I have to shrug and cheer on the napster kiddies- even though they're being dumb- honestly, there's lots of good music out there _already_ being made by people who understand this stuff. The big record companies, the MTV bands, are just locked in a sick codependent relationship and it's dumb to support it at all. People are frothing at the mouth over the 'right' to download metallica for free but... why Metallica, exactly? What have they done, what has Dre done that's so great? Open your mind, listen to other music- there is SO MUCH music out there of all kinds and people still fixate on what they are fed, like Windows users.
Still, whatever: never try and teach a pig to sing, etc.
The last time I posted to an mp3 thread on Slashdot, someone or other pulled me aside (in ASCII) and said, basically, "Give it up- people don't want to listen to you because you AREN'T metallica, you're wasting your breath". And certainly I've seen some evidence of that. But I've also occasionally seen a person or two like what I have to say, or like the music I pointed them at. Turns out I had some decisions to make- am I doing it to beat Metallica, or am I doing it for me, because I make music like some slashdothackers write code?
I chose the latter.
So, I went quiet for a bit, rather than arguing loudly that I ought to be listened to seven times in every mp3 thread. And since the last time I posted, I cut an entire new album, "Cirrus", which is the anti-metallica;) it's ambient music, with more of an edge to it than your usual musak ambient stuff, done with a synthesizer I took apart and hacked with the electronics of. I finished up the "Dragons" album, and made the CDs of both Cirrus and Dragons available (they're $5.99: a previous poster thought all CDs should be under $5. I'd do that in a heartbeat but $5.99 is as low as mp3.com will allow me to go- still beats $17, doesn't it?), and "anima" is still there, and "Extended Play" and "Hard Vacuum" (I wish the confounded site would put anchor points in so I could have these links refer to the spots on the page where the songs are) and I even went back and put up 700x700 cover jpegs of all my covers. This lets you see what the CD will look like a little better- and can also be used if people want to just download the songs and the cover and burn the CD themselves (which I am happy to let people do- that's why I'm making it so easy to do).
And, after about two days of rest, I'm going back into the studio to do yet another album. These days I prefer to just DO MUSIC rather than bitching about Metallica. If you think my music sucks, check again in a week and I'll have done something else. Check again in a month and God knows what I'll be up to. If you haven't checked in a week or a month, there's new stuff. It's like any form of art (or indeed the art of programming)... you learn by doing, not by arguing about it.
These days I get really crappy page stats, the idea of 'push' marketing totally failed me. When I stopped pushing, people stopped showing up. So I'm giving up and going with 'pull' like I should have all along- just plain trying to do good music, lots of it, huge amounts of it with something in it for just about anybody. Every now and then I'll mention that somewhere (like I'm doing now) but don't expect a recurrence of the BUY MY ALBUM stuff- that was fun but the time I spent doing it was time not spent doing more music.
...just as the time Lars and Metallica and Dre are spending attacking their own listeners is time that they're not spending making more music.
Sorry guys- not optimal. You may be on top of the heap now, you may be in a position to turn the screws on your fans and squeeze money out- I'm in no such position- but check back in ten years and we'll see who's better. You keep right on playing with lawyers and I'll keep on playing guitar and bass and programming synthesizers and stuff... and I can only say, in all honesty, I don't think I will ever, ever need or want to be as stupid and shortsighted as you are being.
Get back to the music- or get pushed out of the way. It might take a while- that's OK, I and a legion of hipper mp3-oriented indie musicians have all the time in the world, and we're not tied up with perverted entertainment industry contracts like you guys are. Enjoy your glide back to the bottom, 'cause there's plenty of air beneath your wings but there's no power in your engines. (heh, thinking in aircraft metaphors- as it happens the next album I'm doing is on the theme of cool WWII aircraft:) ) Cheers, all the slashdotters who've checked out my music- and all the slashdotters who haven't and won't:) 'cause we're all in the same boat, really, aren't we?
Er. I have no problem with the notion that you personally are nice. The question is, what are you willing to be personally associated with? At what point would your personal morality obligate you to no longer be associated with Microsoft?
If there is no such point- then I'm afraid I can't consider you a nice guy, regardless of how nice your personal actions are. Your inactions can speak louder than your actions.
Glad you like Mac IE- because they have broken up the MacIE team and reassigned them to WebTV. There will be no new Mac IE, so it's a good thing you like what's there- that's all you get.:P (I don't use Mac IE- I expected something like that to happen eventually. There is no future in using any Microsoft product.)
What? lusers. It's not about _content_! Spam is not about content, it's about mechanism! I totally impartially go after the accounts of MLM and Ponzi scams, porn, and missing children reports. Do you realize how useless your emailbox would become if it was legally filled with the reports and descriptions of all the missing children in the world? O_O
Uh- is 'send them to prison' really a useful thing to ask an ISP? O_O Here's my version- as a MacOS clipping so it's just drag and drop, over and over and over and over and over and.... eight times today alone... Please kill this spammer's account. -postmaster@airwindows.com Note that I send the complaint as postmaster >:) I think possibly this might help in borderline cases. I'm not above saying 'we're getting slammed here'. airwindows.com is of course, just me...
Uh. You do in fact realize that Photoshop's CMYK color modeling is SUBTRACTIVE?!? Start working with it and see how that messes with your head:) I put together CMYK separations for some posters I was doing, which I was accustomed to using Curves to adjust the tonal balance. Using Curves on CMYK was so weird (most notably, to lighten the balance you had to pull the curve down instead of up, to lessen the ink rather than increase the light!) that I ended up doing all my adjustments in Levels just in order to keep my brain from exploding:) there's a reason many plugins won't operate in CMYK.
Mind you, I fully expect that linux hackers will eventually put just as good a subtractive color model into the GIMP (to equal photoshop it would have to be doing internal calculations and conversions in LAB color which has a greater gamut than either CMYK or RGB), but in order to do that, they need to understand what is actually involved:) you think there weren't scarily smart geeks involved in coming up with Photoshop? Hint: Photoshop originated in _Industrial Light & Magic_, not MS or Corel. Photoshop _is_ GFX geekness concentrated into one program. In order to beat it you have to take it seriously, not scoff at it.
