Posts tagged music
We knew what the people wanted: the same thing the Doors wanted. Freedom.
Ray Manzarek, legendary Doors co-founder and keyboardist, who passed away yesterday. RIP.
Doors co-founder and keyboardist Ray Manzarek died today in Rosenheim, Germany, after a long battle with bile duct cancer. He was 74.
“I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today,” Doors guitarist Robby Krieger said in a statement. “I’m just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him.”
Manzarek grew up in Chicago, then moved to Los Angeles in 1962 to study film at UCLA. It was there he first met Doors singer Jim Morrison, though they didn’t talk about forming a band until they bumped into each other on a beach in Venice, California, in the summer of 1965 and Morrison told Manzarek that he had been working on some music. “And there it was!” Manzarek wrote in his 1998 biography, Light My Fire. “It dropped quite simply, quite innocently from his lips, but it changed our collective destinies.”
Twitter Introduces #Music Discovery App
Twitter #music is a music discovery app where Twitter uses its own analytics of tweets and overall engagement to categorize and promote artists. The app divides music into four categories: music that is #nowplaying and tweeted by those you follow, #popular music trending on Twitter, #suggested music based on your tastes, and #emerging artists (“hidden talent” found in tweets). Every artist you follow shows up on your profile in the app, and you can tweet about what you’re listening to from the app as well.
The music on Twitter #music comes from Spotify, Rdio, and iTunes. To listen to full songs, you need to sign up with a basic Rdio account or a premium Spotify account through the app. If you refuse to sign up for either of those, you’ll only hear 30 second song previews from iTunes. Also, you can only hear the hit song of the artist. If you like what you hear, you have to go elsewhere. The app isn’t available for Android yet.
The customer complaints on iTunes seem to be trending toward: “Why would I want to see the tweets of every artist I listen to?” and “Why create a music app where you have to sign up for another music source to hear the whole song?”
FJP: Twitter is for following friends, but it’s also for following your interests. Twitter #music allows you to see what you favorite magazine or nonprofit organization deems worthy of its playlist — which could be interesting.
The app has proved useful because I’ve already discovered a few new artists I enjoy. However, I don’t like how the web version of Twitter #music warps my cover picture and icon. Also, the app seems to have issues updating with the web version. For instance, when viewing #popular artists, Bruno Mars was labeled #20 on the Twitter chartsin the app, but was listed at #5 on the web. Also, the #nowplaying tag updates quickly on the web, but lags in the app. These discrepancies are probably just early bugs though. They’ll be snatched up in the beak of the Twitter bird soon enough. — Krissy
Image: MoneyCNN
Twitter #music
Twitter appears set to launch a music service although what it is is still under wraps. Yes, you can go to music.twitter.com (pictured above) but when you get there and try to sign in, nothing happens.
Via the BBC:
Reports suggest the new service will offer personalised recommendations on music through its own dedicated app.
US celebrity host Ryan Seacrest confirmed the existence of Twitter’s new app on Thursday via a tweet: “playing with @twitter’s new music app (yes it’s real!)… there’s a serious dance party happening at idol right now”
AllThingsD reports that the service will launch this weekend to coincide with the Coachella music festival.
Judge Rules it’s Illegal to Resell Digital Music
Back in the days when I was a teenager, friends would share music with each other, trade tapes or vinyl or cd’s, and even head down to the local music store to buy and sell used music.
Today, copyright — and rulings about copyright — makes our musical life much more difficult.
Over the weekend a federal judge in New York ruled that it’s illegal to sell our mp3’s (PDF). The case involved a Boston startup called ReDigi, which bills itself as a marketplace for “pre-owned” digital products” and Capitol Records, one of the major American record labels.
Via Ars Technica:
For years, many a music fan has wondered what we first posited back in 2008: “Can I resell my MP3s?”
After all, as we’ve pointed out in the past, nearly all digital good sales are really licenses rather than sales as conventionally understood. The question here is, can such a license be bought and sold to other users?
On Saturday, a federal court in New York ruled in summary judgment within the case of Capitol Records v. ReDigi. The court decided that no, users do not have the right to resell digital music files, as doing so violates existing copyright law. ReDigi, the judge found, is also liable for secondary copyright infringement and likely will have to pay damages.
As Slate notes, the judge’s decision is “is clearly influenced by” a 2001 US Copyright Office report to Congress that argued against digital reselling because digital objects don’t degrade over time like analog objects do:
But isn’t the ability to create copies of works that don’t degrade over time, on balance, a positive development as opposed to something to be feared? Don’t the upsides of technologies that can allow information to be moved instantaneously and at negligible cost outweigh the downsides?
The Copyright Office’s 2001 opposition to a digital first-sale doctrine was grounded in part on the legitimate concern that people might resell copies of digital works while also retaining them. The technology to ensure that the seller’s copy was deleted was deemed “not viable at this time.” However, that is no longer true. As indicated by ReDigi’s service—and by a digital resale patent from Amazon and a patent application from Apple—there are solutions that can help ensure that a single digital sale by a retailer doesn’t turn into multiple digital copies in the secondary market. Are these solutions perfect? Of course not. But do they represent good-faith efforts to harness technology in a way that respects the rights of owners of legitimately purchased content as well as those of copyright holders? Yes, they do.
So, if you’re tired of those Justin Bieber mp3’s you once so enthusiastically bought and thought you could sell them for a few pennies a pop, you’re out of luck. I also don’t see how or why this ruling wouldn’t affect any digital “purchase” we make from books, to movies to software. And by purchase, check the terms and conditions, because what we really mean is license. We no longer own what we buy. — Michael
CSS3, JS and David Bowie
We like timelines. We like CSS3 and JavaScript animations. We like David Bowie.
