The Music Industry

Recently the Pirate Bay has been in court in Sweden. Which is kind of a big deal because Pirate Bay is the largest bit torrent tracker and Sweden has some pretty lax laws regarding copyright protection. If you search Wired there are dozens of articles on the whole thing. For any of my readers, all 3 of you, who don't know what that is, a bit torrent is a downloadable file such as a music album or movie. What makes them unique is that the actual material (often copyrighted) is stored on user's computers, so the actual copyrighted material never touches a bit torrent trackers servers. The trackers such as Pirate Bay just point you towards the users who have the file. When you download a bit torrent you download it from several people at once. Hence, it creates a nice legal shelter.

Anyways...

EDIT (I misrepresented this quote): "Yes." - Per Sundin of the IFPI and Universal Music when asked if "people would have purchased every music track they got [for] free file sharing."

I wonder if he actually believes that? What a ridiculous thing to say.

I've pondered the whole pirating thing for a long time and haven't come to many substantial conclusions. I mean, it is stealing in the sense that it costs money to produce an album and the artists should get paid, but at the same time they're shoving an antiquated business model down our throats.

Here's what I've noticed with myself:

1 - My music taste is much broader because I am exposed to so much more online. I've noticed this with others too.

2 - Because of my increased musical palate I attend more shows. A lot more. This brings in far more money for a band than me purchasing their CD's.

3 - I don't buy CD's at all. Who plays CD's with any regularity?

4 - Downloaded music is popular because of the variety of choice, ease (you don't have to leave your house and it comes in MP3 format), lack of DRM, and if you don't like the music at least you didn't waste any money on it.

Going off of #4, I'm sure many people download music illegally mainly because it's free, but I feel like the vast majority of people do it for the other aforementioned reasons. What this signals to me is that people are pirating media in large part because illegal downloads offer something that their legal counterparts do not. It seems painfully obvious that this industries business model is dead. The iTunes store may be closer, but I say they fail too. What don't these people get? You must offer a superior product, a cheaper price, or preferably both. iTunes isn't any cheaper than buying a CD for the most part and a CD certainly isn't a better product. You have to convert it into an MP3, and how many people don't know how to rip a CD?

Regardless of how you feel about the legality of it all one fact remains. These companies exist to make money and right now they're contracting. What they're doing isn't working and they need to adapt or disappear. The album is how you get people to buy merch and go to shows. Therefore, make it as available as possible. If I were in charge I would experiment with pay what you wish album sales, free album downloads, extremely cheap album downloads ($1-3), and I'd send my bands out on far more tours. The last shows I've bought tickets to were: The Books (sold out in a week, show added, sold out), Iron and Wine (sold out the same day before I could get tickets), Kings of Leon (sold out, tickets were going for 5 times face value), Beck and MGMT (sold out, tickets were going for 3 times face value), etc, etc. If shows are selling out that means they're missing out on revenue; deadweight loss anyone? And the fact remains that I don't own a single tangible copy of any of these bands albums. That's right music execs, illegal downloading brought you my business and I bet I'm not unique.

How to/Funny Videos

Fold a t-shirt really quick. This will potentially save me hours throughout my lifetime.



Solve a Rubik's cube! It's really fairly easy. I solved my first one yesterday.




Funny ones:

100 people randomly running towards strangers... good social psych experiment.



Creedocide; a religious take on rat control.

Important Things with Demetri MartinWed 10:30pm / 9:30c

Power - Creedocide

Joke of the Day
Stand-Up Comedy

Free Online Games
More Funny Videos

Picturequote

"If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development." - Aristotle

This is the last cyanotype I printed. It's made from the 8x10 enlarged negative I made earlier. There are dozens of old processes used to make and print photographs. I'd like to try as many of them as possible, especially daguerreotypes. You have to place the image over heated mercury to expose the image... and it can't be duplicated... interesting. Anymore even the most popular printing process, gelatin silver, has more or less completely given way to digital. It makes sense though. Digital allows more people to own and use cameras.

