While I think I get your point. I'm not sure the statement:
If you want to stop anti-competitive practices, digital distribution needs to adopt the rules of radio
is a good way to start. Radio has never been a good place to look for healthy competition. However, the licensing strategy you are rightfully pointing out is to license all tracks equally to whoever is willing to sell. I think is noble but might not work the same way as licensing air play.
A limited time exclusive is often a pretty good promotional tactic especially because it is subsidized to raise brand (co-brand) awareness.
The sticky part is that there is collusion among the content owners (and artists are no longer the owners) over pricing, who can and can't sell and with which DRM.
I find it interesting that I can price/feature compare small and indie label music on iTunes vs Bleep and make a choice between cheaper or drm free/higher bit rate. I don't know if that can be done with major label music.
For the most part, I've tried to just give up on genre entirely. It rarely says anything of value anyway.
At first I thought this way, but the predefined genres are the things that are not helpful. It sounds kind of stupid, but before I started ripping my CDs I came up with a schema for genre before hand that made sense to me. Ok, please hear me out on this.
In my collection there are some varying degrees of Electronica/Techno what have you. Because it one of the biggest parts of my collection and I listen to that large genre in different ways (chill out, coding grooves, techno freak out, etc...) but in my mind hip-hop is just one thing. Or at least the hip-hop I buy generally falls in to the same kinds (Run DMC, Pharcyde, Beasty Boys and then a bunch of turntablists). But to me its hip-hop when I'm in the mood for it. I'm sure to someone else, there are some very important distinctions to be made in that category, but my collection isn't that deep.
Now for the largest part of my collection: Rock and/or Alternative & Punk. Ok, the Vandals and DK are punk- no two ways about it. But Nirvana? Is Nirvana all that different from The Who? How about Yo La Tengo and the Beetles? But sometimes I want to segment Bowie from AC/DC from Beck from Galaxy 500. Or do I. Ok, I did fudge on Industrial/Goth, and in my mind Tom Waits goes with Blues.
At this point you may think I'm a pretentious music snob (or my collection runs an absurd range) but the point I'm trying to make is that only I can make genre work. And I by work I mean for making "smart" play lists (coding grooven, hipster party, real R&B, etc...)
For fun, some of my other genres: New Wave (or is it Pop or Brit-pop or synth-pop, but not j-pop), Thrift Store (including Hawaiian, Novelty, Tom Jones and scratchy George Jones singes), Drum and Bass (for some reason I can't bring myself to include it with other electronica - and it is a specialized/limited collection). Where does Fatboy Slim go? I don't think of it as hip-hop nor as techno, but its not quite the same electronica as Stereolab.
Actually iTunes is both an MP3 player and an web browser, though highly customized. The iTMS is completly web based. Also there is no tracking. There is no database collecting and storing this information more than any other web server does. This is why it works with out being signed on. A string comparison is made much like and RSS feed when you click on a track.
The purpose of CSS Zen Garden is to demonstrate flexible and reusable CSS design with the same style sheet. It not for copying code with out adapting in to your environment. They made their choices for their purpose, you have to make yours for your site.
I write dynamic web apps all day long. Our style sheet was developed to set it and forget it. When the designer comes along and updates the look, all my apps work exactly the same with out me updating a single thing.
Maybe you should write better templates for your dynamic content.
The problem is that most people are thinking of how the "page" should look and code to that. Instead, try your design by thinking of what content am i presenting and then "how do I div-y up the content into display groups". If you really think that a table to hold two columns of information are better than two divs nested in a container div, you may want to rethink the purpose of the site and what you are trying to present.
Looking at the sites, I'm pretty surprised at the amount of file formats that are available. But it is also overwhelming. I don't have any particular kind of ebook reader. Sometimes I read off my laptop in bed, but its as not comfortable as a book to me, and I doubt I would ever sit at a desk and read long form text either. Of course no one is going to build the ultimate device to my specifications. Still, I'd really like a trade paperback sized document reader with bookmarks, searching and a dictionary. Oh well.
