AUGUST 27, 2009

As a voracious consumer of internet media, I’m going to try to post, on a regular basis, the most interesting things I’ve read over the course of the week. Here goes!

• Is anyone surprised that as our lifestyles become more varied, increasingly-weirder insurance products are coming to market? Two from this week: Rapture insurance for the pets of believers, and fantasy football insurance, which covers league fees and other expenses in the event that a highly-rated player goes down to injury. I really could have used this after I drafted Tom Brady last year. (h/t to Tyler Cowen for both links)
• In times where everything looks like it’s going to hell in a handbasket, it’s tough to keep perspective on just how much things have changed in the last 100 years. This chart, from Berkeley professor Brad DeLong, illustrates how radically different our day-to-day lives are from those of our great-great-grandparents. My favorite stat: 25% (!) of households had boarders or lodgers living under the same roof in 1900.
• Pitchfork’s Eric Harvey has a long thought piece on the social history of the MP3 - an investigation into how, exactly, the MP3 has changed the way we interact with music. It’s pretty dense, but worth a read. A lot of Harvey’s piece re-hashes the intellectual property debates that have been raging since the mid-90’s, but one particularly interesting bit is about the social cohesion and shared experience that music once offered. Chances are, if I whistle the chorus of “Can’t Buy Me Love”, someone in the room will be able to sing the words. But what about a song from my current favorite band? Maybe not.
• Time has a piece in this week’s edition entitled “The Real Cost of Cheap Food“. To those familiar with the sustainable food movement, there’s not too much new here, but it’s fascinating to watch new ideas bubble up from a few fringe activists, to academics, to publications geared towards intellectuals like The New York Times magazine, and finally to general-interest, establishment periodicals like Time.

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AUGUST 11, 2009

Ever since I was a teenage kid with snobby taste in music, I’ve loved the Canadian indie rock band Metric. (OK, “rock” is a bit of a strong word for the group, but “emo” reflects poorly on me, so that’s what I’m going with). After a two-year layoff, the group recently came out with a new album called Fantasies, which is pretty good but nothing to write home about. Much more interesting, though, is how they funded the album - rather than putting themselves through another onerous major label deal, one that dictates creative direction and only nominally compensates artists for record sales, Metric decided to start their own label and build their own studio with the help of grant funding from the Canadian government.

To me, this speaks volumes about where, exactly, paid media is heading. As I’ve written before, plummeting-to-nonexistent distribution and publication costs have ended major media companies’ role of “gatekeeper” - one that they held solely due to the scarcity of space on record store shelves, or column inches in a newspaper.

But even more notably, I think the Metric experience points one viable way forward for media outlets struggling with the competition of the web - government and/or nonprofit funding. Canada, for instance, has decided that to a certain degree, cultural protectionism is preferable to a completely free market. They’re fine with having a somewhat distinct Canadian culture that exists with government protection and subsidy - a goal that’s accomplished in a number of ways, including “Canadian content” laws that require 35% of content broadcast by radio stations be of Canadian origin, as well as the grant system. Of course, this priority is made a bit more urgent by the presence of a culturally and linguistically similar behemoth on the southern border, but many western countries have similar laws.

Like the Canadians, who have decided that it’s worth sacrificing free market efficiency for a little diversity in culture, I think it’s worth exploring a similar model for journalism. We’re quickly finding that in an age of cutthroat competition for journalists, bloggers like Perez Hilton (who commands $72,000 for a full-day sponsorship) are rising to the top. Far be it from me to criticize a guy making money, but I think we can agree that celebrity gossip won’t fill the void left by the increasing unprofitability of investigative journalism. This is a place that I think a well-targeted government grant program, or an equivalent non-profit organization, might be able to step in and cover the significant costs of hard-hitting journalism - recognizing that a vibrant but protected press is superior to the alternative of no press at all.

Enough seriousness - let’s rock (kind of). Here’s “Gimme Sympathy” from Metric’s Fantasies.

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JULY 13, 2009

Via PC World comes the release of a new study by The Leading Question, a UK media strategy company, showing that illegal file-sharing among British teens has decreased by close to 33%. 26% of teenagers admitted to illegal file-sharing in the last month, down from 42% in December 2007.  Not only that, for the first time in the survey’s history, the data show that purchased music downloads outpacing illegal file-sharing.

