The tendency for people to shift their computing life into ‘the cloud’ is rolling on at great pace.

• their email to Gmail,
• their photos to Flickr,
• their back-up to Amazon or Dropbox,
• their documents to Google Docs

and are using collaborative platforms for sharing data, from Soundcloud for music files to Google Docs for spreadsheets and text.

This has been matched by a corresponding conversation about the impact of ‘Cloud’ ideas, technolgy and infrastructure on our ideas of culture and creativity. There are wonderful conversations happening about notions of ownership, what happens when a cultural entity can be made freely available to all, when people can actually build on the work of artists in every field, remix and mash-up other people’s work…

It’s heady and fascinating stuff, and much of it is explored in some detail in Charlie Leadbeater’s book ‘Cloud Culture’ as commissioned by the British Council.

The bit that seems like a massive stumbling block for me (aside from the obviously and gargantuan obstruction of the Digital Economy Bill, in all it’s neanderthal, regressive, stagnant, authoritarian lunacy) is the issue of mobile access to the cloud.

You see, at the moment, access to the internet is shifting from being perceived as a privilege to a right. This belief is impacting on education policy, and well as international development considerations, with regards to building infrastructure in those countries euphemistically labeled emerging economies.

But at the moment, the ‘right’ seems to be to ‘internet access’ rather than ‘permanent/constant/consistent internet access’, and one of the big issues with Cloud concepts is ‘what do I do when I can’t get to my stuff?’

Clearly, mobile access is the key to this, but the mobile industry is SO far behind in making itself cost effective, consumer friendly and up-to-date tech-wise, that it’s hard to imagine a greater technological discrepency than that between the potential of ‘cloud computing’ and the cost, openness, inter-operability, capacity and bandwidth of mobile comms, particularly in the US and UK.

You only need be at an event where people are tweeting a lot from mobiles and a couple of people are streaming video via 3G to experience the crunching stand-still that happens when the system is overloaded. And try accessing a Vodafone signal from an Orange-registered phone when that’s all that’s available? Forget it. What about accessing mobile data overseas? Better visit your mortgage provider first…

While mobile hardware has come on in leaps and bounds in recent times (and looks set to expand even further, under the influence of the Apple iPad, if not including the device itself), the mobile networks are making no noticeable steps at all towards ‘access’ becoming anything that resembles a ‘right’.

Just to underscore this point, having been out of contract for a while now, I called Orange, and told them that as I didn’t need a new handset, I’d like to switch to a sim-only contract, and I’d like to have whatever was the cheapest monthly option that had unlimited data (which, I think, is actually 500meg on Orange, under their ‘fair use’ policy… WTF?) – I was promptly told that the cheapest one they had was £30 a month – almost the same as I was paying already. Which seems a little odd. I asked what would happen if I said I was leaving to another network, at which point, I got the baffling response of ‘well, if you get a new phone, you can have it for £15 a month’ – way more minutes/texts than I need, unlimited data and a Nokia 5800 for £15 a month. Could I get it without the phone? Nope.

It’s nuts, it’s a totally stupid business model, is environmentally unsustainable, and the total lack of interoperability between the networks makes it all too common for people to not be able to access their data in the cloud.

So, what do we do? Cos crap mobile + Mandelson and his big internet scissors cutting off coffee shops based on what their patrons download is going to make public access to wifi a commodity in short supply – the extra strain the mobile networks have to take up if the Digital Economy Bill kills free public wifi will almost certainly be too much for the network as it stands…

Solutions anyone?

Dear Lord Clement-Jones,

Along with everyone I know who works in IT/the internet and the music industry (yes, ‘everyone’), I am entirely opposed to the digital economy bill – the assumptions it makes about the relationship between people making a living online and the rights of media conglomorates to continue peddling an outmoded understanding of how digital assets are best exploited in a world where distribution and even marketing can be done for free and revenue gathered at many different stages of the process.

As a musician, writer, teacher, university lecturer and owner of an independent record label, I have found the free flow of information online to be utterly vital in freeing me from the inethical, counter-creative and monopolistic practices of the big media entities (such as major record labels) and allowing me to build a SME, to partner with other SMEs in broadening the base of the UK online economy.

