How the internet is powered and why iTunes changing their logo is a good thing

Fun fact: I used to study physics*.  I know! would've thought it? Newton was a clever chap wasn't he, and he surmised that every object has at least two opposite forces acting upon it at any one time in.  For example the surface you are stood on exerts a force upwards into you at the same levels as gravity pushing in the opposite direction.  Otherwise you would either go spinning off into space or crushing through the Earth's mantle.  This concept of opposite forces continues throughout the world of physics be the that the forever fantastically named quarks**,  electrons and positrons or a myriad of other examples.  Nowhere is this more true than in the Internet.  However unlike other examples, The Internet not only has these two complete opposite forces exerting on it at any one time, in this case it is fact powered by them!

So what are those forces, well they are:

CATS!

Mr Joel Veitch in his paper "The Internet is made of Cats"*** got it half right.  He, correctly, theorised that the internet is not only made of and by said Cats but that it was also a positive influence on the world creating all the nice things that you find on the Internet.  This is evidentially true to anyone who has spent any length of time on t'interwebs or indeed opened an email during the 90's.  What Mr Veitch failed to mention is the opposite force acting upon the Cats at all time.  Naturally this is...

HATING STUFF!

Hating stuff**** occurs naturally throughout the Internet in many forms. In blogs such as these, forums comments, social networking sites and at the Daily Mail's website.  Now some of this is quite justified, I can heartily recommend www.redlettermedia.com  for some simply fantastic hate filled criticisms of modern cinema and quite often the internet can be the voice of common sense pointing out and lampooning the ass-hatery of individuals and companies world wide.  Lots of it is just hating stuff however.  And there has been a lot of hating stuff recently.



Last week iTunes released it's 10th iteration and shock horror it changed it's logo! This has caused uproar on the internet! Somehow.

"Classic iTunes" logo

Steve Jobs has been criticised for "abandoning 10 years of instant product recognition and replacing it with an unknown".  Now in my opinion, unlike the whole iPhone4 signal strength problem (yeah, you're holding it wrong) this strikes me as utter nonsense.  Why I assume you ask? because things have changed in the last ten years.  No they have, go check I'll wait.  You see what I mean?! I know, it surprised a lot of other people to.

If there is one thing we human beings hate, it's change but change the world has.  Where iTunes has been successful is that it has gone outside of it's area of influence.  What I mean by this is that once upon a time in the early days of the internet people who kept music on their computers were viewed with suspicion, fear and generally ignored.  They were viewed as Crazy types who have digitised their music destroying it in the process with psychoacoustics (actually that argument is still going on just most people don't care anymore).

Amongst other things what iTunes very cleverly did was put on a CD on it's logo.  (It also got locked into DRM by the SDMI but that's another matter entirely and that's not the subject here.)  By placing a familiar household object within the logo Apple reached out to people who did not put music on their computers and told them that it was ok to do so. It gently stroked their heads and put a picture of a CD on there to remind them that it's like a CD except that it's spreadsheet that plays music.

Nasty horrible fake fruit...I mean iTunes 10 Logo

Now whereas this is a tiny part of iTunes' success it is still part of it. The marketing within the brand logo was clear, this is a product you use alongside your CD collection, this is a resource you can use in conjunction with your CD's, put your music on here and keep your CD's safe it said.  This is simply just not the case any more.

It's now 12 years since Napster, 8 years since Kazaa, 5 since Limewire.  The concept of peer to peer networking is thoroughly embedded within the mindset of todays music listeners.  The simple fact of the matter is that the CD is in it's death spasms. The failure of the music industry to recognise the digital revolution is well documented and I am not going to add to it here but in all honesty if you still do not think that the CD is on it's way out ask yourself this:

Name the last 4 cd's you bought and the length of time between the first and last purchase.

There was a time when all of us have gone into HMV and picked up 4-5 albums in one go.  Chances are you were some where between 16-24 when you did this.  Chances are you've not done it for a while now.  Year on year download sales increase and physical format sales decrease and at long last the Music Industry is beginning to recognise that this is not actually a problem, it's just the way of things.