The study’s authors suggest that the decrease in illegal activity has come partially due to the increasing popularity of legal, paid options, but also the pervasiveness of music streaming sites like Spotify, Pandora and YouTube.  Streaming sites have seen enormous growth, not only because of the risks of illegal file-sharing, but also because of the increasing ubiquity of wireless data services - with devices like the iPhone, streaming is possible from anywhere, making downloaded, local copies of music more or less obsolete. Throw in the computing industry’s recent trend toward netbook computers, with their tiny hard drives, and you have a whole lot of factors creating a greater market in online streaming, making the greater prominence of these services not too surprising.

I’m encouraged by the study as a music lover. But I’d offer some words of caution to record execs who think people are finally turning away from stealing their intellectual property: the terms you’re offering to sites like Pandora are more or less killing the streaming business model. Pandora’s announcement last week that it will begin to charge heavy users of the service has, anecdotally, driven quite a few people away - even if they can afford the very small surcharge that Pandora will ask of those who listen more than 40 hours a month. I definitely listen more than 40 hours a month and can afford it, but why should I pay, when there are countless alternatives?

Pandora power users have an enormous level of interaction with the service. We generally sit and rate tracks as they play, to improve the content of our personal stations. I even have a keyboard shortcut on my laptop for doing just that,  so I don’t have to switch windows to rate songs. This should give marketers an incredibly rich data environment with which to discern our likes and dislikes. You’d think that, to simplify things a bit, if Pandora’s algorithms notice a huge number of 24 year-old guys giving good ratings to both Weezer and Mariah Carey songs, that that might be an incredibly valuable piece of data for a record executive, who could then find or create an ironic nerd-rock band with a mezzo soprano lead singer - even using the Pandora service to introduce the band directly into our headphones.

If this occurs to me, as someone well outside the music business, it has to have occurred to the pros in New York, LA and Nashville. I wonder what’s keeping it from happening. But one thing’s for sure - the costs imposed on streaming sites by the music industry will ultimately end in those sites becoming less prominent, sending people right back into piracy.

As an aside, I discovered my new favorite song, Metro by the Vincent Black Shadow, on thesixtyone, a new site that makes music streaming into a kind of video game. I don’t know how to explain it better than that, so you should probably just check it out.

(image is of the basement of Plan 9 Records in Richmond, VA - my favorite record store growing up)

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MAY 18, 2009

I finally had some time today to begin catching up on the many, many posts I’ve been neglecting in my Google Reader over the past few weeks. While I hate feeling so far behind, I love that when I finally spend a few hours going through it, I usually emerge with a broader sense of what’s going on than if I read each post individually. Today’s take-away, based on my quick sampling of posts: innovation is key. The bloggers in my reader cited tons of companies, individuals, and even government organizations who are coming up with new, unique ways to solve problems or adapt to the changing market. Of the group, my favorite comes from Danger Mouse (via PSFK).

I first started keeping tabs on Danger Mouse, a music producer whose real name is Brian Burton, in 2004 when he released The Grey Album, an amazing mash-up of Jay Z’s The Black Album and what is often referred to as the Beatles’ White Album. If that doesn’t ring a bell, he was also half of the musical duo Gnarls Barkley, who gave us the song that was stuck in my head for most of 2006 - “Crazy“.

Danger Mouse is making headlines today because of the less-than-traditional format of his new project “Dark Night of the Soul.”  The project includes an album-length piece of music featuring guest vocalists such as Iggy Pop, The Flaming Lips, and Julian Casablancas, along with a 100+ page book of original David Lynch photography inspired by the music. But that’s not what fans who pre-order through the project website will receive with their $50 purchase. According to the website, all copies will also be clearly labeled with the following statement: “For legal reasons, the enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will.”

That’s right, due to a legal dispute with EMI, Danger Mouse says he can’t release the music, but encourages fans to “hear the music, by whatever means” necessary. (If you’re interested in checking out Danger Mouse’s entire album, NPR is streaming it here.) As his past efforts show, Danger Mouse has never been one to shy away from controversy and selling a blank CD and boldly encouraging fans to pirate his work is bound to generate more.

