From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V9 #161 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Monday, June 9 2003 Volume 09 : Number 161 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Apple Music Store and independent artists [Andrew Fries ] Re: Apple Music Store and independent artists [Dan Riley ] Ecto Music ["Lyle Howard" ] Re: a revision to my list... [Kjetil Torgrim Homme ] Re: Apple Music Store and independent artists [Dan Riley ] Re: Ecto Music [Philip David Morgan ] beautiful voices (still trailing behind) ["Adam K." ] Re: Ecto Music ["Bill" ] RE: Ecto Music ["Foghorn J. Fornorn" ] sarah harmer at joe's pub [broadway jack ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 08 Jun 2003 16:59:34 +1000 From: Andrew Fries Subject: Re: Apple Music Store and independent artists On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 15:14, Greg Bossert wrote: > one or two successful online music > ventures that respect artists and independent labels could tumble from > power the already fragile RIAA. Well, when you put it like that ... Unfortunately, one glance at their terms of service page was enough to make this discussion purely academic for me: this service is provided only in the United States. How odd! Makes me wonder whether Apple is planning a scheme similar to DVD regions? If that's the case, they can count me out. > some of the points that are unusual compared to other such schemes are: > > * the license to copy content to up to three computers > * the license to burn and/or export the content how generous. I still don't understand how this Digitally Retarded Media scheme would work in practice. "three computers" at the same time? Ever? And what about backups - does it mean after making three backups the next one might not play? What if my computer dies and I restore my backup on another machine (this was the point of making backups after all)... does that count as another instance of those three computers? So many questions, so many doubts - all in all I think I'll stick to buying a regular, non-crippled CDs,so I can make my own rips in format of my choice, and back them up and stream them over my LAN to my heart's content, no questions asked. > eh, i run Linux all my home network servers (about a dozen, including > the machine that used to host Ecto), and i write my "day job" code for > distribution on Solaris, but i do all of my development and music on a > pair of Apples, including a lovely Ti powerbook -- owning an Apple > product or three has proven to be no burden to me. not to me, either - just to my pocket! In fact I grew up on Apples exclusively, I only switched when OS X came out. I can remember exactly the moment I decided it was time to quit: I was reading an explanation of its file system. Admittedly Apple had a difficult situation on their hands, trying to maintain some sort of resemblance to how things used to work on one hand, and using BSD file system that knows nothing about things like resource forks on the other - but reading about all kludges and tricks they were resorting to was enough to put me off OS X - probably for ever. Then, there is that small matter of cost... sure Apple makes nice hardware, especially laptops. But my word, you pay for it! I don't know if pricing is especially bad here in Australia, but consider this: as a matter of fact I just bought a new computer. Decent, but not top of the range: Athlon XP2600, 512Mb RAM, 80GB disk, DVD, burner, full tower - it came to just over A$1,400. (I was able to shave some cost off by getting a bare-bones system, avoiding Microsoft tax). The equivalent Apple, bottom-of-the-range G4 tower sells for A$3,090. It has half the RAM and smaller disk... Not to mention the monitor, which I didn't need for this PC but would probably have to get one for Apple, and it would likely also be around twice as expensive as its PC equivalent... No contest. - --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Grrr...Arrgh!" -- Mutant - -- 16:30:09 up 2 days, 1:15, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00-- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 03:00:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Mike Matthews Subject: Today's your birthday, friend... i*i*i*i*i*i i*i*i*i*i*i *************** *****HAPPY********* **************BIRTHDAY********* *************************************************** *************************************************************************** ********************** Alex Gibbs (no Email address) ********************** *************************************************************************** -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Alex Gibbs Thu June 08 1967 Betelgeuse Gleb Zverev Tue June 09 1964 Gemini Sonja Juchniewich Mon June 10 1963 Pegasus Joerg Plate Mon June 12 1967 Gemini Chris Montville Tue June 13 1978 Gemini Ectoplasm (original name) Mailing List Thu June 13 1991 Fuzzier blue