Anyway, it looks like Stross has several basic format, but the formats from Doctorow, and his legion of fans, is out of hand. PSP and iPod ready, two(!) kinds of Newton formats, cell phones and several kinds of Palm/Pocket PC. Cripes man. I suppose that is the benefit of CC and embracing your fan base: free conversions and translations, in addition to your regular marking. I'm sure there is a fetish subculture in there: painfully converting text files to obscure hardware/software platforms.
Still, I'll probably have to just order off of Amazon like a schlub. When are those roll-able OLED ePaper devices coming out?
I acknowledge that Tom DeLay wouldn't give a rat's ass about NASA if the Johnson Space Center weren't in his home district. This just is a typical effort to ladel out pork barrel funds to his constituents, no more, no less.
JSC is only recently in DeLay's district after some fancy, mid-decade district recarving. Mostly I suspect that DeLay wants the lobbying money more than space exploration. Kick backs from contractors is the name of them game. Add this to his "talk to the opposition and you don't get access" style of leadership and you have a nice, little money making district.
There was a piece on this in The Nation not to long ago. Sounded like the most likely scenario to me. (I'd link, but its subscriber only.)
Regardless of how much I love the subject matter, I refuse to buy individual issues. Guess I'll have to wait for a collected and bound book. As an Alan Moore fan, however, I'm used to the pain.
So what is your point? CNN is not the opposite of FOX. They are all corporate "news" outlets looking for ratings. They all distort for cash and access.
As web developer I agree with the bullshit call as well. Cookies are for sessions and should not sit around forever. In fact they should die at the time of a browser close or log out. No ifs, ands or buts. All those crappy apps that I log into, feh, they can get my settings when I log in again. Anything else is lazy programming with a capital z. Cant hack it? Go back to HTML.
It is interesting because (from the goddamn article):
So popular is the iPod, executives are increasingly sending out memos frowning on its use.
Microsoft doesn't currently make hardware, but the sure as hell make a competing media format. Balmer and co have made a lot of noise about the iPod as well. But the point is, how can you make an Apple killer if your own employees are using the competition.
Actually, the only Mac Virus I ever saw was on a CD from a some no name software vendor that my friend bought. She fired it up and the little worm got into the system. A couple of runs of Disinfectant and Disk Warrior got the iMac back in shape though.
Hey,if its a good enough system for striping people of their right to vote, it is certainly good enough to stop people from flying in an airplane. Nice.
There was just an article in The Nation about this, more on the political side than technical, but of the 4 major voting machines makers, all are heavy contributors to Republican candidates in office.
Of course it is the Nation, with a left wing biased, however, they do mention that may Democrats in office are for the no paper trail, electronic voting, but they got stung and are now out of office without a recount. Heh.
And, yes, it is all about money and Democrats are not immune from its influence.
Come to think of it, $1 per song is a complete rip off. If they were ogg encoded, I might give it some consideration at.50/song.
I've always considered $1 for a good song to be a great deal when thrift store record shopping. If the album contains 1 good song (good being a relative term) then I've done pretty well. Even better if I average that ratio over the course of a day's finds.
Now with iTMS, I am pretty much guaranteed that ratio. I know what song I'm getting and its usually one I've been wanting for a while. To me it is worth it. Also you don't have to buy a whole album or buy from RIAA members. It really is that easy. But if you don't want to do either, fine, but I get tired of those who pronounce judgment against those of us who do find it useful.
Eventually the computer industry will step in and say this is crazy.
That will only last for so long. In a few years a tech company can get in on the bill writing action and write themselves a big fat monopoly in conjunction with *AA of their choice. The temptation to lock out the competition will be to great. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. Maybe, because the tech industry still has some creativity left, but as it matures, I wouldn't count on it.
Leave it to Apple to make the digital line in for a MiniDisc finally useful. If I hadn't ditched my MD I'd use this to record iTunes play list to it (in real time though). Otherwise, I have no use for the NetMD check in/check out crap. Also, I've switched to computer based music management so the MD is out anyways.
