The Womb - Music Industry 2.0

Radio Processing

pipelineaudio — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:28:36 GMT

I've moved back to hawaii to help out some family and have been asked to work on some local albums as well.

I've learned that like everything else in hawaii, the radio system is uber corrupt and run by morons. According to all the promoters and engineers, the three or four radio stations play your cd thru some piece of gear and see if its levels match some sort of algorithm. Many songs are rejected on this basis.

What sort of unit would this be? How do I figure out how to destroy any songs I work on so that it will fit here?

Eminem ruling

Bob Olhsson — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:23:56 GMT

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...te=fullarticle

This could be a real big deal.

The Music-Copyright Enforcers

nobby — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 00:35:04 GMT

These are excerpts from a fairly lengthy and in-depth article.

The Blue Arrow system is intriguing.

Quote:

Many musicians have coped with downloading by focusing on touring. They have learned to consider their recorded output, formerly their bread and butter, as a form of promotion for live shows. But the rise of musical genres, like northern Brazil�s �tecno brega� (�cheesy techno�), which remixes and reworks popular songs, offers another, more direct challenge to who should be paid when music is recorded or performed. The producers give away their mixes, so there�s no copyright infringement, then make their money by staging dance parties, to which admission is charged. In the States, producers like Danger Mouse and Girl Talk have created mash-ups of marquee copyrighted material, like Beatles songs, then released them to the general public free, daring authorities to charge them.

Most well-known songwriters are reluctant to advocate publicly for copyright law, out of fear of alienating fans. Dolly Parton is not one of them. �Ain�t nobody got so much money they don�t want all the money that�s coming to them,� she said when I spoke to her recently. Rank-and-file songwriters, whose livelihood can depend desperately on their BMI royalties, are the most likely to express sentiments similar to Parton�s. One day, I visited a Los Angeles DJ and electronica composer named Alex Amato. Amato, as it happens, lives in a converted barn near Vine and Santa Monica that, he said, belonged to the filmmaker Kenneth Anger. Under the name Genuine Childs, Amato composes music with his twin brother, Anthony, which they�ve sold to reality shows like MTV�s �Real World� and �Road Rules.� They�ve also composed DVD menu page music for several big studio releases like �Scarface� and �The Bourne Identity.� It�s a rarefied niche, but Amato seems happy: his music reaches millions of listeners.

Amato also waits on tables and manages a restaurant near his house. His quarterly BMI checks, he insists, are the key to survival. �It�s like my magical Willy Wonka ticket,� he says. Creating music, Amato points out, costs money. It takes money to rent a space, buy equipment, run the equipment. How does music get made if everything suddenly becomes free?

�There are more people listening to music now than ever before,� he told me. �But because of this new kind of accessibility, people feel like they don�t have to pay. Why is that? Why does constructor Joe get to build a house, and he gets paid the same as before, but suddenly, there�s this judgment about this one way of earning a living?�

It is worth noting that during the years the recording industry lost nearly 60 percent of its income, BMI and its competitor ASCAP had steady increases in profits. BMI has done so by going after how people use music commercially, regardless of medium. As the president and chief executive of BMI, Del Bryant, likes to say, �You have to be in the future a little bit.�

In BMI�s case, this has meant leapfrogging from AM radio to FM, from movies to cable to digital radio to streaming to (once-illegal) downloading companies like Napster. (BMI began working on a deal with Napster about streaming music even before it sorted out its legitimacy.) They also signed with Rhapsody, the online streaming site, when the company was in its infancy. The trick, says Bryant, is to understand the content world as an ecosystem. When a new player comes along, don�t kill it, make a deal with it. With each new medium, he says: �We made agreements that weren�t that heavily monetized, and not that heavily binding because we didn�t know if it�d be around for long or how it would evolve. They were place keepers, ways to get us working together. And they slowly solidified. It�s all a question of pricing. The system has to serve everyone�s purposes.�

Richard Conlon echoed what Del Bryant said. �We�re not about shutting things down.� he told me. �We�re about nurturing markets. We don�t want people NOT to use it. We know the market is fractionalizing. You wanna take our music and stream it and have electronic whatevers that play when you stick a chip into something or somebody? Go ahead! Do it! Just pay us!�

BMI is rosy about the future. According to Conlon, who spends a lot of time watching how 8-to-15-year-olds use technology, downloading is out, streaming is in. And guess what? Streaming pays � just like radio. Legally the climate is good too. In May, a federal court found LimeWire, one of the few remaining big free peer-to-peer file-sharing services, guilty of inducing copyright infringement. The company could be fined as much as a billion dollars.

