Truth is Out for the RIAA

So now the truth has finally started to come out. Here's the news item on yahoo:



Wednesday March 31, 12:30 PM

Net music piracy 'does not harm record sales'
By Will Knight

Internet music piracy is not responsible for declining CD sales, claim the researchers behind a major new statistical study.

Felix Oberholzer-Gee at Harvard Business School in Massachusetts and Koleman Strumpf at the University of North Carolina tracked millions of music files downloaded through the OpenNap file-trading network and compared them with CD sales of the same music.

The music industry frequently claims that illegal file-trading is responsible for reducing legitimate music sales. The industry says this argument is the reason for their legal campaign of suing individual file traders over the past year.

However, the researchers conclude: "At most, file sharing can explain a tiny fraction of this decline."

Automatic monitoring

Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf monitored 680 albums, chosen from a range of musical genres, downloaded over 17 weeks in the second half of 2002. They used computer programs to automatically monitor downloads and compared this data to changes in album sales over the same period to see if a link could be established.

The most heavily downloaded songs showed no decrease in CD sales as a result of increasing downloads. In fact, albums that sold more than 600,000 copies during this period appeared to sell better when downloaded more heavily.

For these albums each increase of 150 downloads corresponded to another legitimate album sale. The study showed only a slight decline in sales as a result of online trading for the least popular music.

"From a statistical point of view, what this means is that there is no effect between downloading and sales," say Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf.

The full article

Image Copyright, what's that?

So yesterday I was watching TV, and happened to catch the trailer/intro for a tedious comedy show known as Harry Hills TV burp. [I cannot stand this man.] The funny thing was, I noticed that in amongst several images of televisions, there was an image well known to me. I knew this image, as I had just got it off the internet a couple of nights previously, to use for my own purposes in a design for a music site. I had felt guilty using a few small gifs that were readily available on the web, but as I was seriously 'mucking' with them, I wasn't too concerned. What shocked me about the image used in the TV trailer was that it was used in its original form, with no attempt to change or alter its original colouring or shape etc. I have included it here, as if it is OK for national television programmes to happily pillage the internet, then it must be OK for little old me.

Ooh Baby It's a Rip Off

On the news today in Blighty was the little nugget from the British version of the RIAA, that we must all expect to be prosecuted, like our American cousins, for downloading freely available mp3. This Punch and Judy sideshow is really beginning to piss me off, as it has such blatantly obvious double standards. For example, BT and AOL have recently both ran separate ad campaigns extolling the virtues of broadband internet. They both tout the service with slogans like 'download as many films, songs etc as you want, before they hit the stores etc.' They do not stipulate any particular sites or technology. Likewise the previous campaigns by such dodgy operations as Rio, Sony, and even Ipod. The implication to the purchaser is that this material is easily available and must be legit. Do you remember the campaign by Sony advocating 'record,copy,burn...', I saw full size billboards all over the underground network for that gem. After the fantastic surge of interest that Grey Tuesday spawned, the industry must be reeling at its own total lack of cool and absolute unprepared-ness. Music is now completely out of the 'bag', and has returned to the people from whence it came. Or something. Here are some pertinent links......
Thanks to mp3isnotacrime.org once again.


Banned Music - full selection of banned music for your perusal.
Downhill Battle - activist site for protest in matters MP3 and similar.
Stop RIAA Lawsuits - All the info on how to protest.
Download the handbill PDF - print and distribute this factsheet protest.

A London Derby....

Today is the first stage of a London Derby with world class implications. I don't normally do posts about football [soccer], but today it has to be done, for the sake of good luck. I am a laid back Chelsea fan, but as important clashes draw near, I always become more animated. Chelsea play Arsenal over two legs to decide who goes through to the next stage of the Champions League, which is the most important and prestigious competition in Europe. I've even purchased a Chelsea Flag. It will make no deifference to me either way if they win or lose, but it will make me feel warm inside if they beat Arsenal, who although great, are braggarts, and therefore not good people of the shire.
Wish us luck, we are the David to their Goliath.