Good quality at a lower bit rate. As a result, more content fits in the same space.
But the quality is subjective. 96k MP3 sound fine on my little player while walking and biking. I can fit more in the small usb key than if they were 128s or 160s. If the new format had the same quality at an even smaller bit rate, even better.
The drives are probably comming from Toshiba. See, Lee says that they are currently shipping 350,000 1.8 inch drives:
a planned expansion [by Toshiba] of drive production from 800,000 units per month
of combined 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch drives to 1 million by the end of this year
The article has some slopping editing. I imagine the 2.5 units are for the i/Power-Books.
Just wait until they enter the religious broadcasting market...
Seriously though, the vast majority of those 20,000 radio stations are religious stations. What we are talking about here is the pop music business. It like saying that Wal-Mart is on 6% of all the retail stores in the US. It may be a true statistic, but it isn't relevant to the discussion. Clear Channel is the king maker of pop music, owning the key radio stations and music venues. Additionally, radio has a long history of payolla and collusion. Slowly, these practices are being codified by law, like this "patent". The FCC, at the behest of these media companies, has made it very difficult to just turn the dial and find something of similar value. This isn't the free market. This is a market that the major players call the shots.
I'm not sure what you are getting at. These fans already exists. It has very little to do with experimenting. There are lots of magazines, radio stations, web sites and stores that serve people whom these bands fall under. There are entire communities who report, play and filter the "wheat from the chaff."
Its about perspective. The parent I replied to was dismissing a huge untapped marked simply because he prefers not to know who these bands are. The parent of this thread was being very subjective. To call these people nobodies is a terrible disservice to the fans and scenes they belong to. The bands on AudioLunchBox are already established even if the poster or you don't care to acknowledge it.
Off-label music is a vast utopia of excellent tunes ripe for the picking. If you don't care that's fine, but don't dismiss those who already do.
Just because they are independent doesn't mean they are nobodies. Many have huge communities where they work and play and within their individual scenes.
But maybe its just that you are so tuned into the L.A. entertainment machine that you can't imagine anything else. The world is bigger and much more diverse than you think.
Slashdot Mirror
While I think I get your point. I'm not sure the statement:
If you want to stop anti-competitive practices, digital distribution needs to adopt the rules of radio
is a good way to start. Radio has never been a good place to look for healthy competition. However, the licensing strategy you are rightfully pointing out is to license all tracks equally to whoever is willing to sell. I think is noble but might not work the same way as licensing air play.
A limited time exclusive is often a pretty good promotional tactic especially because it is subsidized to raise brand (co-brand) awareness.
The sticky part is that there is collusion among the content owners (and artists are no longer the owners) over pricing, who can and can't sell and with which DRM.
I find it interesting that I can price/feature compare small and indie label music on iTunes vs Bleep and make a choice between cheaper or drm free/higher bit rate. I don't know if that can be done with major label music.
At first I thought this way, but the predefined genres are the things that are not helpful. It sounds kind of stupid, but before I started ripping my CDs I came up with a schema for genre before hand that made sense to me. Ok, please hear me out on this.
In my collection there are some varying degrees of Electronica/Techno what have you. Because it one of the biggest parts of my collection and I listen to that large genre in different ways (chill out, coding grooves, techno freak out, etc...) but in my mind hip-hop is just one thing. Or at least the hip-hop I buy generally falls in to the same kinds (Run DMC, Pharcyde, Beasty Boys and then a bunch of turntablists). But to me its hip-hop when I'm in the mood for it. I'm sure to someone else, there are some very important distinctions to be made in that category, but my collection isn't that deep.
Now for the largest part of my collection: Rock and/or Alternative & Punk. Ok, the Vandals and DK are punk- no two ways about it. But Nirvana? Is Nirvana all that different from The Who? How about Yo La Tengo and the Beetles? But sometimes I want to segment Bowie from AC/DC from Beck from Galaxy 500. Or do I. Ok, I did fudge on Industrial/Goth, and in my mind Tom Waits goes with Blues.
