It’s already been 20 years since David Bowie’s catalog was on Rykodisc, a label that was started here in Massachusetts. Bowie’s album The Man Who Sold the World was 20 years old when the Rykodisc CD was released. How times flies…
Nirvana did a popular cover of The Man Who Sold the World…
… but that was long after Lulu (To Sir With Love) did her own version, way back in ’74, with Bowie producing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y1LTndlCi8
You can count on good, ol’ Robert Crumb to always find something to complain about. Here he takes exception to having his art seen framed on walls, instead of printed in a book.
There was an exhibition of Crumb art in Boston a couple of years ago. I wrote about it here.
Worried about security on your computer? Wondering about that link you clicked on because a warning came up? Watch this video, posted today, about a problem that’s now on millions of sites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKI5dg1cs74
Internet bandwidth, like oil, is a precious natural resource. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, and the time to start conserving is now!
http://www.publicknowledge.org/files/docs/peak_bandwidth.pdf
Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz is ten years older than Paul Krugman, over whom Stiglitz had some influence. They’re like-minded, but as one would expect they don’t always agree on the details. In this month’s Vanity Fair, Stiglitz weighs in on the top 1% wealthiest among us Americans. Stephen Colbert had Stiglitz on his show shortly after the economic meltdown of 2008, when Krugman won his own Nobel.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Joseph Stiglitz | ||||
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The new Amazon Cloud Player works only with a web browser or on an Android device. Before making it available on other platforms, perhaps Amazon is waiting to see how the music industry reacts to its otherwise bold move. An article on Ars Technica has the headline, “Music industry will force licenses on Amazon Cloud Player—or else,” but I hope Ed Bott on ZDNet has it right, explaining “How Amazon has outsmarted the music industry (and Apple).” There are laws, and there are contracts, and I don’t know if Amazon’s lawyers advised Jeff Bezos that he would be in violation of one or the other by introducing the Cloud Player, but so far none of the big music labels or the RIAA have filed for a cease and desist order.
Back in the early 80’s, when cassettes were an essential audio component, many LP’s came with a warning on the sleeve that said, “HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC… and it’s illegal.” And that was before CD’s! Well, neither claim turned out to be true. I remember when Disney wouldn’t allow its pre-recorded video cassettes to be rented. They could only be purchased, and they even came with a message saying that, embossed into the cassette. Eventually, Disney had to relent to the reality of the times and, of course, video rentals became a huge revenue source for the studio and helped to fund its resurgent animation department.
Time and again, the music and movie industries have had to react to new technologies. Silent movies didn’t survive talkies, but movies survived the competition from radio and, 20 years later, television. The only way to succeed is to find a way to take advantage of the new technology. As I’ve pointed out before, Napster was predicted in 1972, so the music industry had plenty of warning of what was to come:
Since huge quantities of information can be computer-digitalized and transmitted, music researchers could, for example, swap records over the Net with “essentially perfect fidelity.” So much for record stores (in present form).
Stewart Brand
Rolling Stone
December 7, 1972
The controversy over this latest music distribution method will be fun to watch, because Amazon isn’t a lone college kid sharing MP3’s with friends, who can be easily intimidated. If pushed, Amazon can push back very, very hard. Similarly, the movie studios want to squeeze Netflix, but the question is, without Amazon and Netflix who’s left to distribute audio and video — Wal*Mart, Best Buy, and Target? None of them are still committed to selling physical media.
