Posted 11:39 AM by Dave Allen
Test after 104 error

Posted 1:57 PM by Dave Allen
The Short List Of Music

Posted 5:01 PM by Dave Allen
Rosen said the music industry wants consumers to use music in any way they'd
like... "No industry has been as generous as we have," she said.

Intel's Les Valdez disagreed, showing a copy-protected Charlie Price CD that
can play on your PC, but can't be copied. While Rosen said there was a
"peaceful coexistence" between the technology and entertainment business,
Valdez said, "We have nothing of the sort."

-----------------
http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s=1490&a=24572,00.asp

Show Report: PC Forum Focuses on Digital Rights

March 26, 2002
By Michael J. Miller


What should the role of government be in regulating privacy, copy protection,
and other digital rights? That was the theme of the opening panel at the annual
PC Forum conference this week in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Much of the conversation dealt with the recent hearings held by the U.S. Senate
Commerce Committee and with legislation drafted by committee chair Senator
Fritz Hollings (D–S.C.) that would require digital rights management and copy
protection to be built into electronic devices.

Hillary Rosen of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said the
rhetoric around the Hollings bill has been unfortunate, because the music and
technology businesses are working together better than they did a few years
ago. She said that people in the in the entertainment industry are not looking
for the kind of lock and key solutions that, some say, the Hollings bill is
proposing.

Rosen said the music industry wants consumers to use music in any way they'd
like. She adds that the industry doesn't get the credit it deserves for already
affording consumers the opportunity to use the music the way they want, such as
by making compilation CDs from CDs they have bought. She said the industry only
complains when there are file-sharing services and other things that let people
get the music without first buying the CDs. "No industry has been as generous
as we have," she said.

Intel's Les Valdez disagreed, showing a copy-protected Charlie Price CD that
can play on your PC, but can't be copied. While Rosen said there was a
"peaceful coexistence" between the technology and entertainment business,
Valdez said, "We have nothing of the sort."

But the two agreed that entertainment companies need to develop new business
models to legally allow people access to music. Valdez said that piracy is a
serious concern, but he said controlling piracy "doesn't start with DRM
[digital rights management]; it starts with a business model."

Lotus Development and EFF founder Mitch Kapor recalled how in the early and
mid-1980's, Lotus and others tried to put copy protection in their software
products. The consumer backlash was so strong that this approach was retracted
in favor of other methods. He added, "At this point, no one really believes
copy protection will be effective in a straightforward way."

Kapor said he didn't think the movie industry really wanted the Hollings
legislation to pass. Instead, he said he thinks that the film industry hopes
the bill will scare the technology companies into cutting "a deal that will
screw consumers." He agreed that a good answer for the music industry would be
to offer the diversity of content people want at a price they want to pay. The
alternative, he said, is teaching kids not to pay for music.

"Government has been pretty good in its history about thinking about rights,"
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA.) said. Where it often fails, she said, is as a
regulator. She said this is because most of the people involved in the
discussion today have business interests in mind, not the rights of the people.
The question shouldn't focus so much on how to regulate, but instead on what
copyright laws should look like in the digital age.

Posted 3:44 PM by Dave Allen
Let's see. I went to Texas for the SXSW Music Conference, an annual gathering of supposedly alternative music types. Nothing new here. I reaffirmed the fact that rock is dead. And if one still needs a conference to help one get a career then things are getting worse instead of better. The music industry is in the doldrums for sure.

Posted 9:04 AM by Dave Allen
Squall, a multimedia collective, has lined up some performances in Portland, OR. They are - March 27th 11pm, a live radio broadcast on KBOO 90.7 FM. April 4th, Berbati's downtown Portland at 9pm with Fila Brazilia. Berbati's again on April 13th at 9pm with Systemwide and Menomena. And Berbati's again on April 23rd a benefit for the Portland Community Alliance of Tenants.

