Mekka

Public Enemy's Internet strategy

Public Enemy's Internet strategy

Cory Doctorow:  Great Wired News editorial on Public Enemy's Internet strategy -- releasing albums online, encouraging remixes, etc. Public Enemy was nearly wiped out by lawsuits arising from the band's use of samples, and now they're working to make sample-friendly music: 

As a jab to PolyGram, Public Enemy's distributor at the time, the group released There's a Poison Goin' On over the internet and on zip drives, until the band was finally released from its contract. Emboldened by the success, they went on to form their own record label. They created Rapstation to showcase new hip-hop talent. And they built PublicEnemy.com into a highly trafficked website, where among other things, they make a cappella versions of their songs available and encourage fans to make remixes.

Even more remarkable is the way Public Enemy has structured its distribution deals. Whereas many bands sell publishing rights to their record labels in exchange for an advance, Public Enemy grants its distributors a limited license. After a specified period, the rights revert back to the group.

Add to the mix Chuck D's weekly talk show on the Air America radio network, his own channel on AOL Radio and the band's regular tours of Asia, Europe and the United States, and Public Enemy becomes a prime example of the success that follows from a properly executed do-it-yourself strategy. 

Link


[Found at Boing Boing]

Yes, God Is a PC Case

Dark Blade by G69T [Bit-Tech Forums]

[Found at Gizmodo]

Jah Pahn In Da Hah-Ooowwwwwwwwwsassssaaah

Wicka-Why do I gotta be so damn hot?:

Daaaammmmmn, this incredible video is for Ooah & Oskie.

Step it up booooooyyyxzzz!

The writing is on the wall for the Music Industry.

Harvey Danger releases their new album via free downloads on the Internet.

Why did they do it?

From their press release...

"Why we’re releasing our latest album for free on the Internet

In preparing to self-release our new album, we thought long and hard about how best to use the internet. Given our unusual history, and a long-held sense that the practice now being demonized by the music biz as “illegal” file sharing can be a friend to the independent musician, we have decided to embrace the indisputable fact of music in the 21st century, put our money where our mouth is, and make our record, Little By Little…, available for download via Bittorrent, and at our website. We’re not streaming, or offering 30-second song samples, or annoying you with digital rights management software; we’re putting up the whole record, for free, forever. Full stop. Please help yourself; if you like it, please share with friends.

Of course, the CD will also be for sale on the site, as well as in fine independent record stores across the country, in a deluxe package that includes a 30-minute bonus disc that serves as a companion piece to the record proper (retail price for the package is $11.99).

We embark on this experiment with both enthusiasm and curiosity—and, ok, maybe a twinge of anxiety. Why are we doing this? The short answer is simply that we want a lot of people to hear the record.

However, it’s important that people understand the free download concept isn’t a frivolous act. It’s a key part of our promotional campaign, along with radio and press promotion, live shows, and videos. It’s a bet that the resources of the Internet can make possible a new way for musicians to find their audience – and forge a meaningful artistic career built on support from cooperative, not adversarial, relationships. (ed. emphasis mine)

We realize that digital files are the primary means by which a huge segment of the population is exposed to new music; we also believe that plenty of music lovers in the world will buy a record once they’ve heard it – whether via radio or computer.

We also believe there’s an inherent qualitative difference at work—not only between MP3s and CDs, but between clicking a mouse and finding a record on the shelves of a good record store. These experiences are not mutually exclusive – they’re interdependent facets of music fandom, and equally important considerations for a band in our position.

Even with the proliferation of websites and magazines paying attention to independent music these days, it remains difficult for bands—especially rock bands—to get exposure, regardless of how good they may be (or how successful they once were). Making the record freely downloadable removes the main barrier that exists between an artist and the world of potential listeners. And we do mean world; the web’s reach is everywhere.

Whether or not people will buy something they can get for free is obviously a big question, and there are facts and figures to support both sides of the argument. We think it’s not only possible, but likely. The more fundamental challenge is ensuring people have access to your work to begin with.

