2009 Archives 2008 Archives 2007 Archives 2006 Archives 2005 Archives 2004 Archives 2003 Archives 2002 Archives 2002 Music Predictions RIAA Statistics Don't Add Up to Piracy FOR MUSICIANS ONLY When Insanity is Part of the Job Description Selecting a Crew Losing My Audition Saving a Misunderstood Guitar Fiction Ghost Story Off Topic & Humor Free Jack Bauer! - Jan. 2008

2010 Archives January Once in a Blue Moon January 1, 2010 -- Unless I get to play a gig, I never go out on New Year's Eve. Last night we (Hurricane Alley) did a Tucson show, drawing me out into the world on drinking's amateur night. As it's been several years since I played on December 31, it was only fitting that last night was a blue moon. (More...) And the Decade's Best Selling Band Was... January 3, 2010 -- The Beatles still rule the sales charts as their album 1, a collection of number one hits that everyone has heard a bajillion times in the 40-45 years since their original recordings, outsells everything else released in the decade -- with only four months of sales. (More...) Nielsen Soundscan Stops Making Sense January 10, 2010 -- For like the 4th year in a row, Nielsen Soundscan is trying to convince us all that selling a billion things for $1 each is somehow a sales increase over selling a half-billion things for $10-$15 each. (More...) Price-Fixing Suit Against RIAA Revived January 17, 2010 -- The US Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York has ruled that the case of Starr v Sony should not have been dismissed, as it contained "plausible evidence of unfair cooperation and violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act." (More...) A Trio of Bad Things January 21, 2010 -- Obama's DOJ once again weighs in to support the RIAA, Verizon starts (or is at least prepared to start) throwing people off the internet, and the book publishers have caught the RIAA/MPAA brain virus that causes paranoia and destroys math skills. (More...) Judge Reduces Award in Jammie Thomas Case January 22, 2010 -- "The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music," Judge Michael Davis wrote in explanation of his decision to reduce the damages in the RIAA's case against Jammie Thomas-Rasset. "Moreover, although plaintiffs were not required to prove their actual damages, statutory damages must bear some relation to actual damages." Davis added that $1.92 million in damages "for stealing 24 songs for personal use is simply shocking." He also said the RIAA may have a retrial if it does not accept his ruling. (More at Wired...) Follow-up -- January 27 -- A week after the judge reduced damages to $54,000, the RIAA offers Jammie Thomas-Rasset an opportunity to settle the case for $25,000. The offer is refused. January 28 -- RIAA wants a new trial. Money Talks January 25, 2010 -- Having obviously decided that our political system wasn't quite corrupt enough already, the Supreme Court has proclaimed that money is how corporations "talk," so limiting how much they can contribute to political campaigns is an infringement on their freedom of speech. (More...) For Movies, Money is the Measure, Not Viewers January 27, 2010 -- For all the hype about Avatar taking over the title of highest-grossing film ever, there are 25 films that have sold more tickets. By that measure, Avatar falls between Thunderball and Grease and has another 50 million to go before it catches Titanic. (More...) February EMI Looks For Life Support February 4, 2010 -- Reuters reports: "EMI Group posted a £1.03 billion ($1.62 billion) operating loss for the year to end-March after writing down the value of its artists and catalog, and said it risked breaking its banking covenants." The Financial Times says, ""The accounts show that EMI Music will fall far short of critical covenants on its debt when these are tested between March and December this year and could suffer further shortfalls next year." Another source told Digital Music News to expect a "near-term blowup." Oh, goodie! (More...) Followup -- Feb. 7 -- Citigroup, who financed Terra Firma's purchase of EMI and is carrying the bulk of the debt, "believes that Terra Firma's equity in EMI is worthless and that the firm should hand over the company to the bank." Warner Music's Bizarre "New" Format February 4, 2010 -- From Billboard's Nashville office: "In an acknowledgment of growing consumer dissatisfaction with the traditional CD format, for the first time a major label is replacing the typical 10-plus song CD release with two six-song CDs whose release dates are separated by mere months." This is not a new format. It's a traditional CD with only 6 songs. So, even if they were accurate in their assessment of the problem (they weren't), their solution is to give us more of what they think we don't like, with less music. Brilliant fucking move. (More...) Bronfman Still Wants $5/Month From Everyone February 4, 2010 -- Warner Music says they're going to stop licensing its content on free music software like Spotify and Last.FM. Warner's CEO, Edgar Bronfman Jr, said that streaming services were "clearly not positive" for the music industry and "not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future." Then again, he also doesn't like iTunes, despite it