Paul Huesman Wed June 14 1967 coffee drinker Mark R. Susskind Wed June 15 1966 Gemini Dave Upham Sun June 15 1958 Gemini Mike Matthews Mon June 16 1969 Pr. SAFH Albert Philipsen Mon June 17 1968 Gemini Neal R. Copperman Thu June 17 1965 Gemini Susan Kay Anderson Tue June 17 1969 Gemini Ecto-The Mailing List Tue June 18 1991 Fuzzy blue Tracy Barber Mon June 18 1956 Gemini Greg Dunn Thu June 18 1953 + Paul Blair Thu June 18 1964 Objectivist Mike Connell Sat June 18 1955 Apollo David Lubkin Fri June 20 1958 OurLady Marisa Wood Fri June 20 1969 Gemini Cheri Villines Sun June 20 1965 Gemini-Leo rising Ray Misra Sat June 20 1970 Gemini Nik Popa Sun June 22 1969 Cancer Teresa VanDyne Thu June 23 1960 Cancer Dave Torok Mon June 24 1968 Cancer Ethan Straffin Thu June 24 1971 Cancer Kevin Dekan Mon June 27 1960 Cancer Samantha Tanner Tue June 30 1970 Wild Goose BunkyTom Tue July 02 1968 Cancer Anders Hallberg Tue July 03 1962 Cancer Kevin Harkins Thu July 05 1973 Cancer Laurel Krahn Mon July 05 1971 Cancer John J Henshon Mon July 05 1954 The Year Of The Horse / Ruled By The Moon Jim Gurley Mon July 06 1959 Cancer Lisa Rouchka Fri July 08 1960 Moonchild with Java Rising - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------ Date: 08 Jun 2003 10:09:47 -0400 From: Dan Riley Subject: Re: Apple Music Store and independent artists Andrew Fries writes: > how generous. I still don't understand how this Digitally Retarded Media > scheme would work in practice. "three computers" at the same time? Ever? > And what about backups - does it mean after making three backups the > next one might not play? The limit is on playing, not copying. You can make as many copies, backups, etc. as you like, but at any time only three systems will be authorized to play the tracks. > What if my computer dies and I restore my backup on another machine > (this was the point of making backups after all)... does that count > as another instance of those three computers? You can change the list of systems authorized to play the tracks. However, the only procedure documented so far for deauthorizing a system requires that you do so from the system to be removed from the authorized list--so, at least according to the docs so far, your scenario above would count against the three system limit (but, according to the docs, restoring to the same system wouldn't count against the total). It's definitely a problem if a destroyed or stolen system can't be deauthorized. Apple has said very little about how the DRM system actually works, so I can't say if this is a fixable problem, or if it's inherent in how they manage the DRM authorization. iTunes4 About Music Store Authorization and Deauthorization: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93014 > So many questions, so many doubts - all in all I think I'll stick to > buying a regular, non-crippled CDs,so I can make my own rips in > format of my choice, and back them up and stream them over my LAN to > my heart's content, no questions asked. The IMS DRM will let you burn as many CDs as you want, which is a pretty remarkable concession to get out of the major labels. And you can of course rip those CDs, which will give you a DRM free rip, but will suffer from the usual multi-pass degradation if you re-encode it with a compressing codec. Things like this suggest to me that Apple is trying to make the DRM barrier just high enough that most people will play by the rules, which is a big contrast with the RIAAs attempts to control every last thing you can do. I give Apple high marks for that--it looks to me like the most credible attempt so far to convince the fossils at the RIAA that their business model has to change (and they could make *more* money if they'd just do it right--but they're still in deep denial about the lessons they should have learned from their own history and the MPAAs). > not to me, either - just to my pocket! In fact I grew up on Apples > exclusively, I only switched when OS X came out. I can remember exactly > the moment I decided it was time to quit: I was reading an explanation > of its file system. Admittedly Apple had a difficult situation on their > hands, trying to maintain some sort of resemblance to how things used to > work on one hand, and using BSD file system that knows nothing about > things like resource forks on the other - but reading about all kludges > and tricks they were resorting to was enough to put me off OS X - > probably for ever. There are a lot of kluges in OsX, but it still works remarkably well. I'm going in the opposite direction as you--while I admired the GUI of MacOS <= 9, I never really liked using it (and so rarely did). OsX I like, a lot, and will be buying some Mac hardware soon (delayed slightly by the latest G5 rumors). OsX does support ufs filesystems; it isn't advisable to try and make / ufs, but other partitions for doing unixy things can be ufs. - -dan ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 