I still have a lot to learn and more chemicals to acquire, but the tests are getting better.

Inflatable Street Art

Khoda Video

Khoda from Reza Dolatabadi on Vimeo.

This is an amazing video. Check out the link here. It's made up of 6,000 paintings that took a student 2 1/2 years to paint.

Alternative Process Photography

This is a cyanotype I made of a drawing by my friend Justin. It's the same process that was used back in the day to make architectural drawings. It's just a contact print of a negative that is exposed to UV light and washed in water.

I also began making some Van dyke brown prints. It's a very similar process but there's also a hypo clearing bath involved (sodium thiosulfate). I'll post that up once it's done washing and drying. It's currently being rinsed in my highly sophisticated washing device (tray in my bathtub with the water running).

Also up for experimentation is some negative reversal film; Bergger BPFB-18. I use it to enlarge my negatives so that I can contact print them. I first have to duplicate the film by contact printing and developing it. That's called making an interpositive. Then I enlarge the interpositive, which is essentially a black and white positive film, onto an 8x10 film. This leaves me with an 8x10 negative. Here's the one I made:


This was inverted in Photoshop.


More to come...

Great Links

Drug money saves banks... "It would appear, that the criminal masterminds of the under ground economy apply 'conservative' leverage and tend to be 'highly liquid'."

Let the government spend. "Bizarrely, however, some Congressional critics have denounced the administration’s stimulus proposals as 'mere spending programs.' Of course they’re spending programs! More spending is exactly what we need."

Google introduces work on a power meter application that allows you to view your real time energy usage online. I remember reading that studies have been conducted showing that by merely placing a meter that allows you to see your energy usage in real time consumption generally drops around 20%.

Cool art prints.

Solar Tracking Skylights

Here are some actual product shots.

I've been absolutely fascinated by these for a while now. They're basically a 4'x4' skylight. The innovative aspect of them is that they use mirrors to reflect sunlight into the building more effectively than traditional passive skylights. the units achieve this with the use of a solar powered motor and sun tracking system. The unit can track the sun at an angle down to 10 degrees above the horizon.

The other huge benefit is that it doesn't produce heat in the same way that a conventional metal halide or fluorescent light would, so your cooling load is significantly reduced. On a sunny day it produces the equivalent of 800 watts of fluorescent light. At 3.4 BTU's per watt that's about 2,700 BTU's an hour saved on your cooling bill. How much is that? A 12,000 BTU (1 ton) air conditioner is enough to cool down a normal sized 2 bedroom apartment during the summer.

It's also reported that when used in retail locations sales increase by 10-40%; in industrial applications employees call in sick less, are more productive, and are less accident prone; and in comparison to no daylight classrooms, classrooms fitted with this device notice a 6-20% increase in grades (that one is the most suspect though). When you think of how good it feels to be outside in the sun and how terrible winter light (or lack there of) can feel none of these results are that suprising.

Picturequote

"So many young people seem to be getting quite pro-military these days. Somebody should tell them they'll get their legs blown off if they go to war." - Paul McCartney

This image and accompanying article were found at the New York Times.

Voting Prejudice

Before going to this link, which of these choices do you think is least likely to get voted for if running for president?

Black
Catholic
Homosexual
Jewish
Woman
Atheist

It's also worth noting that with the exception of being catholic, every distinction would be more deleterious to your total vote count in 2007 than it would it 2000... I wonder what could have caused that.

Picturequote

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it - always." - Mahatma Ghandi

This is a church at the intersection of Wellington and Southport on Chicago's north side.

Process Photos #3

My first and second post about this.

This is the first roll of my professional online poker playing friends. I've done some more recently but I refuse to scan anything else until I have compressed air... dust everywhere. Just Ben and Pasha play. On any given day they'll usually play several tournaments at once for a few hours.

Ben

Jeff

Pasha on the right.