I look forward to eventually hearing about GIMP hackers (or whoever) getting really GFX-geeky with all sorts of different color models and LAB as a base for conversions- I don't think any of that fundamental technology is patented, because LAB didn't come out of Silicon Valley, nor did ink and printing presses;) it'd be a little harder to get Pantone colors (and all the other color houses) in there, as I'm sure you have to pay Pantone to be allowed to refer to specific Pantone colors. But on the whole, it is possible. But no fscking way are you going to be able to do prepress on an additive color model with a hacked-up grey channel. *g* the very concept, to a GFX geek, sounds like what Linux hackers would think of a 'dozer saying "You can get Windows 95 to multitask better than unix, because it is preemptive!" Uh, no no no;)
Like hell they will: they've KILLED the Mac IE team. Not that I use IE- I refuse- but MacInTouch has been running information about this for days. There are PR people lying about it, it might even be possible that something will be put back together to pretend nothing happened, but evidently the whole Mac IE team got broken up and reassigned to other projects.
It amazes me that anyone ever trusted these people- certainly one can't depend on Office either, much less IE. They would cheerfully do just the same thing to their own Windows users if they wanted to sell 'em W2K apps all over again. Given the opportunity they'd jack prices up to boot.
There won't be Carbon Office- there won't be _any_ further Mac IE much less Carbon- MS has gone into 'crazed frothing madman mode' and will do as much damage as it can before being 'killed' (as it considers a breakup/regulation to be). This is not a slam to the many good developers and decent people who happen to work for MS. They're no doubt fine people- but the Mac IE team is still history- good people _cannot_ set the tone for a monopoly, they are merely allowing it to persist in its behavior by colluding with it.
Death of the Mac predicted: film at 11, every six months for the last 15 years;) this, too, shall pass...
There's an additional reason to sign up- being a free user of spamcop myself, I know that the site prioritizes paying users higher for processes. So if you're a free user you can keep using it (and contributing to the lists of hosts and their spamcounts), but if things are busy you'll be asked to try again later, all processes are busy. That's cool:)
I've had 90 accounts killed with it (that's specific notifications, not "we have taken action *handslap with a wet noodle* there, and don't do it again!")
However, it won't stand slashdotting- lately nonpaying subscribers have often been unable to use the site because paying subscribers get higher priorities for running processes. Part of me is sad when this happens and the other part is delighted:) go spamcop!
Also, does anyone know anything about this 'chooseyourmail.com' (in cooperation with 'F.R.E.E' and "C.A.U.C.E")? spamcop defaults to cooperating with them, but I'm still nervous of it. It claims several entirely dumb and redundant things (turn your spam into steak indeed! Have you no clue of my real motivations) but also claims to forward to 'the federal authorities'. Is that true or is it a lie or a hype?
What gets me about this is the _focus_ of it. It's like one big Metallica advertisement- it's as if every Linux site did nothing but talk about Microsoft, Outlook, VBS or whatever and never mentioned Linux at all. How well would _that_ work? Yet when it comes to moving music into the new millenium (never mind whether we've actually _got_ there yet;) ), it seems to be all _reaction_ to what Metallica, the RIAA etc. do. It's seen as perfectly normal that of course everybody wants to pirate Metallica songs. They're big! Well, think about where they came from.
And maybe one or two of you might listen a bit when I say 'help?'. I need some support. People don't like it when bands put their focus entirely on marketing and suppressing mp3s- but if you're not Big, if you don't have the resources, then you basically have a choice: do your art or stop doing it and promote what you have. That's a damn ugly choice to have to face. I keep choosing to do more music- and it's killing me. There isn't time to go out and harangue people to listen to it, and that's not where my heart really is anyhow...
So I'm going to ask something (which you're free to ignore, after all I have no ability to force anybody to do anything). I keep putting up new music- my techno 'Dragons' album is almost done and has several new songs added to it very recently, more very soon. Please go to http://www.mp3.com/ChrisJ and poke around downloading or streaming some music. I won't try to push a single song to become a 'hit' on the 'charts' because I don't believe in that model anymore. If you can't find anything you like, even when it's free, then go away again grumbling about my pushy tactics;) but if you find something you like, instead of going "oh I probably should get that $5.99 CD to support the artist", could you please TELL SOMEBODY?
It just wears me down to see all this constant emphasis on the manufactured stars of a dying industry. Even bad publicity is publicity- and you know, I only have so much energy to put up against the army of marketing people, lawyers, and outraged geeks all raving about and at and against and for Metallica- and I'm just not going to spend it with complete selfishness. I'm going to spend it mostly on creating my own music- and then I'm going to go hang out in the mp3.com boards and try to encourage OTHER MUSICIANS that I like, because that needs to happen. There needs to be that support- and I'm going to try to provide it for others even if I hardly get any myself. And every now and then (not every five seconds anymore o_O ) I'll run across a Slashdot article relating to music and mp3, relating in some way to my situation- and I'm going to try to get word out about what things are really like out here in the trenches.
I do hope some people who've checked out my music and liked it go and _tell_ somebody about it. There's very little I can do to make that happen, as most of my energies are _already_ focussed on making more cool music for people to enjoy... and I spend as much as I can afford on posters to put around town and stuff. Everybody seems to nod and go "that's cool" and then go back to yelling at Metallica (at least on Slashdot). Maybe you guys could just forget about Metallica for a day or two and listen to free music, music that's actually being shared willingly?
Given that it is now clearly forbidden to take copyrighted material and redistribute it without permission... this cuts both ways, IMHO.
I am a musician and have mp3s up at mp3.com (as everyone knows by now;) ). They are free unless you really want to pay for them or get a (spiffy) CD of them or reward me for working so hard on them... and I encourage users to exchange and copy them.
BUT! This whole court case seems to be establishing that (for instance) BMG or Sony or whoever CANNOT simply take my music and redistribute it on their own online music stores- depriving me of my share of the ad-banner revenue that I get at mp3.com etc. Without this ruling they'd have the same privileges as any user- and if things went well (or even if not) I could see my music being snatched up (it's 'free' after all) and used to bring people to Sony's site, or BMG's, or whatever, in future.
That's because they'd be taking advantage of their ability to redistribute. Now it is established that somebody like that has to come to an agreement before they can _distribute_ such material on a large scale- and I have the power as copyright holder and owner of the mechanicals (which I can still sublicense- mp3.com does not ask exclusive rights to them) to define the terms under which I make these recordings available.
