I just found this trailer while on my travels around the internet. Its a trailer for A Complete History of My Sexual Failures which I had the joy/miss comfort of watching again. Once again if you've not seen this film, go out and find it. Its one of the most freaky good and bad experiences you can have.
Category: media-and-expression
Rocketboom? Rocketwho?
Where did it all go, they must be wondering? After Amanda left over 2 years ago, Joanna has also now left. Now they got some very strange lady/girl doing the presenting. Rocketboom for me has seriously sunk to new a low. I wonder if people even watch it much any more? Its still part of my podcast download but that may change pretty soon. I don't know what it is but it really needs a good shake, do something different. Right now it still feels old and tired. Well someone needs to say it…
Record Store day?
My flatmate happen to have on Channel4 news today and I saw a segment about Record Store day. The general concept is that the independent record stores are losing out to the big stores, supermarkets and ultimately the internet. They have a lot of support from the record labels including Warner Music and others.
Anyway I can't work out if this is,
- simply a idea thought up by the record industry
- A idea brought together by independent record shops and now jumped upon by record labels
I'm a fan of independent stores generally, Bristol doesn't even have a independent record shop anymore. How tragic is that, specially with its background in dance music. and there is a real threat which is shutting down the independent store. But its not that simple, I think there missing something.
- The mass record chains are closing down or at least feeling the pitch from dropping sales
- The supermarkets are eating the lunch of the record chains and they don't give a crap about independent music.
- The internet is a threat but it depends how you look at it.
- The internet isn't just about itunes, napster, amazon, hmv, etc.
- There are tons of niche/independent online music stores such as Juno and my current number one Audiojelly.
- Music discovery is still mainly a social thing. Last.FM, Pandora, Blip.FM,etc.
The above smells to me like a opportunity to claw back the music lovers. Supermarkets do the plain mass and independents can cater for the rest of the market. Its not a huge market but you don't need to make a killing. I'm never going to be able to buy the excellent tune Roundabout by Sam Sharp at HMV, but I can find it at AudioJelly.
One of the advantages independent shops tout is the music discovery, and they do have a slight point but in actual fact I remember queing for ages to listen to the stack of vinyl which I had picked out, when I use to be a vinyl dj. But on the other hand yes there is a nice selection of different music in one place plus you can speak to people for recommendations. Trance like a lot of dance music has embraced the digital world quicker that other types of music. A lot of the djs, make there own music, play there own music and own there own record labels, so they have become like a brand.
The perfect example is Armin Van Buuren (voted number one dj in 2008). He owns 2 or maybe 3 record labels including Armind, plays sets all over the world, creates many remixes and creates his own works. Not only all that but he also has a instanly popular radio show which is syndicated all over the planet and a weekly podcast. Yep he must be the original flying dutchman. Point is that he's filling in the gap of music discovery. Gareth Emery is a regular trance podcast I found by clicking podcasts in AudioJelly.com. The link doesn't end there however. Every week after the podcast, creates a playlist for the mix. So I can identify tunes just by there running order and better still buy it right there.
If independant Record stores are to stick around, there going to have to stop thinking about themsleves as in the game selling pieces of vinyl. I can't quite put my finger on what exactly. But maybe a start is providing the ability to get digital downloads at high speeds in the store. Not because customers need high speed internet access (don't get me started on net cafes) but because they want advice, maybe?
Imagine a store so progressive that it has card readers, ipod docks and a bluetooth network. A place where the music matters and the format isn't important.
R&D TV: Episode 1
So finally its been revealed what I've been working on recently.
R&D TV is a pilot project between BBC Backstage (which is part of BBC R&D) and BBC RAD Labs. The pilot is monthly technology programme made up of interviews from knowledgeable BBC developers, BBC project experts and experts from around the world. Its made of rights cleared assets so sharing of content is a core part of its concept from day one. When I say experts, I don't even mean in the traditional sense but more people doing interesting things which there very knowledgeable about.
There are three parts to the project,
- A brief 5 minute video, containing all the very best bits
- A longer 30 minute video, containing deeper conversations
- The Asset Bundle, containing everything we used and didn't use to make the videos above
They say good artists borrow and the best steal. Well you can think of what we have done as a combination of PBS's NerdTV and Microsoft's Channel9. The biggest difference is the asset bundle.
Releasing the assets as well as the 5min and 30min versions is something that's new for the BBC and to be fair both teams are not well known for. I mean R&D and Rad are not content creation departments. However we truly believe this is a exciting and possibly important experiment in creating media specifically to be shared and remixed.
Not only does the asset bundle include media but it also has all the extra media to create the show and stuff which didn't make it into the show. So you can duplicate the show or with a little more creativity do some remixing and show – legally.
We (me and George Wright) did a interview with Jemima Kiss of the Guardian on Wednesday. There's a couple of corrections like the project is half RAD and half Backstage plus Rain Ashford works for backstage and Hemmy Cho works for RAD. But otherwise Jemima does a good explaining the project and some of the thoughts behind it. I kind of wished we recorded the interview but who knows what might appear in the asset bundle one day soon.
Videos can also be viewed on YouTube and Blip.TV right now but expect even more places in the next few weeks. We created a ATOM/XML podcast file so you can suck down all the files in one go using a podcatcher. Hell we even did the MD5 hashes to confirm the files are correct if you get them from elsewhere.