The web is enabling a switch in the recording industry away from a state where a tiny percentage of ‘lottery winners’ sell millions of records and everyone else remains hopelessly in debt to a label who lend them money, spend it on themselves and hold onto copyright beyond the point where the loans have been paid back. It’s unsustainable and the wonder of the digital economy is that artists are able to manage that themselves – that we’ve moved from hundreds of people selling millions of records to thousands upon thousands of individuals selling hundreds or thousands of recordings, but more importantly, doing so in a creatively and economically sustainable way without giving away their rights.

For those people, the distribution networks on the web that the Digitial Economy Bill with either explicitly or inadvertently shut down are a vital resource for connecting with an audience at a time when the cost of conventional marketing channels (often owned by those same media giants that were acting in such an anti-creative way under the old model) are prohibitively high, enough so to guarantee that all projects beyond those with outside leverage (read: big media backing) will lose money.

In the new economy that doesn’t need to happen. I and my peers can make the music we love, find and audience and allow a range of entry points for them to contribute financially to the ongoing production and performance of that music, and it works. It works time and time again.

At a time when major label entities who are fighting the internet are falling apart (look at EMI’s current crisis), independent musicians are thriving. No-one is making millions, but no-one needs to. The right to become insanely rich by exploiting the intellectual property of others is not something that should be enshrined in law to the detriment of the sustainability of the tens of thousands of people making a healthy, legal, creative and culturally significant living through the internet.

The Digital Economy Bill threatens tens of thousands of people’s livelihoods, while protecting the interests of a handful of very rich people at the top of the big media food-chain, while peddling a series of falsehoods and misused statistics about the state of play for Britain’s creative industries. Please, withdraw the nonsensical amendment with regard to ‘web blocking’ – it’s counter to the good of Britain’s digital economy,

Yours sincerely,

Steve Lawson
http://www.stevelawson.net

Of course I’m going to write a post about the iPad – isn’t it obligatory if you’re a blogger?

First up, I need to say that I don’t really get the way that people feel affronted when a product falls short of their expectations. Crap products are made all the time, and in a supply and demand environment, we’re all free not to buy them. If the iPad turns out to be a pile of crap, we don’t have to buy it, Apple will be left with loads of them unsold and will have to go back, do some better market research and make something we want.

That said, I do take issue with the way things are marketed – marketing is a very powerful force, and not generally held as a conversation. So when someone makes statements about something that are patently untrue, and does it with the weight of a multi-million dollar marketing budget behind them, I get a little antsy.

So, the iPad – what don’t I like about it?

In a nutshell, I don’t like what it says about the relationship between content producers and content consumers on the web.

What I mean is this: if you have a laptop, with a keyboard, a mic and a webcam, you have the same tools at your disposal to respond to online content that the person posting it has. Sure, there are degrees of quality of camera and editing equipment, but I can post a response via text, audio, video or photo in exactly the same way as the content producer. If someone writes something I like, I can endorse it, if someone writes something I disagree with, I can express that. Built into the hardware I’m using is an equality of opportunity that says ‘go on, do it! join in!’ – there’s the implicit tug to break out of the 1:9:90 ratio of content producers to content sharers to content consumers and become part of those putting good things on the internet.

And, I think that that potential for collaboration – for ideas to be developed, built on, for blog posts to become joint works between author and commenters - is the single most awesome thing about the internet. Certainly my own online content would be about 1/10th as useful without the people who take advantage of that technological parity and add their great ideas to my thoughts.

The iPad breaks that. By marketing it as a replacement for a Netbook, Apple are saying “you don’t need a computer optimised for content creation – you’ve got a camera somewhere else, use that, if you must. If you need to comment on something, we’ve put a crappy touch-screen keyboard on here so you can slowly type ‘hehe, LOLZ’ onto a youtube video, or hit the ‘like’ button on Facebook. But srsly, you can consume without thinking about responding, remixing, mashing-up, creating your own thoughts, ideas, media in response to it – just watch what the big boys and girls do and consume.”

Everything about it says ‘consume don’t create’:

• The keyboard is an optional extra
• There’s no camera
• All the software has to come through the app store
• there’s no USB socket for peripherals
• >no jack socket for an external mic (though there is one built in – whoop-di-doo!)
• no removable media (though there’s an optional ‘camera connection kit’ – more proprietary BS to stop realtime video happening…).

Everything about it says “walled garden”: do it our way, use our platform, our software.

The heirarchy is there not just between content producers and consumers, it’s there in the only access point being iTunes and the app store.