We’ve written about a few of the music industry’s innovative services and even about some of its legal issues here on Undercurrents, but I’m always surprised by the ways artists and companies are redefining the traditional music model. Music is ground ripe for innovation. Artists like Radiohead and Wilco have taken stands for revamping the “old model” and much like in the news industry, the large, powerful companies who once maintained control of the music space are slowly losing power. In addition to battling artists, independent labels, and music start-ups, music’s power players also now have to fight forces from outside their industry. I’m sure that even 10 years ago the major labels would have never guessed that Apple would play such a pivotal role.

Innovation comes in all shapes and sizes, but one thing is certain: in a world as uncertain as the one we currently live in, we need a spirit of innovation. I applaud people like Danger Mouse who take on challenges in a bold, brazen way.

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MARCH 5, 2009

Quick - name a major invention (or improvement on existing technology) from the 1930’s.

Having trouble? You’re not alone.  The 20s brought the radio and the perfection of airplane technology. The 40s brought atomic energy and the widespread adaption of the television, technically invented in the 30s but not commercialized until after WWII. But the 1930s have deservedly earned a reputation as lean years for innovation, a decade when Americans warily watched menacing overseas dictators and Humphrey Bogart movies, in anticipation of better times.

Compare that to today. It seems to be the consensus among economists that the current economic climate is as dire as it has been since the 1930s, and the evidence certainly seems to support that. But almost a year and a half into the “official” recession, and much further into the financial crisis, there seems to be no slowing of innovation, especially on the web.

Last year, for instance, I wrote about Pandora - an internet radio service that customizes stations based on your personal preferences. And at the time, the service was pretty state-of-the-art in the online music world. But even in the nine months since I wrote that post, someone’s beat it. Grooveshark has a Pandora-like interface, but allows you to choose whichever track you’d like to listen to next, whereas Pandora uses a predictive model to choose for you. Grooveshark has also written a very cool Twitter front-end for its service called Twisten.FM- which allows users to share songs via Twitter using the massive and ever-expanding Grooveshark library. Twisten.FM essentially allows you to broadcast your own personal radio station via Twitter to whoever would like to listen. With a staff of 40 people, Grooveshark is doing very disruptive and innovative things to two key emerging fields - media sharing and microblogging - and when you think about it, Twisten.FM essentially adds an entire new function to Twitter, without that company doing any more than providing developers open access to the service.

Innovation is also happening on a smaller scale. As side projects, individuals are putting together web services like Stumble Safely, an interactive map of NW DC that mashes up liquor license data, crime statistics, and Metro stop locations for those times you find yourself wandering around the District looking for somewhere to drink. Outside the software space, people are using open-source hardware kits like the Arduino to create useful interactive objects, some of which you can check out here.

I don’t mean to be a pollyanna about the current economic crisis, nor do I intend to sound like a technology utopian. It’s clear to me that significant problems exist in the financial sector, that those problems have spread to the “real” economy, and that smart and brave policymakers are needed to fix those problems. But as innovation - like the type I mentioned above - continues at breakneck speed, it’s hard to stay pessimistic about the economy for too long - a sentiment echoed by economist Jeffrey Sachs.

Time will tell whether innovation leads us out of this downturn, but for the moment, I’ll continue to blissfully ignore the news on CNBC.

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DECEMBER 17, 2008

Have you ever left a store and suddenly found yourself singing a song that you don’t remember hearing – perhaps one that you haven’t heard in years? “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier / I got soul, but I’m not a soldier…”

What about in the morning, after you’ve hit the snooze button a dozen times and finally dragged yourself out of bed and into the shower: do you ever start humming a familiar tune, but have no idea why? “I used to rule the world / Seas would rise when I gave the word… Dum, dum, dum de dum dum dum.”

Well, chances are that The Killers’ 2005 hit song, hypothetically speaking, was actually playing in that store you were in - your conscious mind was just too busy searching for a smaller size to take notice. (Meanwhile, your subconscious mind was having a jam-session with itself!) In addition, Coldplay’s latest single was likely one of the first songs your radio/alarm clock played when it first woke you up this morning. You just weren’t quite awake enough to realize it consciously .

