Video Killed The Radio Star October 1, 2008
Posted by Chris Wright in Music, Technology.Tags: Apple, BBC, CD, iTunes, Music, Sony, Wired
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Who killed the recorded music industry? In the light of Apple’s veiled threat to shut down iTunes in the face of demands from the music publishing industry for a larger slice of the pie, this question is suddenly a lot more relevant. The central issue is not about Apple, it is about the way that society rewards artists and the failure of the free market to keep up with technology.
Before the gramaphone (ignoring the wax cylinder) there was no recorded music industry. Musicians made a precarious living by playing real instruments, live, in front of real people. Songwriters had a share of the sheet music sales from popular songs. as I said, the living was precarious.
The music industry as we know it, evolved during the sixties - by this I mean the infrastructure of the industry, the distribution channels, the manufacturing, recording and marketing instruments, the fundamental structure of a recording contract that tied an artist into promoting records on tours underwritten by the record companies, ultimately paid for by the royalties on successful records. and by records, I mean the physical vinyl artifact.
This arrangement suited the record companies very well, so well that when CD’s and digital file formats arrived, they completely failed to see the writing on the wall. It was abundantly obvious to anyone with the wit to look, that recorded music would be passed from person to person via computer networks. In one fell swoop, the record companies lost control of the medium and some would say, the industry.
Napster, the peer to peer file sharing service was the first to really get under the record companies skin - hugely successful, the companies invention, a peer to peer music sharing system created a model for a decentralised distribution channel that has proved impossible for the traditional industry to control. It took a federal government to close down Napster, but there are a host of similar enterprises still in semi legal business.
This is why it has been so difficult for the industry to deal with. For each track there is an owner of the sound recording, the record company. There is also a separate work, the musical composition - the song the artist sings. By law, each track of the CD is also considered a reproduction of the musical composition. On a typical CD, there may be 12 sound recordings and 8 separate music publishers. Multiply that times 3,000 record companies in the US, and 25,000 music publishers, times 27,000 new CDs per year. Separate individual negotiations for all these rights are simply not a viable option.
With CD sales falling last year by 20% to ($7.4bn (£4bn)), the record companies now have a major problem. The artists do too, but the good ones are now making up the shortfall by playing live - this has to be good for the long term health of the art. By which i mean that new technology has been seen by the record companies as primarily a means of reducing recording costs - to the detriment of the quality of the product, as the art of songwriting took a back seat to the art of sampling. In the current climate, forcing acts to play live may encourage the use of technology to entertain the audiences again. But it’s not that simple.
Traditionally, the audience / society, pays the piper - prices are hiked and artists, record companies and publishers all live happily ever after. Now however there is a problem. Apple don’t own the medium, they are just the de facto owners of the largest share of the market. Rivals include Sony, who as a record and hardware company themselves, would be very well placed to mount a strong competitive alternative. So Apple will not want the price of recorded music to rise. The record companies, watching their profits dwindle daily are unlikely to want to take the hit, which leaves the publishers and the artists themselves.
Interesting times ahead. Should songwriters be paid for writing songs? Is it reasonable for the record industry to seek to sustain its profit levels when they no longer own the medium? What does the record industry do in these days of digital recording technology, to justify its profit? Should Apple simply raise the price of digital music?
What if the artist retains control of the recording? Is there any point in recording 12 song albums any longer? What are the implications of selling less songs? Would a tour the size of Madonna’s for example be sustainable on the back of the profit gained from a couple of singles? Actually the answer to that one is yes, ditto The Rolling Stones, but what of the middle ranking acts that depend on touring to shift albums?
But back to the central issue - we have an audience, millions of music hungry people with money to burn, who are quite happy to spend it. We have a computer company, Apple, capitalising on the digital format to charge the audience for the music at 99 cents per track. We have a music industry desperate to play ball with Apple because they no longer own the medium. We have a music publishing industry asserting its right to gain a higher percentage of the digital rights - so who loses?
Answers on a postcard please!
