Monthly Archives: May 2006
San Francisco ho!
So the big news is my illustrious Partner in Crime (my wife) and I, are moving to San Francisco in September. She, (the aforementioned partner in crime), is getting her PhD at UCSF (in medical sociology, no less), and I’m a tagging a long for the ride. Besides, living in San Francisco has been one of my 43 things for a while, and lets face it, for a technology loving, web programming, music geek, is there really another place to be?
I will still be working for Bryght of course, setting up the new world headquarters (or something like that). Nevertheless, please send all lucrative job offers to colin@bryght.com and while I definitely won’t take them, I might be able to use them as leverage to get Bryght to buy me a yearly pass to one truly humungous climbing gym.
I’ve been following Chris Messina and the interesting tale of Teh Space and coworking, so I’d love to rent a desk if there are still spots left. (Are there?)
One thing I think is pretty hilarious is the process of looking for rental places on Craigs List. I love how people always stand on a chair in the corner of a tiny 400 square foot studio in order to make the room look cavernous in the photo. If you’re lucky, the photographer might even break out the fish eye lens to really make the room seem big. I can imagine the dialog:
“Hey, Wow! This one looks really huge. True, the walls are pretty concave, but I think it’s worth a look.”
Guess what! You’re not fooling anyone!
For the rental newbie, I’ve compiled a glossary of common terms:
Garden suite: Basement, limited light, only garden item is the fungus growing on the inside of the hot water tank.
Cozy: Small, cramped, exposed ceiling pipes may force taller renters to hunch like a Tolkien dwarf
Near Transit: Your bed shakes when trains go by at all hours
Character touches: Crumbling, decaying, probably lots of spiders
Suitable for one person: This person is trying to rent a walk in closet
Must see to believe: Must see to believe the audacity of the ad writer.
Needless to say, finding a nice place to live is going to be the hard part of this adventure I think. If anyone reading this has any leads on a killer apartment, or even any suggestions on areas that are cool to live in, please get in touch with me either through this blog or by email.
And for all Vancouver folk, there will soon be a couch with your name on it in San Francisco.
Net, Blogs and Rock’n'Roll
Here is an interesting sounding book to keep your eyes out for.
Net, Blogs and Rock’n'Roll
From the Authors blog:
“People have access to vastly more music, video and other entertainment than ten years ago. In the case of music, record companies are releasing twice as many new albums per year. Not only that, but some are ‘rescuing’ old and deleted tracks for release in the digital marketplace.
So how do people find out about all this material? How do they judge what they might like? I’m writing a book that addresses these questions.”
Sounds like a good read, now I just have to wait for it…
Pearl Jam Video “Life Wasted”
From the Google Blog:
“Pearl Jam’s new music video “Life Wasted” is now on Google Video for free! Be sure to check it out now, as free streaming and download is available only until next Wednesday.
And in line with the band’s experimental personality, Pearl Jam released the “Life Wasted” video under a Creative Commons “some rights reserved” copyright license. What does all that legal gibberish mean to you? It means that you can download the video for free, share it with your friends, and even post it on your own site–provided you give the band credit and don’t use it for commercial purposes. It’s yet another example of Pearl Jam putting its fans first.”
Except since I’m in the hinterland of Canada, all I see when I go the link is a big “We’re sorry, but the provider of this video has not authorized Google to display this video in your location.” Which is strange, because I thought it was released under a CC license.
Can someone upload this to YouTube for me?
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Updated: This seems to works now… Yeah!
The death throes continue..
XM has launched the Inno, which allows XM customers to record up to 50 hours of music and automatically parses recordings by song and artist.
So of course, the recording industry is suing XM radio.
“The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in New York by the largest labels, seeks $150,000 in damages for every song copied by XM Satellite customers using the devices, which went on sale weeks ago.”
I’m actually neither a fan of XM Radio or the Recording Industry, so maybe they’ll take each other out.
What’s my issue with XM Radio? I certainly think it’s a step forward from the clear channel oligopoly, but I still feel that there are better ways for people to enjoy and discover new music. That long tail is pretty long though, and 70 channels of music seems unlikely to cater to an individual the way last.fm radio does, for example. If I could get last.fm streamed over satellite to a portable player, that would be much more interesting.
More from the Canadian Music Creator’s Coalition
Courtesy of Boing Boing, here’s some more from the Canadian Music Creator’s Coalition. Standout quote:
“We’re watching all kinds of other business models flourish with the Internet and new media and we’re seeing the companies that have always spoken on our behalf as trying to clamp down and preserve an aging business model rather than explore new ways,” Mr. Page added yesterday at a meeting with the Citizen’s editorial board.”
Great interview with Steven Page and his colleagues Andrew Cash and Brendan Canning (of Broken Social Scene). This is really worth a listen.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/galleries/06-05-08.mp3
Playlist/music links
Some interesting links that I’ve come across recently:
AOL Music Now Web Services
http://aol.musicnow.com/media/developer/index.htm
(Courtesy of Zac) All Media Guide also has some cool playlist stuff going on:
http://www.allmediaguide.com/tapestry/
Be sure to check out the demo of Tapestry here:
http://tapestry.allmusic.com/
I really enjoyed wasting time playing with the “Build Descriptors” function. (in the right panel, click the little “Down Arrow” next to where it says “Descriptors”) This brings you to a tabbed interface that allows you to explore different types of music. I’d love to see these descriptors be influenced by (if not entirely based on) a community driven folksonomy. Or maybe have the descriptors be personalized somehow. As in: “These are my descriptors”…
Pretty neat though!