16:22:58 +0200 From: Kjetil Torgrim Homme Subject: Re: Apple Music Store and independent artists [Andrew Fries]: > > Unfortunately, one glance at their terms of service page was > enough to make this discussion purely academic for me: this > service is provided only in the United States. How odd! not at all. acquiring worldwide rights to distribution is a lot of work. it's understandable that they start out with US only. > how generous. I still don't understand how this Digitally Retarded > Media scheme would work in practice. "three computers" at the same > time? Ever? And what about backups - does it mean after making > three backups the next one might not play? read their whitepaper at http://www.veridisc.com/explained_works.asp it's a bit old, and doesn't go into technical details. but one of their premises is that all DRM _will_ be broken. the key is to not alienate your customers and give them a good product so they will use your service voluntary. after all, laws will make it impossible to run as slick a service as iTunes -- as soon as the service enters the mainstream, it will be slapped down with a suit. do you really want to use eDonkey when you can use iTunes? ("oh, I'll save a dollar downloading it from eDonkey -- but I may have to wait a couple of hours for it to complete.") > What if my computer dies and I restore my backup on another > machine (this was the point of making backups after all)... does > that count as another instance of those three computers? their scheme assumes you're online. every new song on a computer must be registered with them. if you are out of slots, deregister it at one of your computers. (I assume they have a local registry of keys to keep traffic down -- it would be annoying if I couldn't play my music just because a router was down.) > So many questions, so many doubts - all in all I think I'll stick > to buying a regular, non-crippled CDs,so I can make my own rips in > format of my choice, and back them up and stream them over my LAN > to my heart's content, no questions asked. they point out that loophole in their paper, too ;-) Kjetil T. np: Ra is an angry God (trance version) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 13:09:55 +0300 From: Markku Kolkka Subject: Re: Apple Music Store and independent artists ViestissC$ Sunnuntai 8. KesC$kuuta 2003 06:32, Andrew Fries kirjoitti: > A couple of things, actually. First of all, I could ask for encoding in > a standard, open and portable format. Apparently Apple uses something > called "AAC", AAC is ISO/MPEG Advanced Audio Coding, so it's just as open and standard as MP3. See http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/aac.html - -- Markku Kolkka markku.kolkka@koti.soon.fi ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 13:01:32 -0400 From: meredith Subject: a revision to my list... Hi, Add to my list of most beautiful voices: Sarah Harmer. I realized at the end of her near-two-hour-long set at the Iron Horse last night that yes, I would happily pay money to listen to her sing the phone book. (Plus, she would surely make some funny comments about the odd names in there while she was at it. ;) Here's one for the Buffyfans among us: Sarah's listed opener was someone I'd never heard of named Mike Neill, so I was a bit puzzled when two guys took the stage. I was even more puzzled when I noticed that one of them looked familiar. I turned to woj and JeffW and said, "hey guys, doesn't he look like Warren?" Then my brain clicked into gear and I remembered that Adam Busch is involved with a musical project. But I still wasn't 100% sure it was him -- for one thing, he was much thinner than on tv! Then he started singing, and I knew for sure. Adam Busch's musical project is a duo called Common Rotation. He sings and plays harmonica (both quite well, I might add), and his partner, whose name I didn't catch, plays guitar and also sings. Their thing is basically acoustic indie power-pop, complete with schtick (coordinated backing away from and then stepping up to the mics, and even after singing the final line of one song, something about "don't make me fall to the floor" they actually did). It could have been really cheezy, but they made it work. They only got to do 5 songs, but they were very entertaining and really got the crowd going. To Adam's credit, he didn't mention anything about his other career -- though after their second song a chorus of young female voices shouted from the back, "We love you Warren!" at which point he said something like "Warren loves his residual checks" and left it at that. :) (I understand that James Marsters (Spike) has a band called Ghost Of The Robot -- maybe we'll run into them randomly opening for someone at some point, too. :) So anyway ... after Common Rotation had left for the airport (apparently last night was the last show on their tour, and it was time to head back to LA) the listed Mike Neill come