20 Tuesday Feb 2007
Posted in Music
SXSW put together a great set of torrents in the build up to SXSW with tracks showcasing artists that appear every year. You can find the torrent here : Link to south by southwest festivals + conferences. A word of warning the torrent is BIG.
16 Friday Feb 2007
Posted in General
It looks like the Canadian record industry have recognised that the current RIAA strategy isn’t doing them any favours according to this article :
Link to Canadian Content Holders Spin Softer Anti-Piracy Plan — Digital Music News
Tags: Record Industry Canada RIAA
15 Thursday Feb 2007
Posted in Books, mindmap, Technology
Tags
As a development manager, I’ve been looking at the updated edition of Gerald M. Weinberg’s classic book Psychology of Computer Programming. Despite having been in the IT industry for the better part of twenty years, this book has still managed to provoke some thought. Particularly with regards to how informal processes can affect organisations.
In addition to the social aspects of software development, the book addresses team dynamics. What makes good programming – for example code readability vs clever solutions. All of which is very important for anyone managing or leading developers, as this will help move a project in the right direction and draw the best out of your team.
The other aspect of the book that has been of interest is the work in trying to understand what to look for in a developer as I have now been long involved in the interviewing and recruitment process.
I have tried to capture some of the points from this book in mind map which can be found in here.
Tags: Programming software psychology book mindmap recruitment
13 Tuesday Feb 2007
Posted in Music
Q Magazine this month (March 2007) published a list of a 100 websites where you can download music for free from. I’ve had a quick flick through the article – although some of the sites are artists giving away some additional tracks, others are actually streaming sites – which I thought was a cope out, so I thought I’d try compile my own list. Obviously there will be some overlaps, but hopefully I’ve got a few sites that Q haven’t. I can’t always guarantee that the sites provide the mp3s legally – but I can say that they don’t promote the wholesale sharing of copyrighted albums.
Okay – so it isn’t 100 strong – but not a bad start. I’ll update the list when I find other good sites worth of adding.
Tags: MP3 Download Sites Music Downloading Torrent
12 Monday Feb 2007
Posted in Music
It would seem that the next Radiohead album has had a date set – with a degree of confidence that Amazon have provided a page for pre-ordering Radiohead’s album for 2007!
09 Friday Feb 2007
Posted in Music
This is an exciting step forward, if as Digital Music News reports (Link to EMI Pushes MP3-Based Plan, More Details Surface — Digital Music News ) the first of the big four maybe prepared to to risk a DRM free world. If EMI doesn’t report any down trend in revenue I suspect the others will have to follow suit.
I, for one would make use of any service that sells a serious catalogue in a DRM free manner.
08 Thursday Feb 2007
Posted in General
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With the snow overnight the less travelled roads can reveal pretty views, albeit with treacherous surfaces. More pictures at our Flickr site.
07 Wednesday Feb 2007
Posted in Music
I was looking at the EFF site about DRM in music and followed their link to Live gigs you can buy in DRM free downloads (Link to nugs.net presents LIVEDOWNLOADS | Catalog of MP3 FLAC Downloads). Although a lot of the artists of predominatly of the Alt and Indie seens that is a good representation with stuff from:
To name but a few.
07 Wednesday Feb 2007
Posted in General
Things are getting a little crazy when it comes to the super bowl performances, the FCC are now looking at shadows cast by Prince (article –
Link to NME.COM – News – Prince’s half-time show under scrutiny).
Firstly, I’d be more concerned about the lyrics sung by an artists like Prince long before an visual element. My real point is that legislation for the FCC and OFCOM in the UK is that they act to protect innocent minds, and would an innocent mind be looking for crude and rude images in shadows being cast? I don’t think so as you would have to have some understanding of crude images to make the association, which means you can’t have an innocent mind.
I does make me laugh that statistics say that by the age of 18 you’ll have seen thousands of images of killing and death – yet an image that are associated with procreation and sexuality cause such a fury.
07 Wednesday Feb 2007
Posted in Music, Technology
In a new article by Steve Jobs (Link to Apple – Thoughts on Music) he indicates he would happily say goodbye to DRM, but explains why he believes FairPlay shouldn’t be made licenable. It is a well written article, but deliberately misses several points.
On the subject of lock in to a particular store, he points out on average each iPod has only 22 songs from iTunes – or 3%, and given that proportion it is hardly lock in. Well, it is unless you’re willing to throw away £17.38 and spend the same to purchase those songs again from a different store. Not to mention that this is averaged over the owning population. How many first generation iPods are in circulation now; how many people like me who refuse to get suckered by DRM wont load any iTunes material? When you consider these points, then those who have purchased from iTunes probably do have a lot more to lose.
Further more with lock in, the problem also manifests itself in the situation of not all record companies have licensed to iTunes, particularly the smaller indie players and they may only work through a Microsoft DRM’d store, so can’t simply download you favourite obscure artist’s tracks to you iPod, or vice versa.
I don’t believe that Steve Jobs’ position is altruistic, but a case of it means he no longer has to carry the encoding burden, the DRM maintenance cost – which from his article is implied has the potential to be rather significant. Not to mention DRM free downloads means he has the potential to capture more download business.
Steve suggests the effort being spent on EU interoperability cases that have been going on in France, Belgium and other countries would better spent pressing the record companies. Yes, I’d agree with that; but as the boss of one of the biggest online stores, you’ve not been the most vocal proponent of removing DRM. Not to mention that as the biggest online vendor of music at the moment you probably have as much or more influence than many governments to persuade the ‘big four’ to try a new approach.
Phil (aka MP3Monster)'s Blog 
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