DudeAsInCool
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Nice Post! (We need to get into the controls to change headings--another thing on the list to ask the Beatking)
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Beatking founder Beatfactory and RainbowDemon each hit 100 posts this week. Congratulations to you both! But its still early in the game for the rest of you members to catch up. Here's to the horse race to a thousand! :)
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Hey Rainbow, congrats on being the first member, after the founder, to post 100!
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By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
(San Francisco • 11/24/03) Apple is leading a race of lemmings into the zero-profit business of closed music downloads, says the founder of MP3.com, Michael Robertson.
"It seems kind of crazy to me, the economics don't make sense," Robertson told us Thursday. "Why are all these guys like Microsoft and Wal-Mart rushing into a business where the industry leader says 'we cannot make money with the contracts that we have'?"
"This is a race where the winner gets shot in the head."
And William Tell-style, Apple volunteered to be the first into the firing range. Canny Apple has had to swallow the pigopolists royalty fees, and DRM restrictions, but it thinks it has a business because its closed business model sees downstream profits from iPods sales.
Robertson started MP3.com in 1998 and after a barrage of lawsuits, sold it to Vivendi Universal in 2001. Last week, after a night on the tiles, Vivendi sold the mp3.com domain name to CNET, leaving the million-song archive to the vultures. (Robertson is striving to find a host for this, and we shall have more news of this later today).
The computer industry traditionally opposed the copyright cartel, but Apple was the first snitch to cut a deal with the pigopolists. Was this wise, we wondered?
"If one company got a huge market share - say 50 per cent or higher - they could negotiate better royalty rates," notes Robertson. "But they forget something. The music industry is tens of thousands of publishers and just five major record labels. Getting all of them to agree is a real tough thing to accomplish even if you're market leader."
Without any Beatles songs, and with only one Roxy Music track on its music kiosk, Apple is currently in a position of begging the big five for content, rather than dictating the terms of the deal. It's the rebel without a clue. Can it turn the tables?
Well, there are several factors that ought to halt the wannabee players in the DRM goldrush in their tracks. A compulsory licensing scheme (which is now backed by the libertarian rights group the EFF) is one. But Robertson points to another: the decision by courts to permit KaZaA peer to peer-style sharing.
"It's the wild card," says Robertson. "KaZaA has been ruled legal, so why pay for restricted music?" he asks.
"Apple really haven't sold that much music. And they've received millions of dollars in free advertising. Don't get me wrong, Steve Jobs is a smart guy who knows the economics. He's clearly betting that he can subsidize it with profits from iPods, or get enough scale to begin renovating the royalty deals."
"It's a real dilemma for me," he says, echoing the thoughts of millions of peer to peer music lovers. "If I 'steal' music from KaZaA I get all this music, but if I pay I have all these restrictions."
If people can get unrestricted music for free, why would they need to go to a DRM store to get a low-quality version with all the strings attached, Robertson wonders. KaZaA, and future P2P technologies make file sharing so simple and fun.
"People will use P2P and people will buy CDs," he predicts.
With so many people - other than the DRM gold rush entrepreneurs - accepting such constraints, accepting that people will always want to share music, and technology will always outwit DRM controls - we're left with the ethical problem of how to compensate the artists.
(Which is why there is such momentum behind compulsory licenses right now. Many people accept that stopping music-sharing is a lost battle, so our better minds are thinking of schemes to use the technology to compensate artists fairly).
Robertson doesn't agree with the idea of a levy, but agrees "there needs to be a radical change here".
And pundits should be wary of Apple's early apparent success, he warns. "I'm not sure if an Apple user is representive sample of the population," he says.
True enough.
Paying for restricted versions of songs they could have got unrestricted and for free has been the real litmus test for Apple loyalists. It's a hurdle they've leaped over with glee. But how many will follow them? Has Steve Jobs mistakenly extrapolated cult behavior and assumed the rest of the world follows shares these values, and follows these assumptions?
