Friday, February 27, 2009

Live Blogging Industry Noise - Noise Pop '09

After a less than impressive morning session with Keynote Speaker Fat Mike (NOFX, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes), the conference has been more noise than industry.



10am - Keynote Conversation with Fat Mike

Maybe I'm just not punk rock enough to get it, but if you say f*ck money, f*ck the internet, and f*ck your fans, why not go one step further and say f*ck it to labels, too? Fat Mike would like you to believe that his label, Fat Wreck Chords, serves as a filter for quality and provides a value add that unsigned bands crave and major labels can't replicate. However, from the perspective of an unknown musician, it's not clear to me why any label (major or indie) adds anything of value that can't be replicated by giving music away for free online. After all, what's the point in making $10 on little round plastic disks if the label is just going to take $9.99 anyway?

11am - The Next Big Thing

The panel asks why, if major labels are such dinosaurs, do they still seem so essential in breaking an artist?

According to Aaron Axelsen (Music Director, Live 105) encouraging listeners to discover new music is like getting a four year old to eat broccoli. "It's good for you," he says, "but you need to sandwich it between two pieces of cheddar cheese." While this perspective serves as an apt justification for his job description, it fails to acknowledge the consumption patterns of most online listening. CD sales are faltering precisely because music discovery is alive and well (and free) in the online sphere.

For now, it is advantageous to most music merchants to maintain the status quo. But what happens when the RIAA starts charging a performance license fee for terestrial radio plays? Perhaps then Live 105 will become the advocate for unknowns. The next big thing for the majors may turn out to be Chapter 11.



1pm - Industry Noise: Hot Topics in the Music Industry

Cory Brown of Absolutely Kosher Records says, "If nobody's paying for anything, it doesn't matter how many people are listening to your music." It should not be surprising that his business model relies upon the sales of those pesky round plastic disks. It's amazing how people talk about music as though it has always been a tangible product, until along came that evil internet that threatened everything. I'd like to remind them that throughout the entire course of human history up to the invention of the phonograph, all music was live music. It was only in the twentieth century that music became a product. We should not lament, therefore, that it has now become a commodity.

The price structure of old media is often defended on the grounds that the artist must get paid. This sounds nice, but when has the artist ever gotten paid? Short of going multi-platinum, it is the labels that have reaped most of the benefits of traditional music sales. Perhaps, it's not an either/or decision. Nancy Miller (Music Editor, Wired) proposes the idea of a "musical middle class," suggesting that internet distribution may lead to a path toward profitability for a number of musicians. If there is a path, it's thorny and largely uncharted. But I applaud the realism.

2pm - If Techies Ruled the World / If Artists Ruled the World

The subject of this panel was a hypothetical exercise exploring what would happen if reasonable people controlled the pipeline for the music industry. The answer? Musicians still wouldn't make much money, but it would be a lot more straightforward, and there would be a lot fewer middle men.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Doctor's Visit

When a technophile takes his computer to the hospital:

 
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Saturday, February 14, 2009

Confessions of a Phone Hater, Part II

YouAreYou was long enamored of his iPhone, and now that he's come clean I have no choice but to fess up: I hate my BlackBerry Storm.

Here's why:
1. The Accelerometer . When I want the screen to flip, it doesn't flip. I flip it horizontal, I flip it back to vertical, finally I shake it. I hold it vertical. It doesn't flip. Also, when I don't want the screen to flip, it flips. This happens frequently when I'm holding it vertically and I rest it on a table. Then, it flips. Even when it does flip on command, it lags before it flips.

2. The lock button. I'm talking about the one on the top of the device, which isn't actually a button - it's a location that you press. Because there's a delay before the phone locks (and no accompanying noise or button-click), you're never sure whether it's locked or unlocked. Nothing happens, so you hit the lock location again - then it slyly unlocks and re-locks in succession.

3. GPS. If you use Google Maps on your Storm, you've seen this one before: "Your location within 1100 feet. GPS temporarily unavailable." I estimate that the GPS has worked 10% of my attempts to locate myself.

4. The camera. Almost unusable. The lag between the time you press the button and the time the camera takes a photograph - I counted three Mississippis. That is an embarrassing amount of time. Not to mention the color quality of the photo might as well be grayscale.

I've had several updates, and these problems still exist. I gave it a shot, and I'm not a happy or satisfied customer. But the reality is, at this point I couldn't stand a phone without a touchscreen. Using a little ball to navigate a screen? Intolerable.

When they unlock the iPhone, count me in; maybe YouAreYou will get the Storm.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

iGroan: The Definition of Modern Annoyance

def:
1 : to utter a deep moan indicitave of pain, grief, or annoyance in relation to an iPhone
2 : to make a harsh sound while waiting (in vain) for the 3G network to register

--

I thought I had dodged the bullet on many of the 3G connectivity issues that have plagued the release of the second generation iPhone. But then I went to Tahoe a couple weeks ago, and my signal dropped out completely. Given the terrain and my exceedingly low expectations of AT&T's service, I wasn't particularly surprised to be without mobile service for the weekend. But I did expect it to come back eventually.

I like to think that my 3G signal is still roaming the valley somewhere around Highway 50 East, trying to find it's way back to me. But recently, I've been forced to admit the truth:

The iPhone is a big, fat piece of crap.

There, I said it. Yes, I used to defend the technology from skeptical friends and snarky colleagues when they reported on one article or another listing all the flaws. No more. Sure, I used to sell the sex appeal of a hot techno-gadget to prospective buyers who were justifiably concerned about entering a two year contract with AT&T. But that was back when the phone actually worked. And apparently, I'm not the only one who has recently reached a boiling point. A new wave of lawsuits has emerged within the last two weeks accusing the company of false advertising and misleading claims about the phone's ability to, say, make phone calls.

It's easy to be mad at AT&T because, frankly, the company has been a PR disaster for the last twenty years. But it's hard to feel anything but betrayed by Apple's nonchalance about its defective hardware, not to mention somewhat wounded by its legal defense that no reasonable person would believe its iPhone 3G ads.

So I'm left with no choice. After making numerous calls (on a land line) to AT&T tech support, manually rebooting all network settings, and replacing the SIM card, I have no alternative but to march down to the Apple store, walk right up to that so-called "Genius Bar," and demand that they give me the shiny, new replacement phone they've promised me so that I can be blissfully ignorant all over again.

And when I have that gorgeous new phone in my hands, there's only one question about what to do with the old one.