandwidth into a moving vehicle. Clear Channel Communications Inc. controls both XM and FM radio in many markets, through "independent" promoters who charge exorbitant fees for getting a recording aired.
How much does it cost for a tracker, a wave editor, a couple sample CDs, and a brain?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why do you think KaZaA and Morheus uses tonnes of banners and KaZaA has spyware? With over 100 Million downloads of KaZaA I don't think they has a problem getting money. They will only not make money if they loose it in law suits. And that doesn't even consider open source software like Gnucleus on the Gnutella network that is perfectly happy producing free software for all to use.
On a side note with the introduction of Super Peers for the Gnutella network I think it works as well as KaZaA, it just needs more users.
bukkake.
but where are my freakin' kittens?!?
I want cute and cuddly, like KDE3 (With the glow theme) or OS X or
at least a reference to the God's best creation -- Kittens. Instead I get
a boring interview with a person almost no one cares about.
Please Slashdot, realize that Linux needs more kittens!
This comment should be considered the online equivalent of my hot semen spurting onto your face and hair.
This is why we need to encourage popular and/or talented artists to fight the system. Aside from instrument and recording costs, distributing CDs via an online store or allowing song downloads at $1.00 a piece isn't really all that costly.
I could honestly see Radiohead or TMBG doing something like this in the future. Who knows, with the way Michael Jackson is acting in his current smear campaign against Sony Music, perhaps even the big-name pop artists will ditch the record companies some day. However, this won't happen until the corporations stop "blowing" the radio DJs (sorry for the crude analogy) to make them play their artists' songs 17 times a day.
w w w . e r i c k r o u t . c o m
1) What about lyrics distributed along with the song?
Many bands already give these away for free; if not, you can usually type a few key words of the lyrics into Google and get an unauthorized lyrics page. In fact, that's how I look up artist and title so I can preview a recording on winmx before I head over to cdnow to buy it.
Videos anybody?
Not very many people have cable or DSL yet. Few college students at home over summer break have broadband because the 1-year minimum service contract makes it cost four times as much as it does to anybody else.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Such a powerful mental image.
The argument used constantly on /. (and elsewhere) is, "I'd rather send my money to the artist, than to the RIAA..." Great!
Do you?
Do you go to that artist's website and buy a CD directly from them? Do you send them a check every time you nab a song off of gnutella? When your pal burns a copy of "The Greatest Hits of God's Favorite Band", do you send some $$$ to the guys?
If you do, excellent. You are avoiding the Recording Industry that will screw a band over for breakfast, and laugh over lunch at how an A&R rep has "this band by the short hairs...". You are helping to end an Industry that doesn't care what YOU want, only what they can market to you.
You are supporting artists who have incurred expense to bring their music to you.
They wrote it, arranged it, taught it to the band, rehearsed it, changed it, rehearsed some more, played it at a dive for $25 and two beers each, rehearsed some more, went into a studio, paid an engineer to roll knobs, move faders, and lay it on tape. They listed to it, rehearsed the vocals, and overdubs. They went back into the studio, paid the engineer some more to get that on tape. The engineer mixed it, gave it to the band, remixed parts again, mastered it to DAT or CD. They sent it to a duplication house, they paid to have artwork done, (saved money by doing some themselves), they purchased 1000 CDs. They paid to have a website hosted, (saved a little by doing their own site), drove all over consigning CDs at record stores (small independents). They played some more shows for 50 bucks each (show. not per member), they paid the soundman 50 bucks.
Repeat every year and a half.
This is just a taste of what an average unsigned band goes through to get music "out there". There are many exceptions to this example. Some can record at home on "lo-fi" equipment. Some never rehearse. Some don't play shows. Some release everything on gnutella for the hell of it. Some try to get you interested in their CD in this manner.
Add label interest and, well, look at the links below. The point being made is: Good music is hard to find for a reason. Being a GOOD musician (not to mention songwriter) is one of the toughest (and thankless) jobs ever! The artists who go though the trouble to bring this to you should be rewarded. After all, they could have just sat in the basement writing and performing for themselves, not worried about "how is this record going to do?". The next time you grab a tune off the net, think for a moment. If you actually sent your favorite artist some money for the work that you enjoy, that artist will be able to make more music. Finally, a win win situation.
