Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
Math genius claims to invent new piracy-protection technology: When Internet users started ripping off songs from the online Museum of Musical Instruments, they angered the wrong guy: millionaire mathematician Hank Risan. Risan’s unorthodox museum is a Web site devoted to guitars and their role in music history, reflecting his personal …
Read More »Culture and Society
Singles Going Steady
Discussion #3,1004 about the state of the music biz, this one by Amy Harmon of the NY Times: The industry is pursuing lawsuits against music pirates but is also offering new ways to legally listen to and buy music online through deals like a recent alliance with Apple Computer. That …
Read More »“Serving Music Listeners”
VERLYN KLINKENBORG of the NY Times hopes iTunes can remain independent from the machinations of the major labels: This new innovation is almost certainly going to set off a surge of new buying. Some of us will be filling in the CD-size gaps in our collections, but a lot of …
Read More »The Collective Intelligence At Work and Play
Henry Jenkins has a perceptive analysis of the “collective intelligence” of the Internet and its bearing on Survivor – really: The Survivor winner is one of the most tightly guarded secrets in the country. Some say that the show’s producer, Mark Burnett, engages in misinformation campaigns, planting misleading information in …
Read More »Apple Movies
New movie-editing software goes on sale June 14: Apple, based in Cupertino, California, had unveiled the software in April during the National Association of Broadcasters meeting in Las Vegas. Final Cut Pro 4 will sell for about $999 [$911.99 from Amazon!!] Apple, like many personal computer companies such as No. …
Read More »Sold Up the Digital River
Verizon runs out of options and has to reveal the names of four customers suspected of illegally uploading [article mistakenly says “downloading”] digital copies of songs to the RIAA: The nation’s largest telephone company was ordered to surrender the names to the Recording Industry Association of America by the U.S. …
Read More »As Goes Wal-Mart, So Goes the Nation
Have you heard of RFID (radio frequency identification)? Wal-Mart has: Inventory management technology that uses wireless signals to track products from the factory to store shelves is set to win a major new ally next week: Wal-Mart. The retail giant is expected to throw its weight behind RFID (radio frequency …
Read More »Play Along With Partch
Companion site to “American Mavericks” series produced by Minnesota Public Radio offers opportunity to play eccentric musical instruments virtually online: American Mavericks (www.musicmavericks.org), a new Web site focusing on unorthodox classical composers, allows visitors to hear [Harr] Partch’s music, read one of his manifestos or, by tapping on a computer …
Read More »Blabbing on the Beeb
Hey, that was fun. I was just on the BBC Five Live Up All Night radio show – up all night alright, it was almost 3am there (10pm here) – with host Dotun Adebayo. We talked about Pearl Jam leaving Epic Records and its ramifications – the producer caught the …
Read More »“Where oh where have my CD sales gone?”
With all this talk of the future of the music industry today, it’s a great time to read Jim Wilcox’s terrific article in Sound and Vision looking at the various claims and theories as to why CD sales are down: it’s not surprising that the record industry sees downloading as …
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