TUN3R: Give me Radio or Give me Death

Top Ten Pop Hooks in Rotation for 2011 / TUN3R still indefinitely suspended

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:59:00 +0000

I thought I write this one last "epilogue" post. The last one about TUN3R's indefinite suspension was a bit of a downer to end on. Feel free to read it if you're curious about the history of TUN3r and why we suspended it.

I should have written this post about a month ago. I've started a new job and have been very tight on time these days so I'm going to jump right into the list. It will likely be my last post on the TUN3R blog. But never say never. While the list itself has not been rushed. I'll admit this post is a bit.

Ten: Friday (Rebecca Black): To be sure, this is a horrible song. It's entirely sung in AutoTune and for anyone over the age of 10, is surely one of the most grating sounds to have every reached such a wide audience. But there's something I secretly admire about Friday. Namely, it completely bypassed all the established controls that are normally put in place by the mainstream entertainment complex. It did so using a simple catchy pop hook, which at first was mocked by Daniel Tosh, and later became embraced by millions of pre-tweens around the world. What's most amazing about Friday is that it also features a video showing a bunch of young teenagers with acne. That's right acne. You would think there was a strict law (punishable by death) preventing us from seeing acne anywhere on television. There might as well have been. But no, here we can see it in full display - in the back of a Chrysler Sebring convertible no less. So for this reason I must doff my hat at Rebecca Black, and hope she never releases another song for the rest of her life.

Nine: Buy My Love (Wynter Gordon): I'm kind of surprised this song didn't get more airplay. Whoever wrote it has done an impressive job stitching together various pop hooks into a cohesive song that still sounds fresh to my ears. Yes it's poppy and probably annoying for most music aficionados. But songs like this are a lot rarer than most people realize.

Eight: Price Tag (Jessie J feat. B.o.B.): I read an interview with Jessie J a few months ago which stuck out in my mind, and deserves to be mentioned here. Jessie J revealed what it takes to create a great pop hook. Behind "Price Tag" are about a thousand songs you'll never hear. That's right - Jessie J literally wrote one thousand songs before choosing a handful for her album, of which this is the only one I've heard. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, these pop hooks that float to the surface are the product of highly competitive Darwinian process. What's most interesting for me (another point I bring up) is that all the songs you'll hear this year won't amount to a single Beatles album from the 60s. Still a great mystery of science I suppose.

Seven: More Thank You Know - RAM Radio Edit (Flash Brothers): I've never been a big trance fan. The tempo is always a bit too fast for my liking, there's rarely any vocals, and it all too often sounds like a big wash. But this song, while squarely in the trance genre is oddly...entrancing (horrible pun, I know). There's a kind of anxiety/urgency to the singer's voice which gets my heart rate going. But more impressively, there's something mellifluous to this track that's lacking in most other trance hits.

Six: Someone Like You - Happy HotDog Radio Edit (Adele): Yes she's all the rage still, and I do very much like Adele's voice. But until I'd heard this Happy HotDog mix, I'd never paid much attention to her. There's something about taking a mushy pop hook and sharpening it up, that really appeals to me.

Five: Loca People (Sak Noel): This immediately reminded me of a song (from 1998 I believe) by Touch and Go called "Would You...?". If you remember the song, you'll know what I'm talking about. What I find fascinating about both Loca People and Would You is that they both follow the exact same formula, were both minor hits, and yet there are surprisingly few copycats. But what I find most fascinating about these songs is that they're basically spoken word pop hooks. Sort of reminds me of those extended samples (often from Blade Runner) that would pop up in 90s industrial music. But as simple as Loca People sounds, I suspect it's harder to come up with spoken word pop hooks, than it looks.

Four: Give Me Everything (Pitbull feat. Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer): I'm a bit reluctant to put this song on this list, and from a pure talent perspective I'm not sure if this should be at number four. But the reason I'm giving this more prominence is that I believe this song answers a question I raised last year. Namely, "How has popular music discernibly changed over the past 2-5 years?" While there are many answers to this question, a pattern that appears to be in plain sight is the convergence of hip hop and dance. If go back to the earlier days of hip hop (or rap if you prefer), its roots were more jazz based. When Snoop first released Doggy Style, he applied a more melody. When P. Diddy first broke onto the seen, he took full blown pop hooks and spliced in his rap - but it always felt like he was pausing the pop hook so we could listen to him rap. Then came Eminem and 50 Cent who began to popularize more melodic rapping - but there was still something disjointed about their music. But if you listen to Flo Rida's "Club Can't Handle Me" and Pitbull's "Give Me Everything" it's become clear that the lines between hip hop and dance no longer exist. That said, I'm sure it's not easy rap melodically - there are a lot of constraints working against you. But constraints are also engines of creativity, so I think this will get better, and I think we have some interesting stuff to look forward to.

Three: Fade Into Darkness (Avicii): There's not a lot to this song. But what makes it noteworthy is how it was shamelessly stolen by Leona Lewis and re-released as Collide. Apparently the two were able to work things out with Lewis crediting Avicii as a co-author. But if anything, what this song points out is the dearth of decent pop hooks to work with. As I've pointed out before, many artists simply rehash theirs and others pop hooks. It's almost like there's a fixed supply of gold and the mining companies are struggling to find new deposits.