Twitter - Oblique Strategies August 23, 2008
Posted by Chris Wright in Music, Technology.Tags: Eno, stategies, Twitter
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Oblique Strategies is a set of published cards created by musician Brian Eno, and artist Peter Schmidt in 1975. The cards are printed with odd and interesting methods to solve a conflict or dilemma.
The concept is derived from techniques used by Brian Eno in the recording studio - when ’stuck’ he would select a card and follow the instructions, no matter how bizarre. In his own words:
“These cards evolved from separate observations of the principles underlying what we were doing. Sometimes they were recognised in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated. They can be used as a pack, or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear…”
This led him to the conclusion that the strategy could be applied to other creative situations and he worked with Schmidt to produce the first set, released as a limited edition. The set has been edited and re-released and is now available at The Oblique Strategies Web Site.
So somebody has diverted the idea to Twitter -
Sample tweets:
“Take away as much mystery as possible. What is left?”
“Instead of changing the thing, change the world around it.”
“Question the heroic approach.”
http://twitter.com/Oblique_Chirps
I am indebted to K. Star St.Germain for alerting me to this - check out her article Cute tech: Twitter // Form vs. Function on her blog This is Star for some other interesting tweets!
MiniBlogs, Music and the Death of Rock Criticism August 6, 2008
Posted by Chris Wright in Blogs, Music, Technology.Tags: blog, Blogging, electro, MiniBlog, Music, Tumblr
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With the notable exception of Laura Barton, who impresses me more with every article she writes, I have declared the practice of Music Journalism to be dead.
The game was effectively up when the first sinister rustlings of electro made their entry some time during the late seventies. Practitioners struggled manfully on, filling pages with turgid hagiography on Kraftwerk and god forbid, Amon Duul, but the death knell was effectively sounded by one of the best electro records ever made - ‘Set it off’ by Strafe. To a lyric consisting entirely of the repeated phrase
“Set it off on the left
Set it off on the right
Set it off”
With the occasional interjection of “Let’s Get This Party Started!” Strafe ushered in the ecstasy generation - the air now well and truly let out of the ‘rock criticism as cultural commentary” balloon, scribes had to fall back on their writing skills. Predictably the few that could actually write - Jon Savage springs to mind, shifted their attention to writing books and journalism proper, the rest shrivelled and died.
So what has this to do with MiniBlogs?
I write, a lot, I also listen to music a lot and have collected records for nearly forty years. However mindful of Frank Zappa’s comment that “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, I have studiously avoided any sort of comittment to writing about music. I’ve no doubt I could fill pages with turgid dross, but frankly what’s the point?
So the miniblog - it occured to me that if I restricted the length of the review to say 150 words, it would focus the pen and might even make the whole exercise useful - so my newest blogging venture is Chimera Obscura. This will consist of mini reviews of albums that I feel fall into the category of cult or wilfully obscure. It will inevitably reflect the contents of my own collection to an extent, and will also feature books, films and photography in the fullness of time.
The miniblog provider I’m using is Tumblr, a setup of such startling simplicity that posting a new article takes minutes or even seconds. So far I’m impressed, it’s not a blog, it’s a tightly themed litany. Let’s see how it goes…
Converting Vinyl into Digital Recordings pt3 July 30, 2008
Posted by Chris Wright in Music, Technology.Tags: digitise, digitize, flac, LP, Music, Vinyl Studio, wav
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So, at this point, we have set up our equipment and cleaned the record - now to capture that music and digitise it!
The output from the record deck will need amplifying before it gets to the PC. This may come as a surprise to anyone who has set up a mid range hi-fi, those amplifiers carry a searate circuit to deal with record players.
I use the ART accessories USB Phono plus - this is extremely simple to set up, phono connections out to the sound card (1 Nikkai Stereo 3.5mm Jack to Twin Phono Lead), or USB connection out to the PC, select Phono and Flat output on front panel and adjust output to the top end of the green signal - it should flicker red on loud passages. Solid red will result in the signal being clipped and the recording compromised.
If the equipment is properly set up, you should be able to hear the output coming though the PC sound system. We now need to use some software to capture the signal. Art Accessories kindly package Audacity with the pre-amp, however Audacity is fiddly to use, particularly when it comes to splitting the tracks.
