Carls Guitar Corner

Despite widespread declarations of the death of DRM in music, the Recording Industry Association of America insists that it’s far from dead. At the Digital Hollywood conference taking place in Los Angeles this week, the organization argued that DRM is still used in the large majority of music distribution methods. Not only that, but DRM is poised to make a comeback to make up for where it has fallen.
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“Recently I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music and 20 of them still require DRM,” RIAA technology unit head David Hughes said during a panel discussion, according to CNet. “Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead.”

Hughes’ statement comes just four months after the last of the Big Four music labels decided to ditch DRM for some sales. Sony BMG joined EMI, Universal, and Warner in selling DRM-free MP3 files through Amazon’s MP3 service (in addition to a rather large handful of independent labels), making Amazon the only online destination that sells unprotected music from all of the majors. Other music stores offer some DRM-free selections too, like the iTunes Store, the Zune Marketplace, eMusic, and Amie Street, to name a few.

Still, it’s true that DRM still exists in the music world. The majority of songs from the iTunes Store still utilize DRM, many stores continue to sell tracks with Windows-centric DRM, and practically all subscription services still use it. Other services, such as web-based music service Last.fm, offer free ad-supported streaming, but users are limited to listening over the web and cannot take the files with them offline. And, of course, subscription-based services use DRM to ensure that the downloaded music expires once users cancel their subscriptions.

Hughes believes that per-track purchases are going the way of the dodo in favor of these other models, and that’s why DRM will have a resurgence. “I think there is going to be a shift,” he said. “I think there will be a movement towards subscription services and they will eventually mean the return of DRM.” Hughes did acknowledge that users would rather live in a world where DRM stayed out of their way by saying that as long as they get to use files how they want, users don’t care about DRM.

The problem with DRM is that users can’t use the files how they want, which is why they do care. And we’re miles away from the kind of magical solution solution envisioned by the Hughes that would create the perfect, unnoticeable DRM scheme. Others on the panel realize this. Digimarc Corp. director of business development Rajan Samtani pointed out that there are too many ways for the “kids” to get around DRM and that it’s time to “throw in the towel.”

Aside from incompatibility, there’s another major danger with DRM: having your music licenses disappear on you one day. This most recently happened with MSN Music, which announced that users will need to either commit to their authorized computers for life or circumvent the DRM by burning the music to a CD and re-ripping.

The industry’s recent willingness to drop DRM and embrace other, nontraditional models led us to believe that the music industry was finally “getting it.” Given Hughes’ comments, however, perhaps the Big Four labels and RIAA never will.

If music DRM is dead, the RIAA expects its resurrection.

Landscape artist Mike Shubic can make you a humongous guitar like the 12-foot-long beauty seen here. This particular style starts at $6500 plus shipping. From his eBay listing:

This is an acoustic style guitar sculpture that can be made in any size, finish or style, and, you can actually strum it. The strings are piano wire in various sizes and the piece can be tuned (to some degree).

Boing Boing. or                                            http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220233204961

Amazing Young Guitar Player
Following in the footsteps of other Asian musical prodigies this kid is pretty awesome at guitar. I am jealous.

Amazing Young Guitar Player Video.

Maybe it’s because I work as a reporter, but it seems to me that secrets are overrated. I suspect that so often the cost of keeping secrets is greater than whatever benefit they bring.

You may disagree. But there’s one thing that should be clear: if you want to keep a secret, you shouldn’t post it on the Internet.

That brings us to the odd case of AT&T and its free Wi-Fi for iPhone users. Last week, several iPhone owners reported to the MacRumors blog that they were offered free Wi-Fi service at hotspots run by AT&T at Starbucks and Barnes & Noble. A few days later, the free access was cut off.

Then on Thursday, the site noticed that AT&T’s own Web site now said that its iPhone data plans included free Wi-Fi at the company’s 17,000 hotspots. A few hours later, that language was removed.

At first, AT&T “issued a blanket no comment” when asked about all this.

I was able to reach Fletcher Cook, an AT&T spokesman, who was able to offer a bit more perspective.

