The last unicorn

This post isn't going to be a review of Chinese Democracy - or to give it its full title, Chinese Democracy (sponsored by Pro Tools). I have my opinions on the thing - something along the lines of "even though it is the sound of one man's ego galloping out of all control, there's still something oddly exhilirating about all that galloping... Possibly the most expensive comedy album ever made" - but this isn't a music blog.

Nor is it a meta-music blog, so this isn't exactly going to be a review of Chuck Klosterman's review of Chinese Democracy either; though, for the record, his opening line, "Reviewing Chinese Democracy is not like reviewing music. It's more like reviewing a unicorn", may very well be the best thing anyone's ever said in a music review. But his review does make a claim that's of direct interest to a web 2.0/internet/technology/whatever-blog like this one, namely:

Chinese Democracy is (pretty much) the last Old Media album we'll ever contemplate in this context—it's the last album that will be marketed as a collection of autonomous-but-connected songs, the last album that will be absorbed as a static manifestation of who the band supposedly is, and the last album that will matter more as a physical object than as an Internet sound file.

And that's what I want to focus on.

Personally, I hope this claim doesn't quite prove true, since some artists (though perhaps not Axl Rose, it turns out) have a depth and breadth and originality to their vision that's better explored over the course of a collection of songs; in some cases, even the physical packaging the music comes in can add to the experience. Not to mention that a number of labels - Fonal, 4AD, Leaf, and many other independents - as part of their own vision, routinely produce CDs and vinyl that are beautiful and distinctive purely as objects. And perhaps for those reasons physical formats will hang on in there for some while longer - certainly as I try to reduce my annoyingly space-hogging CD collection the CDs fitting the aforementioned criteria are the ones that will remain.

But, as that last sentence also demonstrates, I can't deny that Chuck Klosterman has a point. He might be slightly premature in making it, and I can see music continuing to be delivered in some kind of physical format for as long as that physicality continues to add something; but still, when so many CDs now offer little more than an MP3 does why would you bother with that extra bit of clutter?

Chinese Democracy, though, as Klosterman says, is almost certainly immune to that concern: to Guns 'n' Roses fans it will matter as an object, out of nostalgia as much as anything; fans will want to place it alongside the CDs and vinyl they've treasured since the 80s and 90s - how aesthetically satisfying the album actually is as an object I have no idea, but for those reasons it really doesn't need to be. But if the albums of other bands, ones who aren't going to be given $14million and 14 enigmatic years to build anticipation, are going to matter as a sonic totality, it's increasingly going to take more than simply releasing them as a physical totality.

While some musicians don't create too much more than a bunch of singles and filler anyway, so downloads are probably their more natural outlet, for the rest with perhaps more to say, or a whole range of interesting ways in which to say it, and particularly for those who have yet to emerge and will thus have no existing reputation to trade and persuade on, the future looks to be a challenging place - at least, if they want to be able to have some say in how their work is experienced. Perhaps some kind of physical format will be involved - the CD as a luxury item, the package being an artwork in itself? the Buddha Machine? - but certainly it will be interesting to find out how they'll achieve it.

And perhaps they won't even want to...

Lives will be ruined, I tell you...

When I wrote a post about The Pirate's Dilemma back in March it seems I didn't quite think through the full awful implications of the book's central thesis.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still broadly in agreement that faced with present levels of piracy the content industry's most expedient and potentially profitable response certainly does seem to be competition, rather than trying to sue every pirate out of existence. In fact, as far as I can see, this attitude is increasingly becoming the mainstream - and it's precisely this which has me concerned, the ominously increasing availability of entirely legal free content [shudders].

Already there's free content all over the internet, of course, and there has been for ages. Some of it (broadly) legal - YouTube, Project Gutenberg, MySpace, for instance - and some of it not so much - TV Links, The Pirate Bay, the original Napster. But these all came with drawbacks - risk, clunkiness, restrictions, age of content, complete illegality, long download times, ratio of fame-hungry teenagers lip-synching to pop music in their bedrooms to actual entertainment. If there was something you wanted to see/read/listen to you had to make an effort to do so, you had to weigh up whether the risks/inconvenience were worth the bother, filter the quality from the dreck.

My point?

With so many services now either already available, or on the not-so-distant horizon, all designed to make catching and finding the content you want to see or hear not only legal but also free and easy - the iPlayer, 4oD, ITV on demand, actual proper movies hitting YouTube in the near future, Project Kangaroo, Hulu, the list goes on - what, I ask, and this is the crux of my objections, are we of weak wills supposed to do, eh? Has anyone thought about that? No.