Apple have recognised this, in removing the CD aspect of their logo they are turning away from it's first 10 years of providing a product that integrates with a CD.  Whereas I doubt the ability to rip tracks from a physical format onto iTunes will go the message here to me is clear.  The first 10 years was about iTunes and the CD being together.  Now iTunes is all grown up and moving on to other things, it doesn't need the CD anymore.  None of us do.

In short it's not something to hate, not really, if it really bothers you that much just change the icon on your computer it's not hard and there are dozens of tutorials on the internet teaching you how.  It's really much more of a cat thing.

* I did fail though.
**up, down, side, bottom, strange, charm, anti up, anti down, anti side, anti bottom, anti strange & anti charm
*** Basement Cat notwithstanding
**** FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Making shows happen - Part 1 Riders

Well I've not done this in a while and probably should.

In intermittent period I have largely been doing two things; Working and trying to find more working....work.

When people ask me what I do at gigs and I tell them "usually a combination of show advancement and stage management" this usually garners a couple of raised eyebrows and the question "what's that then?".  So I thought I would say what they are here and then in the future I can just refer people here.  In the interest of sanity I will try and make this as jargon free as possible, I will also try and insert some advice to unsigned bands because I am nice like that.

Show advancement is what happens when the deal has been done.  Promoters, tour reps, bookers and venue managers all get together and do theirjobs (which I wont go over here as it wouldn't do justice) and from this a concert or series of them is arranged, advertising is done, tickets are sold and all prepare for an enjoyable and profitable evening.  What show advancement entails is making sure, this then happens and that everybody has everything they need to make this happen.

In more detail they fall into the following categories:

Technical Rider: What you need to provide from a technical aspect to make the show happen.  This will almost certainly involve a Public Address system of some sort a Front of house mixing desk and a monitor mixing desk.  The bigger the show the bigger the requirements.  Particularly large artists may ask you to provide amplifiers yourself and Chuck Berry insists on a psychic 30 piece band, that know his entire back catalogue and must be able to guess what song he is going to play next because he wont tell them in advance. Conversely to this at large festivals the production crew may tell the bands lower down in the line up what equipment they are allowed to use as this will then be shared between them all to speed change over times only allowing the head liners to use their own gear.

Chances are if you're just starting out you wont be making many demands.  However do use a technical rider to tell people what you are bringing or more accurately not bringing. If you are not bringing a bass amp and drum shells, say so.  This allows arrangements to be made well in advance.  Conversely if you will be bringing a bass amp and drum shells you will mysteriously end up being booked for more shows by your local promoter, allow other people to use them to and you will also mysteriously end up getting pretty decent gigs. No really, making it so local bookers don't have to phone round every band asking whether or not they're bringing a bass amp will pay dividends, even if you're rubbish.

Channel List: A spreadsheet that details how many signals will be going from things that make noise (outputs) into things that make them louder (mixing desk and amplification).  Particularly fancy ones will details what microphones are preferred, whether this signal needs to be monitor mixed (do the people on stage need assistance hearing it through the wedges on stage) whether it needs a phantom channel (I have no idea what this means either) and other technical requirements as well.

Now this used to be a fairly simple process as every band was the same.  Namely there were two guitarists, a bass player, a drummer and maybe some of them sing.  These were simpler times.  Now as more and more equipment is stuffed onto a stage and everyone has at least one mac book, some kind of bontempi organ from a car boot sale,  a good five keyboards, samplers, sequencers and a whole host of other electronic trickery channel lists are fast becoming huge.  Some bands even go so far as to plug all of these things into their own mixing desk on stage and one of them handles everything giving the sound engineers only one input cable for about 15 different assorted instruments.  These people are gods in my opinion as they save a lot of time, but it's not always appropriate so having an accurate channel list is an absolute must as it lets people know how much work they need to do in limited periods of time and enables them to have everything prepared in advance saving that most precious of commodities; time.

