Fifteen to twenty years ago, Winamp was the MP3 player that everyone used. It was the first MP3 player not to suck: playlists, shuffle, convenience. And you can still download the last version.
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Category: mp3
C30, C60, C90, go!
Links: Facebook goes music industry, Denuvo DRM cracked in record time, a BitTorrent YouTube, women and jazz.
assorted bile and horror
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Links: Robin and Zappa, streaming piracy and the musical taste of dogs.
How the Boy Wonder’s singing coach fired him.
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Links: AirPod woes, MegaUpload 2.0 delayed by dodginess, classic anti-piracy ads.
“Sorry but there has been an expected hiccup. Will tell you all about it later today. Let this play out and give me some time to update you.”
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Links: Dee Dee Ramone, how to work Spotify, talking rubber, American Recordings.
GIRLS LEAD PUNK ARMY ON RAMPAGE
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Movie links: Netflix kills DVDs, more copyright trolls, 32% of US adults watch pirated films.
Bad! Bad troll! Bad!
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Links: What.CD successors, the 1939 Voder, anaemic chart sales, the bagpipe AI.
Roko’s Basilisk, right, but on the bagpipes.
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Links: Storytelling, the rump hi-res streaming consortium, the end of newspaper critics, Jim Bob.
Also, Wikipedia started sixteen years ago today.
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Links: Slowdive return, GRIDI, Tetris on a Launchpad, BitTorrent Inc.
But Lauren won’t budge; she likes what she likes, and Spotify understands that.
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Links: AdNauseam blocked, Facebook video takedowns, hi-res Tidal, a wrist vibrator subwoofer.
Seriously, $199 for a vibrator for your wrist.
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Streaming links: Google and SoundCloud, hi-res audio, codec snobbery.
From the world of your music on other people’s computers.
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High seas: ISP warnings don’t work, Facebook content ID, more suits against copyright trolls.
News for freelance consumers of the preservation of culture.
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Links: Smart TVs, mining the Internet Archive, new Popcorn Time.
Why Smart TVs are as terrible an idea as they sound, automatic categorisation of the Internet Archive and a new version of Popcorn Time.
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Digital distribution: Streaming takes over, Apple goes label, go to your listeners, Bandcamp 2016.
The fine art of getting your music to paying listeners as of late 2016.
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From the high seas: Pirate Bay in Australia, DDOS attacks, Kickass Torrents revived, monetising piracy.
Yo ho ho and three megabytes of hot RAM.
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Links: Spotify without SoundCloud, 808 classics, the Legendary Pink Dots, millennials.
Spotify rejects SoundCloud again, ten 808 greats, the Legendary Pink Dots and you awful millennials.
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What the death of What.CD fails to mean for all of humanity.
There’s a lot to be said in favour of massive copyright violation in the interests of cultural preservation, but “fixed targets are stable and sustainable in a world including the record companies” is not any of it.
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Links: China’s top music site, 808 The Documentary, Shazam is listening.
Douban.com, a movie about a drum machine, software that grabs your microphone.
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Why Blockchain won’t save the music industry, and Imogen Heap wants to spyware you.
The blockchain book I’m writing; a couple of short excerpts from the music section I drafted about half of today.
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Recording links: a new vinyl process, Brexit and UK records, Pono no mo’.
Exploring new frontiers in obsolete technology, why Brexit will affect UK music precisely how you think it would, and the state of Neil Young’s Pono.
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Industry links: Consumers may only rip CDs to properly copyright-levied 80 minute MP3s of silence.
It was 35 years ago today, Sergeant Adorno taught the band that HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC.
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Links: Negativland, Diamond Rio MP3, Dylan, writing.
The ultimate in merchandising, reviving an old gadget, Dylan as writer, me as writer.
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Links: Spotify malware ads, music manuscript fonts, drugs. And Blockchain.
It’s been another busy day with Blockchains in. Have some links.
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Links: September, Ziggy Stardust, Alan Turing, rap as social news system, even cheaper streaming.
Today at work I’ve been busy discussing the horror of Blockchain. So have some interesting webpages that are completely not about that in any manner.
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Links: The record industry is still suicidally stupid, torrented MKV at 11.
Shazam makes a profit but not from records, the record industry goes back to trying to sue the Internet out of existence, the record industry thinks a YouTube employee is really working for them for free, Spotify and Soundcloud will prove that 2+2=1.
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The streamingpocalypse first hit the record industry in the 1930s. It was called radio.
The music industry occasionally forgets that entertainment is an optional expense, consumer confidence is a critical material condition for what they do, and when times are tough people stop spending.
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Stephen Witt: How Music Got Free (2015, 2016).
This purports to be the story of the last twenty years of the record industry, told by one of the kids who collected MP3s in his college dorm just before Napster. It isn’t the story of the MP3 revolution, but it is some stories, only one of which is seriously important to the claim in the title. But the details mostly aren’t wrong.
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Links: floor-sweepings editions, musician forums, Piracy: The Better Choice.
A site for multi-disc reissues, a new musicians’ forum, DRM still doesn’t work, exclusive deals don’t work.
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Links: how Deerful and J. G. Ballard work, how Warner Bros doesn’t, what to do in Norwich afterwards.
Secrets of the stars!
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Is Bandcamp the Holy Grail of online record stores? Hell yes.
The New York Times offers a nice writeup of your friend and mine, Bandcamp. Describing how it works and a bit of the story of the company. We talk to quite pleased musicians also.
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