Two: Take You Higher - Radio Edit (Goodwill & Hook N Sling): This song is sort of a remix of Big Jet Plane by Angus and Julia Stone (they're brother and sister in case you're wondering). But I think it's more than a remix. It feels a different song. The only way I can describe this song would be if Bob Dylan decided to put out a dance song, without compromising his character. There's something uncharacteristically anti-climactic about this song which whenever I hear it I wonder "What are people in the dance clubs doing when this song comes on? Dancing awkwardly?"

One: Attaboy (Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile): I'm not sure what genre this song fits in. It's kind classical, kind of bluegrass/country/folk. I probably don't listen to enough modern classical music. For whatever reason, it seems to eschew blatant melody. But this song is not only rife with pop hooks, there is an effortless playfulness and to this piece that leaves everything else on this list in the dust from a pop hook perspective. But what's disappointing is that everything other song on The Goat Rodeo Sessions is forgettable. Goes to show how difficult it is to come up with a killer pop hook.

There are times I wonder if pop hooks are discovered or "mined". If so, in the same way the miners are saying we've hit peak gold, is it possible we've hit peak music?

TUN3R is signing off at the end of 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 20:56:00 +0000

The headline says it all. Peter and I have decided to shut down TUN3R - the web site and the iPhone App will no longer be available by the end of this year.

TUN3R was officially launched in July 2007 with respectable fanfare. In 2006, when Peter showed me a demo of the technology behind TUN3R', it was one of those rare moments that seemed like magic. The ability to move around a mosaic of stations, hearing the sound flip in real time - just like a traditional analog TUN3R - was exhilarating. The Internet has always been a great place to find "long tail" nichey stuff, but I've always found the rigid organization and latency in browsing to be off-putting. Searching has always been a necessary evil, but TUN3R made it fun to find stations on the web. Serendipity was reborn. There were other things that made TUN3R more useful than the average radio aggregator: We we the first to crawl playlists, and allow users to search against them (also the station's web site). Later we added the ability to browse major city's AM/FM dial which we called "City Dials". Finally, we (well, basically Peter) released an iPhone App.

Others were impressed too, and for a while it seemed like TUN3R had a very prosperous future ahead of it. So why didn't things play out this way? I'll be the first to admit that under different, harder nosed, sharper elbowed management it may have done better. Although there were a few major obstacles we encountered along the way which I'll explain...

First, we thought it would be possible to make TUN3R a consumer company driven by business-to-business revenues. The original idea was that stations would pay to appear prominently on TUN3R's Dial. Unfortunately, the stations that most wanted to be on TUN3R's Dial were Internet based stations running on a very limited (if any) budget, and could barely afford their streaming costs, let alone a marketing budget (some stations even ask to be removed from TUN3R for fear of running out of bandwidth for their more loyal listeners). The stations that were well funded (i.e. the big FM stations) were and are as clueless about the impact of the Internet to their business as the music labels were and still are. Most of these stations outsourced their Internet strategy - that is to say their future business strategy - to data streaming and web site building job shops. Sigh.

The underlying problem wasn't so much that we couldn't sell into AM/FM stations - it's that these stations are not very interesting to Internet radio fans (i.e. TUN3R's fanbase). FM stations have too many commercials (most of which are still localized), antiquated restrictions preventing them from being heard outside their country, a looming reputation for accepting Payola bribes, limited playlists, too much empty filler, and inconsistent proprietary streaming formats. At most Internet stations, the DJs are in charge. At most FM stations, there is often no human DJ to speak off.

Internet radio has flourished somewhat in the free market of radio. But sadly, Internet radio is increasingly being seen as synonymous with Custom Radio - that's what Pandora and Last.FM are selling. It's a neat idea with huge appeal. But, it's one of those situations where the idea sounds better than it really is. A great DJ must be heard to be believed: I can talk to you until you're blue in the face about a great Internet radio stations (like the Soma stations or Radio Paradise, or the Swiss BigBeat), but until you listen to these stations you won't know to even look for them. Pandora knows this all too well, and has since launched non-custom pre-programmed genre stations. In the future, I wouldn't be surprised if Pandora had more listeners listening to DJ led stations than its Custom Radio offering - especially given the social direction the web is moving. Custom Radio == Lonely and Isolated Radio.

Therefore, we concluded that for TUN3R to be successful, we would have to focus solely on the listener. That is to say, TUN3R would become a pure Business to Consumer (B2C) business.

B2C is an arena that typically requires a combination of a lot of capital and/or guerrilla marketing. We did get approached by a well heeled VC from the US (it's been a nuclear winter for VC here in Canada since the dotcom bubble burst), but they came to us before we had any revenue to speak of, and since moved on by the time our iPhone App began bringing in cash. As for guerrilla marketing - it's for better or for worse a necessity. There are so many iPhone Apps now available that most App bloggers (and magazines) can and do charge for coverage. Translation: there's very little honest coverage of iPhone Apps out there as most of it is dictated by Payola. Generating grass roots buzz often requires various forms of spamming, something which we never felt was well suited to TUN3R's ethos.