A good channel list will make sound engineers hate you less.  They will hate you a little bit, but that's just part of being a sound engineer.

It will also help avoid statements like "what do you mean you don't have 32 plug sockets on stage?"

Stage plot: The stage plot is in essence a handy diagram showing where bands are going to put everything on stage.  Sounds fairly innocuous but it is an incredibly hand thing to have.  Firstly it's a visual aid and they always help, plus they will give information like how many mic stands are going to be needed and where everything is and therefore where all of the cables need to be.  Essentially it works alongside the Channel list to complete the picture.

A good stage plot looks like the one on the right.  It shows where everything is on stage, shows where the preference of monitor placement is and has been done on the computer for legibility and has in this case provided a legend all though this is not always needed.  The set-up is not particularly complicated but is made immeasurably easier with this handy diagram.

Whereas a bad one looks like it has been done a napkin.  Even this though is useful, it's just not as useful and will probably generate more questions than answers.  Sometimes on purpose.





Dear unsigned bands: Have a stage plot.  Spend some time on it and you will only have to do it once or until you buy a new glockenspiel that you just have to incorporate into your set for one song.

Lastly Schedule: This is in many ways the most important of all information provided by a venue.  It will state load in times, sound check times, door times and stage times.  Stick to them.  Certain bitter stage managers (not me of course) will say that musicians need to have times adjusted by about two hours to make them turn up on time now whereas I would never be so jaded as to make statements like that it is true that timings are generally the first place to slip.  If you can not make the time's given, which for the unsigned band is entirely possible given that you most likely have a day job as well, let people know.  Things can be adjusted and moved around.  Chances are there will be some sitting around to be done, but similarly if you are there and somebody else decides not to turn up on time you can purloin that stage time for yourself and garner yourselves a sound check rather than just the line check you were going to have.

Like wise with stage times.  Most venues now have their entertainment licenses very strictly enforced and the time you are given on stage will be cut short if you take too long getting everything up there.  I can remember when I first started doing this ten years ago bands would be told "you have thirty minutes" now it is very much the case that you are told "you have till 8:30".  Once you're finished the most likely thing you will want to do is have a beer and chat up that red head, but don't just yet!  Get everything off as fast as possible, in all honesty you should and must be able to strip the stage of your gear in about 5 minutes.  Get a reputation for being on time and setting up/stripping stages in a timely fashion and again that mysterious promoter effect will kick in.

Well that's about it I think for now.  Technical riders and scheduling documents are not the most exciting things in the world but they do make shows happen smoothly.

That said I did recently come across the finest written rider known to man, have a look not only will it give you a good idea of what I mean by all of this but it is also genuinely hilarious in places.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1004061iggypop1.html

TTFN - DFTBA

SOUND *intake of breath* CIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITEH!

Right then, been meaning to do this for a while but put it off, but no more!

@ARRJAYKAY Sound City guide. Bands wot i fink you should see! (apparently this sort of thing requires poor spelling, no I don't understand it either but I don't make the rules)


I shall attempt to do this in as few a words as possible, I know you're busy after all

Wednesday 19th May

Mugstar 20:15-20:45 Kazmier - Noisy, awesome. What more do you need?
I Am Austin 21:00-21:30 Mojo - Drum & Bass (not DnB though!) jumpy dancey joy joy
Dog Show 21:30-22:00 Static Gallery - The 2 man gypsy found music circus of glee
We are the Grande Mello Mello 22:00-22:30 - Chilian Indy Shenanigans
Alice Klar The Shipping Forecast 22:30-23:00 - Yar Yar German techno plus scouse cheek/chique
Little Miss Strange Heebie Jeebies 23:30-00:00 - If Lou Reed was 20 now, he'd be in this band
Barberos Magnet 00:15-00:50 - 4 Men dressed as sperm playing 3 drum kits and keys. DO IT!