The posting of the offer of free Wi-Fi on the company’s site was “a human error,” he said. But he added that the company has long planned to offer free Wi-Fi to customers with iPhones and other phones that have Wi-Fi capability. (Indeed, he told me that directly in February, when I wrote about how Starbucks switched to AT&T from T-Mobile for its Wi-Fi network.) Last month, AT&T started giving many customers of its high-speed Internet service access to the Starbucks hotspots.

“Our Wi-Fi network is a great way of differentiating the AT&T network and giving customers another reason to choose us over a competitor,” he said. As for details and timing, Mr. Fletcher was mum.

So the only secret AT&T really has is the date when it will stop teasing its iPhone customers.

AT&Ts Wi-Fi Tease for iPhone Users - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog.

Paperless ticketing is the only purchase option for this tour.

Check back soon for a tour schedule and more ticket purchasing information .

Paperless Ticket:
You will not receive paper tickets for this event. At the time of entry, you must present the credit card used to purchase your tickets as well as a valid photo ID (such as driver’s license, state ID or passport). Your entire party must enter the venue at the same time. Tickets are non-transferable.

brooklynvegan.

For former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, his next gig is just a trip back in time.

“In the ’60s, music festivals were all about coming together to celebrate and spread the word about what people were feeling,” he says. “Then it was about the (Vietnam) war and a cultural revolution. This time, it’s about saving the planet.”

This Sunday, Hart co-stars with a legion of top talent in the multi-city Green Apple Festival. It’s a harbinger of summer music fests that place as much of a spotlight on green awareness as on their sonic offerings.

Green Apple started in 2006. This year, eight cities will host a range of acts in a variety of public settings.

The eclectic groups signing on to this carbon-neutral roster include the Derek Trucks Band in Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, Los Lonely Boys at Dallas’ Fair Park, Ziggy Marley on the Santa Monica Pier and Gov’t Mule on Washington’s National Mall. Hart’s Mass Drums group — which includes Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee — will play at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The other cities are Denver, Miami and New York. For lineups, visit greenapplemusicfestival.com.

“It’s clear that the public and musicians alike really want their music to mean something today, which is why the artists volunteer their services,” says Peter Shapiro, who is producing Green Apple along with the Earth Day Network, the non-profit group that popularized the concept of Earth Day in 1970.

“We’re hoping (to) attract a crowd that goes beyond who would normally attend an Earth Day event.”

Green Apple is keeping as green as possible with initiatives that include using organic cotton T-shirts for event staffers, employing biodiesel generators, serving organic food and encouraging patrons to access the settings by bus, bike or foot.

Across the nation, concert festival promoters increasingly are making the planet’s health a focus of their promotion.

“A lot of this is being pushed by artists like Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews, who care about the environment to the degree that they might not choose to play a festival that isn’t green,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of touring trade magazine Pollstar.

“That said, a lot of people on the management side (of festivals and venues) come from the same generation and share the same political views. This is a trend that will continue.”

Other green fest fare planned this summer:

•Sasquatch! Music Festival, George, Wash., May 24-26

Bands: R.E.M., Modest Mouse, The New Pornographers

Greenery: Recycling on site, organic festival souvenir clothing, online carpool sign-up to reduce emissions, bicycle-based cellphone rechargers.

•Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, Manchester, Tenn., June 12-15

Bands: Pearl Jam, Jack Johnson, Kanye West

Greenery: Biodiesel generators, solar sound stages, biodegradable concession utensils, recycled paper, use of VOC-free paint.

•Rothbury (Mich.) Festival, July 3-6

Bands: Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer, Widespread Panic

Greenery: “Green Team” members will dispense recycling and composting tips; biodiesel- and solar-powered stages; food concession plates made of sugar cane and garbage bags made from corn; an optional $3 Green Ticket surcharge to help offset carbon emissions generated by fans traveling to the site.

There’s a message with the music at Green Apple Festival - USATODAY.com.

After Spain, Australia is tops with the 2,000 or so people who pack up and leave Britain every week.

Last year, 23,000 British people came to Australia for good, twice the number a decade ago.

Since the 1970s, Canberra has run a non-discriminatory immigration programme based on a points-scale for entry. There is no favouritism towards those from Britain or from any other English-speaking country.