At this point you may think I'm a pretentious music snob (or my collection runs an absurd range) but the point I'm trying to make is that only I can make genre work. And I by work I mean for making "smart" play lists (coding grooven, hipster party, real R&B, etc...)
For fun, some of my other genres: New Wave (or is it Pop or Brit-pop or synth-pop, but not j-pop), Thrift Store (including Hawaiian, Novelty, Tom Jones and scratchy George Jones singes), Drum and Bass (for some reason I can't bring myself to include it with other electronica - and it is a specialized/limited collection). Where does Fatboy Slim go? I don't think of it as hip-hop nor as techno, but its not quite the same electronica as Stereolab.
Then I asked my wife's thoughts on genre. Oy vey!
Actually iTunes is both an MP3 player and an web browser, though highly customized. The iTMS is completly web based. Also there is no tracking. There is no database collecting and storing this information more than any other web server does. This is why it works with out being signed on. A string comparison is made much like and RSS feed when you click on a track.
Do you fear RSS aggregators?
There is a funny/strange passage in Cormac McCarthy's Suttree about a kid who goes to jail for "Melon-Funnin".
The purpose of CSS Zen Garden is to demonstrate flexible and reusable CSS design with the same style sheet. It not for copying code with out adapting in to your environment. They made their choices for their purpose, you have to make yours for your site.
I write dynamic web apps all day long. Our style sheet was developed to set it and forget it. When the designer comes along and updates the look, all my apps work exactly the same with out me updating a single thing.
Maybe you should write better templates for your dynamic content.
The problem is that most people are thinking of how the "page" should look and code to that. Instead, try your design by thinking of what content am i presenting and then "how do I div-y up the content into display groups". If you really think that a table to hold two columns of information are better than two divs nested in a container div, you may want to rethink the purpose of the site and what you are trying to present.
Hell, at that point you might as well use Flash.
Looking at the sites, I'm pretty surprised at the amount of file formats that are available. But it is also overwhelming. I don't have any particular kind of ebook reader. Sometimes I read off my laptop in bed, but its as not comfortable as a book to me, and I doubt I would ever sit at a desk and read long form text either. Of course no one is going to build the ultimate device to my specifications. Still, I'd really like a trade paperback sized document reader with bookmarks, searching and a dictionary. Oh well.
Anyway, it looks like Stross has several basic format, but the formats from Doctorow, and his legion of fans, is out of hand. PSP and iPod ready, two(!) kinds of Newton formats, cell phones and several kinds of Palm/Pocket PC. Cripes man. I suppose that is the benefit of CC and embracing your fan base: free conversions and translations, in addition to your regular marking. I'm sure there is a fetish subculture in there: painfully converting text files to obscure hardware/software platforms.
Still, I'll probably have to just order off of Amazon like a schlub. When are those roll-able OLED ePaper devices coming out?
I got an early Popeye disc and a Tom and Jerry (from before they were a cat and mouse team) at target. Fun, weird stuff.
JSC is only recently in DeLay's district after some fancy, mid-decade district recarving. Mostly I suspect that DeLay wants the lobbying money more than space exploration. Kick backs from contractors is the name of them game. Add this to his "talk to the opposition and you don't get access" style of leadership and you have a nice, little money making district.
There was a piece on this in The Nation not to long ago. Sounded like the most likely scenario to me. (I'd link, but its subscriber only.)
Regardless of how much I love the subject matter, I refuse to buy individual issues. Guess I'll have to wait for a collected and bound book. As an Alan Moore fan, however, I'm used to the pain.
So what is your point? CNN is not the opposite of FOX. They are all corporate "news" outlets looking for ratings. They all distort for cash and access.
