Archives for July 2009

Summertime is flying by, no? Next week will mark round three of Blogger Book Club, during which the ladies and gents will be gathering to type about The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business by Tara Hunt. Quick, somebody Twitter about it!

But seriously, I’m expecting this to be a pretty fantastic down and dirty on the subject. We’ve been watching the performing arts community adopt (and in some cases heedlessly lunge and in others scream and kick) their way into social media/web 2.0 technologies. This book seems like a solid way to branch into a discussion of the wondrous potential and the scary, scary sinkholes we’re navigating.

I would like to admit going in that I harbor some skepticism about the “time waste vs potential” here, but I also have to acknowledge that while I’m still on the the early side of 30, I’m came late to blogging and haven’t waded into this pool much deeper than that, so I’m also a very inexperienced judge. A de.licio.us account here, a test run in Friendster back in the day, but really, I’m pretty innocent. Composer Alex Shapiro, however, has wrapped her arms around these applications and discovered all kinds of opportunities and successes, so I’m going to get off my jaded pony and follow her lead next week. I have a feeling my mind is about to get blown.

Related on both the music and social networking sides, the NYTimes reports on Mass Animation’s recently completed short “Live Music,” set to hit theaters in November. The 5-minute animated tale of love between an electric guitar and a violin is headline-making because it was built “using the Wikipedia model, with animators from around the world contributing shots, and Facebook users voting on their favorites,” reports the Times. And talk about crowdsourcing: Michael Lynton, chairman and chief executive of Sony’s entertainment division, tells the paper that he hopes to produce a feature-length film the same way. I don’t know how pro animators feel about this, but the people who contributed to “Live Music,” 51 in all, earned $500 per scene and a film credit.

So the real money line in the Times report is probably this one: “The marketplace — advertising, gaming and, of course, Hollywood — is hungry for content, animated in particular, that is done in a faster, cheaper way. “Live Music” was made for about $1 million and took about six months to complete. Intel, hoping to peddle its new Core i7 processor to animation geeks, was the principal backer.”

The Brave New World of creative commerce, indeed.

We just wrapped up a three-part series on the contemporary classical recording scene penned by ace reporter Jody Dalton over on NewMusicBox. Dalton’s research seemed to demonstrate that despite the wider recording industry’s tales of woe and gloom and tripping and bloodying knees and plummeting down cliffs, etc., the contemporary classical CD bin still chugs along, scrappy before, still scrappy now. And they are still pressing real-world product.

But it’s 2009 and I have to wonder: why this obsession with the circular shiny? Really, it’s when I read articles like this one about the next steps taken towards that miracle jukebox that eliminates the plastic and leaves your floor and wall space free for better looking eye candy that I get happy. I don’t like to see things sent to the landfill, but why does anyone, excepting those in the audiophile club, cling to the format? Who among us is nostalgically attached to those cool, crisp CDs?

But then I think about how little music I listen to, considering so much music is just a link away. CDs seem to have nine lives to give, and perhaps it’s ill-advised of me to suggest we should hurry along their demise. Weingarten’s commentary has been bouncing around among the music journos for a while now, but I haven’t seen much discussion of it on the art music side yet. Will Twitter save us, or will the new paradigm ensure that “nothing adventurous ever gets out”?

There are many great conversations about music to be had, but I also suspect that quite a few debates sound something like this to eavesdroppers.

(Thanks for the tip, John!)

This just in: Embedding a YouTube Video May Cost You a Bundle in ASCAP Bills

Now seriously, a bundle? What is going on here?