But, word-of-mouth still serves us well.

Speaking more frankly, we both have families to support and bills to pay. Without quitting our jobs and getting funding, there's not a lot of time left in the day to build out the product and brand. There was certainly no shortage of good ideas.

Without trying to sound pedantic, it's not possible to pursue new ideas without freeing up time and money from ongoing projects. And for this simple reason we are putting TUN3R on an indefinite hiatus.

But hey, if you're reading this and disagree, feel free to express your ideas. But I should warn you: At this point we're not short on ideas; just time and money.

What then will become of this blog? Given that it's free to host, I'll probably just leave it up for posterity. Who knows, maybe I'll throw up one more post before the year is out.

A final shout-out to all the great Internet stations and DJs - you know who you are. It's been our pleasure to see you on the TUN3R Dial.

Signing off now.

INTERVIEW: Cornucopia Radio founder, Peter Beeston

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 05:00:00 +0000

One of the simple pleasures of modern life is embarking on a long car trip, turning on the radio to find a meaty engrossing radio show. With all the variety out there, most radio is geared towards what I might describe as snacking: short song sets broken up by news breaks; DJ chatter; and annoying commercials. There are talk radio stations which occasionally can be entertaining, and while a step up from the nachos and cheese of music stations, they're more like burgers and fries: one-dimensional pundits preaching to the choir.

The only exceptions I've been able to find are the liberally sponsored government backed stations. Stations like the BBC, NPR, or CBC. Ironically, in spite of their "socialist" government backing, they succeed quite impressively within our free markets. In fact, here in Canada, the CBC has the third highest overall listenership of any station, and leads in high value demographic groups like seniors, university graduates, Canadians in professional occupations, and skilled sales people. I often wonder why there aren't more stations that attempt to embrace radio dramas, poetry, lectures, spoken word, and sketch comedy.

Well thank goodness for Internet radio, and stations like the Cornucopia Radio Show. CR, based out of Sheffield UK, plays the sort of material I've only hitherto heard on public radio stations like the CBC or BBC. I only learned of it two weeks ago. Since then, I've been periodically tuning into this unique and fascinating station, often lingering for an hour or more. As a sample of what I've heard, I listened to 'Bluff Cove Disaster' a radio play about the Falkland Islands War, a lecture on the philosophy of art "The Creative Act" by Marcel Duchamp, some spoken poetry, spoken word, various sketch comedy, a ghost story radio play called "Ghost of a Chance", and on the music front a syndicated version of Hype Machine Radio, featuring the latest tracks from the very best music blogs around the world. Let me be clear, this is no amateur college/university station. The quality is very much what you would find on a BBC station.

This brings me to the subject of this blog posting. Peter Beeston, one of the key pillars of Cornucopia has graciously agreed to this TUN3R interview.

Q1 Neil: Thanks Peter for taking out some time to respond to these questions. I've poked around the CR web site and can see that you're both involved in running CR as well as contributing to it. Did you also found the station? How did CR get its start?

A1 Peter: Yes, I’ve been involved since the beginning. We started just over 4 years ago, broadcasting for one hour a month on our local community radio station. At that point it was just myself and a few friends creating stupid comedy sketches, but pretty soon we were creating much longer radio-plays and utilising lots of local performers & writers. A few years later and we found ourselves producing several different shows a week; in the process working with various creative groups around the world.

Sadly however, the economic crisis began to affect the community station and the type of output it could support. So instead of giving up we decided to utilise all the material we were currently producing and offer our programs up as syndicated shows and more importantly, use all of our material to create an online radio station, one which was representative of the things we believed in.

Q2 Neil: There's so much variety on Cornucopia. What segments resonate most with your listeners? What's your most popular show?

A2 Peter: The radio drama plays we produce are very popular (both on the station and as podcasts), as this is a genre which has been ignored by most stations over the last 50 years. However I think the term ‘Variety’ is key to everything we do. We’re living in an increasingly commercialised world; one in which broadcasters like to believe that people can easily be pigeon-holed or catalogued; that just because somebody likes ‘X’ they’ll never like ‘Y’. They’re petrified of taking people out of their comfort zone.

I think that’s rubbish. People love to explore and discover new media; finding material they don’t yet know they’ll love. So I hope what people like the most about ‘Cornucopia’ is not any one show, but more the philosophy behind it. The idea being, that we’re going to broadcast a whole load of creative stuff, produced by talented but under represented people from across the world and If you don’t like one show, hold on; the next thing that comes along might be totally different.

Q3 Neil: I really enjoy The Hype Machine - I've actually found some real gems, like some of the remixes of Lisztomania. How did the relationship with Hype begin? What other musical programming do you have?

A3 Peter: As we’re mainly ‘spoken word’ producers, we have to use syndicated music shows to fill that quota on our station. However I’m also very keen on promoting ‘Creative Commons’ work (all our work is released under the same license), so broadcasting the Hype-Machine is a very natural fit (like yourself, I think it’s great way to discover new music). Getting them on board was just a matter of a simple polite email. We’re all in the same boat, and by broadcasting their show we’re helping them get their own message out to the masses.

