The most ridiculous story of this year is now....

Paul Oakenfold discussing how his "venture into mixing with a live orchestra" is something new that people aren't used to hearing. He's charging $50K a gig for his shows.

I guess if I could remix Madonna and U2, I would charge all you people $50K too.

"Oakenfold's two-day Pops performance comes as classical music is gaining popularity."

What?

" Oakenfold, who last year toured with Madonna and remixed Justin Timberlake's single "My Love," said the music that made him famous -- house and trance -- will never be as mainstream as hip hop and other music popularized by the likes of MTV."

Hmmm lesser known Trance and Electronic acts are separate from mainstream because they are spawned from the mainstream as an alternative to mainstream. It is it's own mainstream. It is not looking to be on MTV albeit a few Cadillac commercials and the like.

"You just don't have the artists and the videos, radios are not playing it," he said.

Maybe thats because the radio is tied to labels paying radio stations to play what the labels want the radio stations to play which is why you always hear the same music on the radio. As for the videos and artists...there are plenty of artists and videos out there, you just have to find them so here is a list of some at my myspace page under MUSIC. While a tad nonsensical, myspace is a good place to start to find a wider range of electronic artists and musicians in general. Virb is also a good place to go as is Audiobulb and WARP...come to think of it...what is he talking about? Oh...himself. I believe Portishead has played with a live orchestra way before this guy did. Shame on you for not giving props to other pioneers before you sir.

Prince is the new music hero

In a beautifully crafted plan, Prince (The Artist known as The Artist formerly known as Prince) is decidedly giving his upcoming new album (Planet Earth) away for free with a national Sunday newspaper which sells an average of 2Million copies of the paper weekly.

Prince, now the new music hero to many artists and music activists worldwide is simply exercising his ability as an artist to share his music with people and is grass rooting the largest innovation in newspaper promotions in history. The album apparently is going to include tickets to his upcoming concert in London, a move which is angering alot of people in the recording industry.
From the article..."The singer had signed a global deal for the promotion and distribution of Planet Earth in partnership with Columbia Records, a division of music company Sony BMG. A spokesman for the group said last night that the UK arm of Sony BMG had withdrawn from Prince's global deal and would not distribute the album to UK stores.

It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career," ERA co-chairman Paul Quirk told a music conference. "It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music.

"The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday."

My opinion: A music artist should be able to self promote when the label is notified if the artist belongs to a label. It is clear here though that the label has no interest in assisting Prince with his self promotion and is already threatening him with pulling distribution of the album which brings all the more importance to why artists should concentrate more on how THEY promote their music as opposed to how a label would promote the music from an artist they sign.

Just because you get to hear music for free does not mean that you do not value the content that you are listening to. The perception labels give that because you get something for free, you don't understand the value of it, is part of the gross mis-representative value judgments the industry in forcing on you in the first place. There is music worth buying...Ive received music and movies for free only to end up buying it up to 3 times just to make sure it's around in the future. I've paid for more music that I ended up not liking than I've ended up enjoying and this was mainly before the ability to download and hear what you are thinking of buying before you buy it.

Guitar Center sold for $2.1 Billion

Ouch....to a private investment firm that has not yet announced what they are going to do with it. Bain Capital Partners also owns Toys R' Us and Warner Music. Where is Toys R' Us now anyways?

First the Statue of Liberty and now....Privatunes!

With the onset of iTunes offering the EMI library without DRM (or should I say with EMI offering their music library through iTunes without DRM), the recent hoopla surrounding complete user identification embedded into each DRM free track you purchase through iTunes is now being freed once again by the French.

From the founders of the feed reader Matoumba, which is a 3rd generation feeds reader that digs up information most relevant to you, comes Privatunes. Privatunes allows you to erase private information that iTunes puts into each track that you legally purchase from their site. The information that is embedded is your full account name and email which was designed to track where your music goes if you decide to upload it to a file sharing server. That goal, while logical to the industry, does not take into account what happens if you decide to share your music with a few friends who share the music with a few friends who ultimately end up uploading your track to a file sharing site making you the responsible party and having to be the one in the spotlight as the guilty pirate.

