[contextly_auto_sidebar id="6BOXVutxAn6x54DqzWmGmpzRcmnqtSpG"] IT'S been on the verge of dropping for months now, but YouTube has finally announced its new music streaming service, which could perhaps crush some of the others. What will it mean for musicians, er, content providers, especially those without corporate backing? At this point we don't entirely know, but the group Content Creators … [Read more...]
Obama Wants a “Free and Open Internet”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="jqHfdeb7F6lDN38IeV0lSf8Avyx9cp2I"] THE president, I'm pleased to say, has now taken a fair and reasonable stance on an issue that exerts a strong effect on the creative class. Do we want the web to be skyboxed-- the rich over here, in the good seats, the rest over there, fighting for crumbs -- the way American society is? I don't, and that's what net neutrality, in … [Read more...]
What Happened to Net Neutrality?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="JX2tjd7JvriqrA2S7OZYKTAWW9ZQa4Rm"] What about the idea that the Internet would become a level playing field, an outlet for democracy and independent voices, rather than a corporate-dominated, winner-take-all wasteland like commercial radio? Well, it's taken one step forward and two steps back, or perhaps vice versa -- the new proposal is very hard to figure … [Read more...]
Techo-Utopianism and the TED talk
MOSTLY, I try to dig into the arts and culture in this blog. But there are times when digital technology demands attention; technology has become the water in which we all -- musician and scribe and architect alike -- swim. That's why I'm especially pleased to nudge readers toward a piece that's been floating around for a while which even some informed people may have missed: "We need to talk … [Read more...]
Iggy Pop Rips the State of Music
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="rsTsrc9iWZyWOtGEurvcdQNW78Mrk5Dy"] TODAY I have a new Salon post that quotes an Iggy Pop speech in the UK, and tries to make sense of it. Well into the age of streaming, we’re still hearing from a few musicians – most of them promoted and even employed by the tech sector – that we live in the best of all possible worlds. Some resent the new arrangement, where they … [Read more...]
More Death Among the Alternative Press
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="RwTNk9ycXONYXBOQztWFt8xWs1Cktyce"] AT a certain point, we won't even notice it anymore when a publication we've loved and learned to rely on fades to black. For a little while longer, though, we'll still register it. That's one of the reasons I'm grimly happy to have had the chance to weigh in on the loss of two more alternative weeklies -- the Providence Phoenix on … [Read more...]
Have We Lost the Ability to Be Alone?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="wInG9qIiyZXfe5IWkw9gGzmkXV2eQ06T"] A COUPLE of decades into it, we're still figuring out what the Internet is doing to us, as individuals and as a society. A fascinating interview with the author of a new book, The End of Absence, get at this in a nuanced way. Author Michael Harris talks about the difference between the digital era and the age of Gutenberg, the … [Read more...]
Switching Sides in the Digital War
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="eJnmz4EFyiZtMYvvDKNPqiDekKwUDUR1"] DIDN'T we hear about how great it was going to be? Those early days, when we were told how funky and non-commercial and liberating the Web was going to be, now seem like ancient history. One writer who believed in the promise of the Internet in the early days has come to see what a much more complex issue the digital revolution … [Read more...]
Do Artists Embrace or Resist Technology?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="YYQ5BrKAlLhK2VSvLagOYij5KMvYrB2z"] WELL, both, and neither, I can hear someone out there growling. But what I mostly hear in the culture at large is that we -- citizens, worker bee, student, scribe -- need to "adjust" to the brave new world of digital technology. Some of us do. But as someone who's been to numerous exhibits and conferences on "art and tech," I've … [Read more...]
Alex Ross on the Physicality of Music
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="exXEgyg9vY0GhSt0xuo4Eqn9fO25Opza"] THE New Yorker's classical music critic is one of the least stodgy and most forward-looking of writers; he got in on blogging early and thinks classical music and digital technology are natural allies. But even he has reservations about the disappearance of records and CDs into the cloud. His new piece, about "The pleasures and … [Read more...]