- Another Steve Albini interview about In Utero. It’s a pretty good one.
- How do music journalists deal with all those albums? I used to get an LP, play ten seconds of each track and write all I could from that. Then I’d play a few songs to check. Then I’d submit the result and get paid something insulting. It’s still a pretty good quick starter. That’s if I don’t just forward the email to Alli.
- Level Music: Warner’s digital distributor for unsigned artists. They take 8% with no upfront.
- The music business doesn’t need saving. Some bits need to hurry up and die in a fire a bit faster, though. It notes that convenience always wins. And that blockchains aren’t going to help.
- Did someone mention blockchains? An appalling puff piece in Music Business Worldwide about JAAK. They claim they’re totally going to solve the problem I state in the book: the lack of a Global Repertoire Database. From the official announcement, they claim they’ll do this on the public Ethereum blockchain.
But, Ethereum literally can’t scale up to cat pictures — CryptoKitties left Ethereum unusable for a day with 14,000 users. Blockchains don’t scale.
There is work to increase Ethereum’s throughput. So far it’s been “six months away” for the past few years. Never trust blockchain hype if you can’t see it literally working in front of you. Blockchain people make the worst music industry chancers look trustworthy and reliable.
Music news sites keep reprinting these blockchain press releases without the slightest journalistic tyre-kicking or asking “wait, is this even possible?” I gave them the crib …
- For what else I’m up to, see this post on my next two book projects: another blockchain book, and Roko’s Basilisk.
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