Category: Music/MP3

Anything connected to music/mp3 in any way.

Code Monkey Dance

In these days, it’s popular to upload home made music videos to the music of your favourite bands to sites such as YouTube — but it’s also a time where those who have the rights to the music is happy to sue or at least claim copyright infringement for a a 29 second long video clip of a dancing baby, because you could hear the artist playing in the background.

What then, is the reactions to a video where a girl dance to a complete tune?
[flash http://youtube.com/v/2lLRBiEBRAc]

The reactions among the viewers are of course positive, but the band itself, what would they do when they learn about it?

Well — why not ask if the girl in question is present in the audience on a gig, take her up on the stage, and let her perform the dance with the band — live?
[flash http://www.youtube.com/v/t85p8MkdKUo]

Now that is what I think is appreciating your fans! No wonder fans start young then, imitating their heroes:
[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkkXB3U7Noc]

Pirate Bay vs MAFIAA

There are companies who don’t like it too much when they find that their products are being pirated and shared over the internet, understandably enough. We mostly hear about the actions of the Music And Film Associations of America (RIAA and MPAA) here, and how they react by sueing both the living and the dead. Reactions so out of proportions that few have sympathy with them, even if they are the wronged ones.

But — what if the MAFIAA and their helpers react by doing things on the wrong side of the law? There has been suspicions that such is the case, and at least one episode where this has been claimed, though I believe the (US) court sided with the money music industry in that one. However, recently emails have leaked from MediaDefender, a company used by the MAFIAA in their fight against file sharers, and these emails have been shared and scrutinized by many. What have been found?

Well, the guys at the Pirate Bay have found enough to go to the police, reporting several companies. Oh, the irony. The companies behind the earlier attempt to take down the Pirate Bay find themselves on the wrong end of the stick? But — no one should be above the law.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

iTunes to drop DRM?

Well – I’m not taking anything for granted. I also remember having read that an Apple lawyer saw no reason to drop DRM, even if the record companies should stop demanding it (sorry, I don’t have the link anymore. But maybe I’ve mentioned it in an earlier post?)

Now hoewever, Steve Jobs has shared with us his thoughts about music, about DRM and Fairplay and why Apple don’t licence it to others. What I like most about what he writes is this:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

I like that. He doesn’t say that Apple has plans for dropping DRM, but he does continue to say that DRM isn’t such a goood idea, as it doesn’t work anyway, and that there is a growing concern over DRM in European countries. He may very well have the Norwegian ombudsmann in mind, who says that the iPods being tied to iTunes for playing protected music is illegal. However, he does have a point when he urges us to put the pressure on the for big record companies instead — the majority of them (Universal, EMI, and 50% of Sony BMG) are European themselves. And since there may be chances that these companies will drop DRM, as many speculates, we may see that iTunes will be DRM-free. 🙂

Fun buying CDs again?

I’ve been refusing to buy any CD that contained any form for copy protection on them, partly because they’re inferiour products that may not be played on my equipment, and partly because I don’t want to pay for the privilege to be treated badly. The good news is, now it seems that the era of these broken CDs is over. I read it on Boing Boing that EMI is doing the only sensible thing and dropping their DRM scheme for CDs. Was EMI the last company to realise this was the only sensible thing to do? If so, it can be nice looking for new CDs again from now on, without worrying if they really are real CDs.

Just wonder if those DRM’ed albums are rereleased on real CDs — there are some nice ones I refused to buy…

On a related note, how long will DRM on compressed music last? WMA, AAC and so on — will the companies want to keep this practise going, or will they reach the conclusion that their market is actually limited by it? Some thinks that DRM will stay for a long time, others that it will go away, and yet some that yes, it’ll go away, but it will be replaced with something else.

I don’t know myself, and don’t have any particular opinion of wether it will stay or not – but I hope for the best. I have read a few articles about what other thinks, though, and from the couple of last months or so:

So, any idea what the future of DRM look like?

Steal This Film

Weird Al Yankovic may have written a song about filesharing (which you can download) but what about a whole film about the same topic? You can get that, too.

Steal This Film is a documentary about the peer-to-peer organisation and the filesharing movement. As they write about the documentary (part 1) on their website:

There have been a few documentaries by ‘old-media’ crews who don’t understand the net and see peer-to-peer organisation as a threat to their livelyhoods. They have no reason to represent the filesharing movement positively, and no capacity to represent it lucidly.

We wanted to make a film that would explore this huge popular movemet in a way that excited us, engaged us, and most importantly, focused on what we know to be the positive and optimistic vision that many filesharers and artists (they are often one) hva for the future of creativity.

The film is possible to download in several formats. I’ve done it now, and am going to burn it to DVD and watch it.

Don’t download this song

What do you do with a song that in the title of the song itself specifically ask you not to download it? Well – you download it, of course… Weird Al has written and performs a song about file sharing, how you’d not want to mess with the R-I-double-A, because they’d treat you like the hardened, evil criminal you are, no matter what age. And so on. So head over to DontDownloadThisSong.com — and download it.

On Piracy

Whew. I just finished watching a documentary, On Piracy, about DRM, music, Walmart and stuff. A very interesting 1 hour 44 minutes, with interviews with several people in the Canadian music industry and its consumers, and it brought forward the different views on what it’s all about.

There are known information in the film, and things I didn’t know. There are stuff I find horrific and silly – the standard claim that making a copy of something so that two persons have their own copy is the same as stealing something so that one person lose it while the other get it is there. But no matter who you agree with and what view you have, this is a balanced documentary. Go see it on Google video.

If you want – you can also download it – this prerelease is released under Creative Commons.

I like Canadian artists

OK, I guess I don’t like absolutely everyone, musically or otherwise, but things are happening over there. Lots of artists and their record companies don’t quite agree with what RIAA and the four big international companies are telling us, as can be read more about at Michael Geist, and at National Post. They’ve also formed a new coalition: Canadian music creators coalition.

It will be interesting to see what happens – but there’s more. Consumer Electronics Association also disagree with what a pirate is, and have created a terrific ad to tell about it. See it in full and read more at eff.org.

CEA ad