Remember, sharing is caring so the idea of putting your full account information into your digitally and legally purchased track is ludicrous. If the idea is to protect the rights of the music maker then the music maker should be including themselves in the process of how the distribution happens. If the artist knows that their music is going out to the world without DRM then the artist should know that people might listen to their music without paying for the listen every single time it gets played. So actually there is no way any artist can control how their music gets distributed once it gets sold without limiting what the consumer can do with their legally purchased music.

Tower Records (R.I.P) sold this KISS doll resembling Gene Simmons. On the doll was a button that, when pushed, would play a few second of 'I wanna Rock and Roll all Night'. Of course it was all slow because the batteries were run down but you get the idea. I pushed the button like 5 times and wondered if KISS was being paid for each time I heard the snippet. I mean if i bought the doll I owned the doll but do I really own the music that comes with the doll?

Hunger Is From

I recently went to see Skinny Puppy live at the House of Blues. Aside from the show which was interesting to say the least, I had the distinct opportunity to begin a conversation with a female friend of a friend who was brought to the show as well. As for the friend who brought the girl I ended up conversing with, he's cordial to me but we have never really talked or introduced ourselves but apparently everybody likes him because he is a local business owner or major party thrower or something to that degree but he's everywhere and he showed up at the HOB with his female friend.

So we were all standing around staring off into the middle distance enjoying the concert goers all wearing black except for our group by the bar and she asks me about my shirt I am wearing which has the name "TheHungersite" on the front and the website on the back. She asks me "whats up with that shirt", and "Whats the name all about?"

I answered that it was a commerce type site that allows you to purchase goods and along with the purchase you also are buying food for either the people who made the products or other needy organizations. She then asked where the money for the purchase goes when you buy something from the site. I answered that it goes to either the people who made the goods or other needy organizations and that she should go check out the site to get more information.

I'm not sure what happened after that point but I think the conversation turned into defensive debate tactics as I don't think I was providing the information she wanted to hear. She continued that it doesn't make any sense and that someone is profiting from the sale of the goods and she wanted to know who. She asked,"If I buy a Gold necklace from the site, who gets the money?" to which I answered,"You most likely can't buy a gold necklace off the site but what you do spend on the purchase goes to feed the people who either made it or other needy people."

I told her that she can get into the semantics of the business model by going to the site to which she responded that she didn't want to go to the site but wanted me to understand that if I am wearing a shirt for something specific that I should at least know everything about it before I go wearing it out in public, which I equate as utopianisticly ironic as ordering fast food or going to a Skinny Puppy concert for the first time.

Keep in mind we were at the House of Blues seeing Skinny Puppy where over 90% of the attendees were wearing leather of some sort and a shirt with the name of the band they were there to see.

I was completely taken back by I guess not being ready for such an engagement at the show we went to, adding that my friends all started smiling and walking away from the situation like, I guess like they were my friends and leaving me with someone who more or less gave me the impression that she wanted to debate because she was looking for some kind of answer I couldn't provide, and instead of realizing that, she used it to drive home a point I was already fully aware of. Oh how I wanted to trail with my friends at this point.

Getting my bearing on her approach I began telling her why I use the site. I buy coffee and like the option to make sure that my purchase does toward a fair trade price for their product to which she asked how and my answer was by buying direct from single family plantation owners and not distributors that would raise the cost of the goods by including in the price of the product, their cut...I couldn't remember all of the talking points but that was sufficient enough because I liked the fact that with everything going on at the moment, she wanted to talk about something more relevant in the world.

She then asked how they ship and who they use to ship the products to me (DHL) and I think this was the moment that I realized that it really wasn't about finding out about the site, it was going to be more about where is the problem in this equation and how can I exploit it to gain ground in the conversation. This was the point I presented the bigger argument. My friends were still taking a stroll away from me.

I said, "Look the argument is too big for me to be able to lay it all out for you right now, all I can say is go to the site and learn about where the money goes and decide for yourself, I'm certain that they are non-profitable though. I choose to go there because it is one of the sites out there where everything is not imported from China and where I can buy food for people that comes as part of my purchase in the form or 'cups of food'. I get a letter from the family who I supplied food for and that made me happier in life to some extent rather than buying Starbucks or going to Wallmart and that ideally we all make bad purchasing decisions everyday". I continued that it is nice to have a website that allows me the option to make a difference on a very small scale.

I think I got frustrated at this point which happened to be the moment that my friends returned to the once complete circle where I was engaged.

