Still Alive was unironically one of my favorite songs from 2007, so you can only imagine how mind-poppingly awesome I find the real-life on-stage combination of it, one of my favorite games (Rock Band), Veronica, and Jonathan Coulton, as they belt it out along with Leo Laporte and Merlin Mann. Even better was how Veronica saved the band from failing out, what, three times?
P.S. -Extra bonus: Veronica, Jonathan, Merlin, and myself will all be on TWiT this week with Leo, so watch out for it.
It’s been around for a few months, I know, but I’m nominating this clip Veronica sent me as YouTube video of the year: Will “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy” Oldham and Zack Galifianakis doing Kanye West’s Can’t Tell Me in the country with farm animals, tractors, and a sprinkling of The Sound of Music. (Written on Oldham’s forehead at the end: I ? success.)
Not entirely sure if the Joy Division reference in the title is uncouth, but consider this blog to be wearing a black armband today: Tony Wilson, founder of Factory Records and music visionary, is dead. More at the Beeb.
I was a little occupied today, but it looks like Pete’s new thing has finally gotten out. I’ve been hearing about RCRD LBL for quite a while, and I think congratulations are definitely order — Pete and Downtown came up with a really inventive idea here. It’s about time someone came around and shook things up with music online, and there are few people I can think of who could do that like Pete. (For those that don’t know him well, his obsession with gadgets is matched only by his obsession for music — so this is pure Rojas.)
As if we all didn’t already know that Keith Richards batshit insane. It’s too bad the Stones (pre-1980) are one of the best bands of all time, otherwise I might feel a little weird about liking the tunes of some dude who snorted his father’s ashes cut with cocaine.
Update: Keith’s manager, of course, says Keith was only kidding around. Right, ok, totally plausible, just like that wardrobe malfunction that one time, right?
I shouldn’t be surprised, but damned if I didn’t manage to polarize an audience today with my little Apple and EMI ditching DRM is good, but it’s not good enough editorial. I managed to hit the ever-oversensitive nerve of Mac fanboys at the same time as rubbing fellow anti-DRM consumers alike — a rare case. Not that I’d expect any of those who swore off Engadget today to ever read this here personal blog, but it seems to me like the point was lost reading the editorial in a way it wasn’t written. To summarize:
The news is good, good, good, good, good. This is seriously great news, and I can’t even say how glad I am to hear that EMI is offering music DRM-free.
EMI went to Apple first, since Jobs was likely to be a receptive audience after Apple’s European troubles and his editorial on DRM. No surprise there.
Apple was all too happy to come up with a solution to distribute the music free of DRM. Jobs personally endorsed this by presenting at EMI’s media event. They intend to make the majority of music on iTunes DRM free. That’s awesome.
So why, then, are smaller labels that also distribute on, say, eMusic still not allowed to sell music DRM-free? They’ve wanted this for years. Indies have to take a back seat to majors when it comes to choice of selling with or without DRM?
And if DRM is such a caustic user experience, why doesn’t Jobs fight to sell Disney-owned music DRM-free? And for that matter, Disney-owned TV shows and movies?
And if it’s about the best user experience possible, why not sell in MP3, which plays in all devices? And why not sell in lower bitrates for people who want to extend battery life and space?
Look, I’m not saying this isn’t a good thing. It’s a great thing. But these companies — Apple especially — have an agenda, and are wrapping a very good intention with a lot of BS that people should be skeptical about. I’m not discouraging this move, I’m discouraging the say-one-thing-do-another actions of the players behind it.
Disclaimers: I sometimes use iTunes to buy media. I have and use a Mac as my primary laptop. I listen to music on EMI, and like it. I (obviously) loathe DRM. That add any context?
Tom Whitwell, who edits the fantastic Music Thing (and formerly wrote a column of the same name on Engadget) has a really fun “visual aid” to some of the more obscure samples from some of Daft Punk’s less obscure tracks. So good!
So tonight the lady and I were arguing about Daft Punk’s Technologic. I was saying how ironic it was that Apple is obsessed with the track and plays it at their events. She says, “it could be about anything” in terms of tech, but I’m totally convinced it’s a song about fair use. Look at it: it’s an electronic song about all the things you can do to and with fair, free, open files. Even if you want to argue the hardware angle, it’s still in advocacy of a free, open hardware model vs. “DRMed hardware” (i.e. trusted computing). Maybe I just think about this crap too much.
So I’ve been lacking a particularly valuable resource for some mix CDs I’ve been working on the last couple weeks–I was actually getting desperate to the point of starting a very simple database-driven site project to cover the need (pun oh so intended). But then I happened to be searching on that Grace Jones cover of Warm Leatherette by The Normal and I happened upon The Covers Project. Best new site ever.
I'm an editor and technology critic in the midst of founding a new content startup. More here.
September 7th - @davidciccone Didn't ask anyone to resubscribe, but that wouldn't matter either, iTunes only tracks a total of one subscription per user.
September 7th - @davidciccone iTunes only increases your ranking based on new podcast subscriptions. It doesn't track loads, refreshes, or even downloads.
September 7th - Temporary VDoS-related outage at ryanblock.com. Should be back online now though. Damn that woman has power.
So tonight the lady and I were arguing about Daft Punk’s Technologic. I was saying how ironic it was that Apple is obsessed with the track and plays it at their events. She says, “it could be about anything” in terms of tech, but I’m totally convinced it’s a song about fair use. Look at it: it’s an electronic song about all the things you can do to and with fair, free, open files. Even if you want to argue the hardware angle, it’s still in advocacy of a free, open hardware model vs. “DRMed hardware” (i.e. trusted computing). Maybe I just think about this crap too much.