having sold billions of singles for him. Instead, Bronfman still wants people to pay him a monthly fee to listen to Warner Music's content (I'm guessing $5, since that's been their goal for five or six years). But here is the best part -- Bronfman thinks that "the amount of potential subscribers for that would 'dwarf' the number of people who currently buy music from sites such as iTunes." Because all of us are just lined up anxiously waiting the chance to spend money and own nothing in return. EMI Selling Abbey Road Studios; UMG Gets New CEO February 17, 2010 -- EMI has put its Abbey Road recording studio up for sale, which feels like its end as a record label. Then again, EMI's current CEO Guy Hands is a huge fan of... karaoke. Has the best karaoke machine in England, I've heard. He also wants to sell EMI to Warner. Meanwhile, Universal Music gets a new CEO, who says CDs are the future. He obviously hasn't talked to Edgar Bronfman yet. I forgot to make note of his name, but I'm sure we can look forward to more visionary statements emanating from UMG. Follow-Up -- Someone declared Abbey Road as an historic landmark or building or something, which means EMI can't sell it to just anyone. Andrew Lloyd Weber is said to be interested. John Mellencamp as Indiana Senator? Indies As Clueless as Majors February 20, 2010 -- Just participated in the first round of an invitation-only chat group concerning the music industry. Despite being focused on the independent sector, Round One was a whine-fest that seriously pissed me off. (More...) Pediatricians Go Insane February 21, 2010 -- From USA Today, we receive another sign that the people in charge of America have turned into complete blithering idiots: "[T]he American Academy of Pediatrics wants foods like hot dogs to come with a warning label - not because of their nutritional risks but because they pose a choking hazard to babies and children. Better yet, the academy would like to see foods such as hot dogs "redesigned" so their size, shape and texture make them less likely to lodge in a youngster's throat. Warning labels on "foods like hot dogs." This is the stupidest fucking thing I have seen since, oh, probably yesterday. The baseball stadiums are going to love this. Might as well make grocery stores go around put a warning label on everything edible, at a great waste of time and expense. When everything has a warning label, they they are meaningless. Seems wiser to put one big sign at the checkout area that says: Don't Be a Dumbass Teach Your Kids to Chew Their Damn Food Learn the Heimlich Maneuver Media Ignores Health Care March in NYC February 24, 2010 -- Did you hear about the thousands of New Yorkers who walked across the Brooklyn bridge as a rally for a public option on Saturday? Of course not. Just like the anti-war protests before we invaded Iraq, the "liberal, far-left" media ignored it completely. So did the "fair and balanced" outlets. Ir wasn't called a "tea party," so it didn't happen, even though this group of people were literate enough to spell their signs correctly (309 photos). As someone who would like to see our country move forward instead of stagnate in ignorance and greed, I'm developing less patience each and every day with the rational side of anything being attacked and intelligent ideas ignored or impeded just to take the opposite political side. I have never been a political person. Sometimes I vote Republican; sometimes I vote Democrat. It all depends on who I see as having the best potential. America's political system has degraded to the point where it now resembles gang mentality. Red vs Blue. Bloods vs Crips. You've got the wrong color on and you're the enemy. Anything you say must be wrong. And you don't go to the right church. Your kind shouldn't even be allowed in the country. We'd rather watch our Mama die than have health care because it was your idea, so it sucks. Read it? Fuck no. We don't have to read it. There's nothing to think about. You're wearing the wrong color. Get out of our neighborhood. We don't want you here. Truth, justice and the American Way. Wasn't that what Superman used to take care of? Sadly, Superman is fictional and no one is taking care of these things. Truth has been banished, replaced with one-sided fascist propaganda. Our most trusted news source is a comedian (Jon Stewart on The Daily Show). Justice has been flushed down the toilet; the rich are above the law, the innocent are tortured. The American Way has been destroyed as page after page after page of the Constitution has been shredded, pissed on, twisted and tarnished by greed and corruption, used in combination with blatant lies to enable the pursuit of remorseless killing for profit at the expense of the American taxpayers. America today feels like what I thought living in the Soviet Union was like in the 1960s. We are the greatest threat to world peace. We have abandoned the idea of National Defense in favor of using our military to invade countries on false pretenses. And some of us are so stupid that they think it's a good idea to deny people medical treatment because they can't afford it. Heartless bastards. At least they're easy to spot. The dumbasses are the ones wearing the wrong color. iTunes