I have seen the most Police ever in one place on the way home, implying that if we lose, there will be 'trouble'. As I have alluded to before within these pages, football 'trouble' is not a pretty sight. So that's another reason to hope they are victorious. For those interested, I've included a couple of 'soccer' links.

Chelsea Official Site
Arsenal Official Site
Ace football gossip and news


**Postscript / It was a draw [1-1], making for an unbearably tense 2nd leg next weekend at Arsenal....

News from Nowhere

I hope you like that, me referencing William Morris with such ease....I thought as I was working a bit on this blog, that I would mention I'm enjoying the extra special treat of having several emails read out live on air to 6 million listeners. It's on a show called Simon Mayo, on BBC Radio Five Live. my most recent was a well informed and eloquent slagging of Gram Parsons and the Flying Burritto Brothers. I know this may not always be a popular point of view, but this is what I said:


"...I must say the crimes that Gram Parsons is responsible for are many, heres just a few:

'The introduction of country music to a wider audience' actually means the blandification of a folk music that was the nations own already, making it suitable for the late 70's and eighties gross out of the superstar showbusiness style. see also jackson brown, eagles, nils lofgren etc....

the flying burrittos are possibly, apart from commander cody, the worst country band to ever exist...

expecting to be regarded as a generational hero just for extreme imbibment of pharmacuticals is not very interesting..

he never wrote any good songs

he looked like a girl

can you think of any more???..."

This prompted many emails and callers arguing from both sides....I wish I'd recorded it, but that would have probably been a bit too sad.

France and the Hijab

This picture is for real. Its a muslim woman/girl protesting her right to wear the hijab in a french school. I'm not mocking her apparel rights, after all, I have worn some seriously amusing get-ups in my life, but I'm aghast at her reasoning.

John McGeogh - A Cultural Perspective

I was very surprised at the news of Mr McGeogh's death, so I did a bit of searching, and to my amazement, there is hardly anything of note available on the net about John. Having witnessed the cultural explosion of British Punk Rock, I can say that individuals like John were a perfect example of what the original punk was all about. Much artier and intellectual than commonly perceived nowadays, punk rock was actually an explosion of brainyness back into the then current music scene, which at that time was dominated by overblown mysogynists with no opinions or cultural importance, save to a few 'wild and free' macho pretenders. After the dream of the 60's was over, the 70's degenerated into a nightmare of faded denim and vacant attitudes, drug fuelled pessimism and 'the straight people' ruling the roost. After 1976 though, everything changed, and the example set to us all by groups like Magazine, The Banshees and the Cure was one of bohemian exressionism, radical statement and a love for the avant garde. The weird people had returned! That celebration of individuality led to countless new ideas and a flourishing of artistic challenge. People like John McGeogh inspired higher goals, greater achievements, newer visions and above all, skill, creativity and invention. It is sad that punk is remembered as a musical style reminiscent of Blink 182, when the reality is that punk was arty, clever, dynamic and weird. In short, it was actually a left field cultural movement designed to alienate the 'straights', and leave them to disco purgatory. McGeogh stands in elevated company, as many of the cultural heroes of that time are all for the most part ignored: Ian Curtis, Siouxsie Banshee, Howard Devoto, David Thomas [Pere Ubu], Devo, The Slits, Comsat Angels, Furious Pig,The Residents, Faust, Can and so on. As I get older, I realise that one of the tricks of society is to rewrite history to fit the current climate and so it is with 'punk'. In America, punk is now associated with jocks, circle jerks and loutish sexism, [see Limp Bizkit et al and the antics of their 'fans'], and therefore couldnt be more removed from the truth. When Kurt Cobain used to big up The Slits and The Raincoats, he was celebrating an attitude impossible to Americans - girls rock, weird people rock, underground lefties rock, strange geeky people rock. He also was one of them, not the terrible media creation he is taken for today. As for McGeogh, his work with Lydon and PIL and others stands up. Let the music of all these wonderful maveriks do their talking.