on, and immediately brought everyone crashing down with a painfully boring set that was sadly much longer than an opening set needs to be, no matter who is performing. Finally, it was Sarah's turn. She was completely solo, with just an acoustic guitar, and she proceeded to put on the best performance I've ever seen her do. While I've loved seeing her, my one complaint has been that she's tended to rush through the songs, and seemed rather nervous in between songs. Not this time. She was relaxed, and genuinely happy to be back on the road again. She told some really funny stories in between songs, and provided some insight into a few of her old ones (such as, "Uniform Grey" was written in Halifax -- makes sense!). She also played a lot of new songs, since she's been recording a new album (yay!) that is due in January. They were all really, really good. I think the new album will be well worth the wait. She's doing two shows at Joe's Pub in NYC, tomorrow and Tuesday, and then she's doing two nights at the House Of Blues in Boston on Wednesday and Thursday. Her tour continues for the next couple weeks, so if you can get to a show don't miss it. =============================================== Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth =============================================== Live At The House O'Muzak House Concert Series http://muzak.smoe.org =============================================== ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 17:15:44 +0000 From: "Lyle Howard" Subject: Ecto Music Howdy, Seeing Susan Court's name mentioned (twice) reminded me of all the musicians lurking on the ecto list. If I recall correctly it has been two years since ectophiles attempted to gather together handmade-homemade music for the perusal/ignoring of the world. Do I hear a faint scream from the east coast, coming from the general direction of Foghorn J. Foghorn? Or maybe that is a Phil Hudsony echo from the west coast. Anyway if we start today and work very hard we could have some kind of music agglomeration in a couple of years. It seems that every third person on this list is a musician. It would be nice to see (hear) what everyone does musically. For those groaning at the thought of recording a two or three minute song, I suggest collaboration with other musicians. In fact, I suppose we could put up a bunch of loops somewhere and use those as a foundation for some sort of music. Ecto-karaoke. Just an idle thought. Don't shoot me. Lyle _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 19:35:07 +0200 From: Kjetil Torgrim Homme Subject: Re: a revision to my list... [meredith]: > > I would happily pay money to listen to her sing the phone book. > (Plus, she would surely make some funny comments about the odd > names in there while she was at it. ;) speaking of which, have you heard Scared Weird Little Guys' "The Phone Book Song"? absolutely hilarious. you can get some samples of their humour from http://www.swlg.com.au/ Kjetil T. np: SWLG: Shopping and Parking ------------------------------ Date: 08 Jun 2003 13:55:17 -0400 From: Dan Riley Subject: Re: Apple Music Store and independent artists Kjetil Torgrim Homme writes: > their scheme assumes you're online. every new song on a computer must > be registered with them. if you are out of slots, deregister it at > one of your computers. (I assume they have a local registry of keys > to keep traffic down -- it would be annoying if I couldn't play my > music just because a router was down.) They must have some sort of local registry--you have to be able to play music you've registered while disconnected from the net, or the scheme is dead. I would guess that's why the "must deauthorize before selling/losing/destroying" problem exists at all--if they required connected operation, deauthorization post mortem would be simple. I suppose I should try it and find out--I've got an iBook from work, and I'm in the US... - -dan ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 11:34:10 -0700 From: Paul Schreiber Subject: Re: Apple Music Store Greg Bossert wrote: > Apple did, disappointingly, pull the license to share content via the > local network to other Apple computers, after someone distributed a > hack to allow sharing over the internet. but they are at this point > still open to customer feedback, so complain to them if you feel this > is a reasonable right. That's not quite right. Let me clarify how this works. iTunes 4.0.0 had two music sharing (i.e. streaming, not downloading) feature: * Rendezvous: automatically discover computers sharing playlists on your local subnet * General streaming: you can connect to any machine on the internet running iTunes (provided they've enabled sharing) via a daap:// URL iTunes 4.0.1 removed only the second piece of functionality; the Rendezvous/local sharing feature is still intact. The sharing feature works for music you've encoded yourself. It's not really useful for