Q4 Neil: All the material on CR is IMO of a quality on par with the BBC. How many contributors do you have? Where do most of the contributors come from?

A4 Peter: We’re very lucky to be based in Sheffield, which has one of the highest concentrations of people working in the creative industries of anywhere in the UK. So we’re never short of people who want to get involved in what we do. Across the city we have a core team of around 10 local writers and performers who are involved in making a lot of our content (documentaries, drama, comedy ect) plus we have an even bigger pool of actors and actresses who we can call at any given time.

Also we work with a number of audio drama groups from across the world. Helping to broadcast their own work on our station (as well as on our FM radio shows). A lot of these internet relationships have been fostered on audiodramatalk.com and voiceactingalliance.com which are excellent resources for people wanting to produce spoken word radio shows; some of the work produced is mind blowing!

Q5 Neil: How is the station managed? How do you decide what material gets accepted and what is rejected, and when it gets aired?

A5 Peter: We have an open door policy for anyone that wants to produce a radio show. Whether that’s somebody who wants to work face-to-face with us in Sheffield, or an individual who wants to create work on the other side of the world. All we ask is that the show is creative and different. That it’s something you wouldn’t find anywhere else.

In terms of scheduling, I like to embrace a quirky randomness to our schedule (as fitting our ‘Cornucopia’ name) A weekly schedule consists of a randomly repeating 8-12 hour running order which gets completely overhauled and updated every weekend with new shows.

Now I appreciate this is a slightly different way to program a radio station. Some people prefer to know that a program is on at the same time each and every week; but that isn’t the type of station I want to create. I want to create a station in which you never know what you’re going to hear next, a station where you’re confident enough in our ability to feel that we’re never going to let you down.

Q6 Neil: Although I didn't hear any, do you have any talk shows (e.g. interviews, discussion forums)?

A6 Peter: Yes, this is often covered by our Mind Labs strand, which is our primary home for shows which focus on ideas, topics and discussions. We also syndicate great talk shows such as Frequencycast which is an amazing technology & gadget discussion program.

One thing which we should try and do in the future (which we’re not doing at the moment) is to have more round table discussions with our writers and performers about the work they create and produce. We should try and illuminate the process of making a radio drama (which I think people at home would find really interesting). So keep an ear open for that!

Q7 Neil: I don't hear any commercials on CR (which I like). Does CR make money? Is there a business model, or is it a labour of love?

A7 Peter: Well, this is a problem for all radio stations, especially in the current climate. Some of the FM stations I’ve worked with are constantly in debt and always on the verge of closing down (the slump in the advertising market has been going on for years). So instead, you have to look at different ways to operate. One of the most important things is to try and keep costs down, but making sure this is done in a way which doesn’t affect quality. You have to think, if you’re spending money on something which isn’t going to help your broadcast, is it really worth it?

I’m also currently up to my neck in writing funding applications to arts organisations, trying to get support for helping local writers and performers. There aren't that many ways for creative people to break into writing for radio in the UK (outside of the BBC), so hopefully somebody will appreciate what we’re trying to do and give us more money to do it better in the future.

Q8 Neil: I'm sure you've crossed paths with many people from many different backgrounds. Is there an interesting story you can tell about running Cornucopia?

A8 Peter: Well, sometimes I have these big crazy ideas which seem fine when talking with friends at a bar, but then turn into these mammoth projects which I have to manage as best I can. The one that stands out is when ‘Cornucopia Radio’ decided to organise a day long live broadcast in a major public space in Sheffield. It featured live bands, sketch comedy and poetry. It lasted seven hours and was running uncontrollably over-schedule. At the height of this madness, I was suddenly interrupted by ‘Doctor Who and the Daleks’, who were in the area to promote a live stage show. They heard we were doing a live radio show and wanted to take to the stage and help us out. So in my frazzled state, I bizarrely found myself trying to conduct an unplanned live interview with a Dalek and wondering where best to stick the microphone.

Yep, radio can be a little weird sometimes...

[Neil: See photo at top]

Q9 Neil: Silly question, but I always ask it. If there was one song that epitomized Cornucopia what would it be?

A9 Peter: Well, it’s a silly answer in return; but we’ve often used “There is Hope” by Misty’s Big Adventure as our theme tune. It’s stupid, random and doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it has an energy and enthusiasm that can win over even the toughest of souls.

I’m using the song as metaphor for what we’re doing at ‘Cornucopia Radio’; just in case you haven’t made the link ;-)

Q10 Neil: Where do you see Cornucopia headed for the future? And in more general terms do you believe that there could be a profitable business model for a higher minded radio station like Cornucopia, outside of the government sponsored model?

A10 Peter: I think there is going to be a massive change in the position of media production and broadcasting over the next few decades. Television, film, publishing and radio have been controlled by large organisations for at least a hundred years; not because they were necessarily the best, but because only they had the money, equipment and broadcasting channels that were needed. But this is all changing before our eyes. A simple iPhone in your pocket already has enough software to broadcast directly to millions of people across the world; all you need is the passion and the creativity!