This does really cut both ways. I realise it doesn't do that much for listener interests (I will do what I can to make sure I at least look after listener interests) but it actually can be used right back at the labels should they attempt to start blatantly using 'free indie mp3s' without coming to an arrangement- an arrangement where the contractual power is on the side of the copyright holder and owner of the mechanicals. The labels do NOT own ALL the music in the world...
Brian couldn't be more right. This is about mp3.com's ability to use other people's music without compensation. I agreed to a contract with them and _get_ compensation (in fact, I effectively get some of the ad banner revenue, costing my listeners nothing but the anguish of having to look at yet another 'Sephora.com' ad;) )
If you're a musician, if it's your own music, not only are mp3s legal but _you_ are allowed to set the terms. I always encourage sharing and trading of my mp3s. I also write GPLed software FWIW- including some music-related software which I need to start distributing:) I keep asking, "Does anyone want to use this?" but I'm usually asking musicians instead of geeks, and they usually don't get what the software is for (in particular, I've written a nice simple polyrhythm calculator that measures in bars/beats/ticks at 4 beats to the bar and 480 ticks to the beat:) )
That's for the _songs_. The artists do not typically own the _mechanicals_. Mechanicals are the actual recordings of the music, not the concept (lyrics, melody) of the song. Licensing with ASCAP does nothing to give mp3.com access to the mechanicals.
They are mobs, herds- you could make a very good case that they are a new life form, like a hive mind, in the same sense that people are not cells though they are made up out of cells. Combine the right cells and you get something that acts very different and has different motivations and in fact can be very hostile to some of its cells (fat cells, for instance, or facial hair cells)
Combine people in the right way and you get something that acts very different and has different motivations and can be very hostile to people, or indeed to its own environment and the world in general. It is _not_ strictly a superior form of life/hive-mind thing: though it has the capabilities to suggest that, its agenda and motivations are LEGALLY required to be pure mob rule, herd behavior, and this is sub-human.
There are no reasonable, purely logical ways of coping with this, but thankfully reasonable and logical don't always apply. The Black Plague, AIDS and cancer are not reasonable and logical- they tend to kill their hosts. But they are processes on a cellular level that kill an individual on the human level. There are processes on a human level that will kill an entity on the corporate level. This can be characterised as 'terrorism', and rightly so- however, because it is derived from the human level, it is possible to aim such activities not blindly at other humans, but at the corporation itself. Sort of the anti-Unabomber... he attempted to punish pretty randomly chosen individuals for the crimes of what he saw as a social movement, larger than even a single corporation. It would be possible for individuals to wage war on a corporation by attacking, not a social movement or a concept, but carefully chosen weak points of a corporation- possibly attacking key individuals as in traditional warfare, possibly attacking more abstract areas such as the corporation's valuation or standing with the IRS or EPA or supply lines or product acceptability.
I could almost suggest the possibility that the recent troubles with Microsoft Outlook viruses were a terrorist attack from _inside_ the company- not in producing the viruses, but that somebody is waging war on Microsoft by skillfully persuading them to establish, and stick to, a model for program interaction that is fatally flawed! The sensible thing for them to do would be to scuttle the committment to ActiveX and live content. Why don't they, when they are ever closer to being held responsible for these disasters? Perhaps there is somebody in there who's dedicated to the destruction of Microsoft (the corporation) who is carefully holding them to this fatal path by continually suggesting, "People want to not have to click a button- do you want Sun to beat you for live content? It's the customer's responsibility to not run bad software- the customer does not want to mess around clicking on things, just make it go- why not have a preview pane so they can see their new content before even opening the email?"
Is a cancer the ultimate symbol of cell excellence?
Is Metallica the ultimate symbol of musical excellence?
Is a toxic waste dump the ultimate symbol of environmental excellence?
Is a pedophile the ultimate symbol of childcare excellence?
Sorry man- you are _crazy_ to think as you do. Enjoy the cancer you'll eventually get from blindly consuming anything your fed (you _do_ smoke, don't you? The ultimate symbol of selfwill excellence), and enjoy the social cancer of the corporations you so love... while it lasts.
Who needs to drink? One of my favorite driving game experiences is as simple as firing up Nascar Racing or something, and then taking off around the track- backwards! Not in reverse, I mean circling the track clockwise while everybody else is going counterclockwise:) you can try to evade the other cars but it's also fun to play "Smash the car until it cannot move" and see how many crashes it takes to render the vehicle completely inoperable:)
I take _serious_ exception to one thing you said up there. Sure, Metallica are being noisy and stubborn and not a little bit controlfreaks on this issue, but you said: "Napster has contributed more to the world than Metallica".
Bullshit!
Napster is a service. They are _facilitators_. They are not making a contribution as much as they are helping along interactions.
Metallica are a band. They create art. Sure, it may be crap art, sure they might not be able to make as good art as they used to, but let me tell you about a guy named Ernesto Cortazar and maybe you'll understand a little better...
Ernesto Cortazar is the king of Easy Listening on mp3.com. He dominates the charts, sometimes in genres that aren't even Easy Listening- he dominates the Classical charts in spite of many complaints that his music isn't really Classical- he has 11 CDs available on mp3.com, _all_ a humble and reasonable $5.99- he's earned over 29 thousand dollars in downloads alone, again on mp3.com.
Ernesto makes music that would make a Metallica fan puke! He's totally committed to Piano Easy Listening, love songs, the complete 'not even new age' approach lacking only the candelabra on the piano. But he _means_ it. That's what he _likes_. I am telling you from the viewpoint of a musician (one who's only made $54 off downloads and makes infinitely less 'easy listening' music, except for "Wood Dragon": mp3.com/ChrisJ) that Ernesto contributes more to the world than Napster, because Napster _facilitates_ and Ernesto _creates_.
By the same token, of _course_ Metallica contributes more to the world than Napster! You don't have to _like_ what they contribute, but saying they contribute less than Napster is damned insulting because Napster never wrote a song in its life! It's not _about_ contributing, any more than TCP/IP is about contributing. It's about _communicating_.