That's not what we hear from you.
It's rather tasteless to remind you that this week is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre - where a charismatic San Franciscan decamped to the jungle and persuaded almost a thousand followers to commit suicide, by drinking toxic fruit juice. It gave birth to a lasting idiom: "have you drunk the Kool-Aid?"
Well, have you?
The Register.com ®
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Great. You can post new threads in the Music News and General News sections. These automatically post on the front page. Thanks for chipping in!
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QUESTIONS FOR AL GREEN
Soul Exception
Interview by ALEX STIMMEL
Published: November 23, 2003
You had so many hit records -- secular records -- in the early 70's but never received any awards for them. Then you became a reverend and a gospel singer, forsaking pop music, and you started winning Grammys.
Ain't that something! ''The Lord Will Make a Way,'' that was the first Grammy album. I knew I must've done something right! But I'd be onstage at my shows, and people would be screaming: ''Al! 'Let's Stay Together!' 'For the Good Times!' '' They really wanted those songs, and I saw how much they meant to people. So I started doing them again for the audience.
Your new album, ''I Can't Stop,'' is a long-awaited return to making secular music. Why now?
I paint pictures with my songs. With my first records, I started a great painting, and I realized that the canvas isn't finished yet. I've still got to do my work as a reverend, but now I have to use whatever bait I can to get as many fish as I can. The Man don't care how I caught 'em as long as I got 'em!
Aren't you afraid you'll be seen as cashing in?
I can't form people's thoughts. Many people could have seen me as drawing lines when I left soul music for gospel. I even saw it like that. But you can only do what you think is best, and I have more beautiful pictures to paint. But if you are true, and you mean what you say, everything counts.
What does it feel like to see young, mostly white hopefuls, on shows like ''American Idol,'' trying to sing like you?
It's a wonderful compliment, but it's a trip. There's a kid over in Japan right now in the Top 10, singing ''Tired of Being Alone,'' and he sounds just like me. It doesn't give me pause, though, because we tried to make some good music, so that even the youngsters in hip-hop, who sample our horn lines, would have a good foundation. I did a concert the other night with Justin Timberlake -- he's my neighbor, you know -- and it makes me feel great to have all the girls in the front singing ''I'm Still in Love With You'' -- and the song's older than they are!
How did you write your songs to give the music such emotional impact?
I would love to say that I did do that, that I had that much talent, but I'd be lying. Although I did sing 'em good, didn't I? I wrote songs about my girl, about my life, about what I was doing at the time. It just feels like those songs are a common denominator. Believe me, a lot of guys come right up and tell me, if I pull a girl up tight, put the fireplace on and pour a little wine, I just play some Al Green, and I got it made!
You probably don't hear that about your gospel recordings.
No, it's always ''For the Good Times'' or ''Let's Stay Together.'' However, I do think life itself teaches you that it's difficult to separate ''I love you'' from ''I love You.'' Both count if you really mean it. If you mean ''I love you, darling,'' it means as much as ''I love you, Lord.''
Then could you just take one of your old songs and change the meaning to a more devotional, gospel thing if you were so inclined?
Yeah, but I don't have to do that. I take ''Simply Beautiful'' and just sing it like it is. Why try to change it, try to make it something that it's not? Everything is beautiful in its own time and space. This is a beautiful country -- people are free to think what they want; we have freedom of thought, freedom of religion. I think that God is love, and I need to sing about it, even if it means doing it through the songs that people will most identify with.
It sounds as if you've reached a perfect point between the two worlds.
Oh, I'm not perfect. I still chew gum during recording sessions, or have candy in my mouth. I need to be comfortable, even if it's doing something I shouldn't be doing, like clapping my hands in the middle of a song. And I know they're gonna stop the tape, but I get so excited about the music until I can't help clapping my hands!
So no amount of professionalism can get in the way of real emotion?