You can see it all around you right now. Massively successful YouTube videos have audiences that any TV channel would kill for, popular blogs have more readers than Dan Brown could ever (poorly) imagine, and today’s interesting and unique radio stations will be tomorrows market leaders. Granted I think it’ll be less profitable for most people and run more like a successful hobby with a small income (I’m talking about the ‘long-tale business model’ here) but hopefully ‘Cornucopia Radio’ will be part of the revolution. Or maybe I’ll just get tired of the whole thing and give it up.

Either way, I’ll always be able to tell people that I once interviewed a Dalek...

The Forbidden Fruit / TUN3R's Top 10 Pop Hooks in Rotation for 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 20:06:00 +0000

There are two themes I have been contemplating over 2010. The first is Internet Radio as "The Forbidden Fruit" of music. The second is not so much about radio but rather how music has changed over the past 10 years.

First, what do I mean by "Forbidden Fruit"? For example, if you listen to a decent Internet radio station with a focus on contemporary music (e.g. pop or techno), you will likely be exposed to songs that aren't yet making the rounds on other music distribution platforms (e.g. FM radio, satellite, Pandora, Last.FM, iTunes, etc.). The reasons for this is are due to the legal logistics required to secure the distribution of remixes as well as international restrictions. Because of the nature of live streaming Internet radio, it's regulated differently. Terrestrial and and satellite radio are more tightly regulated, and custom radio (e.g. Pandora and Last.FM) is entirely driven off of a centrally vetted catalog. Furthermore, it's often the case that I'll hear a cool song or remix I like and it's not even available on iTunes; even niche music retailers like BeatPort and MasterBeat won't have the mix you're looking for or it's not available in your region (and they can't have all the DJ remixes). You'd even be hard pressed to find many of these remixes through illegal download services. So, if you're if your one of those girls or guys that takes pride in "being into it before it was cool" (and who isn't?), live streaming Internet radio stations are the way to go. This is why I steadfastly maintain, Internet radio is the bearer of Forbidden Fruit, and why it holds such a great appeal to me.

The second theme that has been bouncing around my head this year is the question "How has music fundamentally changed since 2000?" If we look back to earlier decades (and I suppose part of the problem is we don't yet have an historical perspective of the present), it is fairly easy to see what has changed. If we compare music from 1960 to 1970 it is easy to point out what changed (Prog rock was born). In the seventies we saw the evolution of Prog Rock, the emergence of Disco, Heavy Metal, and Punk, and even the beginnings of electronic music and post-punk new wave. The eighties saw the maturation of New Wave, the rise of Rap and Hip Hop, and the evolution of Metal into sub-genres like Thrash and Industrial, and the reinvention of Disco as Techno, and in the underground, the nascent beginning of grunge. The first half of the nineties was mostly defined by grunge music, but other genres such as Industrial grew legs. The second half of the decade was dominated by hip hop, but a new alt-pop was growing in popularity. Alternative no longer holds meaning as a genre, and has really just morphed into the default genre for people who collect music (I've only met two persons who meticulously collected Top 40 music). Hip Hop and R&B have more or less converged. Prog Rock seems to have made a comeback, insofar that we're seeing a lot more musical instruments than the standard 3 piece ensemble. And, a focus on celebrity culture and singing competitions has from what I can tell amounted to a large and sapping distraction from anything we would normally associate with creative song writing. Yes, at a macro level, the past 10 years has seen change. However, there are so many songs I hear now where I'm asking myself "Would this song be possible ten years ago?". When the answer is "Maybe, but not quite" this for me is a more interesting way of examining the changes that have occurred over the past 10 years.

Enough rambling. Here are the Top 10 Pop Hooks of 2010 as per TUN3R's opinion:

Ten: We No Speak Americano (Yolanda Be Cool, DCUP).
I consider this to be the "Mambo #5" of 2010. It's immediately catchy and annoying all at the same time. What's most surprising is that it's not yet being used for a television commercial (at least not any I've seen). I could imagine it being put to good use selling the new Fiat 500 in North America.

Nine: Dynamite (Taoi Cruz). I overheard my kids singing this a few times already. I've heard a number of other young children singing this too. A family Pop Hook is a primal Pop Hook. I just wish it didn't have to be so cheezy sounding. This could have been a better song. I imagine there's a better song hidden in a downstream remix.

Eight: Amazing / Hot (Inna). Amazing and Hot both sound like the exact same song to me (I think there's a guy singing in Hot though). It goes to show the challenge of writing a decent Pop Hook. Instead of writing a brand new song, sometimes it makes sense to just tweak the one you've got and re-release it. I actually welcome this in the case of Amazing and/or Hot. I'll be surprised if Inna can top this, but given her, ahem, marketability, perhaps we'll be pleasantly surprised.

Seven: Rocket (Goldfrapp).
This is one of the songs that has got me wondering what has changed in the past ten years. Rocket sounds like a song taken right out of the late 70s, early 80s disco period. It reminds me of "Bette Davis Eyes" or "Total Eclipse of the Heart". I wonder, is this a progression of music or a rehash of older music. It's really hard for me to tell with this one.