There are pull and push factors that might help explain the popularity of starting afresh in the former colony.

Australia’s businesses are booming, unemployment is at a 30-year low and, with the great economic powerhouses of China and India not far away, the wide brown land is now perceived as being close to the action rather than a long way from it.

The push factors include the notion that Australia is Britain the way it used to be.

Michael Palin, the travel documentary maker and former Monty Python comic, says he feels at home in Australia. ‘It’s like Britain was 20 years ago,’ he said during a recent visit.

Australia is busy enticing Brits to set up home halfway around the world.

‘There are skilled vacancies in all states and territories in more than 90 occupations,’ Immigration Minister Chris Evans said at the start of an Australia Needs Skills campaign to lure nurses, plumbers, almost anyone with a skill.

The campaign plays to opinion polling which shows lots of British people are fed up with their lives. Screw Working in Staines, Sod London House Prices, Stuff London Traffic and Bugger it, I’m off to Adelaide are four of the campaign slogans.

Australian-born marketing executive Bill Muirhead, who designed the campaign, said it ‘might appear we are being rude, but a lot of things in Britain aren’t good.’

The South Australian state government has recruited British police officers, with the promise that they and their families will ‘enjoy a Mediterranean-style climate, a relaxed blend of beach, country and city lifestyle and a first-class family environment.’

The normal six-month training course for officers has been halved, and the state government in Adelaide is hoping to hire 200 police officers from Britain.

The vacancies at home, the skill shortages, in part reflect the jobs that Australians themselves have left to seek new lives abroad. There are now 1 million Australian expatriates.

There are Australians who are fed up with their country too.

They leave, hoping perhaps to join a cavalcade of greats who include former World Bank boss James Wolfensohn, feminist academic Germaine Greer, comedian Barry Humphries, art critic Robert Hughes, novelist Peter Carey, country singer Keith Urban and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Departing Brits make a beeline for Australia - Life.

On Dec. 11, the Web site for the band Panic at the Disco turned completely white, with no explanation. Before long, curious fans noticed that the source code for the page contained a clue that hinted at the release of the band’s new album, “Pretty. Odd.”

Over the next few weeks, other puzzles appeared that led to samples of songs, a blog entry from the band, and finally — through clues scattered around various Web sites — the cover of the album and the names of the songs on it.

“We timed everything from late December through January to get people talking,” said John Janick, who owns the band’s label, Fueled by Ramen.

In an era of instant downloads, the label made the band’s fans work for everything they could. And after iTunes allowed customers to order the album in late January, Mr. Janick said, it sold 8,000 copies before it arrived in stores.

The album has sold 235,280 copies since its release in late March, according to Nielsen SoundScan; the total is respectable for an alternative rock group that appeals to fans who tend to find music online rather than buy it.

As CD sales continue to decline, Mr. Janick’s instinct for grass-roots promotion has made Fueled by Ramen one of the few labels that consistently scores hits with alternative rock.

Panic at the Disco’s first album has sold 1.7 million copies; the most recent albums by two of the label’s other bands, Paramore and Gym Class Heroes, have gone gold, and Fueled by Ramen bands like Cute Is What We Aim For are building an audience.

When a Fueled by Ramen band becomes popular, as Panic at the Disco has, it starts to endorse the label’s other bands.

The label Fueled by Ramen has found fan bases for bands like Gym Class Heroes by using tactics reminiscent of the Motown era.

The label has a deal with Atlantic Records, a Warner Music Group brand, that lets Atlantic promote, market and distribute Fueled by Ramen bands that are becoming popular. Even by itself, Fueled by Ramen is usually one of the most popular partner channels on YouTube, behind conglomerates like Universal Music and CBS.

The label and its partners “know how to do things on the cheap,” said Bob McLynn, a partner at Crush Management, which represents Panic at the Disco, Fall Out Boy, Gym Class Heroes and several other Fueled by Ramen bands. “The music business doesn’t know how to do that.”