I use Vinyl Studio, available from AlpineSoft - this excellent utility allows you to capture the signal from the LP, store it as two .wav files (one for each side), filter any scratches, clicks and pops, and finally split the two files into individual tracks. It will also retrieve song titles from the internet!
First job is to create a project and an album in Vinyl Studio - this sets up a directory structure for the recorded files.
Creating an Album
Create the project using the file - New menu, then in the ‘Record’ tab, select ‘Prepare to record a new album’.
Fill in the Artist and Title - take care as it will use the content here to search for the track titles.
Click on ‘Create Album’.
The next step is to check levels. Again, we don’t want to overload the signal.
Checking Levels
Note that the software has worked out that we’re using the USB Audio codec to digitise the analogue audio stream. It is a feature, so I’m told, that certain devices are listed as microphones - the Art Accessories USB plus being one!
Adjust the volume from the USB plus (preamp) until the peaks are registering red, but not butting up against the top of the scale. This is quite fiddly with some records - set the level on the loudest part. Also be aware that back in the seventies, mastering technology was not what it is today, so it’s not unusual to find two sides of the same record mastered at different volumes - set the level for each side to be sure of getting the best results.
Finally we’re ready to go - select record, place the needle on the record and move on to the ‘Split Tracks’ tab while the music is being digitised. Here you can send the software off to retrieve the track listing from a variety of sources, chosen from a drop down list. Again, be careful as different editions of a record may have extra tracks. Yo can also fill in the track listing by hand. Once this is done, return to the ‘Record’ tab, when the record ends, hit stop, flip the disk and repeat the process.
Once we have the LP digitised, then we need to split the tracks. Remember we currently have one huge .WAV file for each side of the album. Return to the ‘Split Tracks’ tab.
Splitting the Tracks
In this screen, hit ‘Scan for Trackbreaks’ - the software will make a pretty reasonable stab at finding the breaks between tracks - it will warn you if you have more breaks than tracks, or less - if this happens, chances are you have a quiet passage which has been mistaken for a track break - simply locate it in the graph and delete the break. This is made simple, by being able to play the track from the software - just put the pointer in the place you think may be mistaken for a break(you can zoom in on the graph), and press play.
If you accept the default sensitivity settings, you will find it gets 90% of track breaks right, but will need adjusting to deal with fade outs. Same principle as above - navigate to the beginning of the fade out and press play, then move the beginning of the brak to the place where the music becomes inaudible.
In the next tab, we can clean up the audio - you can utilise the automatic scan which locates every pop, crackle and click on the record and zaps it, or you can painstakingly locate each audible blemish and zap it - your choice!
So now we take the final step - converting our two large files into several smaller ones. nothing easier! Select the ‘Album’ menu (top of the screen) and choose ‘Save Tracks as MP3′ or ‘Save Tracks as WAV’.
Personally I choose to save the tracks as WAV, on the basis that I can then convert them into FLAC for Hi-Fi and MP3 for mobile listening, later. That will be the topic of the next article!
Converting Vinyl into Digital Recordings pt2 - cleaning May 27, 2008
Posted by Chris Wright in Music, Technology.Tags: record cleaning, Vinyl, VPI
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Taking on the ‘crap in, crap out’ homily, it follows that cleaning the record properly before recording it means a considerable reduction in crackle and pop.
In fact, the manufacturing process for vinyl leaves a fair amount of chemical residue in the grooves in any case, so there is an argument for properly cleaning a record before it is ever played. The traditional methods of cleaning, bristle brush or anti static pad, do remove a fair amount of dirt - the rest, they redistribute, deep into the grooves, where the needle grinds it into the playing surface…
The professional cleaning system is essentially a two phase process. A cleaning fluid is applied and worked into the grooves by firm application of a brush, while the record rotates - this spreads the cleaning fluid across the whole surface. The nature of the fluid is a question for debate - some favour distilled water, others a chemical mixture which is supposed to work on a similar principal to shampoo - ever noticed how clean your fingernails are after washing your hair?