Six: Feel it in my Bones (Tegan & Sara, Tiesto).
I'm glad to see Tegan and Sara have made peace with techno music. Not only have they collaborated with Tiesto, but they also released a remixed version of Alligator with Morgan Page. I first saw Tegan & Sara during a living recording of Open Mike with Mike Bullard back in 2000. It was immediately apparent that these twins from Calgary had some intense melodic-mind-meld thing going on and everyone in the audience was quite taken aback. Bullard himself, appearing stunned, told the audience off-camera that he'd never seen an act like Tegan & Sara before. I'm not surprised they've resisted techno remixes for so long. Their music comes across as obstinate and angry. Their melodies and lyrics have an intensity that is unique. I doubt Tegan & Sara have peaked and look forward to seeing what they come up with next.

Five: Sweet Disposition [Axwell & Dirty South remix] (Temper Trap).
The original version of this song never made any impact on me and is barely recognizable after you've first heard the Axwell & Dirty South remix. The odd thing about this song is I can't find it for sale anywhere. Especially weird given that this remix has spawned a whole bunch of remixes all of its own. This piece of Forbidden Fruit is tasty.

Four: 17 (Aquapura).
This is another song I struggle to understand if it could have been written in 1998. I think it could have, but have my doubts. Could it have been on Daft Punk's Homework, Air's Moon Safari, or Moby's Play? None of those albums could have existed in 1988. If you can answer that question then you've got a good grasp of how music has or hasn't changed over the past 10 years.

Three: Hello (Martin Solveig).
There's something I like about a blasé sounding woman sing. You can really hear the unique imperfections of the voice - personality shines through. Another good song in this same vein that just came out this year is Teenage Crime by Adrian Lux. But you can only get away with this singing style if you've got a killer pop hook to hang your vocals on.

Two: Excuses (Morning Benders).
I saw these guys open for the Black Keys in August and found myself wishing they could play the entire show (no offense Black Keys). There is something very genuine feeling about The Morning Benders that resonates with me. There are elements of Morning Benders' songs that remind me of all the great Pop Hookers: The Beatles; Beach Boys; and The Pixies. They've got talent and will go far.

One: Nothin' on You (B.o.B. feat. Bruno Mars).
My buddy Aaron introduced this song to me and I was immediately blown away. All pistons are firing here: familiar melody; lyrics that grab you; and both technically superior vocals dueling with imperfect and recognizable vocals. I can't imagine ever growing sick of this song.

We look boldly towards the next decade of music.

Stay TUN3D...

INTERVIEW: Legendary DJ and Voice Actor Richard Weirich ("Bob Burton") of Golden Hits Radio

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 05:00:00 +0000

The "Oldies" radio format has been steadily growing in popularity over the past few years (boomers anyone?). Here in Toronto, there are nearly as many Oldies stations as there are Top 40 stations, and you can now find them on the FM dial (they used to be the mainstay of the AM band). The format itself has expanded mainly due to the passage of time; seventies weren't oldies in the eighties - but they are now!

Which brings me to the recently launched Golden Hits Radio (GHR). While you won't hear GHR on any AM/FM tuner (it's a pure Internet radio station), it is in its own way more authentic than your typical Oldies station. What makes GHR such a joy to listen to - apart from excellent audio quality, song selection, DJing, and no commercials - is that it is brought to you by legendary radio personalities "Burt and Kurt". While I didn't grow up listening to "Burt and Kurt", those of you from Florida, Texas, Alabama, or Mississippi will like know who I'm talking about. The duo are famous for such characters as: Uncle Mack; Red Wood; Lonnie "The Beautiful Dude" Bumpus Jones; the Maha Richci Yogo Fogi Nanana Fanna Go Fogi; and many more.

I caught up with Richard Weirich (the "Burt" half of "Burt and Kurt") - an accomplished voice actor for this exclusive TUN3R interview.

Q1 Neil: Richard, thanks very much for taking the time to participate in this interview. On the Golden Hits Radio web site you mention that GHR is very much a "labor of love" and an outlet for your passion of music programming. Can you elaborate on that and describe how GHR got started?

A1 Richard: For nearly 40 years radio was my livelihood as well as being something that I loved dearly. More than a vocation radio is my passion which is why I launched Golden Hits Radio. I love music and the art of radio programming. It is something that I just have to do.

A while back I had a business called the Radio Format Factory in which I developed automation formats for radio stations. The radio company that I worked for took exception to my side business and ordered me to shut it down. Consequently, when I parted ways with terrestrial radio I still had the equipment and the music library which provided the foundation for Golden Hits Radio.

Q2 Neil: I've been listening to your station for the past week, and it's a remarkably well programmed. The song selection, transitions, and overall mix are superb. To my ear GHR is a prime example of how a great DJ can elevate the listening experience. What's your secret? Is there any advice you can pass on to younger DJs?

A2 Richard: You're very kind. Obviously years of experience in radio programming dictates much of my programming philosophy. But I also have a basic belief that radio killed radio. I don't think the demon was satellite radio but the poor choices made by corporate radio. Short playlists and cramming the same music down listeners throats was a recipe for disaster....especially when programming to adults. The basic formula for oldies stations was to play a handful of oldies (usually 200 - 300). The emphasis was not on "what to play" but... "what not to play." There is no wonder that IPods and MP3 players were so successful. Radio drove them away.