Thursday 20th May

Tina Refnes Heebie Jeebies 19:45-20:15 - Music to breath out to
Misery Guts The Masque 20:45-21:15 - Go, smile, come out thinking I really do know what I'm talking about
DNA Orchestra Leaf Cafe 21:10-21:35 Hauntingly good trip-hop nostalgic joy machine
Cabruêra Hannah's Bar 21:55-22:20 Music to pretend you're in a Tarentino movie by.
Minion TV Leaf Cafe 22:30-23:00 Liverpool instrumentalists will sell you that Lexus!
The Loud Mojo 23:00-23:30 Very Ronseal..... but that's good thing!
Wave Machines The Kazimier 23:30 - 00:30 like a really stoned Deadmau5 with miffed vocals, listening to these makes you happy and a top way to finish off the day

Friday 21st May

Rosie Jones Studio 2 Studio 2 20:30-21:00 Devon acoustic cheeky goodness with kittens & cows
Young Guns Masque Theatre 21:15-21:45 High Wycombe finest, not hard though is it, RAWK!
Curry & Coco Heebie Jeebies 22:00-22:30 if Robots in Disguise were men....and good
Reverend Sound System The Haigh 23:00-00:00 No Makers, side-project-tastic
The Staves 33-45 Midnight Session, calm right back down with 3 part sister harmony

Saturday 22nd May

Strait Laces Metropolitan 18:00-18:30 No idea why these are on so early, WHERE THE WOLF ROAM!
Fei Comodo Masque Theatre 19:15-19:45 Like Enter Shikari but without all the dicking about
Mr Fogg 33-45 20:00-20:30 Like playing a jónsi record at 33 not 45
Pink Film Zanzibar 21:00-21:30 Polished, ready, see now, brag later
Sound of Guns Haigh 22:00-23:00 Learn the lyrics now so you can sing along at Glasto next year
Doktor Combover Magnet 23:30-Onwards Like burlesque for your ears. Aural filth for fun and profit



That's what Brian Boitano would do and so should you

(As ever when I can't think of a suitable picture to put in I insert one of a homeless polar bear, did you spot him?)

How to Destroy Angels - This is my excited face

So we have seen announced today the collaboration of a new musical project with Husband and Wife Trent Reznor and Mariqueen Maandig AKA "how To destroy angels".

To the right was my initial reaction to this news.  Now before I go any further you can follow them on twitter HERE (already 4000 followers when I signed up) and on youtube HERE (800 subscribers already).  Have a look at the website for typically Reznor teaser trailer goodness, the kind of thing we have come to expect from Mr Reznor over the years HERE.  He really does know what he is doing.

And that's it really.  He really does know what he is doing.  Now ignoring the music entirely (no really) as where as I am very excited about what the family Trent are going to produce that's not really the point of this blog.  What I am interested in here however is what they do with it.

If you have never heard of Trent Reznor's day job "Nine Inch Nails" firstly please let me know what rent is like under rocks as I'm a bit hard up at the moment and have to move house soon and secondly allow me to bring you up to speed.  Very quickly.  There are better places to learn of it than here, but in a couple of quick sentences.  Cleveland, Indsutrial Synth Pop, late 80's, unrelenting music that still managed massive critical acclaim, Grammys and success even though if you sit down and listen to it it really really shouldn't of.  Think angry man beating the shit out of scaffolding whilst playing keyboards but still somehow putting a massive smile on your face.  No I can't work out how he did it either.  Clever bastard.  To quote Steve Huey 

"Nine Inch Nails were the most popular Industrial group ever and were largely responsible for bringing the music to a mass audience."

If you're still none the wiser really just go an have a listen to Just like you Imagined from 1999's The Fragile on Spotify as you probably heard it already as it was on the trailer for 300  

Now what I actually want to talk about is the various ways in which NiN have distributed music over the years.