Oh, I like to be professional, but by doing something that's not perfect, like trying to sing a song chewing gum. I know that that's not right, but sometimes I get away with it.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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Rainbow's not kiddin'--don't be shy. This is a COMMUNITY site for music lovers. Feel free to join and chip in. Know some music we should all hear; have a favorite guitartist you want to sound off about, whatever... And bear with us, as we make improvements over the next several months and overcome technological glitches, etc etc
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The online music space is started to get crowded. Any one wanna make any bets on who is gonna win out?
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An impressive roster. Nice post.
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Not bad. We will just have to continue the pace... :)
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The rag mag is trying to sell copies by bringing up trash from the past. I for one believe people can change...I'm sure Eminem has.
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Don't feel any pressure to do so right away, Beatking. Really they are suggestions at this point--choose the ones that you like. How hard would it be to get a chat room going--this might be useful so we can all put our heads together...
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good one, yoda
any other members, or visitors out there, that want to help us?
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I nominate one of these babes to be a moderator. And speaking of members, I will in turn offer them mine...heh
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CheapPrick: well I didn't know there was a British scene but oh well, heh
well...there used to be :)
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ZP back online at 12:30 P.S.T.
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BBC. Com
Bands 'urged to cut album tracks'
Record labels are urging artists to put fewer tracks on albums because fans are put off by too many average songs, the Los Angeles Times has reported. (e.g. Bruce Springsteen's classic Born to Run album only had eight tracks)
"There's been a tendency to overload CDs because the technology permits it," Sony US president Don Ienner said.
CD sales are competing with websites that give fans songs cheaply or free.
On Monday, Microsoft unveiled its online music service plans while free site Kazaa launched a campaign to fight the music industry's anti-piracy drive.
Record labels are urging the clampdown on album tracks as a way of reversing a three-year-long slump in album sales.
"The final choice will always be the artist's, but I feel - and consumer research bears it out - that the public thinks albums have too much filler," Mr Ienner told the paper.
"We all should be concerned about giving music buyers good value, whether they're getting eight, 10 or 20 songs."
Digital technology allows artists to fit more music onto albums
Digital technology mean CDs can fit twice as much music - 80 minutes - as vinyl albums..
The LA Times said changes would mean a "shake-up" in the music industry, which was structured around albums of up to 16 tracks selling for $12 (£7.50).
The article compared Bruce Springsteen's 1975 album Born to Run - which had only eight tracks - against the recent chart-topping album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which had 34 songs.
Online rival
Some record company executives are now saying album albums should have 10 or fewer songs, the paper reported.
Meanwhile, Microsoft unveiled plans to launch a downloadable music service to rival legal online music sources such as Apple's iTunes and Napster, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Analysts said the company's Windows operating system - installed on millions of PCs - could give it an advantage.
The service could also be adapted to run through Microsoft's Windows Media player, which allows people to play music and video files, which is loaded on many computers.
'Call to action'
The service will be run through Microsoft's MSN website, but further details were not provided.
And free file-sharing network Kazaa launched a campaign urging its 60 million users to help it "fight back" against efforts to stop "piracy" on popular networks.
Kazaa, which allows people to swap songs through their computers, has been one of the services accused of letting fans make unauthorised copies of songs.
Nikki Hemming, chief executive of Sharman Networks, which owns Kazaa, said: "It's a call to action. We want to pump up the volume."
The $1m (£640,000) campaign, which features on the internet and in magazines, includes an ad that argues music executives are "missing the opportunity to capture an enormous market".
"The world of entertainment is changing," it said.
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Unguarded Lyrics Embarrass Eminem
By KELEFA SANNEH
Published: November 20, 2003
Hip-hop listening sessions are usually pretty dull affairs. It's hard to enjoy any hip-hop album when you're trapped in a conference room with a bunch of media professionals. But when executives from The Source, a hip-hop magazine, asked reporters to attend a listening session on Tuesday night, they weren't expecting people to have a good time. "This is a very important evening," said David Mays, the magazine's co-founder and chief executive. And then, through some rather feeble speakers, he played a profoundly poor hip-hop track from about a decade ago, maybe longer.