Unfortunately, artists represnted by the Industry are in a different boat altogether. For some real examples of what it costs the major label band to be a major label band, see here, here, and here. Additional info here (my fav)
Yup. What was I talking about? That's right.
"Cowboy Neal, you Roxorz my sockorz." Said Commander Taco lovingly as they embraced. People on the street yelled at them to leave, but they wouldn't listen. They loved each other too much. As they hugged, and kissed, and laid to the ground, never letting go. "Commander Taco, you wowzers my trousers." Cowboy Neal said. "You're not wearing any." Commander Taco reminded him. As they hugged, the cars on the road honked at them. Not in support, but rather in a vain attempt to get them to move so they could pass. But Cowboy Neal and Commander Taco did not care about cars. The only form of transportation they cared about was the man train. Weeks upon weeks of playing Cho Anki and watching Men Alone II: The KY connection had come to a boiling point. Cowboy Neal had a big big hunger for man-taco. This would not be fully fulfilled, but he was thankful for the mini-taco anyway.
"Will you marry me, Cowboy Neal?" Commander Taco asked. "Of coarse I will!" he squealed giddily. They stared at each other akwardly for a moment. "Uh... where's the ring?" asked Cowboy Neal. "Oh! Right!" said Commander Taco as he assumed the goatse position. Cowboy Neal was up to his elbow in the spiciest of taco sauces. He never found the ring. That didn't stop him for searching for the next eleven hours.
Then they were both taken to jail for sodomy and raped in jail, much to their delight.
You can not stop us
We have the AC
You die now
Are you afraid?
Death to Commander Taco
Death to Cowboy Neal
EvilBob is Great
My fucking asshole neighbors keep me up every fucking night with their goddamn motherfucking music. If you nerds can put an end to music I will get down on my knees and give each and every one of you a nice big sloppy blowjob.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
viruses? in an mp3? Quick someone tell McAfee to update their jpeg virus scanner!
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exactly, I was pointing out that he really does compete directly with p2p even though he asserts otherwise..and there are plenty of things they can do beyond what p2p gives you now, such as reliable downloading and giving new recommendations based on what you're downloading so you can find new music.
But instead it seems they want to destroy all existing p2p and start from scratch, with less functionality than what p2p has now, instead of building on it.
MP3 files can be easily copied if they're not wrapped with any digital rights management. But if you have a DRM wrapper on an MP3 file, it wouldn't be readily accessible."
You must be kidding me. MP3 files can be easily copied no matter what you do to them. No matter how much you polish a turd, it's still a turd, right? Well, let's see. I right-click my MP3 file. I click "Copy". I right-click in another folder. I click "Paste". Well, I sure seem to have copied it!
"...the file quality isn't consistent, the directories sometimes are wrong, you get viruses."
So the file quality isn't consistent. But what the hell, it's fun using sound tools to change the bit rates so they're all the same. No, seriously, it's fun.
Directories sometimes wrong? Well, that's hardly a problem with the actual software, is it? If people do go around sticking up the entire hard disk drives so I can download their CVs and address books...
Viruses. Hm. Since when did downloading an MP3 give me a virus? Even if you do download executables, you can always stick it through the ol' virus scanner. You do have a virus scanner, right?
"What's your time line for making this service a success?
It's years.
But do you have years, though?
Sure... If we can show forward momentum and steady progress and continue to do all the things that I've been describing...then, yes, we do have some time. Time is required to build a long term, sustainable business and become mass market with online distribution of music in a legal way."
Don't delude yourself. You think you have a few years? Well, we've all seen what can happen in a few short years. Back in 1992, there weren't millions of people on p2p networks sharing music, warez, and pr0n. Fast forward a decade...
And online distribution of music in a legal way? Well, you don't seem to be going about it in the right way.
If I buy a CD, I have the music forever. You can't take it away from me once you take my cash.
If I buy one of these "MusicNet" MP3s, then I have to keep paying for the music, and if I don't, it's taken away from me with no refund? And even if I get a "permanent download", I still have to pay as much overall as if I just bought the actual CD?
