Updates from December, 2009

  • RATM Christmas Follow-up: Was It A Fix?

    Steve 8:47 pm on December 22, 2009 | 19 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , meaning, RATM, ratm4xmas, simon cowell, sony, sustainability, xfactor

    I’ve started mentally drafting this a few times, but almost all of them just ended up with me reiterating everything I said in my ‘Futility Of Fighting Fire With Fire‘ post over on stevelawson.net.

    However, this evening, someone linked on Twitter to This blog post claiming that it was a campaign masterminded by Sony. And now the process of saying ‘is it?’ and ‘if it is, how dare they!‘ has started. I’ve been asked my opinion on it, both the veracity and the meaning of it, so I thought I’d scribble down some thoughts.
    (More …)

     

  • Beta releases of music: how best to name and tag?

    Jennifer Moore 9:24 pm on November 26, 2009 | 17 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: digital formats, metadata,

    A possibly rather geeky, but ultimately practical, question, for people who make &/or listen to music in digital formats.

    Hello all – my first post here. Thanks to Steve for the opportunity!

    One of the things that’s very appealing to me about the new era of music on the net is the idea of beta releases. I really like the idea that as soon as a song’s ready I could upload some reasonable version of it, without committing myself to that as “the definitive version”.

    But then I’m wondering how those song files would best be named and tagged. Because wouldn’t it be a bit confusing for the listener to end up with multiple different versions of the same song, that all had the same name?

    OK, I’m thinking ahead here, as I’m still tinkering around with recordings at the moment. I’m just very aware that once a file goes out into the world, it’s out there forever. If I decide later on a better tagging convention, I can’t miraculously get back all the copies so I can upgrade the tags. So it seems like a thing to invent & think through before I start.

    Date vs version numbers

    In an earlier round of thinking about this, I already decided that for me, the date is going to be the best way to identify the different iterations.

    I considered extending the software analogy and using some kind of version numbers instead. But I’m pretty sure that nearly every recording I released would be v1.x (one point something). Less than one would imply it didn’t have all its bits yet, in which case I wouldn’t release it. And only rarely would a song reach v2.0, implying a major evolution or reworking. (Though, for other people, that might well be more likely than it is for me.)

    So I’m not sure that version numbers really add much over and above using the date – whereas they do have a disadvantage: the extra thinking! to decide “how big a fraction” was justified by each new version. (In any case, using the date has precedent in software versioning – Ubuntu, for example.)

    I don’t think I’m likely to release more than one version of the same song in a day, unless there were some kind of big mistake or malfunction which I needed to correct immediately. So the date should usually be sufficient to identify a particular release.

    Similar but better

    It’s also worth noting that in my case, all the iterations are likely to be pretty similar – so much so that even I might need to look at the date to know which was which quickly. I’m not usually trying to invent different versions of a song; for me usually it’s more like aspiring to an ideal version, which I never quite reach but try to get closer and closer to. The differences might only be the quality of emotion in the singing, or the fact that it was a few bpm faster or slower and that suits the song better, or that in the intervening time I practised the bassline some more with a metronome :-)

    So I don’t think it’s all that likely that people will prefer an older version and deliberately want to keep it – though I’m not ruling that out. What I’m more thinking of is the scenario where people are unwittingly listening to, and propagating to their friends, a not-quite-as-good version which according to me has been superseded. So I see it as very much in my interest to make it easy for people to see which is which.

    Where to put the label

    Well, but I’m not convinced that I want the actual song title to sprout a date. I mean, obviously that’s a fall-back position, one way to handle it, but it doesn’t seem very elegant to me. What belongs in the name space is the name.

    Now I know that the ID3v2 standard includes TDAT = Date. But I’m not sure if that gets displayed on a typical MP3 player – or, more generally, which tags do usually get displayed, that would enable the listener to see which version they were about to listen to. Or how easy it would typically be for the listener to choose to access that other tag data, especially on small portable players. I know that some display artwork, so I could include the date in the artwork – but not all do.

    I see there exists “TIT3 = Subtitle/Description refinement”… and there’s also the option of naming the actual file to include the date. But, again, I’m not sure how common it is to display either of those for the listener to see while listening (either optionally or by default).