I could wish that, instead of trying so hard to tear Metallica down, you spent some of that effort trying to build the musicians who _do_ cooperate and share and communicate, up... yes, of course I say that as I'm a (and only one of the) token slashdot musician, and of course I would like to actually be able to buy strings more often and get more of the tools I use to create with. But frankly I would be nearly as happy to see you go out there and hype Ernesto, or Bassic who also makes plenty of money by, again, doing what _he_ genuinely enjoys, which is Mike Oldfield-influenced synthesizer music that's very pretty and peaceful, most of it. These people are doing things the right way, as am I... must the whole story be about tearing down Metallica, can't some of it be about building up us?
What's the fifth? You paying a few bucks a song for a download. Sorry man- I sympathise, tho- if you _want_ to be compelled to pay a few bucks per download when my entire albums are only $6, how about going and impulsively buying all my albums? I am afraid I am not willing to coerce you into it, though:) I just wonder if you're really serious. Do you mean you will only pay people who _will_ coerce you, and how does this fit in with points 1 through 4? I know I'm sick and tired of the 'push media' ways of the old rotten industry. It's time for new rules, ones that follow your four points. It might be that the only place you ever find these points is in free music... and then it is up to your conscience to reward that, or to not reward it. The fate of the musician ends up being directly in your hands- I think that's a good place for it to be. I trust _people_ one hell of a lot more than I trust recording corporations...
ROFL! Download my music and I won't sue your ass! *hehehe* Buy my CD and I promise to let you listen to it- even make a copy for a friend if you like! *hehehehehehe*
Oh, man, what _is_ this world coming to when the above isn't a joke? To think that "I promise not to sue my own fans" is a SELLING point O_O *rofl!*
Yes! I promise not to sue you, and for an additional low low price of $5.99 I'll still not sue you, plus you can have a CD, plus I won't drive over and set fire to your house! (I don't have a car anyway:) ) oh my oh my:)
Does the agreement say WHEN? Read the 'contract'. Napster might be perfectly safe saying "OK! Our banning-person works 8 hour days, so give us a couple years for your 335 thousand." It's got to take some time to enter all that in. See in the usage agreement if it says anything about how quickly the bans are to be implemented. This is a lovely example of how the deranged, shrinkwrap, click-wrap UCITA usage agreement madness might actually work in our favor. That agreement is going to be pretty literally interpreted- don't think Metallica are going to be able to get interpreted as what it SHOULD mean, only what it literally means.
This is already being done at mp3.com. It's possible to set up an album with a bunch of fully downloadable songs and one that is just on the album and can only be streamed (pause for haxx0rs to ROFL, back to our discussion) or if I understand it correctly, not even streamed, just on the album.
Mind you, I don't do this or support it so I can't tell you whether it works:) it is just not the way I choose to do business as a musician, but it _is_ out there. It's sort of like a shareware/crippleware concept. It seems to suggest that you have to coerce people in order to sell anything, which my experience tends to contradict.
I wasn't going to say anything as I'm in these threads too much:) but you're missing a very major point here.
People are not going to be _coerced_ into paying something they originally got as free.
I personally have had three different CDs sold on mp3.com for $5.99 when every single track is available for free. If asked I would provide even the cover art graphics to someone who wanted to make their own copy of my CD for free but couldn't or wouldn't pay. I already make it as convenient as possible to download every single track. My guess is that at least three people (each, interestingly, choosing a different album) independently decided that they would be willing to pay $5.99 to mp3.com for the convenience of having an audio CD made for them with a nice cover and all, and because I get half of the $5.99. I assume all of these people did originally get this as free- in fact I know it, because even if they didn't _take_ it, they got the music free because I made a point of giving it to them.
It seems that my experience flatly contradicts your concept, and this makes me happy and speaks well for the ability of an artist to earn money off free artwork through access to global distribution over the Internet. It's not much money but it's more than you'd credit, and I could do better still by working to produce greater music (or more commercial, accessible music): I know an artist (Bassic) who earns over $5000 a month on mp3.com from downloads and CD sales, and one important reason for this is simply that his music is more simple and accessible than mine. He loves Mike Oldfield, I love Mothers Of Invention- who do _you_ think is going to sell more CDs?;) but I am happy about this because I _can_ produce the music _I_ like. Nobody is forcing me to make it like his in order to sell more of it. That's the beauty of being-paid-for-free-music, nobody can bitch if I'm not TRYING HARD enough to BE COMMERCIAL. I heartily endorse it to other artists who want creative freedom.
(And yes I also still endorse going and downloading my music and buying my CDs- by now the CDs of free music sold have been anima, Extended Play, and Hard Vacuum. So _every_ _completed_ _CD_ I've done has found at least one person who liked it enough to support it with their creditcard- I get a huge kick out of that, because I never expected that _all_ of it would see CD buys. Big appreciation to whoever's doing it, and I'm still making more and still making a point of giving it to you first and foremost)
Seems like I can sneak onto _any_ music related thread, and this is no exception;) Everybody already knows that I have loads of instrumental music at the above URL, that it's cool music, that it's free and I support Napster and people exchanging my music freely and lust after popularity that is great enough that I can speak out on behalf of mp3s and be listened to;)
Well, you might _not_ know about my other project at mp3.com, because it's not current stuff so I don't promote it. But I do write pop/rock songs as well: mp3.com/RFW is the place- that's short for The Room Full Of Windows, my 'song band'. What's more, for every single song I have up there (two DAM CDs available- DAM == 'mp3.com press to order system'), the full lyrics are typed out and listed online on the page. Not everybody takes the time and effort to do that, but I did.