Nine Inch Nails albums have been leaked via the Internet pretty much since mp3's and netscape started having a party down your interweb pipe be that via mp3.com, napster, myspace or anything even vaguely similar.  NiN are the very definition of viral distribution and better bloggers than I have waxed lyrical on them in the past.  The 2005 album With Teeth was streamed in it's entirety via myspace and when physical copies were eventually released they were packed full of pro tools and ACID pro files allowing users to experiment with Reznor's music in a manner that suited them.  That's right, the physical copies came with something fans actually WANTED.  Enhanced CD's having photo and videos etc has been nothing new but it has never really carried much water with fans.  After all download song for free or buy track and get a photo as well, not really much incentive.  This was 5 years ago, somehow everyone else hasn't followed suit.  Ah well.

2007 saw Year Zero released. A concept album with the lyrics centred around fictional characters and an internet based alternative reality game called Art Is Resistance in which the stories and content contained within the music was continued across another medium.  So listeners could have the album on and play the ARG at the same time.  In a time in which Google tell us that people "graze" media, multitasking across many different delivery methods and subjects having multiple tasks centred around the same thing has got to be a win, surely?

The there are the Easter eggs, oh the easter eggs!  Running the static at the end of My Violent Heart through a spectogram reveals the image on right.  An arm and hand interacting with the sound file.  No really, there is ACTUAL imagery in this music.  And that's one example.

Perhaps most famously (or at least the one I have seen quoted and referenced most at conferences and the like) are the albums Ghosts I-IV and The Slip which was made available in a "pay what you want scheme" (much like Radiohead's In Rainbows)  plus more expensive variants of the album available to those that wanted them (The £300 Ultra-Deluxe limited to 2500 copies edition sold out in just 3 days) and was released on Creative Commons licenses as well as large amounts of concert footage being released via bit torrents.

So that was all a very very brief description on the kind of methods Reznor has used to release his music in the past few years.  It is not an exhaustive list by any stretch and even the most casual of googlings will reveal far more in-depth descriptions.

Now of course I am not completely naive (hehe naive is an anagram of Evian).  Could any of NiN's unorthodox methodologies yielded such success if Reznor had not already been incredibly successful through more traditional  recording industries models? No probably not.  Those Eight grammy nominations before the year 2000 didn't happen by accident, he is after all a very talented musician and the Universal Music Group know a thing or to about promoting their artists but in no way whatsoever does that invalidate what he has done.

Now I seem to remember Clarkson on Top Gear saying to pay attention to the new BMW M Series (or something, I'm not really a car person) as what are extras in that car will be standard features in 10 years, much the same can be said to be true of Reznor in my belief.  When How to Destroy Angels release material in the summer I will be amazed (and a little disappointed) if it is not released and promoted via methods that I previously had no idea about and I can't wait for that. 

In a few months Trent will once more take the current distribution model by the scruff of the neck and give it a good shake and I for one can't wait to see what it looks like afterwards.

Oh and I bet the album will sound incredible as well.

rjk


**EDIT***
I am good to you, I really am

The death of the single and how it brought us to today

When I was 6 I saved up 4 tokens cut out from Wheetabix packets, sent them off, allowed 28 days for delivery and received "Come on Eileen" By Dexy's Midnight Runners as part of their Top Trax promotion.  This was the undoubtedly the beginning of something that would be massive in my life.  My room as a child growing up in South Wales was full of two things, He-man toys and tapes.  Everywhere you looked there was tapes, making that oh so very distinctive sound as you shifted another box to have them rattling around next to each other and then in one corner that was neater than the other, the 7" vinyls.

My pocket money went pretty much on two things from that point onwards, singles from Woolworths (I wasn't allowed in the record shop, it was full of bikers smoking roll ups and drinking strongbow) and then whatever change was left over went in the Street Fighter 2 machine in the corner.

Then in the mid 90's the weirdest thing happened.  I couldn't buy singles any more.  Slowly but surely the selection I had to choose between went away.  What had been rows of Vinyls and cassingles in my childhood, became the cd's (and microdisks, minidisks, dats......briefly) of just the top 20, soon after just the top 10.  Then albums, compilation albums and official film soundtracks.  Next to the pick and mix and the other stuff they try and sell you whilst you queue to pay.