What would you use?
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
to visit this site to understand how things happen
I am a musician too. It costs me tons of money for strings, etc., blah blah blah just like everything you said. But I play because I LOVE TO PLAY, I love to express myself, I love to perform for others and make them happy and watch them dance. I love to create. I love to play alone sometimes -- gently, sweetly & just for myself. People ask me all the time why I don't go pro & make money from the whole thing. Well, that would suck. Then it would be a job. If there's anything I've learned in this life is that when something loved becomes something that *must be done*, a lot of the magic drifts away.
The greatest performers I have ever seen, have been amateurs. Some of the worst performers have been trying to make a living at it.
Look up the history of that word. (hint, it doesn't mean someone who isn't good).
I have a real job. I'm into music for love, not money. When I play, the sentiment in the sound is obvious. Maybe that's the main reason why so much music lately has just sucked? That most of the folks that end up being recorded have lost their PASSION. Or maybe they never had it in the first place but just look good on video?
I dissagree that a monitary reward is what these artists have earned. Having people listen to your music should be reward enough for any artist. I love music, a lot. I love it enough to invest hours of my time listening to it every day. I do not however, attach a money value to it. Music is information, it doesn't play well in our system designed to deal with physical goods.
If you want to earn money, there are a lot easier ways to do it than making music. If you want to be known and respected, then music is the place to be. Case in point, look at the software engnieer that makes 90k a year, but gets treated like a horses ass. Then look at the musician who has his song pirated 10,000 times a day on gnutella. Who would you rather be? And if you say the engnieer then I've lost respect for you as an artist, and wouldn't pay for your shallow corporate music anyway.
I think it's time to re-evaluate the "value" of music. Of course it's worth something. That something just doesn't happen to be money.
Will this service work the same way as commercial radio, you will only get the songs from the artist which the record company thinks are worth promoting? (i.e crap)
I took a fast look at what they had to offer, and as alternative music they had: Gorillaz, Fatboy Slim, Red Hot Chili Peppers and some more. Not what I call "alternative" more mainstream music.
Well, I'm never going to subscribe to one of these services unless they have som alternatives to the britney spears music.
They're experimenting with that, as are others. And this has become a much more active conversation now about how to sell single tracks or entire albums online.
But I mean they're selling MP3s. They're selling files that aren't tethered at all for 99 cents a download.
Right, that's a permanent download."
Huh. Anyone know what that's about or have any URL? That sounds like something that would actually be remotely interesting.
This guy obviously doesn't know his enemy.
"the file quality is guaranteed,"
That's odd, all the P2P clients I've ever used told me the quality in number of hosts. Most P2P users don't intentionally host crap.
"the download times are optimised,"
And P2P clients also tell you the connection speed of a host. To optimize the download time, get the file from that guy with the T1.
"What's the business model of Kazaa or Morpheus? How will they make money to support being around long term if the idea is to steal it and give it away for free?"
The business model is to take cash from spyware vendors in exchange for sneaking their spyware into the client.
Of course, for an open-source client like Gnucleus, the point is to make music available, not to make money, which renders his argument moot.
And that is why P2P will outlast paid music: As long as there's open-source authors who want a P2P client, they will get it.
The world can be wrong today for once.
But surely pleasure is one of the most valuable things there is? And throughout history humanity has generally agreed that pleasure is a commodity that has monetary value.
Why do people study and work hard and compete to be well paid? Is it for money? no, it is for what they can purchase with that money, and once you are beyond subsistence (you have enough to eat, clothes to keep you warm, a roof over your head and transport to get you where you need to be) what you buy is pleasure.
Why spend money on an expensive car when a cheap one gets you where you're going? Because the expensive one is more pleasurable to drive, or more pleasurable to sit in, or more pleasurable to look at.
When you go to a fine restaurant and a chef prepares a gourmet meal that you love, you probably think that it's reaonable to pay for it, but you're hardly paying anything for the ingredients, in fact you're paying for his years of training, for the cost of upkeep of the restaurant, for the waiter who brings the meal to you, and for the guy who does the washing up afterwards.