Apple are free to make whatever crap they like, to fill it with DRM bullshit, to lock down their software and content delivery mechanisms, to leave off keyboards, and instead make massive phones that don’t even work as phones. But please, don’t put your marketing weight behind a campaign that says this has anything to do with replacing a netbook without acknowleding that is breaks the single best thing about the internet.

• It’s an iPod touch for people with clumsy fingers or bad eyesight
• a digital photoframe that shows websites (though not Flash-driven ones, apparently)
• it takes everything that’s bad about the mobile web and makes it less mobile.
• Instead of streamlining the laptop computing experience, it clumsifies the mobile experience.
• You’re going to need some effing big pockets to make this thing truly portable in a way that beats a netbook or laptop.

So, if that all works for you, please, buy one – I’m not against people who want that feature set having one, I don’t think Apple are the bad guys for making it. I’m not an iPad hater, any more than I dislike any other fairly rubbish poorly thought-out incomplete piece of tech (like V1-3 of the iPhone, iPod, iMac… there’s a pattern here…). I can’t see any use for it for me that isn’t already met by my Nokia N97 and iPod Touch combination, or a proper laptop.

The basic laptop design, let’s not forget, is brilliant – the built in keyboard works as a lap-stand and screen cover, as well as somewhere to house CD drives and sockets. If you want a smaller one, you can get one with a breakout connector to those sockets and add-ons. Need to put it away? no problem, close the lid and your screen is protected! hurrah! what’s not to love about that? If Apple add touchscreen tech to their laptops, and update OSX for touch, the way we were hoping they would for the iPad, I’d be all over it. even a lappy with a detachable keyboard for trips where those extra few ounces of weight are critical. That’d be cool…

For now, I’ll not be buying one, and will happily tell anyone who asks why. Via some typing, on a keyboard, the old fashioned way

So, the iPad is here – massive Dom Joly iPhone? half a laptop? eReader? The Daily Prophet for Muggles…?

I read a couple of people on Twitter making claims that it was going to ‘kill books’. In response I tweeted this quote from Douglas Adams, which I got via Neil Gaiman:

“Nothing is as good at being a book as a book is.”

And commented that eBooks ≠ MP3s for written words.

So what’s the difference? Why are book-sellers in a different position to those who were in the business of selling music-in-bits-of-plastic that are now crapping themselves that their livelihood is vanishing?

Firstly, digitally downloadable music is the most malleable, useful format ever for music, and we lose nothing in the quality of experience by going that route. Sure, the quality of files sold on iTunes is lower than CD, but don’t forget that CDs are just containers for digital music – they’re overly large computer discs – and that the audio on them is of a quality deemed acceptable to all but the most audiophile of listeners. With digital downloads, there’s nothing to stop us upping the quality to the point where the changes are undetectable – 24bit, 96k files are probably about as good as you need to go before the changes are imperceptible. We can do that, and once the headphones are on, or the speakers are playing the music, the experience is the same as any other format for listening to recorded stereo (or in the case of DVD-A, 5.1) music. Nothing is lost, portability and positively variable quality is gained. If you want the experience of popping something flat and physical in a slot while listening, you can make a piece of toast at the same time.

eBooks are a whole different proposition – the act of reading requires us to continually look at the thing we’re reading from. That’s what reading is. Otherwise, it’s memorising, and the act of memorising requires us to read – or listen to – the words before we learn them.

So books and eBooks aren’t just a delivery mechanism – they are the stereo system as well as the record. They are carried around as part of the experience.

This isn’t to say that eBooks ‘aren’t as good as books’, just that they AREN’T books. They are a wholly different way to consume the written word, with all kinds of fun multimedia potential too, but also with all kinds of issues surrounding readability, shareability, discovery, portability, flexibility, the ability to scribble notes in the margins and the format for gifting.

Comparing once again with music – if I want to give someone a CD, it’s quite possible for me to record a digital file onto any kind of transferable media I like and pass it on without losing anything. The same can be done with an eBook, but it’s much tougher to transfer from eBook to book – the cost of printing a document of book length at home is not comparitive with the cost of dubbing a CD and printing a nice picture on it.

Readability is a huge issue – the Kindle gets round it by using ‘E ink’ or ‘virtual ink’, rendering it much easier on the eyes, but making the screen much less multi-purpose. As far as I know, no-one yet has done a hybrid E-ink/normal screen. So you have the variable use of an iPad-style screen with its eye-strain issues for longer documents, or the Kindle which is a one-trick pony, all be it a fairly brilliant one trick pony.

