There’s been a slew of recent attempts glean insights from hip-hop’s history by exhaustively examining the genre’s lyrics. Yale University Press attempted to do so with The Anthology of Rap, to mixed reviews. Even though it focused on his own lyrics, Jay-Z’s Decoded served a similar purpose, arguably more effectively. Could a machine do better? Artist Tahir Hemphill thinks so, and is raising funds on Kickstarter to datamine the entire history hip-hop lyrics. Duncan Geere at Wired reports:
MOONY HABITATIONS BY LEILANI CLARK: When you’re better friends online rather than off
BY KATE DANDIZETTE: An interview with two of the organisers behind a series of free programming classes for womin being held in London
Net neutrality is more than confusing tech-speak. It’s a battle for the only vestige of free media.
The man behind The Smoking Gun recounts his first experiences online
The man behind Channel 101 speaks about becoming Internet famous
Steve Jobs’ declaration that nobody reads anymore is on one level correct, and on another, absolutely bonkers.
For the second edition of the Origins of Our Communication series, Gabe Levinson interviews Amazon Epicurean Mister Quickly about the Internet and James Coburn.
Has there ever been a time during which adults gazed at their own navels and tried to recapture their youth as the Internet era?
In the first in a series, Gabriel Levinson interviews BibliOdyssey curator Paul K. about how the Internet has affected his life.
Let the story of Microsoft’s doomed Plays For Sure be a cautionary tale to those who support DRM.
Maps, maps and more maps–the many different types of maps, and the many different stories they tell.
There’s a lot to want to like in permanently-in-pre-release-beta audio playlist software Songbird, an open-source challenge to iTunes that includes all the post-iPod expected functionality and interfacing, along with a robust mp3 blog searching engine that’s built on top of Firefox. Songbird holds a ton of promise–being able to head over to Fluxblog or the Hype Machine and listen to the tracks as if they were a radio, for example, is pretty cool–and then being able to integrate those mp3′s into a playlist along with music on my hard drive. In concept it’s seamless and brilliant–in fact, the built-in Firefox functionality enables you to scroll through any website, and the mp3′s embedded on it, like you scroll through your own personal mp3 collection. Brilliant.
The bad? Like Firefox, with which I am quickly losing all patience, the software feels like you’re navigating an Abrams Tank: it’s slow, cludgy, and prone to crashes. Like Firefox, you love all the functionality, but can’t help feeling like you could be doing everything you want to be doing much quicker if the code was a ton leaner. Firefox’s unresponsiveness has been driving me increasingly to Safari (even the buggy XP version), which is quick and clean despite far less functionality (the lack of del.icio.us plugin and Gchat support has always been a big dealbreaker for me with Safari.) All the same, Firefox’s behemoth system footprint on both my PC and Mac is growing all the more frustrating, and the thought of using an audio program that somehow is built on Firefox and is even less responsive makes it a tough sell for now.
I have a lot of hope for Songbird–it’s the kick in the ass iTunes desperately needs. iTunes was innovative in its simplicity and usability in its first three or four iterations, but has only grown more maddeningly slow and weighed down by unwanted features. What Songbird needs to do is tighten its code up a ton, and focus on the two things people want: an intuitive audio database for their mp3 collection, and a way to surf audio online, within the same application. Cut out the dross, make it fast and responsive, and the developers will have an open-source iTunes killer on their hands.
In this day and age of big-budget punk, Open Source Software offers a lot of object lessons in how to do things right (once again).
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft says Facebook is probably a fad, and considering the fate of Friendster and the increasingly decrepit Myspace, I suspect he’s right. The larger question, as new media advocates and old-media hangers-on jump from the newest teen fad to the next in a vain attempt to remain on the bleeding edge of the evolving social media, is whether these networks will always have such short life spans. If so, it does not bode well for a well-develop and matured social news network, as such a goal requires a aggregate of trusted users and relationships who have developed an body of individual or collaborative work. I can’t see this mass migration from one well-trafficked network to another, in which the social relationships and body of media that has been developed on the old network is abandoned, to be sustainable in the long term.