The track is by Eminem, and it sounds like a free style, not a song. Like much of his best and best-known work, this rant castigates an untrustworthy ex-girlfriend. But in this case the ex-girlfriend is black, and the rhymes are full of crude racial taunts. "Black girls only want your money," he says more than once. And early on he lays out his conclusions in sweeping (and inept) language:
Black girls and white girls just don't mix
Because black girls are dumb and white girls are good chicks
White girls are good, I like white girls
I like white girls all over the world
White girls are fine and they blow my mind
And that's why I'm here now, telling you this rhyme
'Cause black girls, I really don't like.
Even before the news conference had begun, Eminem had released a statement acknowledging that the words were his but calling them "foolishness," the sound of a spurned boyfriend venting his "anger, stupidity and frustration."
But the executives from The Source argued that this newly unearthed recording (provided to them, they say, by three white hip-hop fans from Detroit) is a mountain, not a molehill. Kim Osorio, the magazine's editor in chief, said, "These are racist remarks by someone who has the ability to influence millions of minds."
Eminem has spent much of his career earning fans by making enemies, and a casual observer might wonder how this new controversy differs from ones in which the rapper was accused of homophobia and misogyny — accusations that only helped broaden his fame.
The difference is that because he is a white rapper, Eminem has gone out of his way to avoid showing disrespect to African-Americans. He is always reverential to his mentor, Dr. Dre (even when he's joking about killing Dre in a song), and he has been effusive in his praise of 50 Cent, who records for Eminem's label, Shady Records. When listing his favorite rappers, he once ranked himself ninth, behind eight African-American counterparts.
When Eminem jokes about race, he is usually joking about his own, and he has made a point of avoiding hip-hop's most popular racial slur. This avoidance even served as the punch line to one of his jokes: in his song "Criminal," he rhymes, "I drink malt liquor to [mess] you up quicker/ Than you'd wanna [mess] me up for saying the word . . ." — and there's an empty space where the epithet would be. But at Tuesday's news conference, in a Millennium Broadway Hotel in Manhattan, the magazine's executives played a shorter snippet of a different, unreleased track on which a rapper they identified as Eminem uses the word while explaining, in passing, which "girls" he likes and which he doesn't.
These revelations will undoubtedly give Eminem's detractors more reason to dislike him, but they probably won't much bother his hardcore fans. Although much has been made of Eminem's hip-hop credibility, the truth is that for the past few years a number of hip-hop fans — especially black hip-hop fans — seem to have been losing interest in the rapper, who never seemed comfortable in any community, not even the hip-hop community. His music still hews closely to hip-hop's beats-and-rhymes blueprint, but his persona comes straight out of rock 'n' roll: the sullen loner, the paranoid rebel.
In all of this, the main complicating factor is that The Source is far from a neutral observer. The dominating presence at the news conference was that of Benzino Scott, a less-than-successful rapper who is listed on the magazine's masthead as "Co-Founder and Chief Brand Executive." Mr. Scott has been embroiled in a feud with Eminem, and the dispute has spilled into the pages of the magazine.
The February 2003 issue included an illustration of Mr. Scott holding Eminem's severed head. The March issue kept up the attack, calling Eminem an "infiltrator" who has continued the sad legacy of the much-derided white rapper Vanilla Ice. In a roundtable in the same issue, Mr. Scott blamed MTV: "I believe MTV was like a male basically takin' hip-hop, havin' sex with her, pushin' her off, pimpin' her and after that havin' the baby by her. We all know who the baby is: Eminem."
Eminem himself would probably agree with this last criticism. He has admitted in songs and interviews that his race has a lot to do with his huge success. "Do the math, if I was black, I would have sold half," he once rhymed. But while he acknowledges the power of racism, he doesn't make apologies for having figured out a way to work the system.