Steve Severin Tribute
AnaNova Initial Report

Spalding Grey

I was very moved to find out that Spalding Grey has died. I want to do a small piece on the great man, but need to do a bit of research for links etc. He was very special, and most well known for 'Swimming to Cambodia', and his famed appearance in 'The Killing Fields'. As a well known anti war [esp. Vietnam] activist, it is poignant that we lose such a man in the light of current events. My only hope is that others rise up to take his place, particularly fellow Americans, to help encourage us all in this rather worrying period in history to stand up for what is right.

The Grey Album

So I suppose most people have heard/got the Grey Album by now. I got the first couple of tracks about a week ago, then went and got the rest while I still could, as it's so good. I'm a rocker, not a rapper, but I've always loved the big rappers like Ice T and Cube, LL Cool J, Tupac [a genius], plus some of the mellower stuf too. So I really enjoyed this album. It really is a big 'read between the lines' to the RIAA and those fatcats in the hollywood boardrooms. According to the information at EFF, EMI don't even own the rights. It's all A BLUFF. I got some great artwork from the dangermouse site and I printed off some of the text from greytuesday.org explaining what had happened. That makes a nice product, which will be the envy of all my friends. Maybe I'll even do them a copy, as a present. I wonder if that would be illegal too, on the grounds of being too damn interesting.

Clear Channel Goes Indie?

[I found this article at waxy - a great rss feed. It's very interesting in the light of Clear Channel becoming more of a force on the British music landscape.]

When you hear the words "Clear Channel," you probably don't think "Indie." But on Christmas night, Clear Channel's Los Angeles affiliate KDL switched from a failing dance format to Indie 103-1: "Your Independent Radio Station."

Take a look at these two hourly playlists, to get a grasp of the new format. It's not college radio by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a more eclectic mix of music (e.g. Postal Service, Polyphonic Spree, Jeff Buckley, X) than any other commercial radio station in Southern California. And, even more shocking, the station will be running without on-air "personalities" or commercial interruptions for the next few weeks.

The switch seems distinctly out-of-character for "radio's big bully", known for its secretive payola schemes. Why the sudden interest in providing an outlet for new music?

In Los Angeles, the "alternative" market has long been dominated by Infinity Broadcasting's KROQ. In the last few years, it's evolved into a corporate rock nightmare without any competition. Without an adequate alternative to the non-stop stream of Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park clones, many listeners simply turned off their radios.

One of the new taglines for Indie 103-1 is "bringing the alternative back to Los Angeles," a direct jab at the new KROQ. By providing a more diverse station, Clear Channel will likely be able to profit off new bands that aren't getting exposure from KROQ, while attracting KROQ's alienated audience.

If you're interested, I highly recommend reading Los Angeles Radio-Info, a message board for local radio insiders. They're following the story closely, with tons of great commentary and speculation. It's an interesting glimpse into the feud between radio's two biggest conglomerates. If successful, Clear Channel's "Indie" experiment may have surprising consequences across the nation's radio landscape.

Blog World

Ive been having a quick look around to check out some more of the blog 'technology' that's available, and what it does. [I only started this thing late last year]. Blogshares is particularly interesting, it came to my notice because I have the links for 'mp3isnotacrime and guerrilla news network on the right side, and they are 'blogshare' listed blogs, or something. I'm not sure exactly what that means yet, but it's interesting. Blogrolling is next on my list, which is a way of organizing your blog links, but in the meantime I've added a short list of favoured blogs further down the page. You should check them, they all come with a hearty recommendation, and hey, special thanks to fat kid.

City of Light [One]

Shot from the inner circle of the City of London.

Building the Web

As I've been working furiously on website design for two new clients, it has been painfully obvious that no sooner do you learn one good way of doing something, then three more methods come along, two of which are better. I'm most interested in the xml/xsl interface, so I'm going all out to know that pretty soon. But flash is always so popular with the more upmarket client, that I am compelled to keep trying to master the finer points of more sophisticated actionscript flash skills. People always want to pay you more if you are making a flash site for them, unless there really is a lot of content in a normal html site. As I'm only just at the beginning of server side commands and queries, that isn't yet in the equation, but as soon as I feel able, I will offer more integrated web services.

The photograph is of the great twenties office block near Tower Bridge, London. It's part of a series of building shots I've been trying to locate in order to host the best of them.