I hope somebody does the cut-n-paste thing (seeing as I've done all the actual typing) and _puts_ my whole lyric collection on this Russian server. It would be with my total approval- the only limit I'd have is that I'll leave it to somebody else to do it, because I'd like the webpage-hit and would be happy to get song downloads in exchange for making this available so freely. The lyrics are, and will remain, copyright Chris Johnson (various dates). However, I am perfectly free to permit them to be kept on a Russian server and doing so does not in any way imply I waive copyright. I just happen to not be a dick about sharing- shock, horror;)
I don't actually have any song lyrics on mp3.com/ChrisJ except that one of the techno songs mutilates the words, "get out of this one alive" as spoken by a MacInTalk speech-synthesis voice I hacked different data into to make it more distorted and weird:) need to play with more of that. However, there is a lot of 'about this song' material, and that is where I put the technical data on how I made the songs, and if there are any great audio hacks I invariably include how I did it. So even on the instrumentals there is background information included:)
you're welcome;) now moderate me down, dammit! Hacking MacInTalk voices with ResEdit and a total lack of documentation is simply not geeky! you should have done it in perl while covered in hot grits!;)
The URL linked to just above is an mp3.com account. In that account is more than 200 megs of music I composed, recorded, mixed and mastered all myself, using a huge amount of very Hacker Ethic-style gear (all rewired and hotrodded, in other words, for better performance). I own the copyright to all of this stuff and mp3.com asked only _nonexclusive_ rights (to share the rights) in order to host this huge amount of data that would break me to host it on my personal site, airwindows.com- mp3.com also came up with the first ever truly large-scale press-to-order system I've ever heard of, for pressing ARTIST CDs, and did all of this before myMP3.com was a glitter in Mad Michael's eye.
I have five albums up for sale at mp3.com:
anima is rock instrumentals on animal themes, eclectic, with some fine performances
Extended Play is long-format rock instrumental music- hot, guitar-based jams with some Mothers influences
Hard Vacuum is a dedicated Noise album that revells in raw sound-as-sound
The RFW Demos are songs that didn't make the RFW album, but something about them seemed cool enough to put together a demos reel
All of these are $5.99- through mp3.com's impressively fast CD-to-order facility, you could buy any of these CDs and have 'em within a couple of days, pretty CD cover and all.
If anyone had entertained thoughts of maybe getting one of these someday, or for that matter of ever picking up a CD to support some other mp3.com artist, or even downloading stuff...
...could you please do it now, considering the possibility that this entire resource may be destroyed and taken away from the people who have done nothing wrong, all to satisfy the RIAA?:(
Slashdot Mirror
I have to shrug and cheer on the napster kiddies- even though they're being dumb- honestly, there's lots of good music out there _already_ being made by people who understand this stuff. The big record companies, the MTV bands, are just locked in a sick codependent relationship and it's dumb to support it at all. People are frothing at the mouth over the 'right' to download metallica for free but... why Metallica, exactly? What have they done, what has Dre done that's so great? Open your mind, listen to other music- there is SO MUCH music out there of all kinds and people still fixate on what they are fed, like Windows users.
Still, whatever: never try and teach a pig to sing, etc.
The last time I posted to an mp3 thread on Slashdot, someone or other pulled me aside (in ASCII) and said, basically, "Give it up- people don't want to listen to you because you AREN'T metallica, you're wasting your breath". And certainly I've seen some evidence of that. But I've also occasionally seen a person or two like what I have to say, or like the music I pointed them at. Turns out I had some decisions to make- am I doing it to beat Metallica, or am I doing it for me, because I make music like some slashdothackers write code?
I chose the latter.
So, I went quiet for a bit, rather than arguing loudly that I ought to be listened to seven times in every mp3 thread. And since the last time I posted, I cut an entire new album, "Cirrus", which is the anti-metallica ;) it's ambient music, with more of an edge to it than your usual musak ambient stuff, done with a synthesizer I took apart and hacked with the electronics of. I finished up the "Dragons" album, and made the CDs of both Cirrus and Dragons available (they're $5.99: a previous poster thought all CDs should be under $5. I'd do that in a heartbeat but $5.99 is as low as mp3.com will allow me to go- still beats $17, doesn't it?), and "anima" is still there, and "Extended Play" and "Hard Vacuum" (I wish the confounded site would put anchor points in so I could have these links refer to the spots on the page where the songs are) and I even went back and put up 700x700 cover jpegs of all my covers. This lets you see what the CD will look like a little better- and can also be used if people want to just download the songs and the cover and burn the CD themselves (which I am happy to let people do- that's why I'm making it so easy to do).
And, after about two days of rest, I'm going back into the studio to do yet another album. These days I prefer to just DO MUSIC rather than bitching about Metallica. If you think my music sucks, check again in a week and I'll have done something else. Check again in a month and God knows what I'll be up to. If you haven't checked in a week or a month, there's new stuff. It's like any form of art (or indeed the art of programming)... you learn by doing, not by arguing about it.
These days I get really crappy page stats, the idea of 'push' marketing totally failed me. When I stopped pushing, people stopped showing up. So I'm giving up and going with 'pull' like I should have all along- just plain trying to do good music, lots of it, huge amounts of it with something in it for just about anybody. Every now and then I'll mention that somewhere (like I'm doing now) but don't expect a recurrence of the BUY MY ALBUM stuff- that was fun but the time I spent doing it was time not spent doing more music.
Sorry guys- not optimal. You may be on top of the heap now, you may be in a position to turn the screws on your fans and squeeze money out- I'm in no such position- but check back in ten years and we'll see who's better. You keep right on playing with lawyers and I'll keep on playing guitar and bass and programming synthesizers and stuff... and I can only say, in all honesty, I don't think I will ever, ever need or want to be as stupid and shortsighted as you are being.
Get back to the music- or get pushed out of the way. It might take a while- that's OK, I and a legion of hipper mp3-oriented indie musicians have all the time in the world, and we're not tied up with perverted entertainment industry contracts like you guys are. Enjoy your glide back to the bottom, 'cause there's plenty of air beneath your wings but there's no power in your engines. (heh, thinking in aircraft metaphors- as it happens the next album I'm doing is on the theme of cool WWII aircraft :) ) Cheers, all the slashdotters who've checked out my music- and all the slashdotters who haven't and won't :) 'cause we're all in the same boat, really, aren't we?
If there is no such point- then I'm afraid I can't consider you a nice guy, regardless of how nice your personal actions are. Your inactions can speak louder than your actions.
Glad you like Mac IE- because they have broken up the MacIE team and reassigned them to WebTV. There will be no new Mac IE, so it's a good thing you like what's there- that's all you get. :P (I don't use Mac IE- I expected something like that to happen eventually. There is no future in using any Microsoft product.)
