Nice recent interview with Bill Gould (Bass, ex-Faith No More). Right of reply to Trey Spruance's recent interview slamming FNM over his time with the band during King For A Day.
Nice review of why iTunes still sucks for artists (via Rocknerd).
Can still only use it in the US...
Ages ago I joked that Coke could buy the whole music industry and give all music away and write it all off as advertising. Apple aren't making a huge amount of money from iTunes (most of the money still goes to record companies and eventually to artists, I as I suppose it should). Their hope is that it'll fuel iPod and Mac sales. I think they've made a good gamble.
I've reading a lot of grumbles about how iTunes songs cost the same as they do from regular CDs but they come without packaging and restrict what you can do with it. That and iTunes is the cheapest online store so far, the least restrictive DRM and the ability to buy any song without having to buy the whole album. This per-song selling is the only thing keeping it going of course.
The debate about how recording costs have (or should have) dropped significantly with the help of better technology is for another day.
Much of the reason music still costs so much online is that they (record companies) don't want to compete with CD sales. If they didn't have to support the production side of things music cost would drop significantly. But they're not going to drop this production side any time soon.
But the cost of the physical CD has never been much of a factor in it's price. Most CDs including packaging maybe cost $2 to make maximum. All the rest of the money goes to the record company to pay off the costs, a little bit to the artist, the rest is physical store mark up. At least it should be cheaper without the markup? No, iTunes needs a mark up too. All you'll save is the physical costs which are almost nothing. And most CDs these days sell without the markup. I read something recently that most of JB HiFi's DVDs sell at cost. They use DVD to get you into the store.
I've been digging out some old CDrs lately. I should scan them in for you to see what four years in storage can do to a CDr. Discolouration from UV light where the edges of the CD were sticking out. Scary stuff. Stills plays OK. For the moment...
I still REALLY want something like iTunes for TV shows. $2 or $3 an episode. Discounts for whole seasons. I miss Samurai Jack. Maybe I should just get cable again.
Four day weekend. What did I do? I can't remember... really... I was sick for most of it, am still sick now. It bothers me I can't remember what I did, feels like I wasted the time, but I did a lot. Let's see...
*wobbly spacey thinking back thing*
On Friday I worked a bit on my CD database, which now includes MP3s (I've bought three MP3 albums (two VAST, one They Might Be Giants) in my lifetime now and they deserve a place in my library). Hacked my old image upload code to work locally without the need for the third party COM object I was using (ASPUpload and ASPImage). It doesn't auto resize CD cover images for me now but I can deal with that. Wrote some code to import my MP3s in and some more code to match MP3s up with existing albums in the database. Lots of renaming and Artist/Track matching to do on Various Artists records. If I was rich I'd pay someone to do it. Now if I could just find a nice play to play MP3s from the browser. At the moment quicktime grabs it. Yuck. Would be nice to be able to click something which enqueued the track in Winamp.
Also on Friday spent a bit of time ringing around venues to organise Walken gigs. Looks likely that unless we get a support gig in the next month or so there will be no Walken gigs until January next year, then a month off in Feb to record. I can deal with that. I've been wanting to spent time working on new stuff, and leave time for the other guys to finish the Bakehouse demos off. We'll keep trying though. Don't really want to disappear off the radar for so long. Sent a few demos off to booking places too. Need to call them on Wednesday and Friday.
Visited Doug at Rare Records for the first time in ages. Dropped off a pile of old music magazines I've been meaning to give him for a while. Hopefully organise a swap for something. Also found out he's selling his The Sharp collection. It's all signed though so it'll be a bit pricy I think. I'm hoping he has some stuff I don't have including some of the Sharp Squad fan club only stuff. Dropped by Dave's for a beer and dinner after that.
Saturday drove around looking at rental houses. Got the keys to a few and had a look around. We can get a rental that is much bigger (by two rooms) for the same price, but 20 to 40 minutes extra to get to work. But closer to family. No ducted heating or airconditioner either. Can live without them. About same distance from friends. Makes jamming harder (can't really go home first and get there in time). Still no room for a puppy (the back yards are rarely closed off), but the possibility of a cat was brought up by the puppy lord. Dave thinks what we really want is a baby. If only you could leave a baby locked in a glass cage for two days and forget it's there... if only you could do that with a puppy! Rats are the perfect pet.
I like living where we are, we just want a bigger place, but we really should just get rid of some of our crap. I don't think I'd want to move out that far unless it was a much better place or we were buying.
ooo eBay.com.au has free listings until Thursday.
Sunday. Slept. Did house stuff. Had dinner at parents-in-common-law.
Monday I spent a large amount of time backing up the RAW music data from the band's Bakehouse sessions after noticing how quickly some of my old CDrs are starting to decay. That and I needed the hard-disk space for more demos. Tinkered some more with the CD Database.