You're not paying for sustenance, if that was all you wanted you could make yourself a nourishing sandwich quite cheaply, and do the washing up afterwards. You pay for the pleasure of eating a delicious meal (rather than a merely adequate one), the pleasure of being waited on, the pleasure of sitting in fine surroundings, and the pleasure of not washing up afterwards.
But when musicians and others involved - sound engineers, producers, technicians, roadies (not to mention secondary level connections like the guys who design and build the instruments and recording equipment, or the recording studio itself) - get together and work to produce music that you then listen to (whether at a gig or at home or in your car) because it brings you pleasure... you say this has no monetary value??
The music business does need a shakeup, record contracts are often incredible ripoffs for the artists, and I think that the business model where they expect to lose money on the vast majority of acts but make huge money on a few is way past its sell by date. And the RIAA's attempts to restrict where and how people listen to music they have paid a fair price for is offensive.
But when all the fighting and screaming and crying is over and the dust settles, there will still be people working hard to produce something that brings you pleasure.... don't you think that's worth paying money for?
I think this is what we should be working for too. The thing is, I see it as a "almost" cache-22 situation: the artists who are ready to do this are newer players like Radiohead, or are unknowns who don't get screwed by the current system. The people who are big-name already (my music world is rather limited; I'm thinking Whitney Huston [a bit old], the big country people, Britney Spears [yuck!]) are either too wedded to the system to change, ignorant of what's really going on [find that hard to believe], or one of the very few artists who actually do get paid handsomely by the industry.
I remember several months ago when I read that Whitney Huston was signing a $50-million contact with some studio, and I thought, "Why doesn't she just tell them to screw themselves, and set up an internet site?" She probably has more money than God(dess), and has enough fans that even if only 1/2 of them paid the 50 cents per song that's a reasonable cost, she'd still make out like a bandit. Of course, one reason is that not just anyone can dangle a $50 million carrot in front of people..
The cable analogy plays out. The signal on the pole is encrypted. The signal out of a decoder is not. You are free to connect your non-cable VCR to time shift the content. The guys in the interview know this will have to happen. Cable would not have sold if it had nothing but pay per view only viewable on cable equipment. Music to be sold on the internet will have to have the same level of ability to use on your rio, CD burner, Jukebox Device, etc.
From the article;
"
But right now they're offering more than you can offer. Let's forget about the size of the catalogues. You can put files downloaded off Kazaa or any of those companies on a MP3 player or record onto a CD. How far are you willing to go to offer legal music that can be transferred onto many different devices?
Those are all things we have to do. But like I said, it's an evolution. You have to be able to download files permanently, burn them to CDs, transfer them to devices, use them on several computers, or else transfer them to other devices that can store and play back music. All those things will have to be part of that process. And if I was just going to steal all the content I could do it tomorrow. "
This guy has a clue that may work. XM radio sells well. Cable TV sells well. You could hook XM radio to a sound card and make MP3's. You can hook a VCR to cable. It looks like the next generation of subscription music will have the same lack of a restriction (CD burning, MP3 player, MP3 Jukebox). As long is it isn't crippled by some pay per view encrypted service, it may have a chance of selling. What took them so long to get a clue? Now if the marketing department can get the sweet price point to sell it! Hint-- $100/month isn't it for the masses regardless of how it's marketed as for the price of 6 CD's.
The truth shall set you free!
Is their all you can eat table that barren? I could see a problem if they only had 1000 titles spanning six catagories. (western, swing, big band, polka, etc.) Is emusic.com's selection really that small? I guess it could be if they don't have the license from all the major players so their selection contains almost nothing that gets regular airplay.
Can anybody subscribing to emusic comment on the music selection or lack thereof?
The truth shall set you free!
Actually they can because they can gurantee the content. Have you experianced the looping files? Have you experianced the bad rips with clicks and pops? Have you had troll files (inapropiate material miss-labled (audio goat file)? Files miss-labeled to fly under RIAA radar? A well organized catalog of high quality files would be a big service that people will pay for. Would you have paid $10/month for a Napster that only had good rips, only at high bandwidth (no D/L from someone on dialup) from a Napster size searchable catalog, in MP3 format, and no monthly limits? How about if it were legal and there were no legal threats for using it? Sign me up! I'm on my way to buy some spindles!
