tingilinde

dealing with the distribution system

For a century musicians have mostly found themselves dealing with a distribution system when selling recorded music.  Information is hard to come by 

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Before musicians and their advocates can move to enact a fairer system of pay, we need to know exactly what’s going on. We need information from both labels and streaming services on how they share the wealth generated by music. Taylor Swift, when she forced Apple to back off a plan not to pay royalties during the three-month free trial period for its new streaming service, Apple Music, made some small progress on this count — but we still don’t know how much Apple agreed to pay, or how they will determine the rate.

Putting together a picture of where listeners’ money goes when we pay for a streaming service subscription is notoriously complicated. Here is some of what we do know: About 70 percent of the money a listener pays to Spotify (which, to its credit, has tried to illuminate the opaque payment system) goes to the rights holders, usually the labels, which play the largest role in determining how much artists are paid. (A recently leaked 2011 contract between Sony and Spotify showed that the service had agreed to pay the label more than $40 million in advances over three years. But it doesn’t say what Sony was to do with the money.)

The labels then pay artists a percentage (often 15 percent or so) of their share. This might make sense if streaming music included manufacturing, breakage and other physical costs for the label to recoup, but it does not. When compared with vinyl and CD production, streaming gives the labels incredibly high margins, but the labels act as though nothing has changed.

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a tip of the hat to Bjarne

 

that was swift

Apple bows to a certain power figure in music

That said, this was just an early PR skirmish...  there are still major challenges for musicians and the streaming music model to work out.  And it won't to anything to help the fact that most musicians, even the most talented, will find it hard to make a living or than some of the wealthiest aren't very good musicians.

a tip of the hat to Dan

 

a homemade medium format camera

Made using scanner parts.  

Not exactly the thing you'd want for fleeting images.  Normal exposures take two to five minutes.

archiving musical performances

On the need for audio archives

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But many of Lead Belly's original recordings no longer exist. The tapes that held his last sessions were beyond saving after the oxide on the top of the record fell off rendering it unplayable. Because conservators couldn't get to them earlier, those songs are lost forever. Let's repeat that — some of these songs, among the most significant in music history, are less than 100 years old but still lost to us for all time.

All sound recordings are equally at risk of disintegrating. Before digital technology, record companies created reels for albums by recording different sections of songs, then splicing those sections together using tape. Some of those original tapes are stored in several collections at the Smithsonian Museum.

"You can only imagine what has happened to these pieces of tapes," Jeff Place, an archivist for the Smithsonian Center for Folklike and Cultural Heritage told me. "Over time, every one of those tape breaks is going to break, and it's going to take an hour to transfer three minutes of a recording into a digital format where we can store it. So there are albums that take a whole day to save."

Place's job is to save sounds by whatever means necessary, so that recordings from 50 years ago sound as clear as they did when they were made — and sometimes even better. This means preserving the original recordings in the best possible condition, and for many albums, it means transferring the sound of the original recording to a digital format that will be easily accessible in the future.

Without sound archivists, we would not only lose access to early recordings of Elvis and R&B, as albums decayed and technology changed, but we'd also lose radio broadcasts from 50 years ago and oral histories of lost neighborhoods of New York City. Without archivists, we would be losing sound rapidly; instead, we're gaining it.

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 The National Jukebox has been mentioned several times over the years, but it is always fun to visit

 

apple and beats

There has been a lot of speculation on the Apple/Beats deal.  In the end it is almost pocket change for Apple and I suspect much of the commentary misses the point of how crazy, relative to normal business, music is. 

Michael Vekulenko has some of the more interesting, and possibly relevant, commentary.

(hat tip to Ben)

 

 

beautiful sounds..

The winners in a beautiful sound competition..

great sounds from the winner ..  and some interviews.

 

 

'tis the season...

Sukie was playing Chiron Beta Prime - the holiday season is clearly upon us..

If you like the piece it exists in much higher quality on iTunes.   

We prefer different holiday foods than what is suggested.

 

 

 

sorting out itunes 11

Those who use iTunes find themselves with the first major redesign of the very cluttered interface in many years.  A discussion of what is new and how to configure it to your needs.  I've been using it for about four days and am finding it a big improvement so far.  

a fantastic toymaker's paradise reborn

The BBC Radiophonice Workshop pioneering more than a bit of electronic music and sound effects beginning in 1958 with a 40 year run before digital tools made it "irrelevent"  ...  of course it wasn't and now it is being recast as The New Radiophonic Workshop.  

This version will be virtual - I hope it works, but I have real worries about not having people rub shoulders with each other.  

Take a look at their webpage - and a great video on a bit of the BBC unit's history

what books and music do you own?

The notion of ownership is different from what those of us who have purchased physical media tend to believe.  We really don't own any of it - just the rights to consume it under certain restrictions. 

Things can go very wrong - I have no idea what the specifics are in this case, but imagine if it was a mistake or a minor infraction that managed to piss off Amazon ...  and Amazon doesn't hold the rights either - they are merely a sales conduit which happens to have to power to turn the consume/don't consume switch. (like Apple and a few others)

Fortunately my Apple music is DRM free, but that isn't the case with "my" books - Amazon or Apple.