PoOPlist » Music Industry

Is Jack White mad, clever, or just trying to fuck with record collector scum worldwide?

Mark Zip — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 22:54:29 +0000

Three weeks before his “Blunderbuss” album hits the streets, Third Man Records decided to make the Jack White album track “Freedom at 21″ premier exclusively via flexi-disc records attached to helium balloons launched from the label headquarters in Nashville on April 1st, 2012. Envisioned as an experiment exploring non-traditional forms of record distribution and a way to get records in the hands of people who don’t visit record shops, the label was sure to use biodegradable latex balloons and all-natural twine in the process. Accompanying the balloons were custom post cards with instructions for the finders to submit photos, discovery location and the date on which the record was found, all of which will be incorporated into a website where fans can access the information. Statistics for similar balloon launches show a recovery rate of approximately 10% so it’s quite possible that less than one hundred of the one thousand records launched will ever be discovered and the “Freedom at 21″ flexi-disc will surely be a highly sought-after collectible for years to come.

An extra WTF and “Fuck You” element: the “release” date.

Of course, the NY Times headline writers think that Jack White is the savviest rock star of our times, so perhaps fucking with collector scum is a natural extension of that.

Damn it! I fell into his savvy trap.

Who Cares When Your Record Was Digitally Remastered?

Mark Zip — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:22:52 +0000

Excellent screed/rant by Dave Mandl over on Rumpus.net. Neatly explains the sore point of incorrect dating on music streaming and download sites.

Who Cares When Your Record Was Digitally Remastered? – The Rumpus.net.

Interestingly, one of the commenters says that the reason why the labels feed this incorrect information to the streaming databases is so that they get the (tiny) payment registered to the more recent release. Presumably this make accounting easier for the labels. From a cursory look around a few other services, it appears that those using the All Music API do get the dates correct.

Dynamic Range Day: Inside the Loudness War

Mark Zip — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:34:08 +0000

Justin Bieber's latest record is louder than AC/DC and Motorhead - click for larger image

It seems that today is “Dynamic Range Day”. I think that perhaps the effort needs a better publicist or marketer, I went to Hallmark to look for a “Happy Dynamic Range Day” card and the lady gave me very odd look. No matter, it’s an interesting and necessary effort. The Dynamic Range Day site has a number of useful and informative resources. And if you’re that way inclined, you can win a whole bunch of cool gear.

Dynamic Range Day: Inside the Loudness War – CE Pro Article from CE Pro.

Long Reads: The Global Songwriter Shell Game: Why The Major Music Companies Are Getting Your Royalties

Mark Zip — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:33:45 +0000

Major music labels tell us that it is bad that people “steal content”, so they’ve come up with another revenue stream, accepting royalty payments which thay are not due, from people who are not authorised to collect them and then not giving it to the people for whom it was collected….

The Global Songwriter Shell Game: Why The Major Music Companies Are Getting Your Royalties | TuneCorner Music Blog.

Do You Sell Used Items? – Trans-Pacific Partnership Proposes the End of the Doctrine of First Sale

Mark Zip — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:05:23 +0000

IANAL, but I was fascinated by this in-depth history of the Doctrine of First Sale (which allows me to sell used records to anyone willing to pay) and analysis of the most recent attempt to blow it up.
It’s slightly heavy going, with quite a bit of law jargon, but the thrust of the piece leads to the remarkable conclusion that the TPP proposal, in an attempt to protect US industries which rely largely on copyrighted works, will actually drive then to make all copies abroad. At the same time it will finally kill the market for used books, records, CDs, DVDs, games and computer programs.

Trans-Pacific Partnership Proposes Copyright Suppression of Price Competition.

Slightly less technical coverage of the article at TechDirt

Alan Lomax’s Global Jukebox Goes Digital

Mark Zip — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:50:31 +0000

The music Lomax collected has been available in 45-second snippets on the Cultural Equity web site for several years but is now being digitized in its entirety for streaming…

Folklorist’s Global Jukebox Goes Digital- NYTimes.com.

The Pirate Bay puts up “The Promo Bay” – Does your band want to be in front of a billion eyeballs?

