Music Technology

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Music Technology, OT? February 12, 2011

OT – The White House Asks: Whats Blocking Innovation in America? – Answer: IP Laws

Groklaw is a very useful, very dense site covering the intersections of law and technology. PJ’s work has been invaluable in advancing understanding of the complexities of the ways in which law, and IP law in particular, influence the world we live in, the culture we consume and the technology we use to do it. From the article: The White House is asking us to give them ideas on what is blocking innovation in America. I thought I’d give them an honest answer. Here it is: Current intellectual property laws are blocking innovation. President Obama just set a goal of wireless access…

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Music Technology, OT?, WTF? January 31, 2011

NYC Subways making music – mta.me

Conductor: www.mta.me from Alexander Chen on Vimeo. Impossibly cool! NYC Subway trains API describes art on screen and has a fun musical surprise too. Speeds up over time and is different each time you launch. Run it in multiple tabs for even more fun. Requires scripting, flash, HTML 5 and sound. MTA.ME.

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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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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, Music Technology February 22, 2010

Internet Killer is Still Alive – Won’t you please help?

A while back there was a leak of an EU memo referring to a particular chapter of the proposed ACTA treaty. Now the actual chapter in question has leaked.  The reliable Michael Geist has a reasoned analysis: Michael Geist – ACTA Internet Chapter Leaks: Renegotiates WIPO, Sets 3 Strikes as Model. Yes, his analysis is more reasoned than my headline. It still appears  that this treaty seeks re-shape American law and also the laws of all other signatory nations.  Noticeable NON-signatories include Russia and China, where a huge percentage of the world’s piracy happens. If you are a US citizen, please…

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Music Industry, Music Technology December 2, 2009

MOG – Perfected steaming online music gets close, really close. Must try.

Just a quick break from the salt mines  (making my way through a large collection of CDs, with an interesting jazz collection in the wings) to strongly suggest that you check out the new features of MOG. MOG has been around for a while in the music blogging/socializing sphere and they have just launched a streaming music service.  (US only for the moment, others soon come) This link is to the overview page and the guided tour. Free trial now going on (it lasts one hour) and after that the pricing is $5.00 a month or 6 months for $25.00  You…

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Music Technology October 10, 2009

Could it be that Bass Culture is in trouble?

Wayne&Wax has several posts and discussions jumping off from this post: Mobile Music & Treble Culture. With the proliferation of bad sound on iPods and phones, can we see a march towards treble in the way we consume music? Here are parts twoand three of the string.  It’s an interesting exercise, thinking about the ways in which the physicality (or lack of it) of how we listen to sound sound affect the way we hear it. Or should that be the other way around?

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Music Technology July 7, 2009

VLC player hits 1.0 – Best multimedia player anywhere

The single best media player for your computer, VLC, just hit version 1.0 today. If you have ever had trouble playing media on the web, this is the one for you. It plays everything. I’ve never hit anything it can’t play. Also, it takes up waaaay fewer resources on the computer. It does not load a ton of extras like Apples awful Quicktime and MS Media player. See a longer article about it at Cnet. Ans download it her: VideoLAN – Download from mirror

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IP, Music Industry, Music Technology March 14, 2009

Obama Administration Declares Proposed IP Treaty a National Security Secret

SO, get ready to have you ISP monitor your traffic on behalf of the RIAA and to have your iPod checked at the border… (Obama Administration Declares Proposed IP Treaty a National Security Secret | Threat Level from Wired.com.) Perhaps we should start a service where people can upload pictures of their record collections so that you could show the border guard a picture of some collection and say “See, I really do own all of the items on my mp3 player.”

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Critics, Music Technology March 4, 2009

What is your sampling epiphany?

An unofficial compilation of tracks sampled by Massive Attack showcases the group’s aesthetic through the songs that informed it – and provides fans with the thrill of discovering the originals. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/feb/26/sampling-epiphany-massive-attack (Simon Reynolds at The Guardian, UK)

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Music Technology February 7, 2009

The Deceptive Perfection of Auto-Tune

Unusually cogent discussion of AutoTune on Slashdot. Including notions of “authenticity” in music.  Slashdot | The Deceptive Perfection of Auto-Tune Can we at least agree that too much use of *any* musical “trick” can become annoying?