I was listening to BradSucks yet again, and yet again wondering why he isn’t famouser on the Net. I love his music from top to bottom — tune, lyrics, arrangement, performance — and he is totally living the Internet lifestyle. It’s frustrating to me. Lord knows how Brad feels about it.
So, how about this. See, we all get together and make our favorite big time bands feature on their Web sites at least two Bands That Are Better Than We Areâ„¢. Let them reach at least partway down the long tail to feature some great, lesser-known musicians. It’d be like having an opening act for their Web site. Wouldn’t that be a generous, Internetty thing for them to do?
Anybody know a famous band they can ask to do this? The only one I know is BradSucks, and, well…
YouTube uses a Content Identification tool that enables copyright holders to find instances of copyrighted material so that they can then issue a takedown notice, “moneytize” it, or track it. This includes identifying copyrighted material on a video’s audio track and automatically muting it. There’s no mention in Google’s discussion of Fair Use exemptions.
Mark Smitelli has poked around at the system, uploading copies of the copyrighted song “I Know What Boys Like,” sonically altered in various ways: compressing or expanding the time, lowering or raising the pitch, adding noise, etc. Mark runs the complete results, but to roughly summarize: Altering parameters more than 5% often seems to fool the Identifier, and using less than 30 seconds also seems to let the clip slip through the rule-bound robot’s shiny little nets. Playing clips in reverse confused the Identifier, but stripping out everything except the vocals did not.
Using a clip for as satire [later: I probably got this wrong] or political commentary undoubtedly wouldn’t keep it from the Identifier’s snares, although such use is likely protected and non-infringing. The Identifier, unsurprisingly, seems to be a poor reader of human intention. [Thanks to David Abrams for the tip.]
By the way, if Ellen Degeneres wants to respond in a reasonable and constructive way to the lawsuits over her use of song snippets to dance to, she could always start using Creative Commons-licensed music, with a nice plug for the open-hearted musicians making our lives more tuney.
I’m trying an experiment with a business model I like to call a reverse referral fee. Here’s how it works…
You click on a link that lets you download a copy of Brad Sucks’ latest album, Out of It. The album of wonderful music is yours for free in every sense. (Share it! Please!) But, I’m going to pay Brad for each copy downloaded, at a bulk rate he and I have agreed on.
This offer is good for the first fifty people who download it. After that, you can buy a copy on your own. Of course, Brad also makes his music available for free (in every sense), but don’t you want to support a truly webby, big-hearted musician who’s giving us his talent free of copyright, studios, and DRM? Doncha?
I run. Yes, I know the idea is ridiculous, but not half as ridiculous as the actual sight of me “running.” The only indication that I am running and not, say, just leaning forward slightly is that that posture could under no circumstances produce that amount of sweat. Showering for me is not going from dry to wet; it’s merely the replacement of sea water with fresh.
Well, enough about my sweat. Here are some random thoughts from the hard sidewalks of Brookline and Brighton.
0-10 minutes: Jill Sobule is really good. Why don’t I listen to her more? I especially like the songs where she reveals something unexpected about the person she’s singing about. That’s the essence of the narrative art. Also, why is that new song about kissing a girl bigger than Jill’s was?
10-12 minutes: Jeez, Hegel was right about how history works. Everywhere you look at what the Net is doing to us, old forms are being contradicted, but also raised up, and then overcome by something new that includes it while going beyond it. E.g., experts are better able to do what they do, but put them into a network with other experts — and non-experts — and you get the whole expertise taken to a new level. Likewise, the massness of the Web nevertheless is raising up a new type of local-ness, including that in some public, mass-y places there will be nooks with the Norman Rockwell expectation that people will know your name. Or avatar, anyway.
12-20 minutes: Since at the current pace, the number of registered Web domains will hit infinity in the year 2013, what will be the most efficient search algorithm to look up any one of them? Even if they were alphabetized, could you do the old thing of dividing the list in half to see if the target term is in part one or part two, and then dividing it again and again? With an infinite list, wouldn’t that on average take, um, forever? In fact, how would you even know where the middle was to do the first divide? Well, I suppose you could assign them numbers and then divide them into even and odd numbers. But you’re still talking about infinities here. Jeez, I wish I’d taken math after high school.
20-43 minutes: What is the name of the part of the leg between the ankle and the calf — the back part of the leg, not the shins — because whatever it is, it’s on fire. Undercalf? Backshin? The limpmaster? The quadralimpcets? The supra-ankle-scorcholater? Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow wow that’s a lot of sweat ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.
BradSucks continues to post one new song a month for free download. Of course, you can always download his music for free, or, better, buy it in order to support the webbiest musician on the Web. Here’s his latest (demo): Model Home.
I know I’m late to the PlayForChange.com party, but this is a pretty impressive video, on several grounds. Don’t be misled by the opening; it’s not really just about a street musician.
In a semi-related story, the YouTube orchestra is getting ready to play Carnegie hall. To join, you had to post an audition video on YouTube…
The RIAA has announced that it’s not going to sue music downloaders, although it’s holding open the possibility of suing the most egregious offenders.
I like to think it took one look at Charlie Nesson’s case and fled with its short tail between its legs.
This is good news not only for those who have felt the full, brutal force of the RIAA’s whim-driven prosecutions, but because it helps the clear the ground for a longer, more considered redressing of the balance of rights and values.