At the risk of sounding Pollyanna-ish, making records has never been about making money for this band. If the worst thing that happens is a whole bunch of people hear Little By Little… and no one buys it, we’ll know our experiment was costly. But that won’t make it a failure.

This is by no means a manifesto. We don’t pretend to be the first band to spin a variation of the shareware distribution model. We love record labels and record stores. We buy lots of CDs and are committed to supporting independent music. We’re not a bunch of fake Marxists. We’re just trying to be smart capitalists so we can sustain our lives as musicians. This is an experiment. We’ll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, please enjoy the record. Everything else is secondary."

BRAVO!!!

[Found at Mixed Content]

All your base...

all your base...: are belong to us!

:D

[Found at Jeremy Zawodny's linkblog]

MirrorMask

Cory Doctorow:

"Neil Gaiman is one of the most talented writers working in science fiction, fantasy and comics today (and he works in all three, as well as kids-lit and other fields).

His latest project is an  extraordinary film called Mirrormask, lavishly  illustrated by towering graphic genius Dave McKean (who did the cover for my most recent book), and brought to life by the Jim Henson Creature Shop (Neil's other cinematic endeavors include the English script for Princess Monanoke -- how freaking cool is that?).

Mirrormask, a twisted, pure-Gaiman fairy tale, opens this Friday, and the opening weekend will determine whether the film sticks around to get the audience it deserves. I know I'll be making time to see it.

MirrorMask is a wonderfully demented fairy tale filled with fanged cats out of Escher sketches and prickly spiral staircases to nowhere, but at its core is simply a girl wishing her sick mother would get better. This is the genius of Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman: to create twisted, gorgeous worlds, breathtaking in their elaborate detail, yet never lose the ability to tell a compelling story.

In the opening credits, strips of paper come alive to form a circus. Spangled performers wander among the tents. Sock puppets discuss an evil queen. It is a thoroughly surreal scene, a circus by Salvador Dali come to life, until the very ordinary-looking woman at the ticket booth asks a mute clown to take over for her while she searches for someone who turns out to be her teenaged daughter. Helena (Stephanie Leonidas), the owner of the feet animating the sock puppets, has a very typical teenage argument with her mother and threatens, rather untypically, to run away from the circus.

What follows is a lovely journey through a fantastical landscape. Helena's mother falls sick, and Helena herself, wishing to join the real world, finds herself instead in the Dark Lands, a twisted world where fish fly in schools through the air, insulted books return to the library of their own volition, and everyone wears a mask. It is a quirkily charming place, and there are flashes of Monty Pythonesque humor in Helena's encounter with the Prime Minister (Rob Brydon, who also plays Helena's father). Yet it is also dangerous, as Helena is threatened by savage sphinxes and a creeping dark rot which turns out to be the result of the slow death of the Queen of Light (Gina McKee, who also plays Helena's mother). In this world of masks, it is Helena, with Leonidas' wonderfully expressive, mobile face, who is seen as strange and powerful, and the Prime Minister begs Helena to find the MirrorMask, an item of great power that will both restore the queen to health and allow Helena to return home.


Link  (Thanks, Neil!)

[Found at Boing Boing]

Island in the Mur

Island in the Mur is a floating exhibition and performance space in the middle of the Mur River in Graz, Austria. Designed by Vito Acconci in 2003, the 20-ton latticework construction, made of steel Lucite and glass, features an amphitheater, a children's playground and a cafe-bar.

On each side of the "island," a bridge connects with the riverbank, linking the ancient town center on one side with newer neighborhoods across the river. The island is transparent but blue at night, acting as a navigation aid.

See also the warping facade Acconci has created for the new elevated West Eighth Street subway station at Coney Island; the forthcoming waterfront skateboarding park in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where skaters will speed along intertwining ramps, through a tunnel and on a half-pipe constructed to feel as if they have been shot out over the ocean and the Tokyo store for United Bamboo.

Via archinect The New York Times.
Art in America. Pictures.

[Found at we make money not art]

Clinton's Worldview

He free to say whatever he wants now, so he chats on about everything from AIDS in China to global warming to Roswell (Yes, that Roswell) at the recent CPSA Investor's Forum in Hong Kong.