In his own verses, Mr. Scott tends to express his views of Eminem (born Marshall Mathers) less delicately. In "Die Another Day," he rhymes, "You dyed your hair blond, I'm a make it red/ How you gon' sell records, Marshall, when you're dead?" Later, after casting aspersions about Eminem's sexuality, he adds, "I'm a king, you a little punk/ You the rap David Duke, the rap Hitler/ The culture-stealer." In the context of lyrics like these, the revelation of Eminem's race-baiting recordings seems less like high-minded journalism and more like the continuation of yet another hip-hop feud.
Still, the tapes exist, and Eminem has acknowledged recording at least one of the tracks; if people with more credibility than Mr. Scott start speaking up against him, he may be forced to issue a more substantive apology. In the meantime, though, the magazine vows to press on: Mr. Scott said he planned to distribute the newly unearthed recordings with the February issue.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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FoxNews.com
Jacko Lawyer: Working On Case For Months
Forget all these stories that Mark Geragos was hired to represent Michael Jackson just yesterday. Or the day before. Were we all born yesterday? Geragos has been on the case since last March.
That’s right. Jackson has known for most of the year, even if he didn’t want to acknowledge it, that trouble was brewing at Neverland. The child who is now the subject of this molestation allegation began to raise questions about their relationship late last winter. Jackson -- who is not completely out of touch with reality -- responded by bringing in an expert defender.
Jackson’s camp, I am told, is more than ready to do battle with his accuser and his family. I am told that the mother of the child involved will be held up to severe scrutiny. In fact, Jackson’s side will likely argue that when he tried to break off his involvement with helping the boy and his family financially, the mother became, and I am quoting a Jackson insider, “a scorned woman.”
“She’s very screwed up,” said one source. “There’s videotape of her acting weird, too. And Michael was very kind to her, even getting an apartment for her boyfriend.”
But the argument will be that when this woman, who is financially so dependent that she claimed to have lived in a barn, was told by Jackson’s people that the party was over, she ran to a lawyer to see what she could get out of it.
Remember, everyone in this country is guaranteed a defense, even if you don’t agree with it.
But as I wrote in this space yesterday, a lot of the evidence in the Jackson case will come down to videotape. There is lots of it, too, some of which may show the boy and his family singing the praises of Jackson, defending and explaining his odd lifestyle. If so, they will be hard-pressed to explain their own behavior now. For example: In one interview last winter, the mother of the boy told a reporter: "Michael has pet names for all of my children, and [one of them] even calls him Daddy. He is the father they never had." She said all her children were “hoping to spend a lot more time with him in the future."
The sudden change in Jackson’s schedule, by the way, throws a monkey wrench into his promotional plans for his new greatest hits album. Michael and his entourage were three days away from leaving for Paris and Berlin, where enthusiastic fans would have greeted him. Here in the U.S., the album has so far not made any of the early top 10 of the week lists at major retailers like Tower, Virgin or HMV.
And here’s one big P.S. for all you Jackson watchers: Steer clear of on-camera commentators who are hustling their own gig on Jacko’s back. I am talking about folks like Shmuley Boteach, Uri Geller and Brian Oxman, all of whom are quick to quip when the red light goes on, but know nothing about the case, Jackson or his alleged victim.
'Fog' Film May Yet Produce Oscar Nominees
I’m a little surprised to read some Oscar prognostications about “The House of Sand and Fog,” Vadim Perelman’s directing debut. Critics are praising, and rightly so, Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly’s textured work in the film as a displaced Iranian colonel and a California girl trying to kick cigarettes and liquor.
But critics are one thing. It won’t be so easy convincing audiences to see “The House of Sand and Fog,” a movie that careens inexorably toward one of the most depressing finishes I’ve ever seen.
“House of Sand and Fog” is based on a novel written by Andre Dubus III, son of the late esteemed writer Andre Dubus. It was nominated for the National Book Award and Oprah picked it for her book club, which made it a best seller. All that provenance would suggest to a filmmaker this was ripe material for translation to the screen. Certainly that was the case when Todd Field made “In the Bedroom” from Dubus’ father’s short story, “The Killings.”