Remembering something without being aware that we are remembering it is a consequence of priming and implicit memory- two relatively harmless psychological phenomena. But a problem arises in the artistic world (music, film, literature) when an artist subconsciously adopts someone else’s work while believing it was actually a product of his/her own creative powers.

Earlier this year, for instance, musician Joe Satriani accused Coldplay of lifting elements of his song “If I Could Fly” for Coldplay’s hit song “Viva La Vida.” Immediately, I was inclined to believe that Coldplay’s Chris Martin (creative genius) may have subconsciously copied the beat, chords and melody of Satriani’s song. As Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk explains, it’s not uncommon for musicians to hear something and “regurgitate” it later without realizing it. Considering all of the songs we have access to in the digital music era, I would have to agree with Van Buskirk.

To complicate things further, however, it appears that videos depicting similarities between the two songs have been disappearing from YouTube, courtesy of Coldplay’s label, EMI, which claims that the videos infringe on its copyright.  (One of only a few surviving videos can be found here.) A legitimate claim on the part of EMI, or a clever attempt at a cover-up? You decide.

Either way, Van Buskirk finds it interesting that EMI is using copyright as a way to remove one version of a Coldplay song while allowing other versions to remain online.

It’s a useful reminder of the ways in which copyright law can be used for purposes other than thwarting the infringement of copyright. In this case, it’s a somewhat useful tool for downplaying plagiarism accusations directed at one of the world’s top acts.

We already know priming agents can influence cravings and the consumer decision-making process - that’s been the aim of marketing and advertising gurus for years. In an over-saturated society, however, I wonder: have priming and implicit memory lost their touch, or are their influential powers yet to be tapped?

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OCTOBER 20, 2008

Should recording artists that make their music available via a “blanket license” from a firm such as ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Performers) or BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) be able to restrict use of their songs if they feel their music is being used to deliver messages they don’t agree with?

In last Monday’s Washington Post, University of Virginia law professors Christopher Sprigman and Silva Vaidhyanathan asked this question in reference to the ongoing controversy concerning the McCain campaign and accusations by artists including Heart, Jackson Browne and John Mellencamp that the campaign is using their songs without first getting consent. They make this claim even though the McCain campaign has a blanket license to use the music.

Sprigman and Vaidhyanathan say that technically the blanket license should cover McCain, but also that McCain should be allowed to use the songs under the First Amendment. They say:

Politicians use songs as a way to tell people what they stand for — or at least what they want us to believe they stand for. Using a song to communicate a political message is just the kind of speech the First Amendment was designed to protect.

Personally, I find it easy to side with the artists in this case. I wouldn’t want my art politicized or used in a way that suggested I endorsed a particular candidate. On an issue as divisive as politics, it’s an easy view to defend. But how far does that argument go?

The Virginia Tech football team regularly enters their home games to the tune of “Hells Bells” by AC/DC. Should we take this to mean that AC/DC is made up of Hokie fans? Likewise, if AC/DC was actually made up of UVA football fans, should they be able to file a cease-and-desist order against Virginia Tech?

Or, what if “Time of Your Life” by Green Day were played over the loudspeaker at a public event celebrating the retirement of a respected teacher. Should Green Day have a right to get a cease-and-desist order against the school system?

Perhaps AC/DC and Green Day should have this right. But when looked at in this light, does this use seem quite as objectionable as Jackson Browne makes it out to be?

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SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

Regulators! Mount up!

Those are the lyrics I expected to hear as I sat down for lunch this past Thursday. I was about to enjoy a lovely dish of shish kebobs (I’m on an international food binge) when I heard the bass line to Warren G’s “Regulate”. It was the song all my high school friends couldn’t stop listening to.

The first thought that went through my mind is how cool this little Mediterranean café was for invoking such nostalgic thoughts. However, those thoughts led to confusion as I heard the lyrics that followed the intro:

I keep forgettin’ things will never be the same again
I keep forgettin’ how you made that so clear 

Those weren’t the dope beats from Warren G but instead the passionate prose of Michael McDonald. I realized I wasn’t listening to Warren G’s “Regulate”, but the song “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near).”