Posted 10:19 PM by Dave Allen

Mmmm, new site

The Squall Collective

Posted 9:16 PM by Dave Allen
The Squall Collective

Posted 8:07 AM by Dave Allen
Good morning,

I just signed up with http://skyscraper.trashconnection.com/ an ongoing scrolling piece of net art that looks like a giant skyscraper.

Posted 3:00 PM by Dave Allen

More on the Billboard article.......

Hi Dave,

Great to hear from you. Things are fine back in lil ol London town - it's nice to be back in our old house - fortunately we kept it rented out, so coming back was fairly easy.
I've been consulting too - it's quite interesting actually and I could almost make a living out of it, although it's not very satisfying long term.
Glad you approve of my response to Mr White, I'm happy for you to reproduce it although it's rather ill tempered and there are some missing words and stuff because I did get a bit hot under the collar!

Do keep in touch,

all the best,

Jeremy

Jeremy Silver
MEDIACLARITY

Phone/Fax:+44 (0)208 933 3781
Mobile:+44 (0)776 418 8898

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Gerd Leonhard
>> Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 10:10 PM
>> To: Virtualaw@aol.com;
>> Subject: Re: pho: Timothy White Takes the Labels to Task
>>
>> With all due respect to Timothy, this has got be one of the most pathetic "I
>> told you so", chest-beating and self-serving articles on Digital Music I have
>> ever seen. "...imagine the other ways that the $4 billion lost on online
>> music ventures might have been spent: for example, on salaries for seasoned
>> employees....(Timothy says)" oh yes, there haven't been enough 'seasoned'
>> executives with high salaries that are coasting on stand-by in this business.
>>
>> "Companies seeking to avoid fair play and honest obligations...." ????? I
>> mean, REALLY, which side of this business are you talking about ? Internet
>> start-ups and tech companies hardly come to MY mind first with that
>> description...
>>
>>God it must be nice to be in that ivory tower of yours.

>>Gerd Leonhard

-----Original Message-----


On 3/7/02 2:53 AM, "Jeremy Silver" wrote:

> I absolutely agree with Gerd's indignation. Members of this list should be up
> in arms over Mr White's appallingly reactionary piece of self-important fluff.
>
> Mr White emerges as a true luddite along with so many others for whom the
> fashionable mantra of the moment seems to be the web is a waste of time. The
> fact that consumers are voting with their feet to the tune of 1bn downloads a
> month from p2p operators seems to be an irrelevance to these people. To Mr
> White, that is "the middle-class larceny of large-scale online bootlegging via
> CD burning or other means" and "should be prosecuted". OK so Billboard's
> editor in chief is now leading the charge with the thought police and plans to
> enter every music consumer's home and bring prosecutions! Fantastic - have at
> it Mr White! Meanwhile of course, this fellow, who is holier than absolutely
> everyone, spares nobody in this because the labels are just as much at fault
> because their subscription services "are more likely calculated to increase
> corporate ownership of the tracks than extend services to fans". Well, I agree
> with the last part but what does the first part mean - any guesses?
>
> Mr White seems to be of the belief that technology is the devil's work, has
> distracted the industry from its righteous pursuits and is completely
> irrelevent to the concerns of music consumers. Right.
>
> It's also worth noting that Mr White takes the supposed $4bn invested online
> as quoted in the OC&C report and seems to blame the conventional music
> business for wasting money investing online while not accepting "the basic
> cost of doing business". This is a complete and astonishing misreading. Much
> of that investment was not made by music companies - as we know! It was made
> by VCs who would never dream of investing that sort money in conventional
> music business models. Other substantial chunks of that money, were invested
> by the Media Conglomerate owners of Record companies - not the companies
> themselves. Remember Mr White, it was Bertelsmann Group, not BMG that invested
> in Napster and it was Vivendi Paris not Universal's E Lab's who acquired
> MP3.com. Or have you forgotten the importance that you have been stressing on
> the music companies retaining their autonomy within their corporate groupings.
>
> How depressing that a leading thinker in the music business should choose to
> join the ranks of the President of News Corps, Peter Chernin in bleating
> "There is no new media. There is no new paradigm" . The irony of this is that
> those of us who have been working in this space for more than five minutes,
> more like nine years in my case, have been arguing for the need for
> integration, for proper use of the internet as an environment for
> distribution, communication and collaboration - not merely a new medium in
> isolation, but as a complementary element to enhance exisiting businesses and
> which extend business models. It was, I recall, the Merchant Bankers and the
> 21 year old Harvard MBA's who chorussed on about the "paradigm shift".
>
> The period of web activity that we have just experienced, has seen more
> innovation, more experimentation and more market research, than could have
> ever have been paid for by a million merchant bankers or media corporations.
> The body of knowledge, experience and insights that have been gained will, I
> believe, enrich all of us in years to come. It is a sad reflection of their
> ossified condition, that members of old media businesses take advantage of
> their self-created prominence in media channels that they control (no self
> interest here is there?) and take such smug pride in sniping during the low
> point of an evolutionary cycle. Most music industry executives that I speak to
> these days, believe fundamentally that the old music business model is about
> to collapse. They see around them the evidence that the total "melt down" with
> OC&C predict is starting very rapdily to occur. They increasingly believe that
> major record companies will be shrunk and have less power in years to come and
> that more vertically integrated businesses (like artist management companies)
> will become more powerful and ultimately more profitable.
>
> So the wheel will revolve again, and some of that profitability will
> undoubtedly come from digital technology. It has already changed our
> experiences immensely (look at this email list for a start - the global
> village in action on a daily basis) and will continue to do so - in my opinion
> to the benefit of musicians, artists, writers, consumers and smart business
> folk all over the world. Unfortunately for Mr White, he seems to be defending
> a world-view that nobody ever subscribed to - except perhaps him - in his own
> self-created ivory tower.

> Jeremy Silver
> MEDIACLARITY
>
> Phone/Fax:+44 (0)208 933 3781
> Mobile:+44 (0)776 418 8898
>

Posted 2:48 PM by Dave Allen

Billboard

The Music Industry's Web Of Intrigue by Timothy White

Imagine an industry that has allocated (and mostly spent) more than $4 billion in funds on ventures that have thus far made back less than $1 millionâ¬"globally. Think about it. Spending $4 billion to earn under $1 million. If such calamitous business practices seem like a scenario for a possible "industry meltdown," you've reached the same conclusion regarding the profitable prospects of online digital music sales as OC&C Strategy Consultants, a London-based international financial advisory firm for media industries. In a new study titled The Digital Dilemmaâ¬"Making Music, Losing Money? OC&C merged comprehensive fact-finding discussions with more than 50 players in the U.S. and the U.K.â¬"including music labels, online music retailers, digital-rights management execs, and digital intermediaries or digital service providersâ¬"into a damning report, concluding that "paid-for digital music still accounts for less than 0.01% of sales in any market."

Legitimate download services and digital subscription models sanctioned by the music business have resulted in a monumental loss of both money and time for a hard-pressed industry. One of the functions of this trade publication is to inform readers of where best to put their money, and since 1999, this columnist has examined the faulty business-cum-cultural reasoning behind online music enterprises for corporations and individual copyright holders (Music to My Ears, Billboard, Aug. 7, 1999), as well as offered commentary on the "paucity of both Internet profits and online listening audiences" for legitimate downloads and cited "insights from a prior era about interim technologies and their transitional worth" (Music to My Ears, Billboard, Oct. 9, 1999). Music and media execs have recently told Billboard they do not expect any profits in online digital music sales for at least two years. Technical and financial experts this columnist canvassed during the past three years have privately concluded there may not be any profits in this realm during this decadeâ¬"if everâ¬"and have pulled their money from it.