What? lusers. It's not about _content_! Spam is not about content, it's about mechanism! I totally impartially go after the accounts of MLM and Ponzi scams, porn, and missing children reports. Do you realize how useless your emailbox would become if it was legally filled with the reports and descriptions of all the missing children in the world? O_O
Uh- is 'send them to prison' really a useful thing to ask an ISP? O_O Here's my version- as a MacOS clipping so it's just drag and drop, over and over and over and over and over and.... eight times today alone... Please kill this spammer's account. -postmaster@airwindows.com Note that I send the complaint as postmaster >:) I think possibly this might help in borderline cases. I'm not above saying 'we're getting slammed here'. airwindows.com is of course, just me...
Mind you, I fully expect that linux hackers will eventually put just as good a subtractive color model into the GIMP (to equal photoshop it would have to be doing internal calculations and conversions in LAB color which has a greater gamut than either CMYK or RGB), but in order to do that, they need to understand what is actually involved :) you think there weren't scarily smart geeks involved in coming up with Photoshop? Hint: Photoshop originated in _Industrial Light & Magic_, not MS or Corel. Photoshop _is_ GFX geekness concentrated into one program. In order to beat it you have to take it seriously, not scoff at it.
I look forward to eventually hearing about GIMP hackers (or whoever) getting really GFX-geeky with all sorts of different color models and LAB as a base for conversions- I don't think any of that fundamental technology is patented, because LAB didn't come out of Silicon Valley, nor did ink and printing presses ;) it'd be a little harder to get Pantone colors (and all the other color houses) in there, as I'm sure you have to pay Pantone to be allowed to refer to specific Pantone colors. But on the whole, it is possible. But no fscking way are you going to be able to do prepress on an additive color model with a hacked-up grey channel. *g* the very concept, to a GFX geek, sounds like what Linux hackers would think of a 'dozer saying "You can get Windows 95 to multitask better than unix, because it is preemptive!" Uh, no no no ;)
It amazes me that anyone ever trusted these people- certainly one can't depend on Office either, much less IE. They would cheerfully do just the same thing to their own Windows users if they wanted to sell 'em W2K apps all over again. Given the opportunity they'd jack prices up to boot.
There won't be Carbon Office- there won't be _any_ further Mac IE much less Carbon- MS has gone into 'crazed frothing madman mode' and will do as much damage as it can before being 'killed' (as it considers a breakup/regulation to be). This is not a slam to the many good developers and decent people who happen to work for MS. They're no doubt fine people- but the Mac IE team is still history- good people _cannot_ set the tone for a monopoly, they are merely allowing it to persist in its behavior by colluding with it.
Death of the Mac predicted: film at 11, every six months for the last 15 years ;) this, too, shall pass...
There's an additional reason to sign up- being a free user of spamcop myself, I know that the site prioritizes paying users higher for processes. So if you're a free user you can keep using it (and contributing to the lists of hosts and their spamcounts), but if things are busy you'll be asked to try again later, all processes are busy. That's cool :)
However, it won't stand slashdotting- lately nonpaying subscribers have often been unable to use the site because paying subscribers get higher priorities for running processes. Part of me is sad when this happens and the other part is delighted :) go spamcop!
Also, does anyone know anything about this 'chooseyourmail.com' (in cooperation with 'F.R.E.E' and "C.A.U.C.E")? spamcop defaults to cooperating with them, but I'm still nervous of it. It claims several entirely dumb and redundant things (turn your spam into steak indeed! Have you no clue of my real motivations) but also claims to forward to 'the federal authorities'. Is that true or is it a lie or a hype?
And maybe one or two of you might listen a bit when I say 'help?'. I need some support. People don't like it when bands put their focus entirely on marketing and suppressing mp3s- but if you're not Big, if you don't have the resources, then you basically have a choice: do your art or stop doing it and promote what you have. That's a damn ugly choice to have to face. I keep choosing to do more music- and it's killing me. There isn't time to go out and harangue people to listen to it, and that's not where my heart really is anyhow...
So I'm going to ask something (which you're free to ignore, after all I have no ability to force anybody to do anything). I keep putting up new music- my techno 'Dragons' album is almost done and has several new songs added to it very recently, more very soon. Please go to http://www.mp3.com/ChrisJ and poke around downloading or streaming some music. I won't try to push a single song to become a 'hit' on the 'charts' because I don't believe in that model anymore. If you can't find anything you like, even when it's free, then go away again grumbling about my pushy tactics ;) but if you find something you like, instead of going "oh I probably should get that $5.99 CD to support the artist", could you please TELL SOMEBODY?
It just wears me down to see all this constant emphasis on the manufactured stars of a dying industry. Even bad publicity is publicity- and you know, I only have so much energy to put up against the army of marketing people, lawyers, and outraged geeks all raving about and at and against and for Metallica- and I'm just not going to spend it with complete selfishness. I'm going to spend it mostly on creating my own music- and then I'm going to go hang out in the mp3.com boards and try to encourage OTHER MUSICIANS that I like, because that needs to happen. There needs to be that support- and I'm going to try to provide it for others even if I hardly get any myself. And every now and then (not every five seconds anymore o_O ) I'll run across a Slashdot article relating to music and mp3, relating in some way to my situation- and I'm going to try to get word out about what things are really like out here in the trenches.
I do hope some people who've checked out my music and liked it go and _tell_ somebody about it. There's very little I can do to make that happen, as most of my energies are _already_ focussed on making more cool music for people to enjoy... and I spend as much as I can afford on posters to put around town and stuff. Everybody seems to nod and go "that's cool" and then go back to yelling at Metallica (at least on Slashdot). Maybe you guys could just forget about Metallica for a day or two and listen to free music, music that's actually being shared willingly?
http://www.mp3.com/ChrisJ
I am a musician and have mp3s up at mp3.com (as everyone knows by now ;) ). They are free unless you really want to pay for them or get a (spiffy) CD of them or reward me for working so hard on them... and I encourage users to exchange and copy them.
BUT! This whole court case seems to be establishing that (for instance) BMG or Sony or whoever CANNOT simply take my music and redistribute it on their own online music stores- depriving me of my share of the ad-banner revenue that I get at mp3.com etc. Without this ruling they'd have the same privileges as any user- and if things went well (or even if not) I could see my music being snatched up (it's 'free' after all) and used to bring people to Sony's site, or BMG's, or whatever, in future.
