Mark has some good ideas that I hope Apple explores.
Many people are panning iTunes, but the more I think about it, the more I find reason to hope that independent artists may have found a very, very powerful distribution method and a way to earn some bucks. Having a song downloaded just a few thousand times could rake in the kind of money to finance writing another song!
Pro Tools is a software program that replaces the old infrastructure of recording – huge analog mixing boards, rolls of two-inch-wide magnetic tape – with a computer. Many musicians now cut tracks straight to a hard drive, which means that lots of expensive tape machines are now collecting dust. “We have analog at our studio in Minneapolis, yet we rarely turn those machines on anymore,” says R&B producer Jimmy Jam. Some estimate that four out of five current pop albums employ Pro Tools or one of its competitors. While Digidesign, the maker of Pro Tools, took in $136 million last year, many older studios are feeling the financial pinch. New York’s Greene Street Studios, where Public Enemy recorded many classic tracks, shut down in 2001. Other studios are finding that the only way to stay in business is to make sure they have Pro Tools workstations for their clients.
Since Pro Tools can run with just a moderately powerful laptop and a few accessories, musicians can get professional sound just about anywhere. “The traditional studio is a windowless place on a back alley somewhere,” says Brandon Boyd, lead singer of Incubus. “You can get horrible cabin fever, like being in a dentist’s office twelve hours a day.” So to make last year’s Morning View, Incubus used a Pro Tools setup in the living room of a Malibu house with an ocean view.
For established musicians, escaping the studio means better vibes; for acts that are just beginning, it means they can afford a professional-sounding demo or album without having to sell a kidney. It’s already happening: Dirty Vegas’ home recording of “Days Go By” became a club hit. The group could experiment with different sounds and vocal filters because the clock wasn’t running in a thousand-dollar-a-day studio.
Read the rest at RollingStone.com.
Go and read up over at Shannon Campbell’s weblog. Download some mp3s. Give a listen. I tell ya, her stuff is beautiful.
Fact is, her songwriting sounds like what I’d imagine my wife’s would be. Shannon’s voice is *almost* as good. And that is, by far, the greatest compliment I could ever bestow. I’ve never heard anyone as close. I need to record Richelle singing a song someday. It would simply knock you dead.
An abstraction is a boundary with two sides. On the top side, the abstraction presents a simplified view. Below, there is something more complex and more real. The purpose of the abstraction is to obscure what is really going on.
The world hidden underneath an abstraction is quite likely to be yet another abstraction. In fact, it is typical to have many abstractions stacked together, each one attempting to present an illusion which is even further from the truth. If you stack them up vertically, the ones at the bottom are more real than the ones at the top.
This is what programmers do. We build piles of abstractions. We design our own abstractions and then pile them up on top of layers we got from somebody else. Abstractions can be great. We use them because they save us a lot of time. But abstractions can also cause lots of problems.
So begins a great essay on the programmer practice of building abstractions and using them. Like Rafe I’m disappointed he ends such a great piece with evangelism (.NET over Java), but again, like Rafe, I feel you can ignore it. A good read.
The iTunes Music Store is launching with a library of 200,000 tracks, with participation from all five of the major record labels. In addition, the store will list exclusive tracks from 20 artists, including Bob Dylan and U2.
The songs cost 99 cents to download, with no subscription fee, and include the most liberal copying rights of any online service to date.
CNET: Apple unveils music store. Look’s like my wife’s iBook just became more valuable to me 🙂 I wonder if they will open this service to independent artists? Maybe at a special rate?
Update: Salon: I have seen the future of music and it is iTunes.
…”let’s be clear: The ’90s were not normal . The thing I am most certain of in this world is that the technology universe will not see that ’90s type of growth explosion again — not in our lifetime. This is the New Normal, and it’s about the rest of your life. So the first piece of advice is, Let’s move on.”
Read the rest in Fast Company.
“People don’t need more opinions, we already drown in data. People need clarity. Drill down.” That’s from my mission statement. This is a perfect opportunity to put that to practice and give you cynics out there a civics lesson.
What Senator Santorum said helps you to realize there are differences between the political parties. Pay attention to the related court case which will help define – constitutionally – many important questions, and is a demonstration of how important our choice of President is for whom he or she nominates to the Supreme Court.
Think about what the Senator said. What it says about him, his party, it’s leadership’s silence, and the questions poised by the court case.
For or against – think deeply about it.
Cynics shrug their shoulders and don’t vote.
It’s for reasons like these that exemplify why you must.
Register to vote . Make your opinion known when it counts – on election day.
Go here for details on helping one of the best online writers keep her site alive.
Jeff Jarvis noted it yesterday and a CNN poll confirms it today: the news public has moved on. Number one news story at CNN? The Laci Peterson case.