    In which I note my ignorance

    I’m a bit hampered in thinking this through by lack of experience of relevant tech. Inconveniently in this context, the MP3 player I’ve used most is the Zen Stone, which doesn’t have a display at all!

    Also, the investigations I’ve done so far have been about MP3 tags in particular. But I’ll probably start using BandCamp shortly, and I know there you upload a high quality original and they auto-port it to other formats, putting in tags as they go. I’m imagining perhaps it keeps the basic filename and adds text to the filename to show the format, e.g. [songname]192kHz.mp3 or whatever – but I don’t know if all the other formats it uses have equivalent tag fields, or what.

    Key questions

    So…

    Am I stuck with including dates in my song titles if I want the versions to be reliably differentiable on playback, do you think?

    And if I didn’t do that… for you as a listener, given your typical/favourite gear, how easy would it be for you to find out the date if you wanted to? Can you easily access the official date field? Is there a more convenient place for the date to be repeated, such as the artwork? If it were in the artwork, what percentage of the artwork square would it have to take up in order to be readable on your size of screen?

    Or, to come at the whole thing from another angle… people who have done beta releases already, how did you name and tag them? :-)

    All clues and ponderings very welcome…

     

  • Bandcamp Directory For The Stevie-Connected

    Steve 1:34 pm on October 12, 2009 | 35 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: bandcamp, , , directory, ,

    You may or may not have seen my post this morning about Bandcamp over at stevelawson.net.

    Since posting it, I’ve had lots of tweets from friends whose music is on it, so let’s start a directory of entries – post a link to your bandcamp page in the comments, with a little bit of info about you and your connection to me (just so it doesn’t become a music-spam-fest – there’s no special criteria for being included, other than some kind of link – twitter-friends, gig buddies, blog readers etc… all are fine :) ) and I’ll grab the embed code from your site and add it here, creating a little online shop :)

    here are my 3 bandcamp albums so far:

    <a href="http://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/album/behind-every-word" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/album/behind-every-word');">Blue Planet by Steve Lawson</a>

    <a href="http://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/album/grace-and-gratitude" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/album/grace-and-gratitude');">Grace And Gratitude by Steve Lawson</a>

    <a href="http://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/album/not-dancing-for-chicken" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/album/not-dancing-for-chicken');">No More Us And Them by Steve Lawson</a>

    and here are the first of the embeds from the comments:

    <a href="http://riverblind.bandcamp.com/album/hour-of-the-wolf" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://riverblind.bandcamp.com/album/hour-of-the-wolf');">Mute Signals by Riverblind</a>

    <a href="http://paulbellmusic.bandcamp.com/album/name-in-lights" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://paulbellmusic.bandcamp.com/album/name-in-lights');">Should have learned by Paul Bell</a>

    <a href="http://timeveleigh.bandcamp.com/album/this-is-all-i-have" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://timeveleigh.bandcamp.com/album/this-is-all-i-have');">perfect by Tim Eveleigh</a>

    <a href="http://music.boyatheart.com/album/all-in-a-lifes-work" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://music.boyatheart.com/album/all-in-a-lifes-work');">Boy at Heart by Boy at Heart</a>

    <a href="http://freakshow.bandcamp.com/album/freakshow-demo-2009" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://freakshow.bandcamp.com/album/freakshow-demo-2009');">Under Cover by Freakshow</a>

    <a href="http://stevengbass.bandcamp.com/album/deployment-of-ten-wails" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://stevengbass.bandcamp.com/album/deployment-of-ten-wails');">Gathering String by Steven Guerrero</a>

    <a href="http://mulberryharbour.bandcamp.com/album/the-drift-ep" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://mulberryharbour.bandcamp.com/album/the-drift-ep');">Small Pleasures by Mulberry Harbour</a>

    <a href="http://music.ihatemornings.com/album/this-is-not-an-album" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://music.ihatemornings.com/album/this-is-not-an-album');">Ten by Ben Walker</a>

    <a href="http://music.botched.com/album/metamesmeric" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://music.botched.com/album/metamesmeric');">Cloudlift by Gustaf Fjelstrom</a>

    <a href="http://jasonparkerquartet.bandcamp.com/album/no-more-no-less-2" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://jasonparkerquartet.bandcamp.com/album/no-more-no-less-2');">Bashert by Jason Parker Quartet</a>

