Articles by Mark Zip

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Music Industry January 12, 2011

Sign of the digital times: Sony shutting plant that used to make 18M CDs a month

Sony this week said it was shuttering one of its largest CD manufacturing plants – citing the impact of digital downloads and other economic issues. The plant, which is in Pitman, NJ and has been in operation for some 50 years, first producing vinyl records, will close on March 31 and about 300 people will lose their jobs.  The 500,000-square-foot warehouse began producing vinyl LPs in 1960 and moved to CD manufacturing in 1988. At its capacity, the plant was making 18 million CDs per month, according to its website. Sony shutting plant that used to make 18M CDs a month (Info…

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IP, Music Industry, Music Technology January 10, 2011

Shock! Major record label does the right thing! (.. or does it?)

From the press release: The American people, through the nation’s library, will receive a post-holiday gift of vintage sound recordings from one of the world’s largest recording companies. The Library of Congress and the Universal Music Group (UMG) announced today the donation of more than 200,000 historic master recordings—many long out-of-print or never released—to the Library’s Recorded Sound Section, which has more than 3 million sound recordings in its collections.    Universal Music Group Donates Recordings to Library – The Library Today Library of Congress. Note, though, that Universal retains the commercial rights and the copyright.  So it seems as though…

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CD reviews, WTF? January 8, 2011

Remarkable interactive infographics: Year in Reviews 2010 (P4K Edition)

Edward Segel has a very cool infographic at: Year in Reviews 2010 It features all the Pitchfork album reviews of 2010 arranged according to rating and it pops up images and links. I’m sure my statistician sister can tell you what the technical term is for this sort of presentation of data. I think it is “cool”. Note that if you want to get a 10 at P4K it helps to be a millionaire or a deluxe reissue

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remixes, WTF? December 31, 2010

Unlikely Sources: The 5 Deadliest Drops Of 2010 : NPR

Of all the unlikely places to hear “deadly drops”, I think that bastion of middle class  bourgeoisie, the NPR website, is the most unlikely. Still, credit where credit is due, this short list is killer: The 5 Deadliest Drops Of 2010 : NPR Dunno if it got on the actual radio network tho… (bonus points for the inclusion of one of this PoOPsters’ favourites of the year)

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Record Fairs December 14, 2010

This is what record collectors look like… (well, some of them…)

A fun set of pictures with a wide variety of people and records. This is why the WFMU Record Fair is different. Go here to see all 230 of the pictures: Dust & Grooves Photo Booth at The WFMU Record Fair 2010, NYC. Or here for the project home site: Dust and Grooves: WFMU Or here for the public page in the walled garden of Facebook P.S. At least two poopsters are in the gallery. At least one of those two is showing the wear and tear of a three day record show…

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Radio November 11, 2010

What’s the Mean Time To Katy Perry?

The excellent Music Machinery (a blog about music technology by Paul Lamere) has worked out the “Mean Time To Katy Perry” over 8 Top 40 stations around the nation. Answer: about 40 minutes. Get the full dataset and mathematics behind the TTKP:   What’s the TTKP?

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video October 27, 2010

The Streets coming back to life?

Mike Skinner, aka the Streets, has been very quiet for a year or more. Over the last month or so there have been stirrings from him. He released this song over a year ago and now there is a new video for it. This seems to confirm that the song will be on the new record. right? Here’s another fun one from the recent stirrings:

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Live Shows, Record Fairs September 24, 2010

Brooklyn Record Riot, Sunday Sept 26th

at Warsaw 261 Driggs Ave Brooklyn, NY 11222 Hours: Noon-8 PM $3.00 regular admission $20.00 early admission from 10 am-noon Beer! Traditional Polish food. Eight massive DJs led by Phast Phreddie (yup, Phreddie who used to work at Rhino) 50plus tables of merchandise from 30plus cool dealers hailing from the USA and Canada. Public transportation: Warsaw is located near the L and G trains. The L train has a Bedford Avenue stop (the first stop in Brooklyn as you leave Manhattan). Exit on the Driggs Avenue side and make a right on Driggs and walk toward McCarren Park. Warsaw will…

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Music Industry, Music Technology September 18, 2010