The Kindle is utilitarian – it does its one function very well, without too many concessions to pointless stylization. The iPad may well be used by a lot of people as an eReader, but the experience won’t be the same as reading a book, it won’t be any more portable than an individual book, won’t fit in your back pocket and even if it did, would break if you sat on it.

This isn’t an anti eBook rant – I love the idea of downloadable, sharable books, I love the idea of subscribable news, of blogs and newspapers and novels living side by side in harmony, like Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney, but it’s worth considering the fundamental differences and why, as I said at the top, eBooks ≠ to MP3s for the written word.

….if you don’t believe you, go and download my eBook… for free!

This post is by way of a massive THANKS! to everyone who contributed on my various blogs

More often that not, the real value in what I was writing came from the discussion that ensued - I’d throw an idea or two out (some better formed than others) and the amazing people that took the time to comment, discuss, disagree, encourage, expand and generally riff on my ideas were the ones who took those ideas into a more useful place.

When speaking in Universities about the changes in the music industry, no small number of my main points are ideas that were first germinated as comments on the blog. Some of the smartest insights into the big music industry stories of the year came via those comments, and much of the smarter blogging towards the end of the year was shaped by the melding of ideas and comments earlier on in the year.

As I wander around the web, like anyone, I find that comments on blogs are a curates egg. On most of the national papers, the comments are a battle-ground for ill-conceived fundamentalisms of all stripes, with no-one seeking consensus or respecting difference. Such that any wisdom gets lost in the noise.

And on many ‘pro’ blogs, the ad-revenue-driven need for ‘hits’ above all else means that posts are often written as ‘link-bait’, and any notion of a sensible discussion disappears out of the window in a gust of sensationalism and crass over-statement.

Contrast that with the gracious disagreements that have happened here, the questioning, probing and quest for some kind of middle ground, understanding and learning that has happened across these blogs, and I feel SO grateful to you. It’s not like I did anything special to deserve it.

I always have it in my mind that I have no fear in moderating out angry, insulting or malicious comments. But I’ve done so little of it this year as to not be able to recall any instances. I’m guessing I must’ve done it once or twice, but I can’t remember!

So here’s to 2010, more discussions, more learning, and here on solobasssteve.com, lots more guest writers – a huge thanks to:

Hannah Nicklin, Tom Alves, Wulf F-B, John Sargent, Steve Uccello, Lisa Harding, Jennifer Moore, Sam Hallam, Anders Faerch and Jemimah Knight,

who wrote guest posts either here or, in the case of Jennifer, Anders and Jemimah, over on stevelawson.net – your contributions were a huge help, and greatly appreciated.

Hurrah!

Nope, this isn’t a brainstorm on the future of the music industry. Well, at least, not directly.

You’ve read my novel, right? If you haven’t, click here to read about it and download it for free. (probably best to go read it, then come back here to read the comments, as there may well be spoilers implicit within what people write…)

It’s about a band. They go through a bit of a crisis, and a change, and things happen.

I’m really proud of it, enjoyed writing it and enjoy reading it back. I like the characters, so am wondering what to do next with them.

So I thought it’d be fun to ask you lot what you think should happen in Vol II.

So, have at it – the comments are yours. If I end up using any of them in the book, I’ll send you a free CD.

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 ‘

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.

I don’t, truth be told, think the blog post sets out a particularly convincing case for it being a fix. It’s all good conspiracy stuff, but a bit thrown together. Not particularly good journalism, for sure, and at worst is just a piece of willfully opportunistic nonsense drummed up as link-bait for the blogger concerned.

But, the weird thing is how many people seem to be really bothered by the implication that it’s a fix.

If this is a set up, a Sony campaign, it changes nothing. Whether it is or it isn’t, a bunch of internet nerds hyped back into the charts an 18 year old massive rock hit (it’s on Rock Band) – the biggest hit by one of the world’s biggest rock bands, a band known to millions as rock’s voice of discontent – as a ‘protest’ at X-Factor songs getting to the Christmas number 1 position in the UK singles chart. Both songs were released on record labels that were part of the Sony group, so either way Sony win, no one in the whole world chose between the two when deciding what to buy, so all it did was add more sales to the charts, not actively dissuade anyone from buying music deemed ‘unacceptable’.