On closer reading, sounds like just the next round in the “It should all be free” vs “You’ll need two lawyers and $5,000 to do that” rights debates/posturing, on top of the divide between what commercial entities can handle as the cost of doing business vs the average girl with a blog. I don’t mean to get off on a rant here, but I am genuinely stumped as to why things haven’t settled into a workable system yet, for the latter at the very least. (Okay, I guess I’m not really, but come on people. Let’s get this worked out already.) In this YouTube/ASCAP case, it’s very messy because there’s the “provider” and the “embedder” split. And honestly, thinking about the RIAA cases, I don’t see how this move goes well from a PR standpoint or nets any real profits from suits. However, it is 2009, and this is just the latest in a long line of challenges in the desperate search for revenue. Let’s set up the system to catalog content and collect and distribute payments for its use already so “sharing” is no longer turned ugly by being so often synonymous with “stealing”.

I think about this every time I use istock photos. When I want to illustrate something with a photo I haven’t taken myself, I search through istock. When I find a good image, I select it and a one-time payment of about a $1 is deducted from my account. I love this. I value media and the people who create media very, very highly. Clearly Mind the Gap is very much a for-the-love-of-it, non-commercial venture, but the last people I want to screw over are the creators of content. That said, the potential of new media experiments is very exciting to me and I have also experienced firsthand the amazing “bang head on desk” frustration of trying to muddle through rights issues in the system as it stands now simply because there is no obvious way to clear and pay for usage of many materials. Creative Commons gets us halfway there, but where is the quick and simple usage payment site for IP so we can also start paying the people who should be paid and turning an income off the stuff we create?

Last night my mom wanted to see Michael Jackson moonwalk again, so I called up the blog post where I’d embedded a YouTube clip from his legendary Motown performance in 1983. Alas, it was gone.

So instead, we educated ourselves about copyright law:

Later I replaced the Jackson performance with someone else’s upload of the same clip and wondered (again) where all this was leading. Where is the line between the need for money and the need for social good, between what is mine and what is ours, living in a cooperative society as we do?

Seriously, I know I can be seen as a bit left when it comes to taking sides in this great debate, what with my love of Creative Commons and positive readings of Lessig and remix culture in general–not that I have completely consumed the Kool-Aid, but just sayin’. Still, especially after our Remix book club convo a few months back, I have been keeping an eye out for a similar book taking the “other” side, or at least “another” side. I thought Mark Helprin’s Digital Barbarism might have made for a good choice, but then I thought maybe not. (Has anyone read it?) Chris Anderson’s new book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” is of course not the direction I was looking to go this time out, though I’ll be interested in digging into that one for myself at a later date (Gladwell reviews it for the New Yorker here).

I have also been keeping tabs on such things as the orphaned works/Google issue and the ASCAP ringtones public performance suit, but still haven’t come across a good book arguing the benefits of strict copyright control and the future, etc. Anyone have suggestions?

In the context of the genre wars, this site is pretty hysterical. You can explore Musoc.org’s “fundamental arguments against Pop ‘Music’ and for Art Music, as outlined in About and the FAQ” if you’re feeling game.

Yes, the quote marks are very, very much intentional on the part of the site’s authors.

Sorry to break in on your holiday celebrations with a downer of a post, but Darcy James Argue emailed this morning to make sure this little review of Maria Schneider’s Montreal performance was on my radar. Its non-musical content has been grinding on me ever since. Before you read it, Darcy’s post helpfully included a YouTube link to Schneider in action (though the footage is not from the performance in question). Take a look:

Now, read the post referenced above: Jazz fest 2009: Maria with the long bare arms

Being a critic myself, I’m usually pretty cautious about getting hot over any assessment of an ephemeral live music event, but I mean, seriously?!? Our jaws can drop and our eyebrows crinkle together, and yet perhaps we unfortunately need the reminder that plenty of people still do write about and pass judgment on women in all sorts of fields on grounds just like this. And though it can feel like a time waster, we have to keep talking about it and drawing attention to it until this kind of commentary is gone for good (or at the very least does not appear attached to a national news media brand–blog post or no, it will be read as a critique by a professional in that context). Speaking for myself, all the comments that fill up the space following what Mr. Heinrich wrote are a somewhat saving grace here. Somewhat.