That's because they'd be taking advantage of their ability to redistribute. Now it is established that somebody like that has to come to an agreement before they can _distribute_ such material on a large scale- and I have the power as copyright holder and owner of the mechanicals (which I can still sublicense- mp3.com does not ask exclusive rights to them) to define the terms under which I make these recordings available.
This does really cut both ways. I realise it doesn't do that much for listener interests (I will do what I can to make sure I at least look after listener interests) but it actually can be used right back at the labels should they attempt to start blatantly using 'free indie mp3s' without coming to an arrangement- an arrangement where the contractual power is on the side of the copyright holder and owner of the mechanicals. The labels do NOT own ALL the music in the world...
perfectly legal mp3s including some new ones hot off the sequencers
Brian couldn't be more right. This is about mp3.com's ability to use other people's music without compensation. I agreed to a contract with them and _get_ compensation (in fact, I effectively get some of the ad banner revenue, costing my listeners nothing but the anguish of having to look at yet another 'Sephora.com' ad ;) )
If you're a musician, if it's your own music, not only are mp3s legal but _you_ are allowed to set the terms. I always encourage sharing and trading of my mp3s. I also write GPLed software FWIW- including some music-related software which I need to start distributing :) I keep asking, "Does anyone want to use this?" but I'm usually asking musicians instead of geeks, and they usually don't get what the software is for (in particular, I've written a nice simple polyrhythm calculator that measures in bars/beats/ticks at 4 beats to the bar and 480 ticks to the beat :) )
That's for the _songs_. The artists do not typically own the _mechanicals_. Mechanicals are the actual recordings of the music, not the concept (lyrics, melody) of the song. Licensing with ASCAP does nothing to give mp3.com access to the mechanicals.
They are mobs, herds- you could make a very good case that they are a new life form, like a hive mind, in the same sense that people are not cells though they are made up out of cells. Combine the right cells and you get something that acts very different and has different motivations and in fact can be very hostile to some of its cells (fat cells, for instance, or facial hair cells)
Combine people in the right way and you get something that acts very different and has different motivations and can be very hostile to people, or indeed to its own environment and the world in general. It is _not_ strictly a superior form of life/hive-mind thing: though it has the capabilities to suggest that, its agenda and motivations are LEGALLY required to be pure mob rule, herd behavior, and this is sub-human.
There are no reasonable, purely logical ways of coping with this, but thankfully reasonable and logical don't always apply. The Black Plague, AIDS and cancer are not reasonable and logical- they tend to kill their hosts. But they are processes on a cellular level that kill an individual on the human level. There are processes on a human level that will kill an entity on the corporate level. This can be characterised as 'terrorism', and rightly so- however, because it is derived from the human level, it is possible to aim such activities not blindly at other humans, but at the corporation itself. Sort of the anti-Unabomber... he attempted to punish pretty randomly chosen individuals for the crimes of what he saw as a social movement, larger than even a single corporation. It would be possible for individuals to wage war on a corporation by attacking, not a social movement or a concept, but carefully chosen weak points of a corporation- possibly attacking key individuals as in traditional warfare, possibly attacking more abstract areas such as the corporation's valuation or standing with the IRS or EPA or supply lines or product acceptability.
I could almost suggest the possibility that the recent troubles with Microsoft Outlook viruses were a terrorist attack from _inside_ the company- not in producing the viruses, but that somebody is waging war on Microsoft by skillfully persuading them to establish, and stick to, a model for program interaction that is fatally flawed! The sensible thing for them to do would be to scuttle the committment to ActiveX and live content. Why don't they, when they are ever closer to being held responsible for these disasters? Perhaps there is somebody in there who's dedicated to the destruction of Microsoft (the corporation) who is carefully holding them to this fatal path by continually suggesting, "People want to not have to click a button- do you want Sun to beat you for live content? It's the customer's responsibility to not run bad software- the customer does not want to mess around clicking on things, just make it go- why not have a preview pane so they can see their new content before even opening the email?"
Now that is a terrorist for the next millenium...
Is Metallica the ultimate symbol of musical excellence?
Is a toxic waste dump the ultimate symbol of environmental excellence?
Is a pedophile the ultimate symbol of childcare excellence?
Sorry man- you are _crazy_ to think as you do. Enjoy the cancer you'll eventually get from blindly consuming anything your fed (you _do_ smoke, don't you? The ultimate symbol of selfwill excellence), and enjoy the social cancer of the corporations you so love... while it lasts.
Who needs to drink? One of my favorite driving game experiences is as simple as firing up Nascar Racing or something, and then taking off around the track- backwards! Not in reverse, I mean circling the track clockwise while everybody else is going counterclockwise :) you can try to evade the other cars but it's also fun to play "Smash the car until it cannot move" and see how many crashes it takes to render the vehicle completely inoperable :)
Bullshit!
Napster is a service. They are _facilitators_. They are not making a contribution as much as they are helping along interactions.
Metallica are a band. They create art. Sure, it may be crap art, sure they might not be able to make as good art as they used to, but let me tell you about a guy named Ernesto Cortazar and maybe you'll understand a little better...
Ernesto Cortazar is the king of Easy Listening on mp3.com. He dominates the charts, sometimes in genres that aren't even Easy Listening- he dominates the Classical charts in spite of many complaints that his music isn't really Classical- he has 11 CDs available on mp3.com, _all_ a humble and reasonable $5.99- he's earned over 29 thousand dollars in downloads alone, again on mp3.com.
Ernesto makes music that would make a Metallica fan puke! He's totally committed to Piano Easy Listening, love songs, the complete 'not even new age' approach lacking only the candelabra on the piano. But he _means_ it. That's what he _likes_. I am telling you from the viewpoint of a musician (one who's only made $54 off downloads and makes infinitely less 'easy listening' music, except for "Wood Dragon": mp3.com/ChrisJ) that Ernesto contributes more to the world than Napster, because Napster _facilitates_ and Ernesto _creates_.
By the same token, of _course_ Metallica contributes more to the world than Napster! You don't have to _like_ what they contribute, but saying they contribute less than Napster is damned insulting because Napster never wrote a song in its life! It's not _about_ contributing, any more than TCP/IP is about contributing. It's about _communicating_.