The Web and technology have their uses (this publication goes to press electronically each week), but the mere existence of either entity is no guarantee of diverse viability. The 1899-1926 pre-history of popular radio provides instructive parallels, being a purportedly "revolutionary" communication medium that remained limited in its applications even when it later reached full functional maturity. By the time the originally headphone-tethered "ham" (a merger of the words "hobbyist" and "amateur") radio evolved to feature the widely accepted on/off switch and the loudspeakerâ¬"whereby consumers needed no preparatory skills for maximum enjoymentâ¬"it had receded into the background of public life. Unless, that is, it had something of unprecedented substance to offerâ¬"in which case, the airwaves seemed even more invisible as a vehicle for imaginative programming that transcended its context.

Myopic technologists and greedy software manufacturers always argue that the medium is the destinationâ¬"and they're regularly mistaken. Music downloads, for example, are primitive trinkets that miscomprehend both the transient "personal broadcasting" allure of file swapping and the more lasting, pride-of-ownership appeal of quality physical product. The do-it-yourself perspective is never the most evolved or lucrative point in a product's life cycle; rather, the nobody-does-it-better position is, and short-sighted record companies will regret relinquishing claims to practical superiority. In fact, the music industry has spent the past two decades diminishing the experience of recorded music, whether reducing the size and merit of most CD packaging to the point where it's too paltry to invite lasting curiosity or proffering the often thin and tinny sound of digital music as if it's a "perfect" product.

A casual survey of top artists this writer has recently visited in studios revealed that analog recording is regularly preferred due to the myriad aural attributes of that process, regardless of whether the final music is (however reluctantly) poured into a digital mold for buyers. Until the day that U2, Yo-Yo Ma, or McCoy Tyner are willing to trade their master tapes with any passerby for either the downloaded, burned, or commercially purchased copies of those same recordings, you can be certain that corporate pronouncements about the vast marketplace value of digital music are all saddle and no horse.

Conventional piracy and the middle-class larceny of large-scale online bootlegging via CD burning or other means should be prosecuted. But years of ongoing reportorial inquiries have yielded anecdotal reasons for the proliferation of peer-to-peer file swapping. Chief among them are the frustrations of commercial radio, which plays little that's surprising beyond certain singles or format-restricted remixes of those singlesâ¬"neither of which are usually available for individual purchase. The record industry has adopted the off-putting and commercially poisonous habit of telling consumers what they want rather than answering their needs and complaints. Recent studies show that even hardcore fans have scant knowledge of the latest releases by established acts. The satisfactions of album-length releases have been systematically obscured in the marketplace by limited public exposure on either radio or TV. Many of the songs receiving the most aggressive pushes are designed to appeal to the prurient interests of nominal/cursory listeners. Such tacky sideshows rarely translate into a stable consumer base.

At a time when specious accounting practices in the business community are being assailed, the Recording Industry Assn. of America was touting Shaggy's 2000 Hotshot release as the best-selling album of 2001 with an alleged 5 1/2 million units sold. Actually, that figure was, at best, the sum of shipments in 2001â¬"an archaic and hype-prone method when compared with SoundScan's hard tallies of 4.81 million units purchased of Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory vs. 4.52 million units for Shaggy's album.

Meanwhile, imagine the other ways that the $4 billion lost on online music ventures might have been spent: for example, on salaries for seasoned employees with the expertise (and sufficient budgets) to sign, market, and distribute the physical products of serious artists whose unique talents could have blossomed into worthy catalogs of recorded music.

