:
Another sign of Mr. Byrne rsquo;s constant forward motion is his voracious appetite for new music. He rsquo;s a regular visitor to the annual South by Southwest music festival Austin, Tex.. :, where he will be a featured speaker in March. And any concertgoer in New York City is apt to spot him regularly, hanging out near the back of a room, generally without an entourage, his shock of near-white hair adding a few inches to his already impressive height. Last year he could be spotted sipping white wine in the lobby of Town Hall before a Cat Power performance, applauding the debut of Gnarls Barkley at Webster Hall and cheering the Brazilian funk artist Otto (who appears on a forthcoming Luaka Bop compilation) at Joe rsquo;s Pub.
ldquo;He really keeps his finger on the pulse, rdquo; said Ms. Diaz-Tutaan, whom Mr. Byrne became interested in after hearing the CD her band, Apsci, recorded for the tiny progressive hip-hop label Quannum.
ldquo;That rsquo;s really inspiring to me mdash; that this guy who has been around for such a long time and has been one of my musical influences is keeping up with things on a more underground level. He rsquo;ll just ride his bike to a venue, go in, check out the band and ride home. rdquo; Mr.
Byrne doesn rsquo;t seem to think there rsquo;s anything particularly remarkable about it. ldquo;Sure, I go out a lot, rdquo; he said. ldquo;I rsquo;m in New York, and I rsquo;m a music fan.
But sometimes I go out to these shows and I go lsquo;Where are my peers?, rsquo; you know? Where are the musicians from my generation, or the generation after mine?
Don rsquo;t they go out to hear music? Do they just stay home? Are they doing drugs?
What rsquo;s going on? rdquo; He laughed and shook his head. ldquo;Or maybe they rsquo;re just not interested anymore.
They rsquo;re watching lsquo;Desperate Housewives. rsquo; rdquo;
KCRW is a leading example of how public radio stations are aggressively pushing high-definition radio, live streaming of programs, podcasting and other technology-driven improvements -- and in the process demonstrating the potential the Internet may hold for all radio stations, public or commercial.KCRW's music programs are, in my view, the best around and a refreshing change from the usual commercial practice of playing the same old songs over and over and over and over.Such moves have helped public stations expand their audience at a time when commercial broadcasters are seeing the listener base shrink. But while the initiatives have helped public radio stations expand their reach, the bar for success is also lower. Public stations rely on sponsorship and listener donations and are under less pressure to make money on their audience-growing online initiatives, such as selling ads on their podcasts.
"They have less to lose," says David Bank, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. "They're all about delivering their content to the audience, without worrying about how [new technologies] might displace the audience and the advertiser." Now, he says, commercial radio is wishing it had moved faster and earlier in this area, although it has a big effort to catch up in the past year or two.
Many big radio companies now sell advertising for their streams separately to their broadcast advertising, and start most podcasts with an ad. Industry-wide, online revenue now runs well north of $100 million annually.
i've not thought much about satellite radio ( , ) until a recent lengthy drive around central Colorado. Prior to satellite radio, if you wanted music while driving, the choices were:
- an iPod with an fm adaptor, or a cable plugged into the rental car's radio, or
- Local radio
Several of Sirius's songs were a pleasant surprise: Elton John's classic " " and Willie Nelson's acoustic " ", among others. There were some disappointments, including replays ( ) and the odd playing of the " " in Sirius's "Coffeehouse" program. I have to assume that they are paid to plug the Fray.
I was pleasantly surprised with the Sirius reception while driving in Canyons. The only places we lost reception were and in some deep canyons. The satellite choices certainly are compelling, particularly given the same old, same old, played over and over on traditional stations.
Finally, I continue to be amazed at the quantity of 30 and 40 year old music played in restaurants, cafe's and bars. Lunching on trout tacos one day, we heard Joan Baez, Steve Miller, The Who, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin among many others. Is there nothing interesting from the 21st Century?
