by Ron Miller

Mr. DeVore Meet the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

What happens when a conservative Republican gets sued for using two of Don Henley's hit songs without permission? He gets a quick taste of the DMCA when his videos are removed from YouTube, but fires right back in an interesting test of copyright in the Internet age.

Read the full story on DaniWeb.

Outdated Copyright Laws Need a Do Over

Lawrence Lessig: Image via WikipediaOutdated Copyright Laws Need a Do Over - DaniWeb TechTreasures By Ron Miller

I wrote a post the other day criticizing the RIAA for failing to understand 21st marketing techniques. The night I wrote the RIAA post, I listened to an interview on Fresh Air with author and Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig, who recently published a book called Remix, and he articulated many of the ideas I was trying to convey in my post.

There is a bright line of ownership, Lessig says. We can not simply share a song with 10,000 people on a P2P network, but we should be able to use that song in a non-commercial creative work without fear of incurring the wrath of the RIAA (and other powerful organizations). Read the rest on DaniWeb.

Photo courtesy of Joi Ito

It's Time for the RIAA to Join the 21st Century

It's Time for the RIAA to Join the 21st Century - TechTreasures by Ron Miller

The time has come to drag the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) kicking and screaming into the 21st century because it clearly has a lot to learn about marketing on the internet. The RIAA had a good news/bad news announcement on Friday.

The good news was that it would stop persecuting, er I mean prosecuting, individual file sharers, a strategy that to me was just foolish in the first place. The bad news is it has hooked up with ISPs to form a corporate file sharing police force...Read the rest on DaniWeb.

Photo by RoyalBroil.

Discover Music Bargains at Amazon MP3 Store

I've been spending a lot of time at Amazon's MP3 music store. If you haven't discovered it yet, it's a lot like iTunes, but there are way more bargains and the music is DRM-free. That's right. You download it and it's yours--no strings attached. Most songs cost .89. You can find full albums on special for as low as $1.99 U.S. That's a fantastic price, any way you look at it. And if you use iTunes, songs are added to your library automatically after you download. (Photo Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net )

Before you can download music, you need to download a small program called the Amazon Downloader. You can get it for the Mac, Windows and Linux (Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and OpenSuse).

I recommend making the Special MP3 Deals page your first stop, then bookmark it.

You should also check out the more than 400 free songs. There's new free music every week and since I've been doing it, it's been good music.

So go forth and start exploring. I'm not terribly fond of the layout and they could streamline the process of selecting a song or album a bit, but there is a lot to like here and it's well worth checking out.
 

British Man Invented Precursor to the iPod in 1979

Link: British Man Invented Precursor to the iPod in 1979 - TechTreasures by Ron Miller

According to a Gizmodo post published on Sunday, a British man claims he invented the iPod (or at least a prototype of what would become a portable music player) way back in 1979, the same year the Walkman cassette player first went on sale in Japan. Up to that point, the idea of portable music was an over-sized boom box you carried on your shoulder...

Are You Ready for a Virtual Concert?

'Ladies and Gentleman, start your browsers as we welcome Columbia Recording Artist, Bob Dylan.' Dylan shuffles out onto the stage. You click your applause emoticon. You enter a request for Lay Lady Lay. Dylan looks up from his piano at the screens around him, a little confused perhaps,  a little dazzled. He sees your virtual applause and scowls. He sees your request and begins the opening chords as the band joins in behind him. A long way from the Greenwich Village coffee houses where he started, that's for sure.

If this scenario sounds a bit far-fetched to you, it shouldn't. Wired reports in this story, Online Music Festival Takes Interactive Leap, that a company called Deep Rock Live is putting together a concert series that will be completely online. And they even got Pepsi to sponsor it, so all the "seats" are free.

My first reaction is that this company is missing the point of a concert. The beauty of live music is to be there, to feel it, to commune with like-minded fans. You can't capture that feeling in front of a computer screen, but let's suppose you can get past that idea and look at it strictly from a geeky point of view, maybe it's worth checking out. It gives you a chance to interact directly (sort of) with the musician, something you can't do at the live show beyond clapping and screaming a request (which always seems to annoy the artist).

If we look at this as a technological exercise, it could be pretty interesting. If we look at it as a sociological  exercise, it could be pretty scary, giving credence to the idea that the internet is isolating us into a society of people sitting in front of individual computer screens, rather than interacting in the world at large, but I'm a technology guy, so I'm inclined to give it a shot and see what it's about. It doesn't have to be one or the other and could be pretty darn interesting.

Free (and legal) Internet Music Sources Published on Daniweb Blog

I just published my latest post on my Daniweb.com TechTreasures blog, An RIAA Nightmare: Free (and legal) Internet Music Sources, an overview of my favorite free (and legal) music and video sources on the internet.

iTunes Number One U.S. Music Retailer

On Friday, Apple announced that iTunes passed Walmart as America's number one music retailer. According to the Apple press release, iTunes has more than 50 million customers and has sold a whopping 4 billion songs since its launch 5 years ago.