No, it was an act of lazy cultural snobbery targeted at an institution (the UK singles chart) that ceased to mean anything years ago. As an act of musical defiance it was lazy – ‘yeah, let’s pick a massive selling rock classic that everyone knows that has swearing in it!’ As an attempt to prove that the internet is a force for good in changing the world of music it did exactly the opposite and proved that even on the internet, people resort to the same tired old bullshit of thinking that meaning comes from volume, and the vehicle for mass action is stuff-that’s-already-massively-successful-via-the-old-model.

It was still one song picked as the lottery winner, it was one act – already rich beyond our imagining – who got the golden ticket, the wave of support of indignant web-users, angry that kids and old people could possibly watch XFactor and then want to buy the single that the entire story had led up to over the last few weeks. No-one thinks it’s great – the people who bought it are the same ones who made Pure And Simple by Hear’Say the fastest selling single of all time, but now can’t even remember the name of the band, just that one of them looked like Shrek and that other one debased herself in the jungle… It’s not about music. It’s not about culture, or convincing people that shouty sweary rock music is somehow intrisically better than manufactured pop.

500,000 sales of one song says that the people on the internet are still more interested in being involved in something big than they are in something good.

• Thank your mum for dinner,
• smile at a Big Issue vendor as you buy a copy,
• volunteer for Crisis,
• buy fairtrade,
• recycle,
• and yes, buy indie music from artists whose lives are impacted by every single sale, then thank them and tell your friends.

But do it cos you love it, because it’s good, not because you need to be in mass-opposition to something for it to have meaning.

If Sony fixed this or if it really was grass-roots, the outcome is the same and nothing has changed. Joe will be number one next week, the charts will still never be a reflection of music that I – or anyone else for that matter – really loves. They’ll still be the 40 least offensive, most expensively marketed, best hyped tracks that are around today, and they’ll have nothing to do with what any of us actually listen to.

And I’ll keep telling everyone about the great music I come across on the web – not because I want to start a movement, but because it’s good. Because it soundtracks my life, it’s my music, my story, and I don’t need to hate some X-Factor kid whose surname I don’t even know and whose music I’ve never knowingly listened to for it to be important. It’s important because it’s good, because it’s a sustainable practice that helps the music I love to keep existing, and it’s an act of gratitude to the people who keep making music that makes me feel like the world is a good place to be.

Fix or no fix, nothing has changed.

So for now, have a listen to Miriam Jones – she’s great, relatively unknown, lovely, and waiting to hear from you about how much you love what she does:

I spend most of my time blogging profusely in my main cyber home (http://spiderplant88.wordpress.com) but thought that this post might be relevant here and I was motivated enough to throw the missive out there for comment!

I finally relented this evening and put the X Factor final on. Boy do I wish I had not bothered. What a travesty. None of the final three acts were in any way outstanding and worthy of the attention that is being thrown at them from all quarters of the media, music and otherwise. Now call me a musical snob, but there is a lot to be said for musicians working their way up the music tree and earning their stripes in the pubs and clubs of the land until they make it to a larger audience. There are hundreds of hard working musicians around the country plying their trade and trying to use every avenue open to them to get their music heard by the masses.

The Internet and the growth of social media has made their challenge a little easier in some respects and meant that they no longer have to rely on the major labels to get them into peoples ear space. For far too long the major labels have dictated who and what we should listen to. Years ago, when I left college, I couldn’t get the job I wanted in the design industry (took me ten years to get there) and instead i took a job with my second passion and worked for Our Price Records in Waterloo Station. In those days though the labels had a lot of control, we were still able in our stores, to lay out personal spaces for music suited to the demographic of the area where our store was. I worked in a number of stores as i worked my way up the ranks from part time sales assistant to store manager including Streatham, Wood Green, Covent Garden, Waterloo and Victoria Stations, Heathrow Airport and East Ham. Each area had a different musical ear from Reggae in South London to mainstream pop in the stations. It made it interesting for us trying to gauge what people listened to and making the sales walls relevant to each area. Each of the buyers knew their area and market and ordered stock based on what the public wanted to hear and requested in the store. It was a great time.