The VPI system I use, supplies a chemical mix and the bristle brush required to work it into the grooves. The machine rotates the record on a turntable powered by a very powerful motor - the power is converted into torque, not speed - the record is rotated at a constant low speed, the brush held firmly enough to slightly bend the bristles against the record. A few drops of the solution across the record are enough to spread a film over the whole playing surface - avoid getting the solution onto the label.
The second phase employs a vacuum cleaner to lift the solution, dirt and all off the playing surface. The VPI deploys a hollow cylinder, padded with velvet to prevent scratching the surface of the record. The residue is sucked off the record and deposited into a steel tank inside the device - this can be emptied periodically.
Once the solution has been spread across the record, move the vacuum arm above the record and flick the vacuum switch - a noise like a jumbo jet will terrify small animals, but the record will be spotless. Allow the record to rotate twice, any more than this will cause static to build up and any dust in the vicinity of the record will immediately attach itself to the surface…. be aware that if the record was visibly dirty then some dust will be present inside the inner sleeve. Many people replace the inner sleeve - use one with a clear polythene lining, the paper ones scratch….
Noise Cancelling Headphones April 12, 2008
Posted by Chris Wright in Music, Technology.Tags: Sony, Walkman, I-Pod
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Carefully balancing the danger of resembling a North London pikey against the desirability of actually being able to hear my music above the roar of the aeroplanes I spend so much time in, I tentatively took the plunge on my way to Orlando last week and shelled out for a pair of Sony MDR NC60 Noise Cancelling Headphones.
The difference between these and the ‘bud’ phones I’m used to using is extraordinary. The stats boast 85% noise reduction - I’d happily concur and add to that crisp, clean bass reproduction, comfort and a range of plug adapters designed to allow use in aeroplanes, with domestic hi-fi and I-Pod and the £100 price tag begins to look reasonable.
From the users perspective, with noise cancelling switched on, background noise is almost entirely screened out. Powered by a single AAA battery, this is a feature worth its weight in gold. I tested these phones on a transatlantic flight, with a Sony Network Walkman playing a mixture of rock, country, blues and jazz - no complaints at all. Listening to the in flight movie only highlighted the paucity of the visual arrangements - wide sound stage, great clarity.
In summary, I’m a convert - I fly at least twice a week and these headphones will substantially add to the quality of my life in airports and aeroplane.
Whats Hot - Slim Devices Transporter April 9, 2008
Posted by Chris Wright in Music, Technology.Tags: Hi-Fi, Transporter, DAC, Wireless, Slimserver, Logitech
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What’s Hot
Slim Devices (taken over by Logitech) Transporter
This is the most radical advance in Hi Fi technology since Sony came up with the Walkman. The Transporter is a wireless enabled receiver armed with a DAC (digital audio converter) capable of delivering streamed music to a high end hi fi with no audible (to these 50 year old ears) penalty whatsoever. Stylish in brushed aluminium orblack finishes, this device has transformed the way I listen to music.
The server side is free software called slimserver which provides the stream for one or more of these boxes to pick up (there is a smaller, budget version called Squeezebox). Slimserver will serve a number of formats including MP3, but more significantly the lossless format FLAC.
There are a number of free software applications out there which help rip the music from CD’s or converters which convert downloaded formats into the one you prefer to use - this only works one way - you could convert MP3 to FLAC, but you wouldn’t gain anything in quality.
The server scans your music library and then allows searching via Artist, Album, Song or random plays. It is random playing which is the CD killer - I have collected music for over forty years - my first purchase was ‘Well Respected Kinks’ back in 1964 and have accumulated over 1000 CD’s alone - however as my career focus moved from music to IT, my listening habits narrowed until I found myself with a stack of maybe ten or fifteen CD’s - always the latest purchases on top of the Hi Fi, a small rack to one side and a room upstairs for all the rest - result was 95% of the collection was rarely utilised. So paying a willing teenager to feed rip CD’s at weekends I enabled my collection in under 12 months and using the randomiser provided in the slimserver program, I am now listening to a much wider range of music than I have for years.