Apple is understandably proud of this accomplishment, and it's pretty amazing when you think about it. iTunes for most of that time has placed restrictive digital rights management on its songs (iTunes Plus not withstanding), but people (myself included) seem willing to put up with that for convenience, price and ease of use. The iPod and iTunes combination could be one of the most successful music selling ventures ever.

Meanwhile, there are rumors flying about that Apple intends to release a 3G version of the iPhone, perhaps as early as June. This could stimulate sales worldwide because 3G technology is far superior to the Edge technology they are using now. With each innovation, I'm glad I waited to purchase the iPhone, but come this August when my contract expires, it will be decision time.

You have to hand it to Apple, they know how to create a market for their devices and services and they know how to keep the market growing. Perhaps the only thing that stands in Apple's way of continuing growth is the worsening economic picture in the U.S., but the 3G iPhone should stimulate sales in Asia and Europe (especially with the weak dollar) thereby offering the potential for another successful year at Apple.

It Seems That Media Companies Still Don't Get It

David Meerman Scott literally wrote the book on new media marketing. If there is anyone who understand how to use the Internet as a sales tool, it's Scott whose book, The New Rules of PR, explains how to take advantage of the Internet to transform your business. That's why Scott's open letter to Warner Music Group (WMG) in the April issue of EContent resonates.

As a former employee of WMG back in the 80s and a huge fan of Led Zeppelin, Scott is perplexed why WMG would take down grainy cell phone videos of Led Zep's December, 2007 reunion concert from YouTube for "copyright" violations. As Scott points out, these videos are doing little harm to Led Zeppelin, but they would whet the appetites of millions of Zeppelin fans, perhaps stimulating sales of the back catalogue decades after their glory years of the 1970s.

Scott understands the power of these videos to stimulate interest in the band and more importantly to stimulate sales. This powerful marketing tools costs WMG nothing, yet instead of embracing YouTube as  a marketing device, WMG lawyers, hopelessly lost in 20th century copyright minutiae, order YouTube to take the videos down thereby missing a golden opportunity to market a popular property without costing them a penny.

Unfortunately, much of the music business remains mired in 20th century ideas of ownership, missing the quid pro quo that is viral marketing on the Internet. I'm sure there are smarter, younger (perhaps) employees who completely get it, but for now we are stuck with the likes of the RIAA suing their customers, viewing the Internet as an enemy and failing to make the most rudimentary connections of the power of the Internet to stimulate their business. Perhaps they should hire Mr. Scott again and this time, they should listen carefully.

Modern Music Playing Technology Takes Control of the Playlist Away from the Artist

It used to be in the days before CD recorders and MP3 players, when a musical artist released an album, he or she could control the order of the tracks and there was little the listener could do to alter this beyond getting up and lifting the needle (or turning the album over to play that track on the other side) or carefully recording tracks to a cassette tape.

That's all changed in the age of iTunes when you can get granular control of your playlists with Smart Playlists, but after listening to the new Bruce Springsteen album, Magic, I'm beginning to think in some cases at least, it's a shame that the artist loses control of playlist order because it's obvious that Springsteen put a lot of thought into how these songs flow musically, lyrically and sonically from one track to the next.

There is an amazing symmetry to this album.

He starts off with Radio Nowhere with the line,

"Is Anybody Alive Out There!?"

And ends with Devil's Arcade with the lines:

"A voice says "don't worry, I'm here."

Now to me, there's such beauty and thought put into this and how the songs flow from one to the other, that it's a shame the artist can't control that, but in today's world, the owner can mix and match as desired (for better or worse).

One other thing I've been thinking about: I've read a number of reviews which suggest this album isn't political in nature, and beyond, "Who'll be the Last to Die," it's not as overtly political as some Springsteen material, but as he gets older, perhaps he feels he doesn't have to hit us over the head with the message. Perhaps, he can hide the underlying theme in allegory and metaphor and big hooks and Clarence horn solos. Listen carefully to this album and there is a clear message.

As one example, take a careful listen to the title track Magic. If you listen casually, perhaps it's a song about  a magician or illusion, but if you put the lyrics (and the beautiful haunting music) in the context of today's political landscape, you hear a song about secrets and lies and shadows with the line:

"Trust none of what you hear
And less of what you see
This is what we’ll be"

And this song about grand illusions flows into the big chords of "Who'll be the Last to Die." Enough said.

I've also heard people say, this isn't seminal work, just a kind of a fun diversion on the career path of one of the all-time greats, but I have to disagree. This is no Lucky Town, an album with some decent songs, but one that has hardly stood the test of time of some Springsteen's other works.

This is an album by a mature artist at the top of his song writing prowess who asks us to dig a little deeper and get beyond the incongruity of the music and the message. While many of his peers are content to play hits from 20 years ago, clinging to long past glories, Bruce Springsteen continues to develop as one of the great American artists of our time, but that doesn't mean he controls his musical message once he sends it out into the world. In fact, he has no control whatsoever. While I love the control today's tools give me over my music, sometimes I wish an artist like Springsteen could just lock it in place the way he intended like a great painting or photograph preserved for all time.