Then in the mid 90’s Our Price head office changed their strategy and took the control away. Ever harnessed by the major labels and their buying power, the store took the decision to standardise the range in all the stores meaning that local requests didnt count any more. It was the death knell for the chain and so proved to be. Within 6 years, Our Price was sold to Virgin Megastores and a little gem was gone forever. My passion for live music remained and by this time i had found a job working for a design agency and was doing the job that i had trained to do and was passionate about. I was struck by a certain irony that whilst i had finally been given the chance to do what i had always wanted to do, there were hundreds of music artists out there that didnt have that chance and although we only helped in a little way promoting local artists, yet another avenue for promoting them was gone. As i watch the X Factor churn out yet more manufactured pap that has no individuality and no creativity to speak off, I am reminded of how great the music industry used to be. The live music scene in London was something else. On a Friday night i was never happier than taking myself off to a small venue to see an unsigned act or a larger venue to see a favourite act.

Nowadays its all about how much money you can get from the act and the music is lost. As they are forever saying on the X Factor, its not just about the singing any more its about the whole package. To me that is garbage. I don’t care what an artist wears, i don’t care who they are seeing in their private life or what footballer or model they are shagging. To be its about whether they can sing or play their instrument well and entertain me. Today that is all gone. All the bands that grace our stages sound the same, the market is flooded with boy bands and girl bands whose only job is to titlate and half of them actually cant sing a note in tune in the first place. Tonights X Factor final was exactly as i thought it would be. Olly Murs the cheeky chappy from Cochester who relies on his charm when his voice fails him, Stacey Soloman the barbie doll from Dagenham who can hold a note sometimes but is a balladesque one trick pony and the stage school drop out Joe McElderry who pulls at your heart strings with his puppy dog eyes.

Its a travesty and not what music is about. I miss the says when playing or singing in a band and writing your own music made all the difference. That died a death years ago and this the drivel that we are left with.

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…

Image by Melvinheng on Flickr, shared via a creative commons license.

This is not a post about the things that are wrong with our world. This is a post about how we make them right. Of course it is not exhaustive, and by no means is it intended to be a detailed and flawless solution, in fact it openly admits that fact, because that (you will see) it is the point.

This post is in reaction to many things, but particularly in reaction to the recent #3strikes debate, the actions of Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, and a recently circulated confirmed rumour that suggests the same minister may have his sights set on the leadership of the Labour party. This is not a party political post, and I do not intend to argue why one man’s leadership would be bad for Labour, instead I intend to suggest that what this man represents is an outdated vision of politics, a vision that is bad for our country, and bad for our democracy.

Our society (and although I will talk more generally, ‘our’ here refers to UK society) is governed. We have democratically elected governments who, on the whole, make decisions and enforce laws with the intention of bettering society. I do not believe that anyone gets involved in politics for any other reason but improving the society they live in. This is the desire of the BNP, just as much as it is the desire of mainstream parties, their vision of a ‘better’ society might be opposed to the majority, but that is why they are not in power. Largely speaking, the party in power is supposed to represent the majority vision of what a better society is, and then strive towards it.

I do not believe that is currently so. Leaving aside first past the post reform and candidate selection, we wholly and entirely do not currently live in a democracy. The power is very much not ‘with the people’.

The Story

When Labour came into power in 1997, it was to the tune of a wholly broken opposition. 18 years of Conservative government had systematically deconstructed all that was of society and replaced it with the ethics of individualism. This was very good for a few, and catastrophic for a many. The many had finally realised. Labour won with more than just promises to renew, however, they won with what was for the first time, politics as marketing. It wasn’t just slogans, it was shiny adverts, they weren’t just promoting the values of the party, they were selling the story of New Labour.

Something else very important happened in 1997. The death of Diana. Others have pointed out before me how this marked an important turning point, not in politics, but in the media. This was the media as story, news not as reporting events, but as representing emotions. The papers spoke as though they spoke for us as they ordered the Queen from Balmoral.

Labour was in power without a credible opposition, and suddenly the press felt powerful. They could move the Queen to action. And someone needed opposing. If it was ‘The Sun Wot Won It’, The Sun could also oppose it.

Story is a very hard thing to fight. It is much older than democracy, much older than society.

That was the beginning of the era of Spin. Labour had ridden into power on a narrative, and the mainstream media had assumed the role of opposition using the same. One proposed a story of a better society, the other claimed to represent the stories (wishes) of the people who lived in it.

You notice how neither of these groups are made up of ‘us’?

This is the politics that politicians such as Peter Mandelson, David Cameron and (yes, even) Boris Johnson represent. (Can you think of a better story than the bumbling fool made good?)

An Information Economy.

Spin is all about distribution. Spin is about controlling the narrative of politics; it is about packaging and marketing your version of events. Spin requires complete control of information.