The only way I see these social networks as having any kind of lasting impact, the sort that could develop a legitimate social-networking media buffet with the credibility of a legitimized old-media powerhouse, is if the networks currently at the top (and the major ones to emerge) strive for some sort of shared standards of interoperability among platforms. Which I know sounds somewhat insane–imagine asking Digg, Myspace and Facebook to all work nice together. But the history of emergent technologies on the web suggests that some interoperability is essential for people’s long-term satisfaction with the basic functions of the site. Email is a killer app because anyone with email can email anyone else with an email account. The web works because of open standards (despite Microsoft’s best efforts otherwise.) RSS is a revolutionary because it’s compatible across platforms, web browsers and devices–in fact, most of Facebook’s value to me comes in its ability to easily integrate RSS feeds I choose, a functionality Myspace lacks–and makes it seem incredibly out of date.
In this sense, I think what a successful and sustainable social media will have to share is some sort of open standard, where people can a least share a login, or profile information, or blend feeds from one network into another seamlessly. I doubt the biggies of today would try such a thing–too convinced they can somehow transform the sharing of web ephemera into a Google-level success–but it could be a very plausible model for whatever platforms will inevitably take their place.
Well this is interesting. Radiohead announced last evening on the band’s blog that they will be releasing a new album, In Rainbows, in ten days (presumably self-released,) initially for sale only through the website inrainbows.com. The record will be available on vinyl and via variable-priced digital download
The only CD version (so far announced) will be sold with the vinyl package:
THIS CONSISTS OF THE NEW ALBUM, IN RAINBOWS, ON CD
AND ON 2 X 12 INCH HEAVYWEIGHT VINYL RECORDS.
A SECOND, ENHANCED CD CONTAINS MORE NEW SONGS, ALONG WITH DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS AND ARTWORK.
THE DISCBOX ALSO INCLUDES ARTWORK AND LYRIC BOOKLETS.
ALL ARE ENCASED IN A HARDBACK BOOK AND SLIPCASE.
While the digital download of the album will be variably priced, with the buyer choosing how much they want to pay for it. Really.
The stunning thing about this move is that while others have experimented with this sort of thing, none with Radiohead’s clout or continued cultural relevance have–the best analogue would be Prince’s ill-fated move to self-released albums in the ’90s, years before distribution of media online was practical to most music fans, and years after his cultural and musical peak. It’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out–the music distribution model I’ve been most impressed with in recent years is the “buy the vinyl, get a free mp3 download” approach that indies such as Touch & Go have been experimenting with. The model acknowledges both the fetish-object appeal of vinyl (which still inspires a generation-transcending collector’s devotion that CD’s never enjoyed) while letting listeners also enjoy the music far more conveniently on their iPods–without having to re-buy an album they already own, or Bittorrent something they legally own in another format.
What will be interesting to see is how much Radiohead’s clout will affect sales and the industry as a whole–since there are no metrics for this sort of thing, the dinosaurs at the major labels and the RIAA will likely declare it a failure outright, but even if the band sells less units on vinyl and makes less gross income from variable-priced downloads, their net income could even out with what they would make by foisting a traditionally-distributed CD at an ever-shrinking market. The RIAA will no doubt declare it a failure regardless of the outcome, just as the anti-industry hordes will declare it a triumph, and only Radiohead and their accountants will really know for sure, after looking at sales, production costs, reduced distribution and marketing costs, and tour ticket sales. But whatever the turnout may be, this clearly marks a turning point for the industry, as the band is uniquely positioned with the cultural and economic clout to land a severely disruptive blow at the industry status quo.
In the various music-related roles that I have encompassed over the past few years (musician, bandleader, freelance writer, publicist, show promoter and blogger) I have spent a fair amount of time browsing band websites and reached a critical mass navigating band sites that are ugly, anti-functional, slow-loading and profoundly frustrating to the people they are presumably trying to impress.
Here are some simple observations that I’m presenting as axiomatic. Granted, a lot of them display my subjective preferences about web functionality, but the simple fact is that many of these simple mistakes drive away fans, writers, editors, label people, etc
Paul M Davis