How we discover new music today

We Twitter-follow someone we already like. They follow someone they like and then R(e)T(weet) something he says: We follow the link in the tweet and get to: http://www.collapseboard.com/song-of-the-day-177-agent-ribbons Where we learn about a new band we’ve not heard before. And we get to hear them on videos we’d not seen before. We learn that there is a CD from 2006 (now apparently out of print) and that there will be a new CD forthcoming on October 12, 2010 And finally find out the they are playing a show in NYC September 19th, a day we cannot go…

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Music Industry, Music Technology September 10, 2010

Guess What, Court Says You Might Not Own That Record You Bought

Wired.com’s excellent Threat Level blog has a post called Guess What, You Don’t Own That Software You Bought. It’s all about the federal appeals court saying today that software makers can use shrink-wrap and click-wrap licenses to forbid the transfer or resale of their wares, an apparent gutting of the so-called first-sale doctrine. How might this apply to records? We already know that you do not own songs you “buy” from iTunes, you merely own a license to play them. What if a record company decided to include a note on every record and CD saying that your purchase of…

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Music Industry, remixes, video September 10, 2010

One of Pooplist’s own is very busy (Oh, and gets played on Mary Anne Hobbs’ last show!)

Praveen Sharma (a PoOP contributor in ’01 and ’03) is hard working man. His many projects include PercussionLab and Sepalcure The former has many interesting electronic music based mixes from around the world. The latter has a 4 track EP on Hotflush Recordings which will interest fans of Joy Orbison, Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke and Larry Heard. And in a coup whose import is difficult to overstate, Sepalcure had a dubplate played on Mary Anne Hobbs’ last Radio 1 show. She’s such a fan that she’s included a song of theirs on soundtrack for the new Daren Aronofsky film Go…

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Music Industry September 9, 2010

Matador 21st Anniversary Box – 6 CDs, book (+ poker chips?!)

A little while ago we highlighted the Ninja Tune XX box. Now it’s the turn of Matador Records. Not quite as elaborate as the NT box but pretty hefty nonetheless. And what’s with the poker chips? Is it so fans have something to use at the Matador 21 in Las Vegas celebration, October 1 – 3. Full details and tracklist at the Matador Order page Here are the basics: Various Artists Matador At 21 A LIMITED EDITION 6-CD LINEN-COVERED BOX SET with 36 custom poker chips in 3 values, an 85-page perfect bound book with history of the label, photos,…

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video August 30, 2010

Robyn covers Bjork (with Bjork watching) and makes it work!

One of our all-time fave Bjork tracks. Here performed by Robyn, our new favourite pop diva, on Swedish TV. That takes balls. That’s Bjork herself watching, dressed in a christmas ornament of some kind. And what’s with the audience dressed in best bib and tucker? It’s because this is the Polar Music Prize presentation. This year it was presented to Bjork and Ennio Morricone. Here’s the Bjork citation. More Robyn videos: Robyn “Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart” Alicia Keys Cover (LIVE) at iheartradio Robyn “Hang With Me” (LIVE) at iheartradio Robyn “With Every Heartbeat” (LIVE) at iheartradio Robyn “Dancing…

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Record Fairs August 30, 2010

LP and CD Sale Labor Day Weekend – Woodstock / West Saugerties

Zip’s Ziggurat presents another Huge! Insane! Music Yard Sale 10,000s of LPs , CDs, 45s +12”s rock, pop, hip hop, country, dance, world, folk, reggae, soul, alt.rock, jazz, funk, punk, r+b, metal, classical, techno, new wave, house, old-timey, breaks, spoken, 80’s, electro, blues, promos, DVDs (music + features), tons more Insultingly low prices As low as $0.50 (hey, some are even “cheaper than free”) Listen before you buy Free refreshments too! Memorial Day Weekend Saturday + Sunday + Monday 10am – 5pm September 4th to 6th All covered, so it’s RAIN OR SHINE Osnas Lane Near Rt 212 + Glasco…

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Music Industry August 28, 2010

Another reason to dislike Apple

As though it were not enough for us to have to suffer through Apple and their fanboi’s constant over-hyping of their over-priced, over-rated, under-performing hardware and their smut-hating, prudish and censorious App store tendencies, we now have to deal with people telling us that their “record has been released on iTunes” Yes, I admit it, I am a dinosaur. I think that if I “buy” something I “own” it. BUT, do I really “own” something if I cannot sell it to someone else? And if I cannot sell it, did I really “buy” it to begin with? It’s because of…