    <a href="http://miriamjones.bandcamp.com/album/the-solitary-songs" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://miriamjones.bandcamp.com/album/the-solitary-songs');">Come Clean (April) by Miriam Jones</a>

    <a href="http://howlinhobbit.bandcamp.com/album/buskers-bonus-ep" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://howlinhobbit.bandcamp.com/album/buskers-bonus-ep');">Too Soon Old by Howlin&#8217; Hobbit</a>

    <a href="http://humphreysandkeen.bandcamp.com/album/the-overflow" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://humphreysandkeen.bandcamp.com/album/the-overflow');">Bright Shining Star by Humphreys &amp; Keen</a>

    <a href="http://kirstymcgee.bandcamp.com/album/the-kansas-sessions" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://kirstymcgee.bandcamp.com/album/the-kansas-sessions');">Bonecrusher by Kirsty McGee</a>

    <a href="http://mennarsins.bandcamp.com/album/menn-rsins" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://mennarsins.bandcamp.com/album/menn-rsins');">Augun opnast by Menn Ársins</a>

    <a href="http://asymptotictaste.bandcamp.com/album/we-dont-get-it-either" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://asymptotictaste.bandcamp.com/album/we-dont-get-it-either');">Broken Carnival by Asymptotic Taste</a>

    <a href="http://sunnagunnlaugs.bandcamp.com/album/songs-from-iceland" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://sunnagunnlaugs.bandcamp.com/album/songs-from-iceland');">Upp á himins bláum boga by Sunna Gunnlaugs</a>

    <a href="http://russbass.bandcamp.com/track/what-goes-beneath" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://russbass.bandcamp.com/track/what-goes-beneath');">What Goes Beneath by Russ Sargeant</a>

    (while all this has been going on, I’ve uploaded my first album to bandcamp as well: )

    <a href="http://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/album/and-nothing-but-the-bass" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/album/and-nothing-but-the-bass');">The Inner Game by Steve Lawson</a>

    <a href="http://shawnfarley.bandcamp.com/album/any-raw-flesh" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://shawnfarley.bandcamp.com/album/any-raw-flesh');">I Have A Very Bad Feeling About This by Shawn Farley</a>

    <a href="http://darrylgregory.bandcamp.com/album/she" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://darrylgregory.bandcamp.com/album/she');">No by Darryl Gregory</a>

    <a href="http://atmosmusic.bandcamp.com/album/atmos-plays-waters" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://atmosmusic.bandcamp.com/album/atmos-plays-waters');">Steve by Atmos Trio</a>

    <a href="http://hopeandsocial.bandcamp.com/album/songs-from-the-bar-of-lost-souls" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://hopeandsocial.bandcamp.com/album/songs-from-the-bar-of-lost-souls');">Animals Dine With Me by Hope and Social</a>

    <a href="http://caipirinha.bandcamp.com/track/the-rhythm" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://caipirinha.bandcamp.com/track/the-rhythm');">The Rhythm by Caipirinha</a>

    <a href="http://farleigh.bandcamp.com/album/jez-coad-sessions" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://farleigh.bandcamp.com/album/jez-coad-sessions');">True Born Miracle by Farleigh</a>

    <a href="http://shemakeswar.bandcamp.com/album/three-two-one" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/http://shemakeswar.bandcamp.com/album/three-two-one');">Picture Of Us by She Makes War</a>

     

  • The Importance Of Social Media At Greenbelt

    Steve 12:23 pm on August 30, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,

    Ever been to something so great that mere words always felt inadequate to convey to those who hadn’t been there just how cool it was? Or had so many great experiences in a weekend that you bored the arse off anyone who dared to ask how it went?

    If you have, you’re on the way to understanding the importance of social media in the context of an event like Greenbelt. Greenbelt’s strength and weakness are largely the same thing – it’s an utterly unique event. Unlike anything else that I’ve ever been to, and as such, impossibly difficult to do justice to when explaining it.

    It’s also such a varied experience – from the program to the people, the food to the weather, the music to the art, the politics to the comedy… and the many overlaps between them…

    So how does a story like that get told?