The dark, inescapable void of procrastination this is all about to open up in so many lives (or, OK, possibly just mine) doesn't even bear thinking about... 

There used to be so many disincentives, sigh. So many... [shakes head nostalgically]

(Yes, I know, I'll just have to be more self-disciplined, probably. But still, it's bloody annoying - when I got rid of my telly I really didn't expect it to spend the next few years slowly and relentlessly stalking me, like the zombie it so often used to turn me into, all the way to the bloody internet. Harrumph).

IN CHEERIER NEWS: Europeana, the European digital library, museum, and archive was launched yesterday... and is now offline until mid-December, having received far too much interest to cope with (10 million hits per hour).

How great is that?

Not only that I get a reprieve from losing myself in yet another free site for at least another few weeks, but that quite so many people were interested in a project like that. Brilliant :)

Write or Die

Don't worry, that wasn't an ultimatum, just the name of a new internet widgety thing that someone called Doctor Wicked* has helpfully created for those of us among the writing professions who seem to be eternally governed by Newton's lesser known Third-and-a-bit Law: "For every action there is an equal and opposite procrastination."

Click on the link above and you'll be taken to somewhere that will force you to write - through negative reinforcement. Essentially, if you stop writing for a pre-set (or random) amount of time, regrettable things happen (though not death; unless you happen to be terminally allergic to babies crying, fairly-slowly-flashing colours, your words disappearing one-by-one, etc.). Want to stop the regrettable things? Write. Couldn't be simpler.

Of course, I can't guarantee that with your heart racing and your mind going, "Eek! Think of something! Quick!", that you'll write anything that won't need endless editing - my trial 10-minute session yielded only some old nonsense about hippos and hoppos meeting on the African savannah and giving birth to rap - but the experience was oddly compelling. And, hey, a page of something to edit is better than nothing (though I'll probably leave the hippos and hoppos to their own devices - samplers, and record decks, probably).

I'll certainly be giving it another go.

But, erm, perhaps I won't start on the 'Evil' setting next time...

WARNING: the option to copy to clipboard when you navigate away from the page didn't seem to work for me (using Firefox 3), so if you do use this for something you don't want to lose, probably best to copy it manually before clicking 'Done'.

*may not be an actual doctor, or wicked. Treat all advice accordingly.

Times past?

Before posting this YouTube video I should probably have written something about the internet as a publicity tool for new filmmakers, or something like that - you know, just to tie it in with this blog's general theme of Web 2.0/marketing/technology/etc...

But to be honest it's been done before and really I just wanted to post a funny video. So here's a superbly observed little 'mockumentary' I happened to see at the Cornwall Film Festival yesterday (watch in full-screen, or you'll miss something at around 8:44):

A HARD DAY'S KNIGHT



More details of the director, Ashley Wing, plus another longer movie, can be found here.

@->--

While searching for the above I found something else by the same director. It's short and touching, and, despite the contrast, as I happened to find it today, Remembrance Day, it seemed fitting to post this too:

POPPIES

Spotify - not sure about the name, but liking the service

When you've been too busy to mess around much on the internet, or go through the thousands of items that have built up in your Google Reader feeds, it can be a bit difficult to come up with something to blog about... Happily, though, it seems I must have read about something called Spotify some while ago, applied to beta test it, and completely forgotten all about it, because a few weeks ago an invitation popped up in my inbox - just in time to provide me with a whole load of new music to accompany all of that aforementioned being busy.

Because that's what Spotify is, a new music service. And, I'm happy to say, a pretty damned good one.

Essentially it's legal, ad-supported streaming - download the Spotify player, search for music, create playlists, the usual thing - but remarkably smooth and easy to use. It's quick to load, intuitive, and very rarely, and only ever briefly, glitchy. As for the range of music; you'll be pleasantly surprised what's on there (some quite obscure stuff, plus, unusually for these things, quite a lot of classical), and occasionally surprised at what's not (Four Tet's albums, say), but that always seems to be the way with these things and, hey, it's still in beta - I'm assuming, in other words, that they'll be constantly adding music.

Drawbacks? Well, just a few. A few albums I had on my playlist suddenly became unavailable and haven't yet returned (some licensing problem, maybe?), and perhaps a little more work could be put into a mechanism for discovering new music (next to some artists you'll find suggestions, but not others; however, checking out other artists appearing on the same compilation album can pay dividends), but really there's not much to complain about. In particular, the staggered launch seems to be ensuring that the service stays quick and stable, so hopefully that sensible approach to building the customer base will continue.