Fueled by Ramen has its acts promote one another as well as the company itself, as indie labels have done since the 1960s heyday of Motown and Stax. But Mr. Janick has brought such cross-promotion into the Internet era, where fans of one band are just a click away from information on another on the label’s Web site. His bands often tour together, and many were discovered by Pete Wentz, of Fall Out Boy, and benefit from his implicit endorsement.

“Fall Out Boy endorsed Panic at the Disco and they got all this attention, and now you have Panic endorsing a couple of other bands,” said Bob Becker, the president of Fearless Records, another independent label with links to the Warner Music Group. “As long as you can keep that going, it works.”

Musically, the bands on Fueled by Ramen do not have much in common. But they share a certain aesthetic, with catchy tunes and lyrics about adolescent angst that are suitable for scrawling in a high school yearbook.

“There’s a built-in audience of people who are genuine fans of the music on the label,” said Alex Greenwald of the Fueled by Ramen band Phantom Planet, who says he thinks that will help his group win a larger following.

Mr. Janick, 29, has been promoting music to high school students since he was one himself, bringing to school copies of albums from independent punk labels like Lookout and Epitaph to sell to his friends in Port Charlotte, Fla. Along with Less Than Jake’s drummer, Vinnie Fiorello, whom he knew from attending local concerts, he started Fueled by Ramen. (Mr. Fiorello later sold his half of the label.)

At the time, he was a freshman at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he majored in finance and business management and devoured biographies of the mogul David Geffen and the Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman. “I didn’t have much of a college life,” he said.

The label took off in 2003 — after Mr. Janick had moved to Tampa to earn an M.B.A. at the University of South Florida — when it signed Fall Out Boy. Part of the deal was that if the band proved popular, it would move to the major label Island Records, which it did.

Just as important, Mr. Wentz set the pattern for Fueled by Ramen’s marketing strategy: blog often, tour hard and keep expenses down. When Mr. Janick signs bands, he tells them how hard they will work, not how rich they will become.

More:

An Alternative Approach to Marketing Rock Bands - New York Times.

The violinist stood on a makeshift stage between two lampposts crowned with a patina of bird droppings, under a weathered vinyl canopy hastily erected outside Newark Liberty International Airport in the taxicab holding area. The audience watched him in awe, about 50 drivers in three rows, their yellow cabs a few feet behind, some lined up neatly, others askew.

As Philippe Quint spent half an hour playing five selections, the cabbies clapped and whistled. They danced in the aisles, hips gyrating like tipsy belly dancers. “Magic fingers, magic fingers,” one called out. Another grabbed the hand of Mr. Quint’s publicist and did what looked like a merengue across the front of the “stage.”

Afterward, the virtuoso was mobbed by drivers seeking his autograph on dollar bills, napkins and cab receipts.

“It was so pleasing to see people dancing — that never happens,” said Mr. Quint, 34, a Grammy-nominated classical violinist. “These people, they work so hard, I doubt they get a chance to get out to Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center.”

So Mr. Quint took Carnegie Hall to them, in a miniconcert that was his way of expressing a simple sentiment: Thank you.

On April 21, Mr. Quint accidentally left a Stradivarius violin, valued at $4 million, in the back seat of a cab that he took from the airport to Manhattan on his return from a performance in Dallas. After several frantic hours, the Newark police told him the violin had been found and was at the airport taxi stand with the cabdriver who had taken him home. The two connected, and the violin was returned.

“Anybody out here would have done the same thing,” said the driver, Mohammed Khalil, waving a hand at his laughing, dancing colleagues.

 

The city of Newark awarded Mr. Khalil, who has driven a taxi here since 1985, a Medallion, its highest honor. Mr. Quint gave him a $100 tip when the violin was returned, but he wanted to do more, so he arranged for Tuesday’s concert in a parking-lot-turned-theater.

 

Clad in black, with his dark hair falling over his closed eyes, Mr. Quint dazzled the crowd with a theme from the movie “The Red Violin”; Gershwin’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So”; a Paganini Variation; and the Meditation from Massenet’s opera “Thaïs.” Joined by his friend Michael Bacon, a guitarist (and the brother of the actor Kevin Bacon), Mr. Quint played a piece they had composed, “Seduction Blues.”