Mix them all together as a history of David Bowie homage and we like this.
Image: Screenshot, The Rise and Rise of David Bowie, by Castle Cover Ltd.
Athletes Recreating Iconic Album Covers
As ESPN The Magazine’s music issue hits the stands they’ve recreated old album covers with current day athletes.
Here we have:
- Motorcross’ James Stewart as Rick James.
- Nascar’s Jimmie Johnson as Bob Dylan.
- MLB baseball players as Devo.
- NFL football players as Run DMC.
Click through for slideshows of each photo shoot. Select to embiggen.
Who reads music writing? There’s obviously a core of readers invested in what reviews and think pieces have to say — they debate on Twitter and in specialist havens like I Love Music, on their Facebook feeds and even sometimes in the comment sections. The economics of the web, which are both more directly tied to traffic numbers and lower-margin than those of print, make that audience too small to make any economic sense as a core demographic; readers outside the Best Music Writing-obsessed have to be reached as well.
Maura Johnson, NPR Music. What Happened To Music Writing This Year?
Johnson is on to something, and it’s not just about music writing — it’s about journalism as an increasingly porous activity. Lists and lightweight news bites regularly become the day’s most shared content. And many people who would be receptive to more in-depth, thoughtful content are likely banging out article-worthy ideas in online conversations.
She continues, asking a question all up-and-comers should ask themselves:
And this is where the larger quandary comes in. If the idea is to “serve the reader,” does that mean exposing them to new things they haven’t heard and ideas that might not have been aired yet, or does it mean pivoting off the conventional wisdom in some way?
H/T: Jay Rosen.
Elvin Jones
WordPress 3.5 was released last week and like previous versions is named after a jazz artist, in this case Elvin Jones.
The drummer played with a who’s who of jazz innovators such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner, Charles Mingus, Gil Evans, Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter among others, and generally revolutionized how the drums were played.
Jones died in 2004.
A 1998 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross is here.
Michael Jackson’s Thriller Turns 30
Billboard has an interesting history about the November 30, 1982 release of Thriller. In it, we learn of technology disruption (FM was replacing AM radio) and the audience fragmentation that occurred because of it.
We also learn about CBS Records’ concern over the album’s potential success:
Since the start of the [80s], black music had been increasingly banished from most white-targeted radio stations. This was partially due the virulent, reactionary anti-disco backlash that resulted in the implosion of that genre at the end of 1979. As the 80’s dawned, programmers increasingly stayed clear of rhythm-driven black music out of fear of being branded “disco,” even when the black music in question bore little resemblance to disco. This backlash was greatly magnified by the demise of AM mass appeal Top 40 radio at the hands of FM, which led to black artists being ghettoized on urban contemporary radio, while disappearing from pop radio, which focused on a more narrow white audience.
How dramatic was the decline of black music on the pop charts in that period? In 1979, nearly half of the songs on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 pop chart could also be found on the urban contemporary chart. By 1982, the amount of black music on the Hot 100 was down by almost 80%.
Also, and notably, MTV had just launched. But the music videos the station played were very white as it followed the playlists occurring on the FM charts. They too were very hesitant to give Jackson airtime.
[MTV executives at the time] concede that the channel initially assumed it would not play the video, as its thumping beat and urban production did not fit the channel’s “rock” image. They contend however that in mid-February, after seeing the clip—which was possibly the best that had ever come across their desks—they began to re-think things.
Good thing they did.
Billboard, Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ at 30: How One Album Changed the World.
IMDB’s Top 250 Films in 2.5 Minutes
Edited to a DJ Faroff mashup of Joan Jett, The Beatles, House of Pain and Cypress Hill, Jonathan Keogh brings together 250 movies in 2 and a half minutes.
H/T: Slate.
Watcha Gonna Do?
The Gregory Brothers songify Tuesday’s presidential debate.
What Miles Davis Can Teach Us About Writing
The New York Times’ Opinionator blog has an ongoing series called Draft about the art and craft of writing. Today, Aaron Gilbreath looks at Miles Davis and how the sparsity of his solos tell stories in their silences and how writers can do well by doing the same.
Where David Foster Wallace showed writers like me the possibilities of labyrinthine stories and digressions, Davis showed me how to be affecting without being opaque, lyrical without being verbose. Editing imbued each of Davis’s notes with more weight. It also let his melodic lines breathe, an effect that highlighted the depth and strength of his lyricism. No matter the tempo, Davis’s precise, deft touch produced solos whose moods ranged from buoyant to brooding, mournful to sweet.
Many writers fall prey to the quintessential American notion that bigger is better. They overload their sentences, adding more adjectives, more descriptions, more component phrases, tangents and appositives to form sprawling, syntactical centipedes (like this one) whose many segments and exhausting procession repeat themselves and say the same thing in different ways, with different words, and exhibit an entire ideology: that prose’s sensory and poetic impacts exist in direct proportion to the concentration of words.
Aaron Gilbreath, New York Times. Writing with Miles Davis.
Video: Kind of Blue 50th Anniversary, via Legacy Recordings.
What English sounds like to those who don’t speak it
“An Italian singer wrote this song with gibberish to sound like English. If you’ve ever wondered what other people think Americans sound like, this is it.”
- This is fucking fascinating.
- This is a catchy song.
FJP: So what you’re saying is that it sounds awesome.
Bonus points since this comes on the heals of our post earlier today about the geographical origins of English. Occurred in the land of funky good times.
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