Mark Zip — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:22:28 +0000

The Pirate Bay has many many many people looking at it every day. And now they are suggesting that perhaps it might be good for your band to be seen by those eyeballs. As Masnick asks “Would You Rather Fight Piracy… Or Have A Billion People Know You Exist?” – - See the easy-to-fill-in form here: The Promo Bay.

PoOPlist will go dark for 12 hours Wednesday January 18th

Mark Zip — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:14:01 +0000

Internet strike day is Wednesday January 18th. In a protest against the SOPA and PIPA legislation moving through the US Congress, many major sites (Wikipedia, Reddit, Internet Archive) will go dark for 12 hours. Of course, PoOPlist does not have the reach of these sites, but we want to do our small part to help.

Both of these pieces of legislation are harmful to the internet itself, to innovative business and will not achieve what their sponsors say they will. There are precise ways to prevent foreign websites from pirating US content and they are already written into law. There already ways to prevent counterfeit physical products. We do not need overly broadly written bills which conflate three different areas of law (physical, digital and technical).

You can read more at:

EFF.org SOPA Action page
AmericanCensorship.org
SopaStrike.com
“SOPA” Tag at Techdirt

Youssou N’Dour announces Senegal presidential bid

Mark Zip — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:24:35 +0000

“It is a supreme patriotic duty,” Mr N’Dour said of his candidacy.

“It’s true, I haven’t pursued higher education, but the presidency is a function and not a job.

BBC News – Youssou N'Dour announces Senegal presidential bid.

There are two interesting things about this NYTimes.com article about Rock Music in 2011

Mark Zip — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:24:31 +0000

The first is that Jon Caramanica has written a very interesting and well-considered piece about the mainstream US* rock scene in 2011. I’ve had quibbles with some of his pet projects over the years, but here he hits a home run. It really is difficult to overstate the malaise in US mainstream rock this year. A worthwhile read.

The second interesting thing about this article on the web is the SEO and page title tuning which the NYT has used for this piece. The article is called “The Year When Rock Just Spun Its Wheels” and it lists a bunch of groups who have, in Caramanica’s opinion, failed to set the US mainstream rock scene alight with their new albums, performances or even their entire careers to date.

But if you look at the page title (the bit at the very top of your browser window, above the address bar) it reads Rock in 2011 – Hot Chelle Rae, Foster the People, Chevelle. That’s the phrase which will appear when I paste in the address below this post. It’s also the page title which Google and other web services will use to help understand what the article is about. But is that actually what the piece is about? Sure, the article mentions those bands, but actually the newspaper headline writer had it correct, the article is about the year when rock spun its wheels.

I assume that NYT is hoping that by changing the title of the page away from the title of the article, fans of those bands who are looking for information about them will come to this page. That’s a mis-calculation which should backfire. For instance, I should imagine that a Foster the People fan would be annoyed with this:

… Foster the People, whose album, “Torches” (StarTime/Columbia), was one of the most lauded rock albums of the year by an emerging band, even though it did little to add to the soul-infused lite-rock of the 1980s.

Or how about this gem:

Nickelback on “Here And Now” (Roadrunner), Chevelle on “Hats Off to the Bull” (Epic), Disturbed on the B-sides collection “The Lost Children” (Reprise) — all released big albums this year that work the post-grunge rock spectrum, to varying degrees of success but with equal amounts of innovation, which is to say little. The burly guitars are the same, as are the melancholy choruses, the assertive but not affirming drumming and the sense that this has all been done before, and better (in some cases by Nickelback itself, several years ago).

I cannot imagine that there are too many Chevelle fans wandering around the web hoping to encounter stuff like that.

Choosing the title of a web page carefully is important. But it should be done to best indicate what the article is about, not to drive traffic in a misleading way. This is an interesting article about how mainstream US rock stood still this year, why not tell us, and the search engines, that.

Rock in 2011 – Hot Chelle Rae, Foster the People, Chevelle – NYTimes.com.

* I’ve inserted “US” into my description of the article’s subject. It’s a way to clarify that he is definitely not writing about any place else.