Comment Apple Broadcast Network back last June (Score 1) 244
Slashdot ran the idea of an Apple broadcast network back in June:
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/06/05/219214/The-Apple-Broadcast-Network?from=rss
Comment Hydrodynamic Girder and Panel Set (Score 1) 458
A company called Tekton bought the molds for the old Kenner Girder and panel sets and manufacture them in Boston. The best of the sets that would fit your needs for the higher end of your age range is the Girder and Panel Hydrodynamic Deluxe Set (Amazon has it here http://www.amazon.com/Girder-Panel-Hydrodynamic-Deluxe-Set/dp/B000PVVQMU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1290302783&sr=1-3 ). The company also makes the bridge set, which I have in it's original 1960's Kenner version. I have played with this set as an adult and it too makes an excellent choice.
Submission + - The iTunes Beatles Folly
Hodejo1 writes: 20 minutes before Apple's big music announcement Engadget discovered that iTunes had already uploaded the entire Beatles catalog. Despite the scoop they were less than impressed and for obvious reasons. As Richard Menta at MP3 Newswire pointed out more than two years ago "If you do a Google search for Beatles music what you will find is a massive collection of Beatles MP3s posted on web servers worldwide. It's all there, every track from every album they ever made including the Christmas EPs, alternate takes and any other audio ephemera the global fans of the Fab Four could find and post. You don't need LimeWire. You don't need BitTorrent. And you don't need iTunes". At Digital Music News Paul Resnikoff wrote "Jefferson Graham of USA Today gave just gave me a call, asking if adding the Beatles to the iTunes Store would make a difference. So who cares exactly? Actually, plenty will not only care, but buy serious digital chunks of the Beatles catalog. Yes, despite a ten-plus year window to rip their entire CD collections, despite the endless opportunities to steal the entire Beatles remastered discography in about 20 minutes. There will be people buying, most of them older and carrying the greatest emotional attachment to the group".
Submission + - Why Nielsen is Worthless to Music Industry
Hodejo1 writes: Nielsen is considered to be the most reliable information. It's what people turn to when they want to find out what's happening as far as data goes. The truth is Nielsen doesn't have half the story. If you add up all their available new release figures from 1992 to 2009, you're going to come up with a total in the neighborhood of 735,000 new releases.
Now, go take a look at CDBaby's "About" page. According to CDBaby, they are "the largest online distributor of independent music." And they'll give you their numbers. 278,510 albums being sold on CD Baby, 5,339,025 CDs sold online to customers, $107,769,092 paid directly to the artists. The stat there that I'm keying on is 278,510 albums being sold. That's a full third of what Nielsen reports to have been released since 1992. In 2005, Tunecore arrived. They're a little less public with their numbers, but I know that last year, they claimed 90,000 new releases, just about the same as Nielsen reported for the entire industry. Unless CDBaby went on a hiatus for the year, obviously there's a huge pile missing. Let's add Catapult to that. They released more than 10,000 new titles in 2009. There's also Ditto Music, IODA, The Orchard, MusicBizAcademy, RouteNote, FUGA, and that's just the first page of Google results for "digital music distribution." Who's missing from this picture? How about ReverbNation? If you use FaceBook at all, you know who they are.
Now, go take a look at CDBaby's "About" page. According to CDBaby, they are "the largest online distributor of independent music." And they'll give you their numbers. 278,510 albums being sold on CD Baby, 5,339,025 CDs sold online to customers, $107,769,092 paid directly to the artists. The stat there that I'm keying on is 278,510 albums being sold. That's a full third of what Nielsen reports to have been released since 1992. In 2005, Tunecore arrived. They're a little less public with their numbers, but I know that last year, they claimed 90,000 new releases, just about the same as Nielsen reported for the entire industry. Unless CDBaby went on a hiatus for the year, obviously there's a huge pile missing. Let's add Catapult to that. They released more than 10,000 new titles in 2009. There's also Ditto Music, IODA, The Orchard, MusicBizAcademy, RouteNote, FUGA, and that's just the first page of Google results for "digital music distribution." Who's missing from this picture? How about ReverbNation? If you use FaceBook at all, you know who they are.
Submission + - SkreemR Officially Dead
Hodejo1 writes: It's confirmed. The MP3 search engine SkreemR, which had been down over a week, is no more. As spokesperson James Gagan told MP3 Newswire "Yes, our audio search engine at skreemr.org has been mothballed indefinitely. The site may return in some form, but probably not as an mp3 search engine".
Submission + - Where is SkreemR?
Hodejo1 writes: Those of you who utilize the music search engine SkreemR know that the site has been down for a week now. Not a word has been offered to explain the downtime, suggesting that it has joined Seeqpod in that overly bulging graveyard of consumer-friendly tools. So, was the site finally forced off by the copyright oligarchs or did it just quietly die for lack of a business model?
Submission + - Our Music Collection Mess
Hodejo1 writes: What a mess I've become. This embarrassment of musical riches has gotten the better of me, and my so-called "collection" is now strewn across the physical, digital, and streaming worlds. I've got favorites bookmarked on Pandora from at least a dozen stations, a growing pile of Grooveshark 'hearted' songs, and songs lost in the fire at Imeem. I have a great collection of 70s funk and rap I created on Spotify while in London — maybe it's floating in the cloud somewhere, waiting for me to return. And what about that Rhapsody collection that I let lapse two years ago?