But what about the advertising? Well, besides the odd unobtrusive image on the player, the ads primarily arrive in the form of occasional between-track radio style ads, but far shorter and far less frequent than on commercial radio. They'll break the mood, sometimes, if you're listening to a whole album, but you can always pay £0.99 to listen ad-free for the day, or £9.99 for the month - not bad, really, if you're someone who would otherwise buy at least one CD a month. On the other hand, sometimes there isn't an ad for ages...

Whether it's a Last.fm-killer, of course, I'm not sure, since I still haven't got around to that... but either way, I'd thoroughly recommend it - if nothing else, it's great for trying before you buy.

However, at present, anyone wanting to give it a go will still need to apply to beta test it.

Actually, not quite anyone:

I have one spare invitation. Yours, to the quickest commenter off the mark.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that there is a radio function, which also helps a bit in discovering new music. You can select genres, time periods and combinations thereof and just listen to whatever Spotify throws up; or when you see the 'Artist Radio' option, click it and Spotify will play similar music, mixed with that artist's own. The latter option's nothing like as sophisticated as Pandora, yet, though, or MeeMix; so something more still wouldn't go astray.

Also, the invitation has now been taken, but if I get any more, they might be posted here again...

The sun's gone dim and the sky's turned black

This week The Times gave away Joy Division's final album Closer*, doubtless lifting the national mood no end - in the present financial climate shouldn't it be looking to keep readers, not give them yet more encouragement to leap from the top of the nearest tall building?

Happily, though, the Guardian Online had a much better idea: posting 12 tracks from Icelandic bands playing at the upcoming Iceland Airwaves Festival. If Iceland can help us mess up our economy, surely they can help us feel a bit better with some soothing (and angry) music, too - right?

And they can. Especially in the form of Ólafur Arnalds' deeply lovely 3055.

But what's any of this got to do with technology, you might ask?

Well, the clue's in the title of the blog post: while pretty reflective of the gloomy state of the world economy just now, it's actually the name of the gorgeous closing track of IBM 1401: A User's Manual. Composed by another Icelander, Jóhann Jóhannsson, IBM 1401 was inspired by his father's recordings of one of Iceland's very first mainframe computers - it's chief maintenance engineer, Jóhann Gunnarsson learned of a way to make music with it, and when the machine was decommissioned in 1971 recorded its melodies as they were played for the last time. You can read the full story behind the album here.

As for the track from which I borrowed the post title, it can't fail to lift your mood (the video perhaps not so much) - shimmeringly beautiful from beginning to end, and from about 04:43 it's even more so:

So, yep, Iceland - it's not so bad really, is it?


UPDATE: If you're interested in seeing all this financial scariness from the perspective of an everyday Icelander just trying to make sense of it all and get on with her life, Alda Kalda's The Iceland Weather Report blog is excellent reading.


*once described to me as "probably the most miserable album ever." At the time, I have to admit, I considered this a recommendation, and it didn't disappoint.

New news about old news

"Experience the new look ITN Source website," my inbox told me this afternoon. I politely declined and decided to just look at it instead.

Upon entry to the site, an implausibly young Cliff Richard doing his best - i.e. still pretty bloodless - Elvis impression greeted me, but for some reason I still stuck around. I'm not quite sure why. Mainly, I think, because it took me a few seconds to work out "What on earth's wrong with Elvis?", by which time the video window had somewhat incongruously switched to footage of bats. That was followed by a clip of a portly black-and-white person on stilts. There being no sound, I had no idea what any of these were about, but at least I was spared Cliff's singing.

Possibly out of gratitude, then, as well as mild bemusement, I decided to actually find out what the site was all about: selling archive footage, mostly. And the reason for the 'beta' label: this version of the site makes it easier to search for, buy and license footage (in other words, to give ITN money). I expect it also looks nicer now, but having not seen it before I have no idea.

Why, though, am I writing about it?

Well, for those of us not looking to insert classic footage of grassy knolls, broken German walls, or one of a doubtless much in demand compilation of clips of Michael Winner into some creative endeavour, it could at least be quite a handy place to view such things - over one million hours of them (though, sensibly, just a few minutes of Michael Winner), with 20 more hours being added every day. As well as being a kind of NewsTube, then, it could also prove quite a useful research tool.

Just one proviso: a little less browser crashing would be nice - at present the site seems to play videos in a few different formats (QuickTime, Flash, and whichever one it was that kept crashing my browser).