In fact, “House” and “Bedroom” are quite similar in tone, texture and theme. You could almost call this story “In the Bathroom” since a pivotal sequence takes place in the family john. I guess genetics really can’t be discounted. The difference was that the film version of “Bedroom” had a cohesive sensibility so that even when the story became bleak, the characters, their motivations and the central drama were incredibly compelling.
That is not the case with “House of Sand and Fog.” Although, like “Bedroom,” it has to do with the American dream and sudden violence channeled through Greek tragedy, Perelman’s movie has a big problem. The story springs from something not particularly interesting: a dispute over home ownership. I’m sure the novel, which I haven’t read, is an exploration of cultural dislocation. The movie, though, doesn’t translate that. It’s all about, and I’m not kidding, the fear that we’re heading to housing court.
Dreamworks was courageous even to make this film, but I think waiting for a March release might have been a better plan. This is not a Christmas movie. Luckily, the studio will come back strong Oscar-wise in 2004 with Steven Spielberg’s “Terminal” and “Shrek 2,” among others.
Don’t read any further if you’re going to go see “House,” although I can’t imagine why you would want to. The movie ends with a gruesome, graphic murder-suicide of two of the main characters. (One of them wraps his head in dry cleaning bag with masking tape.) In order to get there, we are treated to two hours of kvetching resulting from a mistaken real estate transaction in the San Francisco Bay area.
Connelly’s Kathy, trying to kick booze and cigarettes, loses her dead father’s unexceptional house when she misses a $500 tax payment. Kingsley, a former Iranian army colonel under the Shah, picks the place up for a song at auction and quickly moves his wife and teenage son in. But Connelly won’t let go, so she stalks the Iranians and threatens them. She even drags into it her new boyfriend, a crazy (natch) cop played by Ron Eldard.
In short order Connelly tries to commit suicide a couple of times, which isn’t that much fun to watch, and Eldard abuses his abandoned wife and kids. There’s a lot of whining about the house (which I guess is surrounded by fog and built on sand, no one says). But Perelman doesn’t make the house particularly riveting except that it’s got a good view. Is this the point? That the average American home is worth fighting for? If it is, there must be a better way to show it.
In “Bedroom,” the murder is so sudden and unexpected that what follows it is compelling. But in “House” we know one of two characters will die pretty early on because it’s signaled with white flags and flying mallets. When it happens it’s anticlimactic. The events that follow — the murder-suicide — are intended to be the surprise. Dubus III, you feel, has simply rearranged the father’s story. To be fair, when the sequence begins, some people in the audience I was in were moved. But all I could think was, where are the doors to the damn theater? In retrospect, I was glad I saved my tears for “Big Fish.” As for Kingsley and Connelly, they may have the distinction of giving the best performances in a movie few will want to see.
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Cool game!
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That would be great Rainbow. I come from the content world, and have been involved with some websites before, so thats why I think in terms of the content. It sounds like we are all coming together on this... I also think we should be mellow about the build... good things take time... and this is a hobbyfor all of us..
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Yeah, I think we should round out the forums, and then set guidelines and goals for them, and get some mods (experts or lovers of the field) to help guide them. These categories would eventually have to be modified, so each section can have different threads like at ZP.
If people are agreeable, then we can get our Bitch Yoda to implement :)
Then I think we need to figure out how to get more people here. Love to hear which of the above ideas were in Beatking's mnd...
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Yeah, I think we should add some new forums, and then set content vision, and the mods to help run it. Love to hear which of the idea were in Beatking's mnd...
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I'm going to begin adding stuff as soon as I remember them, but here's some 90s stuff that still works for me:
Ricki Lee Jones: Ricky Lee Jones (1990); Pirates (1990)
We gets down with the P.E!
in Music & Entertainment News
Posted
Great interview!