While the rest of the content world worries that technology will be the end of content, P.R.O.�s are banking that technology will save it. BMI has developed a system called Blue Arrow that deploys the same technology as iPhone�s Shazam to identify music. (ASCAP uses a similar system called Mediaguide.) These systems can listen to Internet sites, as well as radio and TV stations around the world and identify, in two seconds, virtually any piece of music being played � not just American, but Turkish, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Latin, Japanese and so on. The Blue Arrow database has a capacity of 500 terabytes (one thousand gigabytes each) of music, and can recognize eight million songs. About 3,000 new songs are added each day.

David DeBusk, who was vice president of business development when I met him this spring but has since left BMI, offered to show me how Blue Arrow works. An employee punched a few keys to find out which radio stations in Germany were playing �schlager music,� a bizarrely kitschy form of country pop. One tap of the keyboard, and we were listening live: Oom pah pah, oom pah pah. We went on to display all stations, worldwide, playing Swedish death metal. Did I want to see which ones were playing compositions by the composer Milton Babbitt? How about radio stations in Laos?

Quote:

It was an awesome (or chilling) glimpse into the future: a world where if it can be tracked � on TV, on YouTube, in China � it will be charged for. Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor known for his stance against what he views as an overexpansion of copyright law, is not against BMI�s being paid for its fair share but worries about the slippery slope created by new technologies. �If technology creates efficient ways to charge commercial users of copyright, then that�s good,� he told me recently, �but what I fear is that we evolve into a permission culture, where every single use of music creates an obligation to pay. I wish the line could be as clear as commercial exploitation � you�re running a dance club, using it in a movie. The author ought to have the right to be paid for that. But I don�t think that that right should translate into the right to control whether my kid uses the music for a collage he makes for a class about his trip to Costa Rica!� Friends I talked to had a similar reaction. To a one, they said: �Jesus. Sounds like Big Brother.� When I mentioned this to DeBusk, he smiled ominously. �Yes. Well. We�re here to help.�

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/ma...s&st=cse&scp=3

Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity�

TheNetStudio — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 19:50:12 GMT

The ideas are right, but the implementation is probably not-so-good: Just Sony devices.

https://presscentre.sony.eu/content/...3&NewsAreaId=2

Seemed the best fit to put it here...

DPower — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:52:04 GMT

But Mr. Byrne (love him or hate him) really hits the nail on the head in terms of the evolution of music genres (and hence our business as we fail to adapt or develop said.).

It's a long read for computer screens, but bear with it.

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2010/0...tines-day.html

As AE's/Producers, etc, what are some of your favorite sounding songs?

DrumnBum — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:22:45 GMT

Though I realize musical styles vary, I'm interested to know what some of your favorite songs are from not just an artistic standpoint (songwriting, artist etc) but from the point of view of an engineer, producer, etc.

Another one bites...

TubaSolo — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:34:56 GMT

...the dust

Quote:

These days, the privately-owned Playlist claims only to play songs that live on outside servers. Indeed, the song “Acid Food” by Mogwai was pulled from a blog at chezlubacov.org when we clicked on it Wednesday morning, rather than from playlist.com. The company argues that it shouldn’t have to pay sound recording royalties on that music, and must only remove links to offending music when notified, as required by law.

:Roll eyes::headpalm:

Quote:

Another free music service bites the dust? It’s looking that way.

The more the better.

:very happy:

Long Live Analog - Forbes article on Linear Technologies

radiationroom — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:00:39 GMT

http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/19/lin...gy-analog.html

:Thumbsup:

Thanks to Dean Kay for the link

Protecting your belongings

johnnywellas — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 01:14:48 GMT

Hey there.

Just wanted to ask you for a little advice on the current situation of the musical project/band/whaddayacallit I'm in.

