The video version of Episode 3 of The Best Podcast You Have is coming along nicely. We put in another few hours of work last night, and are hovering at around the five-minute mark, which means it is more than half-done! The first one might someday be looked upon as the worst of the bunch, since everyone is trying to get used to a new medium and we’re using shitty editing software, but have no fear, it’ll still leave you feeling dosed.
Now, some news from this past week.
- For those of you who were unable to download Peel—the desktop jukebox capable of compiling all the music available on any website or blog—here’s Songbird, the PC equivalent (with a few fancy bells and whistles, like an included browser). Like I said last week: Now you can enjoy all the wonderful music I share on my website without having to read my inane drivel!
- Speaking of sharing (by the way, did you know it’s caring?) a study published in a scholarly journal shows that the effects of Peer-To-Peer networks on legal music sales are, “not statistically distinguishable from zero.” That is to say, file sharing is not to blame for the continuing drop in record sales. In fact, the study states that 803 million albums were sold in 2002 (in CD format), which was down roughly 80 million the previous year. The study showed the impact of file sharing couldn’t have accounted for more than 6 million albums total, thus leaving 74 million unsold CDs without an excuse for sitting on shelves. You know what my excuse is (shitty music made by deplorable artists), but I don’t think the RIAA would care to admit that.
- Just because I missed seeing Ennio Morricone conduct at Radio City Music Hall doesn’t mean you can’t buy me this DVD of a concert performance from 2004.
- I can’t tell if this new Tascam MP3 player “for guitarists” is the dumbest invention ever or one of the coolest. It’s allows a listener to slow down, loop or eliminate guitar parts in order to play along and learn a song. You can also raise and lower the pitch 1% in case you’re too lazy to play in tune! I could see the use in one of these if, for example, you’re in a band and you want to mix a song for a guitarist to learn with either an isolated guitar track OR a rough mix without his/her guitar part…but other than that it’s pretty dopey.
- Say, what would the world be like with an open approach to music distribution? I don’t know, but one goatee-faced tech geek sure likes talking about it. I couldn’t make it all the way through the article, so feel free to tell me what the hell this Star Wars nerd is talking about.
- To wrap up a week in which I’ve railed against indie labels and further sullied my chance of building a working relationship with industry members, an article from WIRED that proclaims said labels are taking on the “majors” by starting the centralization process. It means all sorts of peachy wonderful things, like creating a lobby group (sound familiar?) with benevolent intentions, such as getting more indie-music played on local radio stations! Hurray, the end of major label radio dominance! Yay! Oh, and also, the lobby group says they’d like to attend to piracy issues. So keep telling yourself that the bands you love and the labels they align themselves with are really as hip and as predicated on idealism and freedom as you hope they are…
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