Submission + - Rat's Nest of Music Licensing Horror in one Chart 1
Hodejo1 writes: The flow of rights and and royalties in music is such a convoluted mess it's no wonder licensing the stuff has become such a minefield. Here's a US-centric chart, shared with Digital Music News by royalty administration specialist Music Reports that distills it all in a single frame. Needless to say it has devolved to a point where everyone just puts their hand out demanding payment, whether they actually hold legitimate rights or not. So why pay a fortune in royalties when there is no guarantee you actually licensed all the rights? The UK-centric chart is no better.
Submission + - File-sharing weakened copyright—and helped s
Hodejo1 writes: "Consumer welfare increased substantially due to new technology," write Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard and Koleman Strumpf of the University of Kansas. "Weaker copyright protection, it seems, has benefited society." By charting the production of new books, new music albums, and new feature films over the last decade, the authors tried to see whether creative output went up or down in correlation with file-sharing. "The publication of new books rose by 66 percent over the 2002-2007 period. Since 2000, the annual release of new music albums has more than doubled, and worldwide feature film production is up by more than 30 percent since 2003... In our reading of the evidence there is little to suggest that the new technology has discouraged artistic production. Weaker copyright protection, it seems, has benefited society.” The authors don't claim (anymore) that file-sharing has no effect on industries like recorded music. Though both authors also collaborated on a now-famous paper from 2007 which argued that file-sharing had no appreciable impact on music sales, they are willing to concede now that it might be a small part of the industry's problems.
Submission + - The Apple Broadcast Network
Hodejo1 writes: In 1959 5,749,000 television sets were sold in the US, bringing the cumulative total of sets sold since 1950 to 63,542,128 units. This number supported, through advertising, three national television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS (a fourth, Dumont, folded in 1956) and numerous local independent stations. Now here are another set of numbers. As of April this year Apple sold 75 million iPhone and iPod touch units, devices capable of delivering video via Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. Add to that figure 2 million iPads and counting. By the end of the year Apple should have about 90 million smart mobile devices in the wild. That makes a proprietary amalgam greater than what the TV networks had in 1959 and one that easily serves as a foundation for a pending broadcast network that will be delivered not through tall radio towers, but through small wireless hubs and the Internet. Call it the Apple Broadcast Network. iAd is how Apple plans to pay for it.
Submission + - Opera for iPhone: No One Under 17
Hodejo1 writes: Those downloading Opera's first update to it's iPhone application are now greeted with a rather curious warning. Supposedly, the browser now contains "material" that may be deemed objectionable to children and users must first confirm that they are 17 years of age or older to load the new version."
Submission + - P2PNet Silenced 1
Hodejo1 writes: Kazaa's Nikki Hemming could not take down P2Pnet with her libel suit back in 2006 that tried to hold the site fiscally responsible for slanderous posts made by a reader. The irony, of course, was that P2Pnet was mostly a supporter of Kazaa, which prompted The Register's Ashlee Vance to note at the time "The sound of the pigopolists laughing is unbearable" Four years later things turned bad for P2Pnet. On January 19th El Reg reported that the site's publisher Jon Newton was fast running out of cash, blaming it "on Big Music for shutting down two advertisers and for causing his other two advertisers to scale back." Yesterday, Newton shut P2Pnet down, silencing a vocal supporter of fair use and consumer rights.
Submission + - Making Sense of ACTA
Hodejo1 writes: This past week Guadalajara, Mexico hosted the 7th secret meeting of ACTA proponents who continue to ignore demands worldwide to open the debate to the public. Piecing together official and leaked documents from various global sources, Michael Geist has coalesced it all into a five part ACTA Guide that offers structured insight into what these talks might foist upon the populace at large. "Questions about ACTA typically follow a familiar pattern — what is it (Part One of the ACTA Guide listing the timeline of talks), do you have evidence (Part Two), why is this secret (Part Three), followed by what would ACTA do to my country's laws (Part Four)? Countering the momentum behind ACTA will require many to speak out" (Part Five).
Submission + - The Value of Digital Downloads Hit Zero?
Hodejo1 writes: Despite the fact that iTunes can still hawk a tune for $0.99 the prevailing wisdom is that overall the value of a digital track is approaching zero dollars. Almost every artist gives away a track or two these days, hoping the music itself will help them rise above the white noise of obscurity as described by the likes of Michael Geist and Cory Doctorow. But a whole body of work? This week Mojo Nixon, who retired from the biz in 2004, announced his comeback. On Wednesday, October 7th the self-proclaimed psychobilly artist will release in it's entirety his new album titled Whiskey Rebellion as a free digital download on Amazon. Not only will all of those tracks be made free, but everything in the artist's 25 year oeuvre — 150 tracks in all — will be "sold" for the princely sum of $0.00. Needless to say, Nixon figures it's better to give up the digital pennies if it will serve to draw new and old fans to his concerts. ""What do I have to lose? I'll make more money off of this in the long run." Of course, all of this music has been available for free on P2P for years, so if the digital tracks aren't selling anyway why not give them away officially and save fans a letter from the RIAA.
Comment Big Champagne Gunning for Nielsen (Score 1) 248
From August 5th
BigChampagne Challenges Nielsen With New Ratings Service
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/9002/bcdash.html