It only took me a second to realize that Warren G’s song wasn’t entirely his original work, but used samples taken from McDonald. It’s become a common practice for musical artists to take samples from older songs and integrate them in their work. Eminem’s “Sing for the Moment” samples Aerosmith; Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls” samples Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me”; and Nelly’s “Heart of a Champion” samples the NBA on NBC theme song.  Sometimes the most obscure samples are the best ones. Amy Winehouse will be using the Wizard of Oz in her next single, proving that nothing is safe from song sampling.

It’s grown to new heights with DJs like Greg Gillis (aka Girl Talk.) He creates entire songs completely out of samples. I can’t stop listening to his latest album “Feed the Animals.” The entire album is 14 songs made up of samples from over 300 songs. I think it’s a terrific album and I think everyone needs to download it (which you can do for free.) 

But here’s the issue at hand: when musical artists start creating songs using other artists’ works, when does it become copyright infringement? Some artists claim fair use, which isn’t a totally ironclad defense, and others point to various international treaties and conventions, but there are no clear laws that regulate song sampling.

What do you think? Is it an infringement of copyright to use a sample in a song? Where is the line in terms of sampling?

All I know is I’ll be listening to Girl Talk in the gym tonight- it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

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JUNE 27, 2008

A couple weekends ago my wife and I went with another couple to see the Riverdance show at the popular Wolf Trap outdoor concert venue here in the Washington D.C. area. I wasn’t excited about going, but have to admit that the show was entertaining and with good friends around, it was an enjoyable outing. However, what really caught my attention was the concert schedule going forward.

It read like a Rick Dees Top 40 list…but from the 70’s and 80’s! I know this because, well… let’s just say it’s been a while since I was in the 18-35 demographic… a good while.

On the list were The Temptations, James Taylor, Donna Summer and even Earth, Wind and Fire. Actually, I saw EW&F in December in Oslo, Norway, where they played the Nobel Peace Prize concert as part of a dozen groups including  big names like Alicia Keys. Here’s the funny thing: despite the modern day star power of that concert, the group that was most warmly received — in fact the only group that got the Norwegians out of their seats and dancing in the aisles — was Earth Wind and Fire, playing their ageless songs.

One would assume a James Taylor concert would appeal only to my demographic. but,a 20-something colleague in my office went to the JT concert last week without a ticket, bought her way in and said she thoroughly enjoyed the concert with a bunch of her friends. She said that the audience demographic ran from young to old. JT played 3 hours and did several encores. It sounds like a great concert… for my generation.

So my question is why? Why do these groups from the 70s and 80s have such appeal across such a broad demographic? Amazingly, they rarely play new material, sticking instead with the tried-and-true sounds that once upon a time made them chart toppers. Is it because they remind us of a different, less complicated time? Is there a resonating message in their music? Have iTunes or satellite radio revived their careers? Or is their sound just that good and timeless?

What’s your theory?

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JUNE 5, 2008

If YouTube had a greatest hits video collection, it would include Weezer’s Pork & Beans and The Barenaked Ladies’ The Sound of Your Voice music videos.  Both of these videos use already-established YouTube personalities, acting out scenes similar to their own famed videos, but singing the lyrics of the bands’ songs.  By doing so and associating themselves with these celebrities, BNL and Weezer can potentially gain a cult-like following and success similar to that of their videos’ featured artists.  It’s no wonder comments on Weezer’s video include numerous exclamations of brilliance and admiration.  They created a video with characters that had already won the hearts and minds of millions of YouTube viewers.

From a New Persuasion perspective, where do I begin?  In terms of the Weezer video, on the surface, they used individuality and personalization to make their song and video popular.  With lyrics like, “I’m ‘a do the things that I want to do/I ain’t got a thing to prove to you,” and viewer-approved visual elements, they appealed to the average YouTube user’s affinity for individualism delivered through a preferred medium.

Going deeper, although two music videos don’t neccessarily mean a cultural shift in fame and success, they certainly signal a redefinition of celebrity.  The popularity of Weezer’s video in particular (it currently has over 5 million views) speaks to the idea that people appreciate individuality and recognize that sometimes the best fame is home-made.

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