:
>Consumers now have the ability to buy digital versions of music and movies from a vast (and growing) online catalog. But that convenience has come at a price: Most of the digital content is packaged with technology called digital rights management, or DRM, a sort of copy protection that limits what users can do with the material. The music and movie industries defend DRM as a means of protecting artists and publishers -- without it, they say, it would be too easy for users to abuse copyrights by illegally swapping files over the Internet.Rich Albertoni at Entercomm's local station, (NY AG Spitzer filed suit against Entercomm recently). I rarely listen to it - how often must we hear the Police or Sting for that matter? We're fortunate to have and along with our public radio stations.They also argue that without DRM technologies, publishers wouldn't have been willing to distribute their content in online music and video stores, such as Apple's iTunes. But some consumer advocates argue that DRM often goes too far, treating customers as would-be criminals and putting burdensome restrictions on what they can do with music and movies that were legally purchased. (ITunes, for instance, allows users to burn music to an unlimited number of CDs, but limits the number of computers on which users can play purchased music.
)
Those interested in the nuts and bolts of the music business would likely find the Lefsetz Letter useful " ". I wonder if any other local media outlets will pick this up?
RIAA: Ripping Your CD's is Not Fair Use (!
) :
It is no secret that the entertainment oligopolists are not happy about space-shifting and format-shifting. But surely ripping your own CDs to your own iPod passes muster, right? In fact, didn't they admit as much in front of the Supreme Court during the argument last year?Some of our politicians have been serving Hollywood's interests (to the detriment of ours) rather well, including , among others. I included track 8 in a 2004 Mad City Marathon Quicktime. The music fit the very wet '04 marathon.As part of the on-going , the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are talking about making copies of your own CDs:
Jason Kottke at New York City's Beacon Theatre last night and included links to some of the show.
The band offers a handy on their website.
Lawyers representing people who have been sued by the RIAA started a :
We are lawyers in New York City.:We practice law at Beldock Levine Hoffman LLP. We find these cases to be oppressive and unfair, as large law firms financed by the recording industry sue ordinary working people for thousands of dollars. We have set up this blog in order to collect evidence and input about these oppressive lawsuit.
The world British singer-songwriter Richard Thompson creates is so vivid it feels as if you're in the company of the characters he chronicles: bikers, schoolyard bullies, dreamers, lovers and losers.audio
For nearly four decades, Thompson has performed and recorded a wide variety of music, from traditional folk songs to rock-and roll.
His latest effort is Front Parlour Ballads, a mostly acoustic work recorded in a small studio in his garage.
"This is not a pretty picture; what we see is that payola is pervasive," Mr. Spitzer said, using a term from the radio scandals of the 1950's in describing e-mail messages and corporate documents that his office obtained during a yearlong investigation. "It is omnipresent.
It is driving the industry and it is wrong." The Attorney General's findings alleges that the illegal payoffs for airplay were designed to manipulate record charts, generate consumer interest in records and increase sales: "Instead of airing music based on the quality, artistic competition, aesthetic judgments or other judgments, radio stations are airing music because they are paid to do so in a way that hasn't been disclosed to the public," Spitzer said at a press briefing.An alternative?
I think .
Saturday Snow Storm: Music to Shovel..
.. or a Snowstorm Playlist :) A few selections from the music my shuffled to while shoveling earlier today (Madison received about 8" of snow).
- Pink Floyd
- Dire Straits
- U2's
- The Jesus Mary Chain
More Madison Photos: Gala James Gardner snowplow stuck in a snowbank. Ann Althouse posts two . .
..
Great Music Radio Does Exist, on the Internet
Tired of too many commercials and the same old, same old, same old music?Point your itunes or other mp3 streaming audio software to these internet "radio" stations:
- Madison's own
- Finally, and I think, most interestingly, I spend most of my listening time tuned in to Maui's , a low power FM and internet radio station. Excellent and eclectic.
Overture Hall, Madison Symphony, James Trotter are all "Up to Date.
.." on last weekend's Symphony organ performance:
The organ sounded splendid in Mr.
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