music you've purchased from the iTunes Music Store (iTMS). Why? Because that music can only be played on three computers, and you have to authorize them first. So if you're at work or in a dorm, it won't help you. If you're at home, you could authorize your other computer(s) and it would help you. Lastly, about the AAC files. AAC, as has been noted, is a standard format. If you rip music from your CDs into AAC, that music can be played on any computer/OS. iTunes labels these files .m4a (MPEG 4 Audio?). However, music purchased from the iTMS are not standard AAC files. They're AAC + FairPlay DRM, and can only be played on Macs and iPods (and iTunes for Windows, whenever that gets released). These files are labelled .m4p (MPEG 4 protected?). Paul shad 96c / uw cs 2001 / mac activist / fumbler / eda / headliner / navy-souper fan of / sophie b. / steve poltz / habs / bills / 49ers / "We all need to damn well get along." --Sarah McLachlan in a CDNow interview ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 16:44:46 -0400 From: Philip David Morgan Subject: Re: Ecto Music Hello, Lyle: >...If I recall correctly it has been two years since ectophiles attempted to > gather together handmade-homemade music for the perusal/ignoring of the > world....It would be nice to see (hear) what everyone does musically. For > those groaning at the thought of recording a two or three minute song... I > suppose we could put up a bunch of loops somewhere and use those as a > foundation for some sort of music. Ecto-karaoke. > > Just an idle thought. Don't shoot me. You're safe, Lyle... actually _I_ for one like that idea... the loop library could also prove useful to some of us who've been yearning to learn how to produce a recording of some sort, and possibly stir some creative ecto-juice in our own communities. For example, we've a few young folks in my Unitarian Universalist congregation who'd feel at home on this list (but don't know about it just yet - hmmm.... how to promote good ecto) and who are quite gifted musically. Besides, I've had enough of these cabaret nights in which the elder members seem more capable of _re_-creating (read: doing covers) as opposed to trying something new... Philip David (who's unarmed but still culturally dangerous) 2003.06.08 - --- The Polly Stephanson Project - closer to Independent International and Ground Zero than to Madacy and St.Clair... http://homepage.mac.com/pollyshows/ (Hmmm.... ecto-micro-movies.... - that's something else worth considering...) - --- "Now go back and finish your oatmeal." ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 17:11:04 +0100 From: "Adam K." Subject: beautiful voices (still trailing behind) Oh, jeez, and no-one mentioned Laura Love, either. adam k. np - laura love/helvetica bold ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 15:36:04 -0700 From: "Bill" Subject: Re: Ecto Music On Sun, 08 Jun 2003 17:15:44 +0000, Lyle Howard wrote: >For those groaning at the thought of recording a two or three >minute song, I suggest collaboration with other musicians. Count me in! No, I didn't attend Berklee, nor have I ever made a dollar performing music (unlike many of you), but between my computer, Roland synth, four baroque recorders, three flutes, two ocarinas, two harmonicas, two melodicas, and one soul full of musical desire, I perhaps come be of some use. :) In any event, it's a great idea; I purchased and have enjoyed the Ectopia CD; another issue would be welcome! Hopeful in Arizona, - - Bill G. :) np: Miguel Bos - Sereno ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 22:26:38 -0400 From: "Foghorn J. Fornorn" Subject: RE: Ecto Music Sounds like we're on a firm two year cycle here... we had Ectopia in '99, then the 10-year anniv CD in '01... Here we are in '03 and the subject has come up again. We can set our calendars by it. I'm not screaming here, it was all great fun, and I'd be willing to play editor again, if such service is needed. As far as collaborations go, probably your best bet is to just peer to peer it, or if someone has FTP space to offer, use it. I don't think anyone would mind if the ecto list was used as a sounding board for collaboration requests, or offers. If you want someone to keep a central roster or tally, I'm willing. We'll see what develops. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 23:24:58 -0400 From: broadway jack Subject: sarah harmer at joe's pub ms. harmer's at joe's pub in new york city for the next two nights. i'll be catching the tuesday night show but i'll be by my lonesome since meredith'll be down at meow mix for the biannual (or is that the semi-annual?) xena night. anybody else going? we saw her last weekend at the iron horse and the show was most excellent, so if you're on the fence, i'd recommend settling on the going side rather than the staying-home side. ;) woj ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V9 #161 **************************