We're a trio, comprised of guitar, bass and drums. We've been trying to gather other musicians (lead singer, horn soloist, keyboard player and percussionist) for a while, in an effort to expand the boundaries of our musical palette. It hasn't been an easy task to hook up with people who are experienced enough, have the proper skills, attitude and are aware of their limitations at the same time. Not only that, but the "music scene" here is a joke. So we got somewhat sick of the whole process and decided to work towards finishing the 5 or so tracks we have right now, record them with means we're able to afford (think rehearsal studio that provides a cheapo multitrack recording service, or maybe parasitizing some sessions at a recording school a friend will be attending in a while, self-produced and performed "live" either way), with hopes to put them up on a webpage with a streaming player and a "contact us" script (or maybe just a myspace) hopefully getting to more people and yielding the results we're expecting to reap.

Now the question is: as most people, we believe in the songs we're crafting. And putting stuff up for others to freely listen to can also provide them with the chance to learn the songs and claim it their own material. That would be sad and unfair. Even more than what we've been going through up 'till now. :grin:

So, what are the available means for an amateur band/artist to register/protect their work against this kind of plagiarism?

Creative commons come to mind, but I'm really not into any of its details to know whether it's adequate or not. Can the business-savvy mentors care to chime in? Thank you.

Suggestions on Finding a Good AE/Producer Mentor in Nashville?

DrumnBum — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:05:29 GMT

I hope this is the correct place to post this message, and hope this is an appropriate topic - if not, I sincerely apologize. I'm just looking for a little direction.
I'm 28 and am currently in a situation in a studio where I intern and there is nothing going on (I'm not in college). I come in first thing in the morning, do all my cleaning, etc and, once finished with anything they need, I sit around all day (along with the owner and other engineer - though they do attend meetings a few times a week).
I realize that you have to pay your dues in this business, but I would expect in return for my efforts in helping to keep the studio running efficiently, one would (especially when there is not much going on) endeavor to teach me things so that I can become an asset. I'm not a complete beginner, I have taken some courses, etc and do some of my own home recording and have learned a lot - but I want to learn more and make some kind of career out of AE/Production.....I love this stuff.
Anyhow - all that said, here's where I'm at:
I am very interested to find a good mentor. I'm not expecting for someone to give me a job (though that would be nice). I just want an opportunity to truly learn the craft and get my foot in the door. I have no problems doing the normal "intern" duties at all. I'll clean, run errands, etc.
If anyone happens to have some advice, or perhaps is in the Nashville area and would be interested in speaking with me, I would genuinely appreciate any advice and help.

The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet

Bob Olhsson — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:23:19 GMT

Food for thought...

The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet

The Web Is Dead? A Debate

Band names

Davo — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:28:13 GMT

What are everyone's feelings about duplicate names? I am sure there were always multiple bands with the same name, but now that there's the internet, once a name is taken, it's taken. I mean there could have been a band called "The Beetles" before the Beatles came out, that never heard of the Beatles yet, that was like "Aw fuck" when they got famous.

But now there are thousands of small, local type bands that all have a demo and a photo up on a MySpace somewhere, who have laid claim to a name forever, that someone may have been able to put to better use.

Also, do names ever expire? If there was a band called "Fluffy Velvetcake" in the UK that was a 60s psychedelic band, can a metal band use that name in the US now?

Or, if there was a band in like the middle of nowhere in like Ohio or Utah or something that peaked their career with two Warped Tour dates and a stint on College Radio, and then broke up after a year, do they get to keep their totally awesome name forever or does it go back into the pool? What level of accomplishment earns the permanent use? Just making a MySpace page?

What are everyone's thoughts about this?

Viral Marketing 101 - Do something crazy with something loathed

Diginerd — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 04:08:10 GMT

http://soundcloud.com/shamantis/j-bi...ile-800-slower

Nearly 500k plays in under 24hrs. actually it sounds kinda cool in that mindless ambient way.

Read the comments, some interesting stuff surrounding the web's newest meme...

How to attract people to my web site

denitronik — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:50:37 GMT

Hello! I am new to this interesting site and maybe this question was already asked here, but here goes...

I am not a amateur, I produce music for others as well.
Like many others, I have my own web site (see my signature) with music that I composed/arranged/played/recorded/produced and I would like to get as many people as possible to hear my music.
All the mp3s on my site are free to download and are produced the old fashioned way with maximum dynamic range (no over compression).

How do I to attract people to my web site?
How can I get my music to play on web radio for example?

Your help would be highly appreciated. Thanks!