- Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing? — Times Labs Blog
According to the figures published by the Times, the answer is fairly clearly yes. There's a bit of a question as to how much better they're actually doing, but they are doing better. The only people to lose out are labels. What a shame.
Tag: music
Bookmarks for October 23, 2009
- The £10,000 playlist
Nice summary of why I still prefer buying music, and using iTunes to using Spotify. (Although saying that, I have spent quite a chunk of this week using Spotify, to listen to something specific that I don't happen to own yet.)
Bookmarks for July 15, 2009
- Essay: Dumb-dumb bullets – July 2009 – Armed Forces Journal – Military Strategy, Global Defense Strategy
Whenever anyone asks me why I hate meetings and powerpoint, I am just going to point them at this. If the purpose of a presentation in a meeting is to get decisions made, then the decisions made as a result are likely to be flawed. The information should be circulated in a sensible manner pre-meeting.
- Words For Print Vs Words For Web | > jim rossignol
Yes. Clever stuff. Worth the read. Ties up with some back-of-the-mind thoughts I'm having at the moment.
- Meeting Ticker
This should be up on the a screen in every meeting room, ever.
- tedr*tumblr: Right on Trent
Trent Reznor nails the future of not just the music business, but more or less any creative economy. Barring, of course, the disruptive new technology that will be invented next month that will render his notions moot. But y'know, it's a good summary of what everyone should have been doing for the last few years.
Bookmarks for June 30, 2009
- potlatch: what's going on with the music formerly known as 'indie'?
"I can tell you which Suede record accompanied my GCSEs and A-Levels; today's teenagers would tell you which band."
- Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair
Never mind kicking myself – I am scourging myself with rusty barbed wire, and rubbing salt in the wounds for missing this. Couple of key quotes from this write up: "Is the current be-scaffolded state of London perpetual remythologising?" Iain Sinclair says “Before we can move forward, we have to absorb everything that has come before, and rip it off.”
- SoFoBoMo – The Solo Photo Book Month
Dammit, why was I not told about this? Next year, gadget, next year!
- Glastonbury 2009 – The Big Picture
It *almost* makes me want to got there next year, and take a camera. Obviously, I'm not mad, and won't be going, but there are some absolutely gorgeous shots in here.
Bookmarks for June 23, 2009
- » Saga of the Swamp Thing #20
Steve Bissette offers a behind the scenes look at the creation of the first issue of Alan Moore's industry-changing run on Swamp Thing, only recently reprinted for the first time.
- The V: A summary
I am very very occasionally asked why I'm not on The V (an old internet hangout) these days. I can't imagine my presence is terribly missed, but Dave has thrown up a summary of the board that he found somewhere (either on the board itself, or on some kind of nerd forum review site, I guess) that has rather set me to thinking about on-line communities, why I basically don't participate in them any more despite having spent a significant chunk of my 20s in one forum or another, and what I think they lack, and it's a topic I wouldn't mind writing something longer about in the near future, so I'm just bookmarking the summary as a useful starting point.
- Angels in the Abattoir
Thea Gilmore's new idea for a music business model. I'll be interested to see if it takes off. And if I have the spare cash, I might well sign up.
Bookmarks for June 12, 2009
- Gizmodo – Gang Uses Stolen Credit Cards to Buy Own Music on iTunes, Collects Royalties, Still Not Famous – Itunes scam
I saw this linked, and assumed it was an Onion headline, but it's not. This is a real thing. Fucking hell. I don't know whether to be impressed or saddened.
- Facebook usernames and the battle over your digital identity | FactoryCity
People occasionally ask me why I'm quite militant about only every using my real name on-line, owning several domain names of my name, and generally doing my best to get my name, or a basic variant on it as a username whenever possible, and it's this: I do not want Facebook, or any similar service to be the primary marker of my identity when people look me up on line. I wish to have control over my on-line identity and how people encounter it, not give it up to a third party, and the best way to do that is to be open and clear about who I am everywhere. So I have slightly mixed feelings about this facebook URLs business – on the one hand, I'm going to have to try and get my name on there, but on the other, I'd really rather not improve the chances of my profile there beating out something that I actually control as the marker of my digital identity.
- » Buy album | Tough Love
One of London's very finest unsigned bands have just released this first mini album full of absolutely superb tribal pop that is a perfect soundtrack to summer. It'll cost you all of a fiver, and at that price, you cannot afford not to own it.
- Stop Motion Video made from Post-It Notes
Exactly was it says on the tin. Except better than you're thinking it is. Seriously, it's ace, go look.
Bookmarks for April 30, 2009
- Swine Flu Hemagglutinin
Swine flu amino acids sequenced and turned into ambient music. It's not going to storm the pop charts any time soon, but it's not awful-sounding either.
- Open the Future: Pandemonium
I keep linking to on-line acquaintance Jamais Cascio's stuff because he's bloody good. I'm really quite sorry that I'm going to miss out on a chance for a pint with him next week because I'll be in Toronto when he's in London. This one is particularly worth reading if all you can see ahead of us is the global failure of the human species. It probably won't cheer you up terribly much, but well, he makes a particularly good point in a particularly good way.
Bookmarks for April 10, 2009
- 3-D Printing Hits Rock-bottom Prices With Homemade Ceramics Mix
I have no personal use at the moment for a 3d printer, but I'm sure the day will come when I will, and I'd really rather not have to pay through the nose for raw materials.
- Cover versions – a set on Flickr
Someone has taken classic record covers, and re-imagined them as Pelican book covers. This is absolutely beautiful stuff.
- Daring Fireball: How to Block the DiggBar
Jon Gruber has implemented an anti-DiggBar tool for his pages. I will probably do the same for mine. Read about why and how he's done it, because while this may sound a bit like a crank thing to do, rejecting potential traffic from a popular source like Digg, the important principle here is that what Digg is doing is subverting on of the basic premises of how the web works, and it should be discouraged.
- Behold the GIGAFLAKE!
Truly, the confectionery of gods and titans.
Bookmarks for April 1, 2009
- The Problem With Music
Steve Albini's breakdown of exactly how much a band can expect now to earn in a normal record industry contact. Figures would need to be adjusted for inflation, but I bet they're still proportionally the same. I've seen this a few times over the years, I just wanted to log it in case I need to refer to it again.
- Micro scope – The Engineer
Some notes about the practicalities of nanomachinery in the body – both the propulsion/navigation, and the means by which they might operate on us.
- Blood powered fuel cells.
Good to know that my future cybernetic implants aren't likely to need batteries.
- Jacek Utko asks, Can design save the newspaper? | Video on TED.com
After the links the other week, here's a talk about how they newspapers might yet be kept alive: by making them beautiful objects.
- Ramachandran on synesthesia, creativity and metaphor
A fascinating talk on the some of the possible neuroscientific explanations for some of the more remarkable and ill-understood operations of the brain.
- wrongcards
I shall be sending these in future. Well, maybe not, but there are a few things in here that made me laugh.)
- Anki – friendly, intelligent flashcards
This could be a really useful little learning tool.
Bookmarks for March 26, 2009
- glycon: Big Numbers #3
Alan Moore's Big Numbers #3, made available on-line with his blessing. To say this is a big unexpected would be understating things a bit, but well done that man.
- Remixes of the paranoid London police "anti-terror"/suspect your neighbours posters – Boing Boing
Ironically, the police state that we're increasingly living in "for out own saftey" is what's moving toward to the belief that armed insurrection is the only answer.
- AC/DC rocks the office wins Media Grauniad award
My former colleague Phil has recently won a well deserved award for a very clever means of producing a viral music video.