She was giving me this "Oh you poor Ignorant Consumer" look while she told me that I was probably being had by some major fraudulent organization (I guess like the music industry?) and she felt bad for me because she said that I was trying to do something good and was probably being taken advantage of which made her sad.

I remember getting kinda mad at her at this point but still conversing. I told her to look around and see all the people who are paying money to have someone vomit fake blood on them, I said look at the HOB who doesn't care at all about any of the people who payed to get in and if there was any fraudulent organization in operation it was most likely any organization we can think up at that moment. I was then speechless in my thoughts.

I then asked her where does she shop? I asked three times with no answer. I'm sure we could dissect the purchasing powers of anyone around us and I then asked to look at her clothing labels noting that when it really comes down to it, we all are taking part in a marketplace where the cheaper the better and that China is leading the way for the "Cheaper" part and it was becoming more difficult to actually find something "Better". (Note: I am not anti-Chinese, I am just making a point a point about a flooded marketplace dominated by one distributor which is a communist country).

She did not answer any of my questions. She immediately digressed into that she knows now that she should go check out the site and that she might actually find something interesting to buy. The conversation then ended and I smiled and re-introduced myself to her with a smile although we did part quickly. I do hope she knows that the intention was true in that the site is actually one of the better sites giving the consumer the power to make a difference and not perceived power.

I respect her point and was glad to be approached by her. I do wish though that her tact was toned down a bit because we had never met before but it was what it was. When we went inside to see the show start, I mentioned to my friend that I would have liked for the conversation to go better and was met told, "So, you didn't like her because she had an opinion?"

...it wasn't about her opinion! It was about her approach. But the shirt did do its job come to think of it. I've had it for 5 years and it still wears great. The site is still there and the options I have there are very cool. There is a Hunger site, Literacy Site, Breast Cancer site, Child Health site, Animal Rescue site and a Rain Forrest site all tabbed on the front page. You can go there every day and click on the "Help Feed The Hungry, Its FREE!" Or you can buy drinks at a Bar for yourself. your choice. I do both.

Oh well, back to my 7-11 coffee and using my environmentally disruptive computer...

RIAA bringing in troops...but local troops.

The RIAA acknowledges it all — except the notion that its staff presents itself as police. Yes, they may all be ex-P.D. Yes, they wear cop-style clothes and carry official-looking IDs. But if they leave people like Borrayo with the impression that they’re actual law enforcement, that’s a mistake.With all the trappings of a police team, including pink incident reports that, among other things, record a vendor’s height, weight, hair and eye color, the RIAA squad can give those busted the distinct impression they’re tangling with minions of Johnny Law instead of David Geffen.

ISP's spy on you? Nuh-Uh.

AOL, AT&T, Cox and Qwest all responded to the survey, with a mix of timeliness and transparency.

But only Cox answered the question, "How long do you retain records of the IP addresses assigned to customers."

Cox's answer: six months. AOL says "limited period of time," while AT&T says it varies across its internet-access offerings but that the time limits are all "within industry standards."

Comcast, EarthLink, Verizon and Time Warner didn't respond.

So don't forget to clear your temp files, index.dat, arp cache and unplug from your modem...it still doesn't matter.

Canadian Copyright Law formed by Hollywood Lobbying?

So here we see amongst other ramblings that Diane Feinstein has mushrooms on her mind, the MPAA can reach into other countries to influence law and two other important facts:

One:
Unauthorized camcording will not be tolerated in Canada even if it means diverting law enforcement resources from health and safety issues to movie theaters.

Two:
Is that private meetings, foreign pressures and lobbyist drafted bills is how law gets made in Canada.

Darfur is not having a crisis...unless you look

More and more we hear how there is no crisis in Darfur, no genocide and no political corruption. That is unless you look down on Darfur from a satellite. Take a few moments to click on the link in the header and view entire cities decimated despite the Sudanese government claiming that nothing is wrong.

After all orders are orders.

