Discussion
Open Discussion and Idea Sharing
Music Data Confessions of a Tagaholic
Bandcamp added artist/song tagging to its slew of features yesterday, and hopes are high that more social music features are in store. As a self-professed tag-a-holic I’m pretty stoked about the news, and especially so because I had emailed them suggesting a tagging feature. Bandcamp artists can now list themselves in up to five genres, they can add their location, and they can add specific traits to individual tracks in the form of tags.
Music Blogging Throwdown—Evading DMCA Takedowns
Dubbed musicblogocide2k10 Google deleted at least six known music blogs from its Blogger platform. Google posted an official response highlighting their current procedures for handling DMCA complaints that were last updated last summer—Google implies that they warn offending bloggers but cite difficulty contacting offenders in the past. They also include the link for filing a DMCA counter claim.
Multitouch—The Human GUI?
Multitouch may be next GUI—is there a doubt? For decades we’ve used the mouse, but as GUI technology improves we’ll find more limitations in a mouse-based system. Clayton Miller’s 2009 project called 10/GUI demonstrates the potential of multitouch. According to Miller, “the industry is now at a crossroads.”
Censorship and Media In An Expanding Internet Population—Do You Feel Censored On The ‘Net?
Blocking sites = blocking progress. I’m American. It’s hard to imagine über-restricted Internet surfing. In the U.S. internet censorship does exist in workplaces, libraries, and schools but U.S. censorship is minimal compared to Chinese censorship. Censored sites in China include wikipedia.org, amnesty.org, nasa.gov, digg.com, bbc.co.uk, cnn.com, guardian.co.uk, facebook.com, flickr.com, tumblr.com, wordpress.com, youtube.com, and—WTF—even disney.com is censored.
Dancing Graffiti
The film Bomb It portrays graffiti as the “biggest art movement in humankind.” With any movement there is opposition and many see graffiti or tagging as mere vandalism. Art or vandalism—where do you spray the line? “Graffiti is energy” says Bronx graffiti artist T-Kid and “it represents life” says artist Pose 2. The same can be said about dance—dance is energy—and it represents life in nearly every culture across the globe. The graffiti photos below show dancers and different types of dance around the world. Many images in this set were painted in the popular form of stencil graffiti. 14 photos and 3 videos.
VEVO Launch Tonight—Do You Viva or Veto?
The major labels’ new video site Vevo is due to launch tonight. A potential upside is that Vevo’s backend is powered by Google and YouTube technology, which may make it easier to integrate social features. It might also fuse somehow with the Google music search. The potential downside is that it could be fueled by greed more than music.
On The Horizon For Google Music?
If you often use Google to lookup artists then you’ve no doubt already seen the new Google Music Search that includes playable audio right in the search results. The streaming audio is served via iLike or Lala. Links to other streaming music sites are shown as well—namely Rhapsody, Pandora, Imeem, and Lala.
Numbers. Fame. Adaptation. An Impromptu Debate on Business in a Music Industry Changed by The Internet.
Last Friday I got into a discussion with James Marshall (@infinitestylez) about issues facing musicians in the current state of the industry. I had tweeted two links and James replied stating, “The internet is destroyin’ industries we all love.” It sparked a bit of a debate at first—my stance is that the internet is changing the music business for the better—but we found some common ground along the way.