Sells 10 Billionth Track February 25, 2010 -- The labels wanted to kill the single 10-12 years ago. So what we have here is $10 billion in sales that the RIAA would have lost due to its own stupidity if Apple hadn't intervened. Despite this, the record labels still think Apple is their enemy. The BBC story contains very little else of interest, except possibly the fact that the person who bought the 10 billionth track got an iTunes gift card worth $10,000. Blonde Cheerleader Fulfills Stereotype March 1, 2010 -- First, she got busted for file sharing. Her defense: "I'm stupid. I don't know anything. I didn't know. I didn't know!" She gets off with a $200 per song fine totalling $7,400. Now, a senior at Texas Tech, still seeing the stupid angle as the way to go, she takes her plea of ignorance to an appeals court, apparently dressed in her cheerleader outfit. Appeals court judge says, "Should have read the CD case while you were ripping the files. Ignorance is no excuse." Judge raises fine to $750 per song ($27,750). March 4 -- Afterthought -- Throughout the entire RIAA "education" campaign and the entire litigation nightmare (which still continues), the college kids were never given the suggestion to just turn off sharing. I suppose because it interfered with the whole intentionally incorrect notion that downloading is theft. If you fall for that, you might as well share it because you're already in trouble anyway. Those that are aware of the possibility of clicking "No" to "Share Public Folder?" will usually blow off this advice, despite it being the one thing that will make this go away. "If all of us at [Your School Here] stop sharing, all the music will disappear." Sure it will. No one else in the world has the latest Lady GaGa tracks but the guy in room 407. If everyone in the world stopped sharing the current hits, the record labels would probably post them themselves. They probably are already doing that. "We're hurting the record companies." Really? How many of those albums could you have afforded to buy anyhow? Or still wanted to after you heard them? Besides, you're promoting every artist whose music you share. Hurting them? I don't think so. March MPAA Officially Wins Battle Against DVD Copying March 5, 2010 -- As David Kravetz at Wired explains in full, the MPAA won its battle with RealNetwork's DVD copying software, as Judge Marilyn Patel decided that a) the DMCA prohibits circumvention of any DRM, and b) all the DVDs in existence have DRM, since the format was born with it, unlike the audio CD format, which actually requires a set of unprotected audio files. RIAA Still Delusional March 11, 2010 -- The RIAA is claiming that file sharers are "undermining" humanitarian efforts in Haiti" because they're, uh, not downloading the Hope for Haiti Now digital only album. The logic gets even more strained with every sentence and phrase because, once again, they're just making shit up. There's a lot more to this story at TechDirt, which rakes the RIAA over the coals for issuing a press release that is complete and total bullshit, without offering one single actual fact to support their fantasy. But they've been lying to the public and themselves for so long that they probably don't know what the truth is anymore. Not that it matters, as long as they can keep selling their hallucination to Congress as reality. So... business as usual... Nothing has changed since 2003 in this respect. RIAA Wants to 'Help Musicians Get Their Fair Share' March 13, 2010 -- While all of the record labels have a long, storied history of not paying artists fairly (if at all -- is Sony ever going to pay the Bay City Rollers?), the RIAA suddenly is concerned with the responsibility to pay the artists. Not their responsibility, of course. In fact, they're going to take half of the "fair share" for themselves. (More...) Spain Rules Downloading From P2P 'Completely Legal' March 17, 2010 -- SGAE, a Spanish music rights organization recently took a link site to court, expecting it to be shut down, in typical RIAA fashion. Imagine their surprise when the judge ruled that "if an individual uses P2P networks like eDonkey or BitTorrent to obtain copyright material for non-profit reasons, the act is completely legal". Note that nothing is said as far as those uploading to P2P sites or "making available." But downloading from them is clearly okay. Especially in Spain. (More at TorrentFreak...) Worth Watching March 18, 2010 -- Loyal Reader Jeff S. writes in to point us to a hilarious YouTube video -- "Home Taping is Killing Music." Delfina -- An Indie on the Path to Success March 20, 2010 -- Some people will tell you that you need a record label to gain attention in the world of music. Maybe you just need a good publisher that knows how to get your music out, like maybe getting it placed as background music to a national advertising campaign. (More...) Washington State Wants to Punish Indie Programmers March 27, 2010 -- The State of Washington is considering adding a 10 percent tax on custom software, which seems as if it will be an extra burden for "software firms and consultants that work on web sites, business applications, and other specialized programs." Except Microsoft. (More...)