Two months back I wrote about the music and movie industries plans to implement a “three strikes and you’re out” rule to internet users found downloading copyrighted material with the help of internet service providers. While Eircom capitulated to the demand, promising to shut off users, it seems to be the only ISP in the world which has rolled over so easily.
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While Twitter might be on top of the current craze of social networking services at the moment, it’s not without considerable reason. Most skeptics have the same first reaction to it: Why would I bother? While the idea that you post updates in under 140 characters to your “followers” sounds slightly inane, when given a context, Twitter shines like dimes.
Last week, I was at South by South West music convention in Austin, Texas. The event hosts thousands of events over an 8 day period. The visiting clientele are all like-minded people: either interested in film, music and/or technology. One thing you notice about people attending is that almost all of them have an iPhone or Blackberry. Clearly, these savvy Americans are early adopters of new technology and with that comes innovation even beyond what the services were originally intended for. Continue Reading..»
While there is a real dearth of music video programming in Ireland right now, music videos continue to flourish online. Here are some great examples of music video creativity which deserve some time with your eyes and ears.
The Takeaway Show -Vincent Moon invites indie artists and bands to sing a few songs acoustically in the streets of Paris which he shoots and posts on the internet. The result has been some stunning performances from Bon Iver scaring tourists on the streets of the city, Arcade Fire playing in an elevator and Yeasayer playing on a train.
Kutiman – An Israeli musician has taken clips of people playing along to songs on Youtube and has mashed them up to the point where these disparate musicians are now a band playing along to one single song.
Chairlift’s Evident Utensil – Stunning use of a new technique known as pixel-morphing which apes poor internet video streams to brilliant effect.
Also used by Kanye West.
Fever Ray – Two stunning atmospheric videos for Swedish artist Karin Dreijer’s solo project
If I Had a Heart
Loads more in the read more.
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While the internet is great for pornography, poker, time wasting and pop culture, there are more creative benefits of modern net usage. The internet has enabled the cross collaboration of likeminded artists who live thousands of miles away. Taking that idea and amplifying it is the Youtube Symphony Orchestra, a call for professional and amateur musicians of “all ages, locations and instruments” to submit a video performance of themselves playing a part of a new piece written specifically by Chinese composer Tan Dun (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon soundtrack).
Each video submission was judged by panel and the finalists were chosen last week to travel to New York in April to participate and play the piece at Carnegie Hall under the direction of the American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.
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With all the negativity surrounding the music industry at the moment, it’s nice to be able to focus on a genuinely brilliant service that could do wonders for all spectrums of the music industry – from small, independent bands right up to the majors. Spotify is such a service. Put simply, Spotify is a huge streaming legal library of music available in an iTunes-like interface which is currently available in Europe (Ireland is currently excluded as is the US and Canada but where there’s a way..).
Anyone can sign up for free and start listening to a band’s entire back catalogue ( I chose Super Furry Animals ), today’s chart hits, full albums and releases from less mainstream artists (MF Doom and Air France), with the (very) occasional advert. More discerning users can pay €9.99 a month for ad-free access.
What really sets the service apart from what’s come before is how easy it is to use. Spotify is fast. Like really fast. Tracks start to play almost instantaneously and in my experience (and many others), the stream was seamless, as if it was playing locally from my computer. The search function is intuitive, fast and accurate. Artist pages include bios, artist radio, top tracks and similar artists. You can create and share playlists with other users or use the radio function or explore.
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The Pirate Bay on trial: Four men are accused of helping millions of internet users download copyrighted material. The industry has called on internet service providers to censor such websites.
Last week the trial involving four men accused of helping millions of users download movies, games, software and music through their site The Pirate Bay begun in Stockholm. Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, and Carl Lundström face up to two years in prison, damages of €10 million and a €115,000 fine for facilitating the distribution of copyrighted material.
The trial dubbed “spectrial”, as the defendants considered it a spectacle, has not gone according to the IFPI’s (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) plans thus far. Half of the charges against the men were dropped as the prosecutors fumbled on defining The Pirate Bay as the source of the Bittorrent files (The Pirate Bay’s computer servers never actually hosted any copyright-infringing files) and the defendants have been gaining notoriety by using their Twitter accounts to ridicule the case ranging from expressing boredom (“#spectrial is so boring. It’s sleepy”) to joy at their supposed winning of the case (“EPIC WINNING LOL”).
On the 15th of every month of group of 22 music bloggers around the globe (myself included) participate in a thing called the Music Alliance Pact or MAP for short. On that day every month, each member of the group posts a list of 22 mp3s on their blog, one for each country represented by MAP, accompanied by a description and a link to the artist’s site. It’s a simple idea which was started by Jason Cranwell, a Scottish music blogger who wanted to share his recommendations with others beyond his own internet space.
“I wanted readers to get out of their comfort zone and open their ears to things they might not otherwise listen to,” says Jason. “As each individual blog’s regular readers would usually download and listen to that author’s recommended songs, they would be more likely to download the MAP songs too, even though their source was another blog entirely.”
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What is is with public figures sharing way too much of their life with us lately? The internet has always been a good medium for ephemeral nuggets of information but since when did it become acceptable to air your professional grievances or personal experiences in public for everybody to read? These days pop stars are less mysterious than ever and it’s not a good thing.
Last week, Erykah Badu had a baby girl. How do we know? Herself and her husband tweeted about the event AS IT HAPPENED. At first, she began with “Morning, I’m in labor” before telling her then 4500 followers (it’s doubled since) how long was between contractions. As Erykah prepared to have the baby, her husband, producer Jay Electronica kept things going on Twitter – “Labor has begun. Stand back. No hospitals. No doctors. No medicine. We’re waiting for the midwife to show.” He followed that with updates on her water breaking, how much she had dilated and then bizarrely this – “I see the head, full of hair.” After the pregnancy, the couple posted updates extolling their experiences and they later announced the newborn’s name on Twitter.
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