Golden Hits Radio is programmed with the expectation that oldies listeners want more variety and less repetition. The art is in assembling so many different kinds of sounds from a massive music library and making it all fit together in an entertaining and enjoyable music mix.

Internet radio is much like radio in the 60s and 70s. Back then you started at a small town radio station, made your mistakes, developed your craft, and moved onto bigger and better radio markets. Your best teacher was the school of hard knocks. The best advice that I know for anyone trying to make it as a DJ is to be your own best self and don't be afraid to take some chances. Learn your craft and always strive to stay relevant.

Q3 Neil: Apart from being a program director, you're also a seasoned voice actor. How did you discover this talent of yours? Was there someone from your youth that inspired you?

A3 Richard: Actually voice talent (http://richardvoicetalent.com) goes back to my childhood. As long as I can remember I liked to read out loud. Oddly, I have always been uncomfortable with my voice and I suppose it comes from being a perfectionist. I still haven't had my best recording session. I suppose that when that day comes it will be time to retire.

Q4 Neil: You have helped create such characters as Uncle Mack and Red Wood? How do you come up with new voices and characters?

A4 Richard: All the voices, except mine, were created by my longtime radio partner, Kurt Kilpatrick. He and I first teamed up in Jackson, Mississippi. He is the most talented individual I have ever encountered in radio. We first teamed up in 1974 and even to this day he still cracks me up. Most of the characters were based on real people. Before Kurt and I teamed up he was a tv news reporter. Uncle Mack was based on an old gentleman that Kurt interviewed. Red Wood was derived from a boss he had in one of his first jobs.

Q5 Neil: Can you tell me about the "Kurt" half of "Kurt and Burt". How did you form your partnership?

A5 Richard: Kurt is a very successful motivational/humorist speaker. We first met in 1974 when Kurt had a record produced featuring his impressions and comedy and brought it by the radio station to see if I would play it. I liked what I heard and invited Kurt to join me on my show as a guest. That morning the phones rang off the wall from listeners who loved what they were hearing. Shortly after I offered him a job....and fortunately for me he accepted.

Q6 Neil: When is the best time to listen to GHR? Are there any shows or sketches where we can hear your voice characters?

A6 Richard: Every hour is consistently the same. There is no dayparting due to an international audience. It's always prime time somewhere. We still have yet to add live talent. That's coming in about a month when we will be joined by Shane Wison, Scott Evans, and Dave Mack. All of them are seasoned radio veterans and share a common love for good radio. As far as the return of Burt and Kurt I am still uncertain how I want to handle that. I don't know how heavy doses of personality will work with the flow of Golden Hits Radio. I am leaning toward offering Burt and Kurt personality breaks in a podcast format. That way listeners can hear us when they want and we won't get in the way of the music. We recently recorded some new material that I will soon make available at our website.

Q7 Neil: You've been on air since 1974. I'm sure you've met some interesting characters and have had some interesting moments. Are there any characters or stories that stand out for you?

A7 Richard: Actually....I first broke into radio in Norfolk, Virginia at WCPK in 1970. '74 was the year that I teamed up with Kurt. Indeed there have been many interesting people and situations encountered along the way. I am reminded of an incident involving a DJ who worked at WSGN in Birmingham about 1973. He did the all night show and would occasionally bring his German Shepherd to work. The station was located in the 21st story penthouse of the City Federal Building. There was a fenced walkway around the penthouse and he would let his dog get some exercise in the late night air. Most often he would clean up the dog's residue and carry it out in a plastic bag. One night....for whatever reason....he decided to heave the mess over the wall. Upon leaving the building he was greeted by a startled paper delivery man who was cursing like a sailor about being hit by droppings from a huge bird.

At WJDX in Jackson, MS....I was listening one night when our station went off the air. I began to call the air talent on the hot-line trying to find out what had happened but there was no answer. Frustrated at not knowing what was going on I drove to the station to get the answer. Prior to arriving we came back on the air but I completed the drive to make certain that everything was OK. The DJ was quick to apologize and told the story of how he had to leave the controls because a naked girl was climbing our station tower and he took it upon himself to rescue her. As it turned out she was the daughter of one of Jackson's most prominent attorneys. I feared repercussions but fortunately there weren't any.

Another story that comes to mind....the program director that hired me at WIST in Charlotte, NC preceded me on the air...which was not a problem....except for the pet boa constrictor that he brought to work with him. The boa rested securely around his neck while he played the hits. I refused to go into the studio until he and his friend left the room.

There are many cherished friendships and memories from my radio past. It all went by so fast.

Q8 Neil: Do you have a favourite song? Or is there a song which you feel exemplifies Golden Hits Radio?

A8 Richard: I have so many favorite songs it would be impossible to single out just one but a song that kind of catches the essence of Golden Hits Radio is Rock and Roll Heaven by the Righteous Brothers.

Q9 Neil: Where do you see Golden Hits Radio going? Is your vision complete, or do you see evolving?

A9 Richard: Golden Hits Radio still has a long way to go. We've been on the air less than three months so there's a lot of growing to do. My vision involves getting GHR played wherever there is a potential audience. That means staying on top of the technology. I also foresee branching into other niche formats. The biggest challenge is generating enough income to keep the project moving forward. I remain committed to commercial and subscription free radio. Radio has given me so much and now I want to give back to the great listeners who have made it all possible.