    • In aggregate
    • in pieces
    • with nuggets
    • by accident
    • through video and audio
    • tweets
    • blogs
    • photos…

    The more media we can throw out there that is in and of itself interesting, inspiring, funny, creative, the easier it is for people looking at that stuff to assemble a version of the Greenbelt story that makes sense to them. I can use other people’s photos and video to tell my story, and they can use my blog posts and audioboo recordings to tell theirs. We share, we talk about what interests us, we capture what we can, however we can, by being there and playing with gadgets.
    It’s a wonderful addition to the festival experience, and will in coming years become an ever more vital part of the public face of Greenbelt – an event I can’t even begin to sum up adequately in a way that everyone who reads this will relate to. And now I don’t have to. I can point to specific things for specific people, I can tag the media to make it findable to those who might look for it, we can filter, stream, aggregate, embed, share and contextualise. And Greenbelt can aggregate it all to the front page of the website.

    [EDIT] – here’s me talking to Jon Bounds (@ on twitter) about these same themes. He’s a very smart man:

    Jon Bounds & Steve Lawson on social media, web technology & conversational psycho-geography from Greenbelt Festival on Vimeo.

    I love living now. :)

     

  • Lloyd Davis. He's Fabulous

    Steve 11:39 pm on August 26, 2009 | 10 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Lloyd Davis, ,

    Here’s a present from Lloyd for anyone who missed his set at Darbucka last night. Or indeed anyone who was there, and wanted to relive it (or send it to their friends to let them know not to miss him next time).

    We love Lloyd – it’s always such a treat to have him come and play with us on gigs. Long may it continue.

    We’re you at the gig? Did you enjoy it? Let us know your thoughts below :)

     

  • Imogen Heap's album, Ellipse. Streaming Here.

    Steve 12:42 am on August 18, 2009 | 11 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ,

    Here, my friends, is Imogen Heap’s amazing new album, Ellipse. Embedded for your streaming pleasure.

    Why? Because she asked us to. :)

    (*spoiler-alert* – it’s effing amazing)

    And now you can pre-order the CD or download here – http://www.imogenheap.com/preorder/

    go buy her album, OK?

    "go buy her album, OK?"

     

  • Free Albums - Screw The RIAA

    Steve 12:22 am on August 1, 2009 | 12 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , evil, fat-cats, joel tenenbaum, , , , riaa

    Having just read the story of Joel Tenenbaum, who has just been fined over $600,000 dollars for downloading 30 songs, I’m incensed by the insanity of the RIAA – the Record Industry Association of America.

    While it claims to be “the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members’ creative and financial vitality” the reality is – as is clear from its list of directors – that it represents the interests of a handful of millionaire corporate executives who are, frankly, shitting themselves at the collapse of the industry they’ve built around the distribution of physical music product.

    So the RIAA – rather than looking at new models for distribution, or acknowledging the benefits of downloading for artists getting the word out – now prosecutes college kids to the tune of $22 THOUSAND… per track!

    Since when was a single MP3 worth £22K? What percentage of single songs online have made $22K total, let alone can be proven to have LOST that much through downloading? Had Joel made anything from this? nope. Has anyone been damaged? Nope.

    It’s pure greedy, nasty, anti-music legislative BS.

    So, I’m making 3 of my albums available for free on last.fm. I was going to make them all available over the weekend, but CDBaby administers a few of my albums on there, thanks to last.fm being one of their ‘digital partners’ – maybe I’ll find some other way of giving away more music.

    Whatever, the RIAA are scum. Filth. Pondlife. If I was signed to record label that were represented by them, I’d be turning up at their offices with a NOT IN MY NAME banner.

    The major labels are dying. They age of charging $15 for a CD, paying 50c of it to the musicians, and keeping them in debt are over. It’s the age of the indie. So fuck the RIAA. Give some music away this weekend.

    Here’ s the links to the 3 albums:

    Lessons Learned From An Aged Feline Pt 1
    Lessons Learned From An Aged Feline Pt 2
    Lessons Learned From The Fairly Aged Felines.

    Q: How nuts is that? $600,000 for downloading? Is there a single comparable area of legislation where the punishment is so insanely out of proportion to any impact the action may have had?

     

  • 'Green Shoots' in the Music Industry, or Just Thriving Trees?