On the horizon, there was the blocky spire that was the air traffic control tower. Every now and then a seagull would alight on one of the trailers where the cabbies play dominoes during their wait for fares. Occasionally, a silhouetted plane would glide by overhead, providing a rumbling accompaniment to the music.

 

More heartwarming stuff, so warm yourself here:

Cabdriver Thanked for Returning a Stradivarius - New York Times.

I personally don’t like viral marketing like this. You need to stay aware. You can’t afford to listen casually anymore because of the constant, hidden manipulation. If you have access, just pay closer attention to the Howard Stern show and you’ll hear viral memes inserted into casual conversations. The streams are almost constant.  I say again, I don’t like this kind of manipulation of people. As Frankie said in the 1980s, its “WAR, HIDE YOURSELF”. Read this and protect your mind. PB

In the past year MTV Networks, which is owned by Viacom, has produced a series of commercials for its advertisers that look like regular content on its roster of channels, including MTV, CMT and Spike.

For example, a short chase movie called “Get Moe,” intended to look like an ersatz “Bourne Ultimatum,” is actually a series of 60-second commercials for Mountain Dew. A series of shorts called “Men of Action” thrusts the heroes into violent confrontations that somehow promote the virtues of KFC and Kay Jewelers.

The stars of the CMT network’s top series “Trick My Truck” appear in a series of spots featuring tips on how to maintain your tricked-out truck, including the timely use of oil from Exxon.

At its upfront, MTV will be telling advertisers that these techniques — which are called “podbusting” because they break up commercial pods with content that is almost indistinguishable from the entertainment programming — have greatly enhanced viewer engagement with the commercials and their retention of the ads’ messages.

A scene from a series of spots called “Men of Action” for Spike TV, which ties in products from Kay Jewelers and KFC.

“The results are amazing,” Hank Close, the president for sales at MTV Networks, said in a telephone interview that previewed his sales pitch to the advertisers. “In many of these messages we’re seeing 100 percent retention.” MTV Networks wants to attract more advertisers based on the success of these experiments.

“We are increasingly being asked by advertisers to create messages for audiences in our own voice,” Mr. Close said.

The cable television company is promoting podbusting as a way to persuade viewers not to skip over or drift away from the advertising that interrupts the programs — an increasingly crucial aspect of the television business where the price of advertising is now being measured in how many people are watching the commercials, not the shows.

“We’re looking to redefine the commercial experience,” said John Shea, who runs the integrated marketing division for MTV and VH1.

Dario Spina, who handles the same job for MTV’s entertainment channels like Comedy Central and Spike, said of countering the digital video recorder, “That’s the idea here; we want to blur the lines between the commercial breaks and the entertainment content.”

The ideas MTV has hatched go well beyond the more pragmatic product placement that has become the most common counter to commercial avoidance.

“We’re trying to change the product-placement paradigm,” Mr. Shea said. That has meant steps like taking animated characters from the antismoking “Truth Campaign” and inserting them as commentators on repeats of MTV’s “Real World” — a concept not unlike the old “Mystery Science Theater 3000” series, except the animated commentators here direct viewers to the antismoking campaign’s Web site.

But the pseudo-commercials are MTV’s boldest move. In one of the most elaborate pseudo-commercials, a young designer shows how she comes up with her fashions in a three-and-a-half minute movie that dovetails perfectly with the young female audience for “The Hills,” even as it celebrates the designer’s association with Target stores.

MTV is even keeping the live action from its “TRL” program on view while a commercial is running, using a screen-within-screen technique.

One more example is “C.S.I. Guys,” a series of short movies that have played on the Spike channel’s repeats of the “C.S.I.” crime series. The far less professional C.S.I. team in Spike’s commercials gets to the scenes of murders only to be distracted from the task by a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee or the aroma of a Papa John’s pizza.

“Viewers keep watching right through the commercial,” Mr. Spina said, adding that “good commercial content is good content.”

Advertising revenue at Viacom’s media properties, which include MTV Networks, rose 8 percent last quarter.

Frankie also said you should relax.PB

MTV Plans to Increase Its Blending of Ads and Shows - New York Times.