Google subscribed links
Of all the interesting things announced at Google press day, I’m particularly taken with their new “subscribed links” (thx Boris). The idea is that you can easily plug in extra services to Google’s search, and the results of these extra services are displayed at the top of other search results when presented to the user. Straight from the horses mouth:
With the Google Subscribed Links API, you can add your services directly into Google search. This can help make those services more accessible, giving your users another entry-point to them when they’re making a related search on Google. There are a number of special features built in to Google search, such as currency conversion and movie showtimes, and you can add your service to that list with subscribed links. The API was designed to be as easy to use as possible, and requires only basic XML skills.
I went through and made a couple of quick “hello world” type examples, and it all seemed to work great. Then I thought I would move on to something a bit harder and try and tie into the 43 Things API. I thought it would be neat to make it so when I would google for someone’s name, if they had an account in the 43 universe, I would see their 43x information shown along side the standard search results.
But then I realized that the XML DataObjects that Google uses as a data source can’t be created dynamically on the fly (which I guess makes sense for performance reasons). Google caches the xml data, and crawls it every 10 minutes or so. If you don’t change the timestamp on your XML data file, the new results don’t appear to be crawled again. But since creating an XML file of every user on 43things was out of scope for my lunchtime hackery, I called uncle.
Does anyone else have an easier way of tying in Google’s subscribed links to external API’s? I guess the only real way is to create a cached file of relevant data and have it updated hourly (or something).
The Symphony
I went and saw the Vancouver Symphony last night. I had forgotten how amazing it is to see such a large group of people all make such beautiful music together. I love how even though each individual plays a (relatively) simple part, the overall aggregate sound is so full and complex.
I also really enjoyed the world premier of Jason Nett’s new piece “Symphonia Brevis”. I heard sounds that I’ve never heard come out of an orchestra before. It made me think that organizations like the VSO should focus more on new music like this, and less on the pleasant, but familiar sounding Brahms that followed Nett’s piece.
I’m not sure why exactly, but parts of Nett’s composition reminded me of the awesome Alarm will sound album where they cover Aphex Twin. Mainly as an excuse to try out Odeo’s flash player, and also because I couldn’t find mp3’s of Jason Nett’s work, I’ve got a sample of Alarm Will Sound below. Just click to listen:
Nettwerk Records ++
I just read David Gratten’s post about Nettwerk records. While most record labels just don’t seem to understand, it’s very refreshing to read about one that really does. I mean, they really, really get it. I was so inspired, I came up with a bunch of reasons why Nettwerk Records is the model record company for the future:
1) David Kusek, one of the authors of the future of music says: “The music company of the future will be based around the combination of artists and artist management, publishing, touring, merchandising, and recordings. The artist’s brands will drive the business, and the economics will make the financial risk more tolerable and the return on investment more predictable.” This describes Nettwerk’s business model perfectly.
2) They pay for legal fees of people being sued by the RIAA. “Suing music fans is not the solution, it’s the problem,” stated Terry McBride, C.E.O of Nettwerk Music Group. “Litigation is not ‘artist development.’ Litigation is a deterrent to creativity and passion and it is hurting the business I love,” insists McBride. “The current actions of the RIAA are not in my artists’ best interests.”.
Altruism aside, it’s also great PR move for the label and their artists.
3) They’ve released DRM free MP3’s on a 128 meg USB thumb drive instead of on a shiny plastic disk.
4) Nettwerk realizes that there are new markets for music that are just waiting to be explored, and they seem determined to get there. For example, selling video game music through a partnership with EA.
5) They’re willing to take chances with cool new technology. For example, they have signed a deal with Vancouver based music recommendation service Audiobaba. (I had an interesting talk with Michael from Audiobaba a few weeks ago, so I’ll write more on this soon.)
6) They have some pretty talented artists (Marketing budgets aside, this DOES actually matter after all.)
7) They’re Canadian! (And I’m not being biased simply because I am a Canadian too. Starting and running a label in Canada means that you have access to quite a bit of government funds, all in the name of promoting Canadian talent and culture. I believe that Nettwerk was a recipient of quite a bit of government grants in the early years.)
If/when I start my own label, Nettwerk will serve as the blueprint.
The future of music: Big hooks up front
Technology and music have always had an interesting duality. Throughout history, it seems that most popular music is "designed" (perhaps unwittengly) to exploit the technology used to deliver and consume itself. What do I mean exactly?
My favorite example is that of Louie Armstrong’s horn. The early phonograph had a very narrow acoustic range, and had difficulty picking up certain frequencies. Louie’s trumpet, with it’s warbling pitch, and high treble, was able to pierce the audio haze of early recording devices. It wasn’t just that the trumpet was more popular an instrument then the flute for example; it was that the Trumpet was the perfect vehicle to exploit the medium it was to be delivered on. Other examples include Mark Katz’s hypothesis that violin vibrato was introduced to help early recording devices better pick up the sound, in a similar fashion to Louie’s trumpet.
Moving ahead in time, consider Pink Floyds album, “The Wall”. The Wall was designed to capitalize on the two, long-playing and uninterrupted sides of a piece of vinyl. Other attributes of the media are exploited as well, such as the high fidelity nature of most stereo system at the time, and even the dimensions of the album cover in order to display art work. Could “The Wall” have been as successful in today’s world of downloaded singles and iPod shuffle’s? Perhaps, but unlikely…
When I was at SXSW a few months ago, I found myself in an interesting discussion with Matt May (and others), that I kept on thinking about. We were talking about how current technologies were going to affect the type of music being produced.
Our best guess?
Most online stores or music websites offer you a 30 sec (or so) listen of the track before you purchase, so we figured that future music would be designed to exploit this. Who cares about song structure or melodic development! All that will matter in the future is to have the first 30 seconds of your tune “optimized” for a public bent on quick scanning. All of a sudden, leading off your track with that huge punchy chorus seems like a good idea. The future of music is “big hooks up front”.