The reasoning was simple.  Singles cost too much money to make and didn't generate enough profit per unit sold.  So out was the £4 single with the song you wanted, a remix and two b-sides and in came the age of the 2 good tracks, 10 fillers £15 album.  How many people bought OMC's album purely because "How Bizarre" was on there?  and more importantly can they name any other track from there?

"The Industry was looking for excuses to get out of it.  You had these arguments that singles were cannibalizing album sales.  So they killed the single"  - Jim Caparro (former president of Island Def Jam)

So they did, problem solved.

Terry McManus wrote the following in billboard magazine in 1997

"When [the record industry] stopped making vinyl singles and offered nothing to replace them, the industry stopped a whole generation from picking up the record-buying habit"

But surely that doesn't matter? There is no need for people to sample the product, to test it and see if they like it if they have to buy the whole thing surely?

McManus continues:

"...if you think about water that's trying to reach the surface it comes up in one place and you plug it up.  And you go, 'OK, that's plugged up, my water problem is finished.'  It's still seeking a way to rise to the surface."

A year later in 1998 Shawn and his Uncle John Fanning unleashed Napster on an unsuspecting world, something that McManus refers to as "the revenge of the single".

This morning we in the UK are preparing for a world which includes the Digital Economy Bill.  The British Phonographic society can breath a big sigh of relief that it has successfully criminalised it's customers and the £200 million it is currently "loosing to piracy" is bound to come flooding in any day now but in essence what have they done?

The trouble is, when you block and fight with your most creative citizens from doing something they love they will inevitably find a creative solution to that problem.  The revenge of Peer to Peer is coming, I wonder what it will be.

Home tapeing party anyone?

No Really

I have massively neglected my blog of late.  And that is bad.


Sorry Blogosphere. 


So why is this.


1) I am lazy
2) I am both lazy AND Busy


I have been busy with my full time job of being a student and organising various bits and pieces including the Third Degree festival which if you are so inclined to learn more about Liverpool's premier independent artist music festival you should totally go look at 3rd Degree Festival and then buy tickets for all or some of the nights at See Tickets.


If that wasn't enough I am helping to sort Oh 2 Play which if you or any of your friends would be interested in winning 

• 2 gigs at Liverpool Sound City
• HMV In-store in your home city
• Equipment Prizes (Courtesy of Sentric Music)
• Studio Time (Courtesy of Sandhills Studios)
• AMG Venue Support Slots (courtesy of Academy Music Group)

Then you should totally enter or convince friends that you have (that are in bands) to enter.


Then there's all the student stuff as well.  Writing an essay about napster and the RIAA and the Digital economy bill and all manner of stuff that gets me all worked up.  When it is done I will post it here.  Maybe,  that sounds like something I would do.


One of my news resolutions (apart from not swearing in twitter so much) was to start vlogging.  Considering how little I have blog it seems odd to take on vlogging to.  However I have and you can find it on my youtube channel which is here:


http://www.youtube.com/user/Ritchsaysnothing



Leave a comment, be nice.  Or be horrible, I don't really care.  I can take it *sniff*


Other things in brief, I went to http://liverpool.twestival.com/ it was an awesome evening full of awesome people demonstrating why we are better at talking over twitter than we are in real life. HA! No really.


Right, Imma gonna let you finish but Beyonce had one of the greatest movies of all time.  Wait no, I mean Imma gonna go watch tonights episode of Lost and then go to bed.


But I do genuinely keep meaning to talk about Mother Love Bone, Temple of the Dog and Sound Garden et al and why I believe these bands and not the Arctic Monkeys, Metallica or anyone else are far more important in the digital revolution and why they deserve there place in history.


I know! interesting right? I thought so.


As usual I tried to put a picture in relevant to my blog.  This time I failed and there is a pic of a homeless polar bear.  Did you spot him.


DFTBA