One of the things which I believe will happen very quickly at the start at least is people asking us to interview certain people. We will take a lot of this on board but what I really want to see is people filming themselves and using our footage and combining it with there own. I already have looked into mixing MakerTV with our footage to create a more hardware driven show. Or even taking parts of the Socialweb.TV and using some of the Kevin Rose interview. The best part of all this is, you can all do the same! One thing I've been dying to do is combine Pop!tech footage with ours, because they also put there shows out under a creative commons licence.
There's more to come from R&D TV so look out for number 2 about May time. Looking forward to hearing all your thoughts.
Nine Inch Nails does it again
I'm not even a fan of there music but I can't help but have total respect for what the Nine Inch Nails is doing to the music scene. This time they setup there own Bit torrent tracker to distribute there own music for free in Lossless audio. This guys seriously get it and must be gaining more fans and supporters that anyone else.
Pacemaker v2 Firmware upgraded
The guys at Tonium have recently released a firmware upgrade and software update. The firmware upgrade basically makes the first generation Pacemaker the same as a second generation pacemaker, except with a 120gig hard drive instead of a 60gig hard drive. It really takes some time to get use to the differences but now the pacemaker does everything you expect it to do including the ability to play back mixes you just made without the editor software. They have added the ability to switch between timestretch and pitch for speed control, which means the pacemaker should be even more useful to other types of music. Another one for those not using the pacemaker for dance music is the vinyl pause mode which allows you to control the music like touching vinyl. It needs work but yes you can kind of scratch with it using that mode. I'm expecting people will practice and practice till they find a way which works for them. I think some instant crossfader kill will help make scratching easier. There's also a load more FX's added in this upgrade. Tonium haven't quite finished the guide or videos but I'm finding pressing certain buttons which should work a certain way now do. For example in track selection you can now use the rewind and forward to skip through the alphabet super quick.
Of course the Editor has gone a radical redesign and I'm glad to announce that I got it working with Linux once again. This time I'm using Sun's VirtualBox free version because it supports USB devices and seemless mode. The Open source version works but there's no USB support, so you can never get the device working with the software. Now it works like a charm. I've published my specs on flickr so others can duplicate the setup if they like. I gave up on Wine because it just wasn't consistent and dll's were driving me up the wall. There's a couple new features like the ability to create cases of music and finally export your mix as a flat ogg vorbis file. So no more messing with Audacity thankfully.
The community has come on leaps and bounds now. Not only can you upload mixes which are longer that 1 hour but theres no limits on artists or tracks now. Hell they even allow you to upload mixes not done with the editor. So now I'm having to upload all my mixes which were on Soundcloud.com to Pacemaker.net. However the restrictions are pretty harsh, 128k, 60meg and 60mins max. There's also a emphase on allowing the djs on the site to podcast which is great. Tonium is suggesting there will be lots more including tshirts and the like.
The Pacemaker has come along leaps and bounds and anything else they do will be a positive move. Some people are hacking about with putting SSDs into the Pacemaker, some others are making a wireless and power kit for the pacemaker which will mean you can dj from the middle of a club or festival. Tonium are also working on accessorys and things like Tshirts, Stickers, etc. Mark my words, the Pacemaker is going from strength to strength. Good work Tonium!
Enjoying the Pet Shop Boys
My love for dance music is wider that most would imagine at first. One of the genres I actually quite like but generally wouldn't admit to is the electro-pop/syth-pop stuff. The Pet Shop Boys seem to fit right in the middle of that genre of music perfectly. So it was great to see and hear them perform the other night on the Brits, which I only tuned into because I happen to be in the hotel room flicking through the limited channels for something to watch. Anyhow, The Pet Shop boys they won the 2009 Outstanding Contribution to Music award. Although they play a good selection of tunes, Go West, Its a sin, West end Girls and my favourite Always on my mind. Enjoy the performance before it gets taken down…
Lost is back…
I'm loving Lost again (not that I really fell out of love with it unlike others), thank you Damon Lindelof and JJ Abrams for constructing a complex puzzle which you actually have to watch from the start to the end (although Lostpedia is useful) and requires brain power to follow. Thanks for not wimping out with some lame story to cover the complexity of Time Travel and the nature of the known universe. Thank you very much and I look forward to the next 31 episodes.
Colbert is really upset people remixed
Of course he's not, not only has his interview with Lessig been remixed 100's of times but also its been heard by 10000's of people. There all over the place and yet it still grows…
Lessig vs Colbert the remixes
Thanks to Glyn for notifying me about Lawerence Lessig on the Colbert Report. As usual Steven Colbert takes the comical opposite view to pick some fun at his guest. What's so interesting about this time is, Colbert tells the audience not to remix (also the name of Lessig's new book) any of his works including the show there on now.
“Never. ever. ever. take anything of mine and remix it! For instance, I will be very angry if anyone takes this interview right here and remixes it with some great dance beat, and it starts showing up in clubs across America.”
Obviously the opposite has happened (and Steven knew this was going to happen of course) and now there's all types of audio and video remixes of that segment. I wouldn't be surprised if it started showing up all over the west world Steven. (which would be great advertising for not only lessig's new book but also the colbert report of course)
Remix COLBERT/lessig project, has really blown up and now there's a contest here and video remixes appear on youtube. I was even tempted to do my own remix, but its late now and I got a lot on tomorrow. So maybe over the next few days I'll drop a remix track.