According to the RIAA, CD sales are increasing. Now, the RIAA also says that P2P destroys music sales, so it follows that if they're selling more CDs there must be less P2P, right? Uh, no -- file-sharing is up, too (so CD sales should be falling right?).
So is it possible that CD sales and P2P are decoupled (as all the quantitative, independent research indicates), and that the downturn in CD sales is better laid at the feed of bad business, a bad economy, fewer albums and more things competing for entertainment dollars (cough games cough Internet cough).
The number of CDs and other music products shipped from record labels to retail merchants rose 2 percent last year, to 814 million units, the first annual increase in five years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
If you enjoy cabaret music, then it is likely that you are acquainted with Lotte Lenya. She and her sometimes husband Kurt Weill, along with Bertolt Brecht, epitomize the Weimar era of German drama. "Die Moritat Von Mackie Messer" is perhaps better known to most Americans as the jazz standard/ murder ballad "Mack The Knife." "Die Seeräuber-Jenny" is the epic tale of the infamous "Pirate Jenny." (Visit Lotte Lenya's online store at Amazon.)
From www.aitanna77.tk :
"aitänna77 is my solo project treating analogic instruments (acustic guitar, electric guitar, xilophone, melodica...) with digital tools (pc, plugins...). The results... kind of lo-fi folk with a pop feeling, weird structures and glitchy/crunchy rhythms."
Rubber Johnny is the latest DVD from the king of warped music videos, Chris Cunningham. The central short film is six minutes long and chronicles a 16-year-old, inbred mutant's solitary existence, locked in a pitch-black basement by his ashamed parents. It was shot entirely on DV in infrared, and features a soundtrack from Aphex Twin.
As an excercise preceding the writing of Play, Larsen spent time as a group improvising around some of their favorite melodies from Autechre albums. This experimental excercise slowly evolved into song writing and suddenly songs were coming out of the air with Autecherian melodies filtered through climactic Larsen arrangements."
found at boingboing.net: "This Yahoo! Search service finds content across the Web that has a Creative Commons license. While most stuff you find on the web has a full copyright, this search helps you find content published by authors that want you to share or reuse it, under certain conditions."
search.yahoo.com
"Trying to situate Magik Markers in any sort of pre-existing pantheon is pointless. Since beginning as the manic rumblings of three friends in one of their grandparent’s basements some four or five years ago, the band has cut a swath across noise, improv, free rock, no wave, punk and/or hardcore, usually all at once, bellowing forth a sound that leaves all reference points bloodied in the dust, scratching their collective heads and wondering, “What the fuck just happened?”
“The band started one night in Hartford, Connecticut,” says Magik Markers’ drummer Pete Nolan. “I was getting bored of jamming in the basement by myself, mostly making noise with vacuum cleaners and broken PAs, so I got my friend and roommate Leah to come play some guitar while I jammed the drums. That was OK, but we needed something else, so we pulled Elisa off the couch where she was sitting reading and chewing her fingers. It was pretty tough but we eventually got her down there, and we pretty much sounded like we sound now. Maybe more surfy or something...”" Read more at dustedmagazine + 1 MP3 file
From the Stasisfield mailinglist:
Stasisfield founder john kannenberg was recently interviewed by Marc Weidenbaum, editor of Disquiet.com. The discussion covers a wide range of subjects, including john's curation of Stasisfield, recent solo projects (including Four Painters and A Canticle For Leibowitz ), and his ideas regarding the confluence of sonic and visual art.
Der neue japanische Horrorfilm
von Jörg Buttgereit
Spätestens mit dem Video-Export von Hideo Nakatas kultigem Ringu-Film ist die Nachricht bei uns angekommen, dass das japanische Horrorkino derzeit eine Blüte erlebt. Viele der einschlägigen Produktionen werden stante pede in Hollywood-Ware verwandelt – und verlieren dabei ihren eigenwilligen Charme. Jetzt hat Nakata selbst das amerikanische Remake seines Ringu-Sequels inszeniert. Mehr bei epd.de
From the official webpage: Kokeshi Doll, a heavy weight rock band has been causing sensations everywhere they go.
They will swallow you with sheer force, which you wouldn't expect from a 3-piece girl band. Their love of unique lyrics and somber yet disjunctive sound mirrors the reservedness of oneself. As they continue their search for the deep meaning of a human being, the band strive as the new breed of the 21st century.