I could wish that, instead of trying so hard to tear Metallica down, you spent some of that effort trying to build the musicians who _do_ cooperate and share and communicate, up... yes, of course I say that as I'm a (and only one of the) token slashdot musician, and of course I would like to actually be able to buy strings more often and get more of the tools I use to create with. But frankly I would be nearly as happy to see you go out there and hype Ernesto, or Bassic who also makes plenty of money by, again, doing what _he_ genuinely enjoys, which is Mike Oldfield-influenced synthesizer music that's very pretty and peaceful, most of it. These people are doing things the right way, as am I... must the whole story be about tearing down Metallica, can't some of it be about building up us?
- Easy: point and click
- High quality- 128K but NO skips or incompletes
- Legal
- Fast- you get the music immediately.
What's the fifth? You paying a few bucks a song for a download. Sorry man- I sympathise, tho- if you _want_ to be compelled to pay a few bucks per download when my entire albums are only $6, how about going and impulsively buying all my albums? I am afraid I am not willing to coerce you into it, thoughOh, man, what _is_ this world coming to when the above isn't a joke? To think that "I promise not to sue my own fans" is a SELLING point O_O *rofl!*
Yes! I promise not to sue you, and for an additional low low price of $5.99 I'll still not sue you, plus you can have a CD, plus I won't drive over and set fire to your house! (I don't have a car anyway :) ) oh my oh my :)
Does the agreement say WHEN? Read the 'contract'. Napster might be perfectly safe saying "OK! Our banning-person works 8 hour days, so give us a couple years for your 335 thousand." It's got to take some time to enter all that in. See in the usage agreement if it says anything about how quickly the bans are to be implemented. This is a lovely example of how the deranged, shrinkwrap, click-wrap UCITA usage agreement madness might actually work in our favor. That agreement is going to be pretty literally interpreted- don't think Metallica are going to be able to get interpreted as what it SHOULD mean, only what it literally means.
Mind you, I don't do this or support it so I can't tell you whether it works :) it is just not the way I choose to do business as a musician, but it _is_ out there. It's sort of like a shareware/crippleware concept. It seems to suggest that you have to coerce people in order to sell anything, which my experience tends to contradict.
People are not going to be _coerced_ into paying something they originally got as free.
I personally have had three different CDs sold on mp3.com for $5.99 when every single track is available for free. If asked I would provide even the cover art graphics to someone who wanted to make their own copy of my CD for free but couldn't or wouldn't pay. I already make it as convenient as possible to download every single track. My guess is that at least three people (each, interestingly, choosing a different album) independently decided that they would be willing to pay $5.99 to mp3.com for the convenience of having an audio CD made for them with a nice cover and all, and because I get half of the $5.99. I assume all of these people did originally get this as free- in fact I know it, because even if they didn't _take_ it, they got the music free because I made a point of giving it to them.
It seems that my experience flatly contradicts your concept, and this makes me happy and speaks well for the ability of an artist to earn money off free artwork through access to global distribution over the Internet. It's not much money but it's more than you'd credit, and I could do better still by working to produce greater music (or more commercial, accessible music): I know an artist (Bassic) who earns over $5000 a month on mp3.com from downloads and CD sales, and one important reason for this is simply that his music is more simple and accessible than mine. He loves Mike Oldfield, I love Mothers Of Invention- who do _you_ think is going to sell more CDs? ;) but I am happy about this because I _can_ produce the music _I_ like. Nobody is forcing me to make it like his in order to sell more of it. That's the beauty of being-paid-for-free-music, nobody can bitch if I'm not TRYING HARD enough to BE COMMERCIAL. I heartily endorse it to other artists who want creative freedom.
(And yes I also still endorse going and downloading my music and buying my CDs- by now the CDs of free music sold have been anima, Extended Play, and Hard Vacuum. So _every_ _completed_ _CD_ I've done has found at least one person who liked it enough to support it with their creditcard- I get a huge kick out of that, because I never expected that _all_ of it would see CD buys. Big appreciation to whoever's doing it, and I'm still making more and still making a point of giving it to you first and foremost)
As many times as he wants to: think about it.
Well, you might _not_ know about my other project at mp3.com, because it's not current stuff so I don't promote it. But I do write pop/rock songs as well: mp3.com/RFW is the place- that's short for The Room Full Of Windows, my 'song band'. What's more, for every single song I have up there (two DAM CDs available- DAM == 'mp3.com press to order system'), the full lyrics are typed out and listed online on the page. Not everybody takes the time and effort to do that, but I did.
I hope somebody does the cut-n-paste thing (seeing as I've done all the actual typing) and _puts_ my whole lyric collection on this Russian server. It would be with my total approval- the only limit I'd have is that I'll leave it to somebody else to do it, because I'd like the webpage-hit and would be happy to get song downloads in exchange for making this available so freely. The lyrics are, and will remain, copyright Chris Johnson (various dates). However, I am perfectly free to permit them to be kept on a Russian server and doing so does not in any way imply I waive copyright. I just happen to not be a dick about sharing- shock, horror ;)
I don't actually have any song lyrics on mp3.com/ChrisJ except that one of the techno songs mutilates the words, "get out of this one alive" as spoken by a MacInTalk speech-synthesis voice I hacked different data into to make it more distorted and weird :) need to play with more of that. However, there is a lot of 'about this song' material, and that is where I put the technical data on how I made the songs, and if there are any great audio hacks I invariably include how I did it. So even on the instrumentals there is background information included :)
you're welcome ;) now moderate me down, dammit! Hacking MacInTalk voices with ResEdit and a total lack of documentation is simply not geeky! you should have done it in perl while covered in hot grits! ;)
I have five albums up for sale at mp3.com:
- anima is rock instrumentals on animal themes, eclectic, with some fine performances
- Extended Play is long-format rock instrumental music- hot, guitar-based jams with some Mothers influences
- Hard Vacuum is a dedicated Noise album that revells in raw sound-as-sound
- The Room Full Of Windows is vocal indie pop/rock from the heart
- The RFW Demos are songs that didn't make the RFW album, but something about them seemed cool enough to put together a demos reel
All of these are $5.99- through mp3.com's impressively fast CD-to-order facility, you could buy any of these CDs and have 'em within a couple of days, pretty CD cover and all.If anyone had entertained thoughts of maybe getting one of these someday, or for that matter of ever picking up a CD to support some other mp3.com artist, or even downloading stuff...