It's not just about cross-selling blades to refill the free handles, nor is it about cheap dolls with stacks of pricy accessories. This is about recognizing how the modern ubiquitously connected markets actually work, about recognizing the meaning of terms like one million members and facing the inevitabilities of the Zeno's Paradox of diminishing pricing on increasing returns. I do wonder sometimes if I will live long enough to see any of my compatriots click to this, whether that's cell companies, or musicians ...

Calypso distributes masters of its CDs and CD liner art to street vendor networks in towns it plans to tour, with full agreement that the vendors will copy the CDs, sell them, and keep all the money. That's OK, because selling discs isn't Calypso's main source of income. The band is really in the performance business — and business is good. Traveling from town to town this way, preceded by a wave of supercheap CDs, Calypso has filled its shows and paid for a private jet.
[ Wired: Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business ]

Dig how everybody wins? And it's that local need to make a few extra quid that fuels the demand for the impending show, that's so dead obvious yet so rare.  read more »

Juno? Naw ... D'joo? ... In a way, I'm kind of proud of myself, I didn't think it was possible to just do the Confucius thing ("The way out is by the door; why will no one use this method?") but I stumbled into a report on this year's Juno Awards and, well no, I didn't. I didn't know any of them, not a one, at least none of those mentioned in the article ... except maybe Anne Murray and it probably would take serious electroshock to remove that memory. The rest of the roster were as alien to me as might be the award winners at a Bangra Festival!

I can't tell you who won the last round of Grammys either, and what's more, as obsessed as I am with music, these holes in my knowledge do not bother me in the least. Totally and completely irrelevent, as irrelevent as serial numbers to the sound of a saxophone. Man that's a nice feeling.

It's words like this that alienate appreciators:

"When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Making "a copy" of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'," she [RIAA lawyer] said.

Response around the Greenleaf office:

If this kind of thing doesn't make you want to run as fast as you can in the opposite direction of anything having to do with "established" record business types, I don't know what would.
[ Greenleaf: RIAA vs Radiohead ]  read more »

Kevin Kelly wants to tell you about the Internet, what it is, what it does, and what this means for those folks who base their livelihood on selling things that can be copied, and eight good solid counter-strategies for selling beyond the copy. Sure I've told you about how the CD is dead, how Voice of Fire defeated the publishing industry, how the future of the music industry has nothing much to do with yesterday's songs, but Kevin just puts it all so straight and simple, I had to, well, copy it:

The simplest way I can put it is thus:

• When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
• When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
• When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well ... what can't be copied?
[ Better Than Free ]

What indeed. For starters, Kevin lists: Immediacy, Personalization, Interpretation, Authenticity, Accessibility, Embodiment, Patronage and 'Find-ability', all of them directly and succinctly elucidated for the price of a click-through, and to which I would add just one more, the price of 'Presence'  read more »

This is how freedom ends, not with a bang, but with a blogpost into the empty stairwells of apathy. Welcome, friends, to the True North, Strong and Digitally Restricted. It was fun, though, before, I mean, wasn't it? It was, I'm sure it was, but you young'uns won't likely be rememberin' those days, 'cause they ain't archived on iTunes. Ooops, can I even say that? Not for offense, y'understand, but because maybe it was said before by someone who's got a copyright on it? Can I still say 'copyright'? Damn, I better check with my lawyer ...  read more »

Tell me, what sort of country do you have if it is not your government or even the judges who make your censorship laws, but the big-money corporate lawyers? Oh, wait, no, doh-- I already know that answer! What sort of country? "America" ...

We received a letter from a lawyer represeting the CRIA, they were threatening with legal action and We need to start blocking Canadian traffic because of this. If you reside in Canada, that is the reason you are being redirected to this message. Thanks for your understanding, and sorry for any inconvenience.
[ Offline ]  read more »

The very nice thing about the End of the World is that it happens so often. The latest round in the copyright royalty wars is yet another as webcasters have just been told they will need to cough up 17-months retroactive royalty fees based on plays-per-download instead of percentage rates on revenue, and, not surprisingly, that means 99.9% of the podcasters (the un- and barely-profitable) will pop like balloons. Pandora, for example, has Tim telling the media

"If these rates aren't changed, Pandora won't exist anymore, so it can't get much more important for us. One of the big fears is that the change happens and it doesn't get fought because people don't know about it, or don't appreciate the reality of it, and there's no better way to bring it home than to give a sampling of what it's going to be like if the rates actually go through."
[ Net Radio webcasters plan silent protest Tuesday ]

So the the netcasters are planning for a Music-Free Day of protest tomorrow. Isn't that like the New York Times dissing journalists by boycotting the alphabet?

Before I go any farther, allow me to explain to all the net-radio programmers out there that I for one, and Kee-May too, have released most of our material (back catalog and current) under share-friendly, play-friendly licenses. One trip to any very indie music archive like dmusic.com is likely to uncover a lot more like us, and while yes, you'll have to dig for these unregistered performance works, they are out there, and if you truly want to stick one up the Copyright Association's backside, don't punish your listeners with a day of silence, just roll up your sleeves and program an entire day of music outside the Association's control.

Guaranteed, properly orchestrated, expertly edited, I have no doubt: it will get their attention. Just like last time ...  read more »

It has taken top recording industry leaders and even the vanguards at slashdot, what has it been now, only nearly three years to the day to catch up with me? Well this slice of told you so is for Tim Oren and for all those music fans and musicians who said I was crazy to so diss their precious bit-discs, because vindication of vision really doesn't come any sweeter than this:

EMI Music Chairman and Chief Executive Alain Levy Friday told an audience at the London Business School ... "The CD as it is right now is dead," ... adding that 60% of consumers put CDs into home computers in order to transfer material to digital music players.
[ MarketWatch: EMI Music CEO says the CD is 'dead' ]

I have a new response to those who say they've just poured their savings down the big hole of a CD release: Instead of "Oh that's so nice." I think maybe I will say instead, "Gee, that's too bad." and I'm sure they won't really mind my bluntness all that much because nobody ever really listens to me anyway.  read more »

Jessica Simpson is top of the charts in the anti-DRM circles today. In a very interesting once-bitten twice-shy move by the post-rootkit Sony-BMG Yahoo! has been granted leave to sell no-restrictions pure-MP3 tracks of "A Public Affair".

Yahoo! Music Blog offers the official and admittedly very true political economic rhetoric: "DRM doesn't add any value for the artist, label or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies" -- only there's just a little bit more to the story than mere prodigal DRM tale, even though that fact has, obviously, already endeared Ms Simpson to a new audience of info-geeks, but more than that, if you consider the usual market space for her music, and if you recall what I've already said here before about the need for all artists to make digital art into a one-of event experience transcendent of copying: the little gimmick hook twist slipped into this distro is going to send Jessica one very fat 3rd quarter bonus ...

The new track, costing $1.99, can be personalised before the song is downloaded, allowing users to have their name inserted in the lyrics.
[ BBC NEWS | Technology | US Yahoo offers copy-free music ]

If I'm not mistaken, that's a premium price on the MP3 market, in some circles that's a twice-the-price ticket for the priviledge of being in on the event, on owning an artifact from that fashion-moment in time, and if one little girl gets her name in the stream, you can bet her friends will want one with theirs too. Perfect birthday spice from an impoverished friend or for mom and dad to sprinkle into the shiny new iPod-mini, but more than this, Jessica and her producers have just opened the door to a wonderful new future of Get the mix you want post-modern music production values. You like your Eroica with a tad more bottom to the brass? Not a problem ...  read more »