My perception of the music buisness is changing rapidly these days. It’s become an empty lot of ideas. Before explaining that I need to establish some background.
It used to be that the radio DJ was the gatekeeper of quality, playing what they felt was quality, stylish, cool. As profits rose record labels took over this job and did fairly well at it for quite a while. At some point in the 90s they figured out that the majority of people would buy an entire CD on the basis of 1 radio hit. The concept of the single had all but died out and listening stations were….yet to be invented??? Price-fixing were the words whispered on the wind lest we forget where the industry was coming from.
The internet started to occur to the rest of us round about that time and along with it a new DJ-less, advertising optional distribution network came into being. Music listeners and lovers everywhere entered into this new system like a farmer walking up out of a root celler into a wide open field. There was and is a lot of squinting going on as we get used to the changes.
So music has become an empty lot of ideas. A vast and empty place with so much of something that it’s flat, levelled off and people walk right over it without experiencing anything. I won’t trouble you with references to potential or *shudder* burried treasure because I’m about to ask all who read this to wade into the cliche, idol-wannabe, outernet techno and find some sound that you like. The only thing cooler than an artist who lives on a tv screen in front of your favourite shampoo is one who lives like you and makes both you and them enjoy it more.
Lastly, please rate based on what you like listening to when browsing music as opposed to just giving a blind and lazy A-for effort. It helps to add some terrain and interest to this free space we find ourselves in.
I’m a big fan of rail transportation, whether that be subway, light-rapid-transit, passenger train or a rail gun into outer space. It’s too bad that many of these possibilities are declining in my part of the world. Everything happens slowly on a train. It’s more than just novelly cool to be travelling in the same direction as a whole bunch of other people. There’s a cohesion that happens that is unlike a freeway and deeper than brief and sometimes terrifying air travel. It’s like the feeling of mild betrayal and final justice one gets when a loud drunk gets hauled off ones train in Sacremento. Why was he rummaging my overhead luggage earlier anyways? On an airplane the whole affair would have been shrouded in mystery since landing at any spot other than the destination may cause panic but the train stops all of the time. One more stop and a few highway patrolmen on board just makes for more interesting dream plots.
Something has gotten under my skin as of late. It seems that the media distribution establishment (RIAA and MPAA…possibly a few other AAs) have put their collective wills together and decided to protect the poor artists who depend on their shield of love and goodwill to survive. They have determined to plug something they like to call the ‘Analog Hole’, we’ll abreviate that down to A-Hole for now and define it as that space between the speakers and your ears when you’re listening to music and that space between the television screen and your eyes when you’re watching TV. The problem with the A-Hole is that it is a very vulnerable place, a space in which a microphone can be placed or even worse a video camera which in turn can duplicate the experience you are having in an unauthorized fashion.
The plan is to place a watermark into the audio, movies and TV being brought into your house. This watermark is an invisible chunk of code that is intended to block off the A-Hole when the recording device senses it, actually the device you currently use to copy your experience now will go on working as expected. The intention is that you will buy a new camera or microphone, one that offers the new and special feature of not being able to record things. I wish they had that feature when I bought my last microphone! Rumour has it that the next project on the books for RIAA and MPAA is to reduce the speed of electricity thus making even high speed internet bandwidth insufficient to share large media files.
I hope we all enjoy the freedom of use we have with our entertainment right now because soon it might be gone. And if you really enjoy something find a way to financially thank the person(s) who created it.
In keeping with the cold weather theme, here’s a video of a guy at our very own University of Saskatchewan throwing a pot of boiling water into the air at -40 degrees C with spectacular results and much debate ensuing. Read the comments posted after.
My city just got a whole heap of snow. It sure is nostalgic to have banks of the stuff as big as I recall from my childhood. On that note, the one thing I never got as a child that I’m now aware almost everywhere else on this continent enjoys is a snow day. It’s just not done here. I think snow, like the cold is viewed as an amusing obstacle in my locale, reveling in stories of how difficult it is and how hardy we must be to endure it. Screw that, I just think staying away from normal plans for a day would be a fun diversion.
I’ll try and post some pictures of ‘our’ great day in the snow as soon as I get them from the ‘friends with the digital camera’.
Here’s a photo…
James Frye of Oprah fame had it a little bit right by putting the importance of a compelling story over personal integrity. Perhaps literature (and art in general) of this kind will be more acurately appreciated when the person who made it is no longer availible for talk-show whippings. Now writing one’s memoirs with less than factual information is definitely lining oneself up for whatever immediate grief may result. However, now that this previously confirmed excellent story has been factually de-pants’ed back to fiction does it not remain a good story? I think occasionally we have to remove the art from the artist to really enjoy it. I’m going to go and find something beautiful to listen to that I know nothing about. I want to be moved by only the three and a half minutes of cold transcendance that some unknown person has put into sound waves.