David Emery OnlineNinja Tune on Leaks
It was with considerable disappointment that we learnt in the last week that two records we have been working on have been leaked, despite the use of watermarked CDs. Toddla T's Watch Me Dance (Ninja Tune) and another upcoming release were both leaked from copies sent to the journalist Benjamin Jager at the offices of Backspin magazine in Germany.
For my non-music industry readers, most releases these days are distributed to journalists, radio DJs and other folks that need the music before an album release either via watermarked CDs or digitally via watermarked downloads or streams.
Watermarking does actually work – it’s a pretty advanced technology, and you really can trace things back as shown by this Ninja Tune post. The thing is, though, is that it actually doesn’t do anything at all – technically speaking, at least – to prevent an album leaking; it’s not like the days of copy-protected CDs that would only play in certain CD players if you looked at them in the right way (on a Tuesday. When it’s sunny.). You can take a watermarked CD, rip it to MP3 and upload it anywhere you like unrestricted.
Watermarking is protection by fear.
Fear that if you did leak it the person who sent it to you would find out and there would be repercussions.
Figuring out what those repercussions actually are is pretty difficult, however. Obviously you stop sending them music, which is you’re a freelance journalist could be an issue I guess, but it’s hardly the end of the world. I have heard of people suing, but most of the time that’s going to be a bit of an extreme measure. So, naming and shaming as Ninja Tune have done seems like an effective solution – if they didn’t do anything, their social copy protection goes out the window.
Although as Darren from PIAS mentions on Twitter, they better be really sure they know who leaked it…
Visit ➔Listening to Music
For a while now I’ve been trying to settle on the best music player app for my iPhone. This is important – for better or for worse, I do practically all of my listening on my iPhone whilst I’m out and about.
Now, the default iPod app does a pretty good job to start off with; the interface looks nice enough, and it handles playlists pretty well. The big thing it lacks though is last.fm scrobbling support, and I doubt Apple are going to add that any time soon. It strikes me that it would make a lot of sense if the official Last.fm app would have a playing interface that lets you access the music and playlists stored in your library, but at the moment it seems to be all about the radio functionality which I have no interest in.
There’s definitely a gap for a more pro music player app on iOS, but sadly no one has quite filled that gap just yet. I was quite hopeful that NowPlayer would fill the gap, as it focuses on providing a beautiful UI and has scrobbling support but sadly it just doesn’t work that we’ll as a player – you...
Read more ➔Experiential Rights
Call it Kaplan’s Law: the more value a non-music company adds to the fan/artist relationship, the bigger the threat to those who’s business depends on being between the two.
Ethan hits the nail on the head here. Rights is hardly a sexy subject to talk about, but it’s an undeniable anchor that the whole industry is moored to (which – to stretch the metaphor to breaking point – is no good if you sitting in your speed boat, ready to set off).
turntable.fm is the perfect example, as it’s now blocked outside of the US due to “rights issues”. What this really means is that the US current has an easy way of licensing the specific model that turntable.fm uses – that of an online radio station – that other places don’t have (in exactly the same form at least). It’s the same system that Pandora (similarly US-only) uses, and to be perfectly frank I’d be surprised if it continues past 2015 (when the setup is up for renegotiation) as the major labels think they should be paid far more per play then the currently get from Pandora or turntable.fm (and damn them if they can’t stay in business as a result).
It’s a pretty complicated mess, it has to be said…
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The Horrors - Skying
Love the new album by The Horrors – ‘Endless Blue’ (wait for the guitars to kick in about half way though!) and ‘Moving Further Away’ (wait for the guitars to kick in about half way though!) are particular highlights.
Visit ➔Lil B, SwagSec, and the Gay Hacking Parade
But some of this didn’t add up. ‘Gay hackers target Amy Winehouse’ still seemed too good a headline to be true.
Then I saw that Lil B was releasing his new album today. Apparantly his album ‘I’m Gay’ (named so in support of the LGBT community, though Lil B is himself a heterosexual) had been released without any notice.
Convenient? I later hear through the grapevine that Winehouse and Pritchard share the same PR guy. Would it be too cynical to imagine he has a new client in Lil B? Yes, it would. Until you see that Lil B had a ‘secret’ meeting with Universal staff back in March.
Does this smell even a tiny bit like a marketing campaign? Is it possible that the site owners and label did this purely for press coverage?
Pretty crazy if true. Pretty lousy marketing if it is.
Visit ➔Soulwax's mashup marathon
Realising that getting clearance for all the samples would be a headache, they found a loophole and applied for radio licences, becoming an internet radio company instead. The upside was no tussles with lawyers. The downside was they couldn't charge a bean: the app will be completely free.
The whole thing is pretty nifty, but I particularly like the idea of being able to release mashups and mixtapes as ‘online radio stations’.
Visit ➔The Wheels Of Steel: An Ode To Turntables (in HTML)
I have been interested in the idea of building a turntable-based UI in HTML for years; however, the past presented a number of technical hurdles. Setting dreams of browser-based remixing aside, simply recreating the core design elements of a turntable was practically infeasible until the advent of CSS3. The features most notably missing from browsers involved drawing circles, rotation of elements and low-level control of audio. As of 2011, it's a pleasure to say that these features can be implemented almost entirely using HTML, CSS and JavaScript alone.
Seriously cool.
Visit ➔The Horrors at York Hall
More photos on Flickr.
Kaiser Chiefs ... but under your control
And so to The Future Is Medieval. Without any buildup, fanfare or whatever you want to call the pop equivalent of leaving Red Bull cans scattered around Leeds city centre, the successor to 2008's Off With Their Heads appeared on Kaiser Chiefs' website on Friday. In doing so, it effectively heralds the arrival of the world's first bespoke album. Ten songs from a choice of 20 for £7.50 – no more, no less – but what those songs are, and the order in which they run, is down to you.
An interesting variation of the “In Rainbows” model – I thought we were done with that, to be honest, as it’s a model that’s not actually very good at selling records if you’re not Radiohead…
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