(full disclosure time, I never signed up for Napster or other Peer-Peer network due to legal/moral issues. Make it legal with a subscription plan, and I'm interested!)
The truth shall set you free!
MP3's that sound like they're being broadcast over two tin cans and a wet string. I signed up for the service before I saw that everything was 128kbs, and that was REALLY a mistake.
Keep Austin Weird!
I'm not kidding! Not to this guy's service, but to Listen.com's Rhapsody service.
Why? 75% of the music I listen to comes out of my computer. Most of that are from CD's I own and ripped. Probably a quarter is downloaded via P2P.
Listen.com was the first to put together contracts with all 5 "major" labels, and more importantly (in my book) with a few dozen small labels. As a result, about 90% of the artists I listen to are included in Listen's catalog.
All of it, streamed on demand. Less than 2 seconds after clicking "Play", I'm listening to the song, at a quality indistinguishable from a ripped CD. (I'm listening on $500 bi-amped studio monitors. It's not quite audiophile quality, but nothing to sneeze at.)
No, you can't download the tracks. That's OK for me, since I don't rip music to an MP3 player. I do listen to CDs in my car occasionally, but mostly NPR.
Is it perfect? No. There are artists I'd prefer to have in the catalog (The Beatles being the holy grail of online music licensing). Barring that, I'd like to be able to combine network and local files on my playlist.
But comparing it to any of the existing P2P networks, it's undeniably more convenient having all the tracks available on demand. I don't have to try 3 different searches, then struggle through 4 downloads on slow connections that terminate 3/4ths through. I don't have to correct all the title, artist, and album information to get it in a usable form in my library.
It comes down to a pretty simple cost-benefit analysis: Does this service provide $8.33 a month worth of value to me? (They advertise the service at $10/mo, but you can subscribe for $25/quarter.)
Well, that's the cost of a movie, or 3/4ths of a CD. Will I get more than a movie's enjoyment out of this every month? Darn tootin'. So I pulled out the credit card.
If they start offering downloadable or burnable options, will I shell out more cash? I don't know. Maybe they'll provide a pay-as-you-go option for that.
But at $8.33/mo for an unlimited jukebox, I'm hooked.
You know what? I absolutely WOULD pay the artists directly. If I could send artists $5 through PayPal for downloading their album (which is $5 more than the record company would give them if I bought it) then, I absolutely would. Problem is that there is no way to get that money to the artist. There is no e-mail address that goes DIRECTLY to the artists, so their webmasters or fan club presidents don't steal the money. You find me a way to get money to the artists, and I'll do it.
Couldn't have said it better myself :)
Even if this is true, doing what you love can be hard work. You didn't just wake up one day and, with no musical background, pick up a guitar and play at your current level. You practiced, and played, and practiced, and played some more. You did it out of joy, so the challenge and hard work of those hours was fun, perhaps even welcomed.
Yes, artists should write/ perforrm for themselves first and foremost. The abillity to express oneself w/ music is one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced. When this talent is turned to writing/performing for a paycheck, the self-expression turns to self-doubt and pandering, pandering turns to the lowest common denominator, and that's what we usually hear on the radio.
I agree entirely. There is a subtle difference between my post and this statement, however. I speak for bands/artists that go to the trouble of recording and distribution themselves, with no label support. These people have obviously not lost their passion, either for making music, or for getting it out there for people to hear.
Should they get something for the song that is the 'friend' that you can count on, the 'company' as you drive, the 'adviser' when your relationship ends, or just something to listen to as you clean the house? You have the opportunity to decide.
Should you pay them once? Yes! Should you pay them every time you listen to the album/ single? NO! That would lead to a more stagnant music scene than we have even now, and enrich the **AAs as they would most likely demand a cut.
I suggest, if you enjoy what you are doing, to continue. I was lucky enough to make a living as a musician for two years. It was amazingly tough and rewarding; I count it as one of the best experiences I've had in music. Please do not penalize those who are trying to make a living at this. Go to shows, buy the bands music, and pass the word on to friends. You will be the richer one for it.
(Unless they're really bad, then throw tomatoes at them.