David Emery Online
Designing for the Web. On the Web.
Last week, after a lot of thought and a heap of work, we released my book, Designing for the Web, online. For free.
Well worth a read.
Visit ➔The Orchard
I like this because it encapsulates the journalistic narrative on the music industry perfectly: yet another nail in the coffin of the music industry. Pretty much any story on music is shaped around that narrative, regardless of what the story is and regardless of the truth of the narrative.
In many ways (instruments, publishing, licensing) the music industry is doing better than ever. It is only the record industry that’s dying, just like the wax cylinder industry before it and the mass market for sheet music.
Can we stop the “it’s the record industry that’s dying” narrative as well? From my point of view it’s doing pretty well; it’s different and changing but in no way dying. Although certain chucks are (cough-EMI-cough) that’s nothing to do with the viability of selling recorded music.
Visit ➔NPR, WSJ plan Flash-free Web sites for Apple iPad
In addition to new App Store software, National Public Radio and The Wall Street Journal also plan to create specific versions of their Web sites completely devoid of Adobe Flash for iPad users.
This week Peter Kafka with MediaMemo revealed that both NPR and the Journal will convert at least some portions of their Web site to load properly on the iPad. The custom-built sites will feature the same content and run concurrently with the traditional and iPhone/mobile-friendly versions of each Web site.
I wonder if this is going to be easily available to non-iPad users, and also whether they’ll be the normal website with the flash elements replaced, or some form of iPad specific version with a different UI.
Considering the apparent rise of flash blockers, it would be pretty smart to have a version without flash that gets fed to those users (iPad browsers included). Of course, that begs the question: why have the flash version in the first place?
Visit ➔Interview: David Emery, Head of Digital Marketing, Beggars Group
In his role as head of digital at Beggars, David Emery has worked on digital campaigns for albums such as Radiohead’s In rainbows, Vampire Weekend’s Contra, and most recently the debut album from The xx. Sandbox picked his brains on the full gamut of digital marketing, starting with artist websites.
A brief glimpse into where my head’s at currently with regards to things like artist websites, Facebook, apps et al.
Visit ➔6music and why I don't care
I have never really seen the appeal of radio. I get my news from the internet, the papers, the television. I get my music from any one of the 'cater to your exact needs' online music services like last.fm or spotify or any of the unfairly overlooked podcast and online radio stations. FM/AM radio belongs in cars with tape decks. It does not belong in the age of bluetooth and iPod connectivity as standard.
As previously mentioned I’m a fan of 6music, but I will admit I don’t listen to it very often; occasionally on the weekend at most. I thought it was worth bring attention the other side of the fence – not so much against 6music, but more about the relevancy of radio when we have this whole internet thing.
I don’t agree with this article, but I wonder if many people under the age of 18 actually do.
Visit ➔Ambilight for video tag
At first it looks like an average video player, the kind that loads standard HTML5 video. As the video plays, you very quickly notice what’s happening at the edges. The plugin automatically grabs the average colour in each area, and spreads it across the bounds of the video.
Incredibly cool – makes me very excited about what the possibilities are for doing crazy things in HTML and JS with video.
Visit ➔MTV channel idents
MTV International (ie MTV in every country bar the US) rolled out a new identity and idents created by MTV's world design studio in Milan in collaboration with Universal Everything last year […] More recently (and potentially confusingly) we reported that MTV (in the US) has tweaked the logo in a separate (and for now localised) rebrand - although that logo tweak WILL impact in MTV International (non US) territories by the end of next year. Now MTV International has added to last year's rebranding exercise by rolling out brand new idents designed specifically for its separate, genre-based channels
Nice ‘brand harmonisation’ you’ve got going on there MTV.
I can’t help but feel like this raft of changes-for-changes-sake – most notably, from my point of view, the rebrand of MTV2 to the vomit-inducing MTV Rocks – is a last ditch attempt to become relevant again when it comes to music videos. It’s not going to work though; music video has found its true home on the internet, and it’s not going to be on TV in any meaningful way for much longer…
Visit ➔Music Plus One
Web 2.0.
A phrase I think we’re all quite happy never to hear again, right? Luckily it seems to have died out – of over use, of course – of late, which is handy as no one really knew what it meant anyway.
Similarly – although a while later, encapsulating the relationship the two industries have quite nicely – we have also seen the rise of the term Music 2.0 as well, which has a similar utterly wooly definition.
By ‘utterly wooly’ I mean non-existent. It’s a poor rip-off of meaningless hype-fuel, spouted by people who don’t know what they’re talking about (see also ajax, and now HTML5).
Music 2.0 – definition-less as it is – seems then to be mostly about the Web 2.0-ification of the music industry, so things like Blogs, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, social networking and all that blah blah blah. Digital music, the ramifications of piracy and reduced barriers to entry all could and do get lumped into this vague category which pretty much covers most ‘industry’ discussions of the ‘horrific’ (read: different) future of the music business.
To me though this is all very much a continuation of the state of affairs we’ve had since the outbreak of recorded music;...
Read more ➔Steve Lamacq on 6music
The cultural hole it would leave if scrapped, would have terrible repercussions for everyone from small promoters to indie labels to bands and to music fans of all ages. We’d be denying people the chance to hear music which could – even in just a few cases – alter their life, as listening to John Peel changed mine.
I’ve held back from writing about the proposed closure of BBC 6music as I don’t think I have anything to add to the debate that hasn’t already been said, and by better writers to boot.
Steve hits the nail on the head here, of course. None of the arguments hold any weight when examined with any thoroughness; it’s just politics, plain and simple.
Visit ➔