A New Language Emerging

What if we sold our language rights to companies so that the words we use to communicate with each other are either replaced by ads or that ads would be placed in between the spaces of the words while other companies would purchase ad spots in between the ads of the already advertising advertisers? I mean why not? Think about a few scenarios that would prove this theory plausible;

You probably couldn't because you wouldn't be able to communicate to the person next to you. While my friends and I couldn't stop laughing at the possibilities of how if that were true, companies would reshape language to suit their business model. Seriously though, if you don't know about Net Neutrality then you may not realize how close to that scenario we already are. Close like a Gillette 4 blade razor and the new Gillette shaving gel. Gel so smooth, you'll think of Jamba Juice smoothies made from real 100% ice cream from Breyers brand brand ice cream as the hot summer day wreaks havoc on your skin so you should reach for Copper tone Suntan lotion with sunblock but if your going to do that make sure you have already prepared your Kool-Aide all sugar fruit flavored beverage made with Sparkletts water from the State of California. Been to California lately? Well North Cruise lines has the vacation package for you!!...and on and on and on and on.

Younger Brother Live at the Brixton Academy

Well the show is past but the video memory remains forever posted.

Why DRM will never work

To summarize why DRM will never work in an article written by Jeremy Allison for ZDNet:

• Step 1: Create a DRM system.
• Step 2: ???
• Step 3: Profit!

The self destruction of DRM is cause by the lack of caring of what happens after the creation and before the profit. Thats why there are like 10 forms of DRM out there. Most of it is proprietary to a specific organization

Plus it is noted that by 2012 the cost of DRM management will skyrocket to about 9 BILLION dollars, so if ever there was a new reason to say you should be paying more for your music online and in the store, whatever store is still open selling music, DRM is now the leader of that reason.

Proof that the Music Industry sells "Formulaic" Music

Oh Brother...this one is good. Thanks to em411 gl0tch. It helped me to realize that my speakers were on the wrong sides of my desk.

Another Corporate Blunder

I hear so many times that "a few people in our giant organization have spoiled it for such a small percentage of people in this country that it really doesn't matter, so lets just pay the fine and get on with it", it becomes almost a joke to see a commercial on TV from that same company touting how they are one entity. Even if you are to interview within that organization you are told how cohesive and team focused the company is and yet when the company makes a mistake, all they have to do is remove their association from the group and claim it was just bad apples. How quaint.

Citigroup got nailed for misleading Retiree's into forking over retirement money resulting in most of the retiree's having to get jobs to cover their losses.

The penalty includes a $3 million fine and $12.2 million in restitution to more than 200 people through a related class-action lawsuit. The NASD also suspended three brokers and two branch managers at a Citigroup office in Charlotte, North Carolina, and fined them a total of $295,000.

So were the bad apples fired?...NO
Broker Matthew Muller was fined $50,000 and suspended nine months, and broker Joseph Zentner was fined $30,000 and suspended 30 days. Branch manager Randall Matz was fined $60,000 and suspended 90 days, and branch operations manager Elizabeth Harris was fined $30,000 and suspended 45 days.

In an e-mail, Citigroup spokeswoman Susan Thomson said the largest U.S. bank takes the matter "very seriously," calling the activities "the inappropriate actions of a small group of employees in one office more than five years ago."

I guess its ok then Susan thank you...move along...

Watch AT&T's CEO Farewell Speech attacking Net Neutrality

Despite claims of poverty whenever pressed to offer better services, these AT&T execs are privately gloating over more than $35 billion in gross profits over the last 12 months. Moreover, Whitacre (and now Stephenson) are pressuring Congress to allow them to provide privileged Web access to their customers to companies that pay them a special fee.

“With all of our generous campaign contributions, I’m quite certain that Congress will see it our way,” he said during his farewell speech. “Who else they gonna listen to? The public?!?”

RIAA drops another piracy case

The shear amount of lawsuits ending in being dropped has a new addition in which dating back to 2005 where the RIAA sued a disabled mother (an infuriating story I ranted about back when it happened on yummykind.com(since removed)). Turns out that they couldn't find anything or prove anything because the two individuals had never heard of file sharing! So the tactic the RIAA is using now is sue first prove later if even proving it cant occur...im lost now.

Good people living good lifestyles still get raw deals

Found out this weekend that my mother has what appears to be breast cancer. Now I'm the first one to admit that I would gladly take the place of my mother for any disease but I do find it angering that a person such as my mother who has lived a dedicated life of Church and Family and Health has to deal with cancer for the second time and other misfortunes like bells palsy. I have to ask why her and not me? It's like the plight to live, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, will greet you with cancer at some point no matter what lifestyle you choose.