Instead, the heavily funded online sphere has become a web of intrigue for any businesses intent on siphoning cash while eluding the operating guidelines and logical expectations that generally govern the rest of the capitalistic landscape. (Attention stockholders of the tech persuasion: When was the last time you saw cash dividends?) Clumsy phrases like the "complex economies of developing e-commerce" arise whenever excuses are being made for MusicNet and Pressplay, the major-labels' widely panned online digital music rental sites ("Hitting All the Wrong Notes" was the headline on TIME's Feb. 25 evaluation), which are more likely calculated to increase corporate ownership of the tracks than extend services to fans. MusicNet and Pressplay are proving as reluctant to cut credible deals with artists and publishers for copyrighted music as was the illicit Napster file-sharing enterprise that the majors battled to disconnect. Somehow, it's easy for corporations to find $4 billion for murky digital goose chases but hard for them to accept the basic cost of doing business. At least the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel, in its Feb. 20 recommendations to the Library of Congress, called for direct payment to artists of non-subscription Webcast digital royalties, but such payments should extend to all digital modes of music delivery, broadcast, and distribution. Show all parties the money.

Almost as disappointingly elusive as online music profits are the rising number of out-of-power music and media executives who once undermined artists' cases for copyright and contract issues before assorted industry and governmental bodies, only to sometimes flip their positions after parachuting from their respective posts. This was evidenced by a recent statement from former BMG U.K. & Europe president Richard Griffiths, just hired as international president of a U.S. artist management firm, who now amazingly asserts, "In the record business, people are realizing that record companies only care about selling records, therefore they don't care about long-term careers."

Indeed. And Congress, the Department of Justice, European parliaments, and investigative agencies in Brussels or elsewhere should realize that the overwhelming majority of long-term careers in the music industry are those of the artists, whose creative legacies last far longer than the opportunistic policies of most of the music executives and corporate entities associated with them. In the digital revolution, cynics fought crassly for market share and the spoils of venture capital. In the American Revolution, citizens fought courageously for the right to be law-abiding corporations unto themselves if they so chose. If one creator/copyright holder seeking legitimate protection and compensation for his or her music cannot prevail against an array of high-handed holding companies seeking to avoid fair play and honest obligations, we are facing a threat to our social democracy that will equal or surpass the industry meltdown we may yet invite.

Posted 1:58 PM by Dave Allen
Hi,

First of all I want to give huge thanks to everyone who came out to Reed College and made that show a great event. Now that the Reed show is done we are moving on to our next performances. See below -

11:15pm March 27th. Live radio show on KBOO, 90.7 FM, The Church of Northwest Music hosted by Marc Baker. Full band plus guests - Rapper Jumbo from the local hip hop crew Lifesavas and Derek Sims, trumpeter. Tune in, it's easy and it's free.

BERBATI'S PAN,

Downtown Portland, Saturday, April 13th. Doors at 9PM

Systemwide
Squall (full band and same guests as above)
Menomena
Plus DJ Ism and DJ Joelskool

Three great bands, two great DJ's, all for $9.00

More later, thanks for your time.

Dave

Posted 10:29 AM by Dave Allen
I woke up and felt that I had to write to the Mayor of Portland today....

Dear Mayor Katz,
I live in an area that would appear to be on the frontline of your Streams Initiative. I am puzzled as to why, as a homeowner, I am going to be subjected to certain use restrictions on my property.
As the parents of three young children we stress environmental issues to them on a daily basis. As you must know the pollution of the Willamette and run off into the river must surely come from industry and farming sources. As a family we do nothing to harm the land around our property and certainly would never cause any toxic or other harmful substances to enter any nearby streams. Therefore we are puzzled as to why perhaps, when my children outgrow our living space, we would not be able to add an extra room to our house or perhaps build a guest house without City impediments that are already currently very stringent?
We already put up with the extra cost created by the wear and tear on our vehicles brakes, suspension and tires that is a result of speed bumps being stuck in our neighbourhood roads and now you want to restrict what we do with our property. If you could flesh out in a reply to me just what is achieved by penalizing property owners further I would be very interested to hear it.
Yours very sincerely,
Dave Allen

Posted 10:13 PM by Dave Allen
Ramblings

Posted 9:53 PM by Dave Allen
Squall is a multimedia collective based in Portland, Oregon.