"Japanese noise rock band Melt Banana found more success in the U.S. and the U.K. than in their own country, gaining a small but dedicated fan base among American and European punk rock fans. Although their music sounds noticeably different from any sort of traditional punk, it contains some punk elements: shrieking vocals, overdriven guitars, and one-and-a-half minute songs. Melt Banana's unique style, however, comes as a result of the distinctly piercing vocals of lead singer Yasuko O., as well as the frenzied, effect-charged playing of guitarist Agata. Searing, intense, and mind-blowingly fast are perhaps the first adjectives that come to mind when listening to Melt Banana's music." Read more
Featuring guest stars Lily Tomlin, Howard Cosell, Frank Sinatra, Richie Havens and a gang of children, Muhammad Ali spends forty minutes talking about tooth decay.
"James “Twig” Harper and Carly Ptak are Nautical Almanac, a Baltimore group that was, once upon a time in Michigan, Twig, Nate Young of Wolf Eyes, and percussionist Sol Meltzer. Nautical’s sound is somewhere between analog improv and improv comedy (if improv comedy made a sound [besides audience members yelling “Tomato!” “George Washington!” “Hepatitis Spelling Bee!”])—some sputtering beats under jerry-built noise that breaks before your eyes and ears, the sound, sight, and smell of wired garbage played by giant rats. " Read more
Also from dj monster mo:: "As far as I could determine, this 1969 session features tracks from a CBS Studios session in Nashville, TN that did not see an official release. A Japanese company released these discs from an unknown source. The bonus tracks are taken from The Johnny Cash Show. Cash's vocals have a more commanding presence than Dylan's."
English:
This short paper investigates whether and to what extent there is a conflict of interest between artists and their publishers, regarding to whether and to what degree illegal distributions of their copyrighted recordings should be prevented. This conflict arises
because artists also earn their profit from other market activities such as giving live performances, in addition to the their share of profits from sales of their copyrighted recordings via the publishers. Read the paper PDF
Deutsch:
Neue Studien belegen: Urheberrechtsschutz nützt Medienunternehmen nicht immer und Künstlern fast nie
Netzwerk-Ökonomen zeigen mit ihren Modellen, wie digitale Werke durch einen höheren Bekanntheitsgrad an Gebrauchswert gewinnen - auch wenn dies eine Folge von illegaler Verbreitung ist. Selbst aber in Fällen, wo eine rigide Copyright- und Kopierschutz sich als vorteilhaft für Medienunternehmen erweist, würden die meisten Künstler von der ungehinderten Verbreitung ihrer Werke mehr profitieren als von ihren Gewinnen als Urheber. Empirische Untersuchungen zur Situation der Künstler in Großbritannien und in Deutschland untermauern die Annahmen der Netzwerk-Ökonomen. Weiterlesen bei telepolis.deDas Paper im Orginal PDF
Some of the hottest properties in Hollywood these days are the remakes of Japanese thrillers. Their box-office success has helped coin the term "J-horror"-a genre that will intrigue you even more if you read our interviews with three key figures behind the phenomenon: director Hideo Nakata, producer Roy Lee, and author Koji Suzuki." Read more
The Top Five Sci-Fi Books: All Headed to the Screen Indicating that Sci-Fi is currently a hot trend in literary acquisitions by film producers, the Top Five books on The Book Standard/Nielsen BookScan Sci-Fi Bestsellers Chart are all currently in various stages of adaptation.
Maybe I'll be a feminist in my old age She quit London for New York after being hounded by the press. Five years later, Björk has a new relationship and a new baby. But, she confesses, she's still homesick for the British sense of humour.
Encouraging the spread of mobile phones is the most sensible and effective response to the digital divide
[...] the debate over the digital divide is founded on a myth—that plugging poor countries into the internet will help them to become rich rapidly
This is highly unlikely, because the digital divide is not a problem in itself, but a symptom of deeper, more important divides: of income, development and literacy. Fewer people in poor countries than in rich ones own computers and have access to the internet simply because they are too poor, are illiterate, or have other more pressing concerns, such as food, health care and security. So even if it were possible to wave a magic wand and cause a computer to appear in every household on earth, it would not achieve very much: a computer is not useful if you have no food or electricity and cannot read.
Rather than trying to close the divide for the sake of it, the more sensible goal is to determine how best to use technology to promote bottom-up development. And the answer to that question turns out to be remarkably clear: by promoting the spread not of PCs and the internet, but of mobile phones. [...] Read the whole story