    Steve 10:12 am on July 16, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: bbc, , , , ,

    This article by Rory Cellan-Jones on the BBC site says that some new survey has told us that it’s not all bad for music…

    I’m not sure it’s ever been ‘bad’ at all, to be honest… CD sales are declining, but digital music costs so much less to manufacture and distribute that the crossover point between lower sales but increased profits will hit eventually. Hard copies are still a desired way of ’showing allegiance’ to a band, over just downloading. Merch is doing well, gigs are doing well, and the potential for new acts finding an audience without gambling a fortune is marvellous.

    It also seems to me that the decline in bit torrent traffic for music may actually be that a lot of the early adoptors have filled in their catalogue with all the stuff they wanted to start with… Anyone wanting to ‘replace’ their vinyl collection may well have downloaded gigabytes if not terabytes of music to get all the Led Zep, Queen, MJ, Abba and Beatles they ever need – check out last.fm’s charts for more on how much music listening is ‘legacy’ based…

    So, there are a whole range of ways that people find music, replace music, download music, pay for music things. They’re all happening, it’s mostly good news, and we can stop worrying, yes? :)

     

  • The Death of CD (Uccello Project's take on it)

    Steve Uccello 12:31 pm on July 5, 2009 | 6 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , death, of, project, uccello

    According to CD Baby: “Over 70% of the music-buying public still prefers to purchase physical CDs, and most music journalists won’t write about your act unless you’ve sent them a professional-grade disc.”

    Nowadays there’s sooo much room for innovation. It seems to be that each artist needs to figure out what works best with their audience. There is no ‘new model’ that everyone’s going to embrace, though we all keep trying :) I like Darren Landrum’s ideas about having various ‘bonus materials’. Sounds like a great way to have the best of both worlds. There also seems to be more freedom in the instrumental world, I keep hearing about ‘mini-discs’ that contain one long piece of music on them, those seem like an inexpensive alternative that makes it possible to release each song or ‘piece’ as it’s completed.

    My basic feeling is this: Making a really nice physical product is even more important now, in the face of all the alternatives, a CD (or vinyl or cassette) really has to ‘justify’ it’s existence. I know how I am, I download most of my music, and when I do get a real CD, I instantly dismantle it, save the jewel case for my own use (I run my own studio, so I’m always giving people discs of sessions) then I have a big box in my loft where all my liner notes reside, and the CD gets burned into my computer then stored in a binder, I just need to be this way, I have a small house! BUT, there are those certain albums where the art is really well done and the product itself feels like an object of art (there’s actually a Japanese theory that an object can acquire a soul if it is imbued with enough energy from the person that owns, or who has made it) and I don’t have the heart to tear those apart.

    As I’m about to complete my new record, I thought about whether I should make a disc at all, or how nice it should be. So this subject is pretty pertinent for me right now. I decided to make this one as nice as I could afford, I’ve been working with my brother, who’s a fantastic artist, and we’re using a high end printshop (Stumptown, in Portland OR) we’re even getting the nicest paper we can, and we’re including a poster with the CD (when folded up the poster will double as an info/contact postcard) all in an attempt to give people a valuable product that will, hopefully, go a little beyond the ‘download experience’. Possibly in vain, we are attempting to create an experience where people will pop in the album, then look at the art as they listen.

    As the music unfolds, they would unfold the panels of the packaging and the poster-they are actually designed with this in mind. We’ll see how it turns out, but we feel that it’s worth the effort to try and create something that is a work of art.

     

  • The death of CD - forward or back?

    Dancing Monk 5:33 pm on July 1, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , clasical, , writing

    There’s been much discussion about the death of CD & the freedom this will bring musicians & this has got me thinking what does this freedom entail & what possibilities will be created.  For the last 50 years the vast majority of LP driven music (e.g. pop) has been constrained to 40-70 minutes of music consisting of individual songs which have no connection with each other.  That’s certainly what the record buying public expect & seem to like so why change.  There have been notable exceptions such as the concept album beloved of prog rock but really most music today is just a collection of random songs but does it have to be & I would contend that this has been driven mainly by the format they are published in.

    I listen to a fair amount of classical music where there are standardised forms which often consist of connected movements e.g. a symphony typically has four movements which are intended to be played together in sequence.  There are song cycles, e’g Schubert’s Wintereisse which link together songs around a common theme or collection of poems, again intended to be sung as a complete performance.

    Now the tyrrany of the fixed format has been supeceded is this new freedom going to encourage song writers to explore the writing of suites of music or is it going to be business as usual with the normal random collections.

     

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