There are elections this year in Chicago on February 27th 8th. You have until next Tuesday (the 8th) to register. Check your registration. See the longest popup menu on the internet. Don’t forget to check variations of street types (Av vs Ave) the site is stupid about that.
Radiohead recently did an experiment with digital downloads where they allowed their fans to download a full non DRM version of their album for whatever they wanted. Apparently this was a major success and led the band to realize that traditional recording contracts fail in the face of the digital era.
I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the recording industry lately as the RIAA is attempting to claim that ripping music at all does not fall under the fair use guidelines. (Apparently that was an inaccurate claim, and it was specifically ripping for uploading.) If that claim went through, I would probably have never purchased another CD again. At this point in my life CDs only serve as high quality backups of my music. And very occasionally as high quality sources. In any case these cases have made me wonder about the future and past of music.
In particular the notion of “the album”. The album comes from the old album of records that were required before LPs were invented as each record could only hold a song or two. In rock music LPs weren’t used regularly to distribute music until the 60s. This means that prior to that time music was recorded and distributed as singles. I have to believe that that model fits the digital era much better than the album model. (Radiohead not withstanding.) The recording industry won’t appreciate that though, since it is very hard to say that a single is worth $25. But if the artists aren’t making anything off of digital sales, as we move away from physical sales (CDs) something is going to have to give. If the recording industry doesn’t give way, I can see artists stopping going to the bug guys and either going to smaller labels, or just going completely independent using a service like CD Baby or if you want to be on ITMS (and everything else), Tune Core.
Sure it will make the job of radio DJ harder, but wouldn’t that be a more interesting world to live in than what we have now?
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