As web developer I agree with the bullshit call as well. Cookies are for sessions and should not sit around forever. In fact they should die at the time of a browser close or log out. No ifs, ands or buts. All those crappy apps that I log into, feh, they can get my settings when I log in again. Anything else is lazy programming with a capital z. Cant hack it? Go back to HTML.
Actually, the only Mac Virus I ever saw was on a CD from a some no name software vendor that my friend bought. She fired it up and the little worm got into the system. A couple of runs of Disinfectant and Disk Warrior got the iMac back in shape though.
Hey,if its a good enough system for striping people of their right to vote, it is certainly good enough to stop people from flying in an airplane. Nice.
There was just an article in The Nation about this, more on the political side than technical, but of the 4 major voting machines makers, all are heavy contributors to Republican candidates in office.
How They Could Steal the Election This Time
Of course it is the Nation, with a left wing biased, however, they do mention that may Democrats in office are for the no paper trail, electronic voting, but they got stung and are now out of office without a recount. Heh.
And, yes, it is all about money and Democrats are not immune from its influence.
I've always considered $1 for a good song to be a great deal when thrift store record shopping. If the album contains 1 good song (good being a relative term) then I've done pretty well. Even better if I average that ratio over the course of a day's finds.
Now with iTMS, I am pretty much guaranteed that ratio. I know what song I'm getting and its usually one I've been wanting for a while. To me it is worth it. Also you don't have to buy a whole album or buy from RIAA members. It really is that easy. But if you don't want to do either, fine, but I get tired of those who pronounce judgment against those of us who do find it useful.
That will only last for so long. In a few years a tech company can get in on the bill writing action and write themselves a big fat monopoly in conjunction with *AA of their choice. The temptation to lock out the competition will be to great. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. Maybe, because the tech industry still has some creativity left, but as it matures, I wouldn't count on it.
Leave it to Apple to make the digital line in for a MiniDisc finally useful. If I hadn't ditched my MD I'd use this to record iTunes play list to it (in real time though). Otherwise, I have no use for the NetMD check in/check out crap. Also, I've switched to computer based music management so the MD is out anyways.
Good quality at a lower bit rate. As a result, more content fits in the same space.
But the quality is subjective. 96k MP3 sound fine on my little player while walking and biking. I can fit more in the small usb key than if they were 128s or 160s. If the new format had the same quality at an even smaller bit rate, even better.
The drives are probably comming from Toshiba. See, Lee says that they are currently shipping 350,000 1.8 inch drives:
The article has some slopping editing. I imagine the 2.5 units are for the i/Power-Books.
Just wait until they enter the religious broadcasting market...
Seriously though, the vast majority of those 20,000 radio stations are religious stations. What we are talking about here is the pop music business. It like saying that Wal-Mart is on 6% of all the retail stores in the US. It may be a true statistic, but it isn't relevant to the discussion. Clear Channel is the king maker of pop music, owning the key radio stations and music venues. Additionally, radio has a long history of payolla and collusion. Slowly, these practices are being codified by law, like this "patent". The FCC, at the behest of these media companies, has made it very difficult to just turn the dial and find something of similar value. This isn't the free market. This is a market that the major players call the shots.
I'm not sure what you are getting at. These fans already exists. It has very little to do with experimenting. There are lots of magazines, radio stations, web sites and stores that serve people whom these bands fall under. There are entire communities who report, play and filter the "wheat from the chaff."
Its about perspective. The parent I replied to was dismissing a huge untapped marked simply because he prefers not to know who these bands are. The parent of this thread was being very subjective. To call these people nobodies is a terrible disservice to the fans and scenes they belong to. The bands on AudioLunchBox are already established even if the poster or you don't care to acknowledge it.
Off-label music is a vast utopia of excellent tunes ripe for the picking. If you don't care that's fine, but don't dismiss those who already do.
Why are they nobodies?
Just because they are independent doesn't mean they are nobodies. Many have huge communities where they work and play and within their individual scenes.
But maybe its just that you are so tuned into the L.A. entertainment machine that you can't imagine anything else. The world is bigger and much more diverse than you think.