"So I think there's a lot of economic opportunity if you can figure out how to organize a clean-energy sector.
I'll just give you one example. In America today, I reduced the energy usage of the Clinton presidential library, which is a huge, glass-and-steel building. I cut the energy bill by 34% by doing only two things. I put 305 solar reflectors on the roof and I built the floors out of compressed bamboo, running miles and miles of tubing underneath where we put cold water in the summer and hot water in the winter, and just those two things cut our energy usage by 34% and also my contribution to climate change.
There is now a three-month back-up in the States for people ordering solar reflectors. Today, in Latin America there are a million poor people who get all their energy for light and cooking from small-scale solar generators attached to their homes and the cost is about the same as a month's supply of candles. There could be 100 million down there, there could be 500 million down there. There could be a billion in Asia. The money is enormous to be made out of doing the environmentally responsible thing. The price of solar energy is dropping 15% a year, with economies of scale.
I flew into Copenhagen the other day, and if you fly over, you see the bays full of windmills. I've been to the Canary Islands, off the west coast of Africa, and in Tenerife, the biggest island, the south part is covered with windmills. China is beginning to get into wind energy. The price of wind energy is dropping at 15% a year. The efficiency of the turbines is far better; now they will turn with less strong winds. And they're easier to maintain. If I was a young entrepreneur, and I could figure out how to do it, I would organize a fund to develop clean energy.
The possibilities of creating energy through conservation are staggering. America today uses 9% more oil than it did 35 years ago even though our economy is twice as big - because of conservation. And we could easily double that again. And there's money there. Sixty percent of the energy put in to generating electricity in most generating facilities across the world is waste heat.
Now I could give you lots of other examples, so, my view is that if I were doing this in the short term, I would be trying to figure out if there were any good deals in oil. In the medium term I would be looking to see if there's anything to this clean-coal technology.
Can you really trap CO2? And can it safely be deposited in the ground? And will it stay there or will it just come back as methane and still make a contribution to global warming and therefore the whole technology will be a waste? And can we do anything to create, on a large scale, what is inherently small-scale technology in solar and conservation? Because, basically the new-energy economy, unlike the old one, is disorganized and undercapitalized, highly entrepreneurial but without any political influence, anywhere in the world. But we have a chance now to think about this because you've got $65 oil.
And I don't care what happens, the price of oil may drop, but I'd be astonished if it doesn't go between $45 and $75 a barrel and bang around in that range for the next five years - and then go higher after that…so that's my take on it, and that's what I would do if I were 25 years younger and starting a different life. And I might be broke in a couple of years, but I don't think so."...

Part 1, Part 2.

(Found at MetaFilter)

Zero Emmissions in the Future?

"Smaller than a DVD player - small enough to sit comfortably under the hood of any truck or car - it could be big enough to solve the world's greenhouse gas emission problems, at least for the near future.

In fact, it could make the Kyoto protocol obsolete. "

[Found at MetaFilter]

Modeling the sound of music

Modeling the sound of music

Cynthia Bruyns's Vibration Lab is a software designed to simulate the sound of any percussive instrument, real or imagined, in a computer. The system could someday enable musicians to play instruments that exist only on the screen, enable the design of new physical instruments, and boost the realism of virtual environments for education and training.

"Every object's sound comes from the way it's vibrating, and every object vibrates differently depending on its shape and material," says Bruyns, a Berkeley graduate student. "Instruments like violins are shapes that have been perfected over many years to produce a certain tone."

The software enables users to take a computer-generated 3D model of a complex object and bang it with a virtual stick to hear how it vibrates. For example, thin and flat metal objects sound very different from thick, curved wooden instruments.

Beginning with a 3D model, Vibration Lab adds mass and stiffness properties that mimic the characteristics of a real material like wood or bronze. The frequencies of the object are then calculated. Users can then "strike" the object in various places by hitting keys on an electronic piano keyboard connected to the computer using a standard digital music interface.

Via Boingboing Lab Notes.

[Found at we make money not art]