Spin is not working. Our society has grown out of it. Our country has been made undemocratic because of it. Our politicians do not fear the people, they fear the press. The people do not trust their politicians because the press exposes the antiquated attitudes and secrecy within their ranks. However the Press only constructs an oppositional story, it does not deconstruct it. The press is also not run for anything but the benefit of sales. No matter how well standing the broadsheet, how ubiquitous the tabloid. The mainstream media choose their story, and then they spin their readers and politicians into it.

The internet opposes and undermines that.

We live in an information age. For better or worse that is something that must be accepted. There is a rival economy, and it consists of information, it is a world (democratically, one might say) built of a thousand individual narratives. No one claims to speak for others, if someone is championed, it is because one person had the words that echo with others’. In this context the politics of Peter Mandelson et al will not work. He is a clever man, and I hope clever enough to see that one voice, big business, Spin, the politics of ‘push’, are gone. This is the century of pull, this is the century that politics has to become mutual.

Wikipolitics.

Well, everything needs a title doesn’t it? (/a hashtag).

I have blogged before about how I don’t believe in apathy, but I do believe in disengagement. I believe that British politics is due a reformation. I believe that we can demand that. Are you bored of the tone of the Labour government? Do you really believe that a Tory one will be different? Are you looking for a protest vote? A voice? You will not currently find it at the ballots.

What is Wikipolitics?

It is a starting point. It takes the open-source ethic and applies it to government. I don’t propose that we edit policy documents. I do believe that parliament should be opened up, demystified, and the power taken back. How do we do this? We’ve already started, look at projects such as Louder, 38 degrees, look at the Trafigura backlash, the Iran election, the G20 protests.

We now live in a world where we construct our own media consumption, where we pull together, build our own stories. Politics and the mainstream media are clinging on to old methods of distribution and delivery.

Whilst still acknowledging that at least 2/3 of the world does not have access to the internet (the UK figure is something like 30%, with a further 7-8% only having narrowband access – source) and those who do are likely to be from more affluent, developed backgrounds, we also need to be aware that instant publishing and access to our own media channels is incredibly empowering.

We also need to pull ourselves out of the luxury of political disempowerment. It is our responsibility to be involved in politics. If it is not one with which we wish to be involved, then we need to change it.

Reformation, Reclamation.

We need to tell our parties: “Arm your backbenchers with Flips, with Audioboo, with simple wordpress websites. Open up. Work in real-time. And don’t be afraid. We know you are, we know you are worried that you will be criticised, pulled apart, but please remember that although it has not been so before, that is what we mean by democracy. That is the open-source ethic. Let us participate”.

This worked for Obama, he brought the US the highest election turnout in a century. But then he stopped. And that where it’s gone wrong. That’s when Murdoch took back over.

The mainstream media has characterised us as a pack of baying wolves. The politicians have been characterised as lying snakes and fat cats. 2/3 people believe they cannot affect decision making. Trafigura, Jan Moir, proves we can. How about we take that to the rest of politics? How about we build our own wiki-guide to how we want to be engaged with, how we want to ask questions of the policy makers, of the parties? How about we offer a route that bypasses the mainstream media – taking honest debate and mobile video on the campaign trail, introducing them to the modern realities outside the political bubble, having a conversation, rather than being delivered a speech. You may argue that there’s no point in participating in a broken system, but how else are people to know how to fix it?

Because this is important. As it currently stands it would take as many years to get women equal representation, as it would a snail to crawl the length of the Great Wall of China. As it currently stands we are bickering and buying our way to climate disaster. As it currently stands we live lifestyles of excess and complete unsustainability. And for all our excess, are we happy? Or are we to some degree living the lives and values that are sold to us – other peoples’ stories?

We are facing a hyper-connected, global village era, politics cannot continue to be its own island.

This is not a manifesto, it is a call to arms. And this is where I stop, because this is a story, too. It’s a story about us, but it’s still my version. We need to write an ending together. How can we open up the political process? What do we want to know? Do we think there should be more experts involved in policy making? Do we want to see cabinet meetings taking questions from Twitter? What tools can we offer? Comment. Engage. This is up to all of us. What can we build? (We have the technology). Go.

– Hannah Nicklin is a brightly coloured and basically nocturnal playwright, blogger, academic and geek. She normally lives over at hannahnicklin.com, and is @hannahnicklin on Twitter.