INTERVIEW: Hamin Mousavi of Radiour talks Crowdsourcing Radio

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Radiour came across my inbox a couple weeks ago where I quickly learned that it is based on the collaboration model which I've blogged about before (check out my interview's with Nekkid Radio and Error.FM). Always a fan of the crowd sourced model, my curiosity remains piqued.

Its name is a play on "Our Radio" and if you tune in, you will hear everything from techno to old men yodeling. In the short time I've been listening, I've heard everything from hard dance techno, to death metal, to folk covers, to negativland-esque mashups. It's a bit more hit-or-miss than Error or Nekkid, but occasionally the station finds that elusive groove of being surprising and familiar all at the same time. It's a great station to broaden your horizons, without being overly challenging.

But there's more to Radiour than its stream. It allows you to log in with Facebook and Twitter, and aims to be a place where new artists can get their music heard. I hope to find out more from Hamin Mousavi who has graciously agreed to this TUN3R interview.

Q1 Neil: Thanks so much Hamin for taking part in this interview! How long has Radiour been around for? How was the idea of the station conceived, and what's your role?

A1 Hamin: Radiour started in the summer of 2008 and has been in a closed beta until February 3:rd, 2010. So we're quite new, haha. The idea for Radiour was conceived by Karl Baron, the programmer. I just convinced him to do something with it!

I myself do anything that isn't programming; from bug-testing to icon design, support to translation.

Q2 Neil: Does Radiour have a geographic home base? Where do it's DJs hail from?

A2 Hamin: The awesome thing about Radiour is that it is made for everyone, everywhere. Our DJs are the people who add songs to the playlist, so we're probably the most democratic radio station on the planet. Most of our users are from europe and america, but we also have some asian users, mostly from japan.

Q3: Do you see Radiour primarily as radio station for people like myself to listen to. Or rather as a different kind of social hub on the net?

A3 Hamin: I'd like to think of Radiour as a place for everyone that are looking for something new and different to listen to. It is more than a radio, but it doesn't have to be if you don't want it to. You can just listen to the stream like with any radio station while others might like to vote and comment on the tracks played. Some even upload their own music, create mixtapes and spread them on twitter and facebook.

You can also as a user change pretty much anything, from the album art to the tags on the different tracks. It's a lot of fun to see what other people like and follow. We've noticed for example that listeners look at what others are adding and then search for similar tracks to add to the playlist. Small themes like these are constantly born just by having our users roam free.

Q4: You have mentioned that Radiour is a great place for new artists to spread their music. What does an artist need to do to get their music heard on your station? Can you give any examples of new artists on Radiour?

A4 Hamin: All you have to do is register yourself, upload your music and then add the songs to the playlist. It should take under 5 minutes, especially if you log in with a twitter or facebook account! You are then connected with your Radiour account to the social networks you already use and can easily keep your fans updated about new tracks.

Johan Sveide and Dj Downlow are a couple of pretty sweet artists, but check out the music search for more. Browse by genre and find something that suits your taste.

Q5 Neil: Hamin, how do you see Internet radio evolving over the coming years? Do you see things consolidating around a few big companies like Apple and CBS, or do you think the independent DJ has a future?

A5 Hamin: The big actors on the market with the big money will probably have the big artists. But there are musicians out there that produce music as a hobby or just don't want to be part of the system. And they certainly have a future, especially now when marketing yourself online is so easy!

We at Radiour are focusing a lot on these kind of artists that want to get the word out about their music. We've for example been working together with an indie music association in sweden to make sure that the functions of Radiour fit their needs.

Q6 Neil: What are your own musical tastes? What do you normally spin on Radiour?

A6 Hamin: I really like death metal with the gothenburg sound but also glitch and japanese electropop. Speaking of japan, I love the recent boom of indie artists that uses voice synthesizers for their main vocals. I usually add what I like so you'll hear a lot of metal/electropop if you listen in when I'm around.

Q7 Neil: If Radiour had its own theme song, what would it be?

A7 Hamin: 20 seconds of something that begins as chaos but ends up as a pleasant melody. That's how I envision our listeners experience on Radiour anyway!

Q8 Neil: What's planned for Radiour's future?

A8 Hamin: Other than working on the webpage? Well, we're right now trying to get Radiour into your phones so you'll be able to listen to the station on the go but still have all of the functionality of the web-version. There is still a lot left to do so I can't really say more than.

We'll keep you updated so check out our facebook or twitter page if you have more questions and want to ask us stuff.

Things about the iPad you may not realize

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:22:00 +0000

Just yesterday I had the chance to play with the new iPad device. I must thank Peter (the big brain behind TUN3R and Milk Crater) who drove down to Buffalo to get one on Saturday.

So does the iPad live up to the hype? Well, there's no point in answering that question. Everyone who has an iPhone or iPod Touch probably has a preconceived notion of what it's like. Anyone who doesn't have an iPhone or iPod Touch either is unaware of how great it is, or is a contrarian. Plus, everyone who's curious already understands the major capabilities of the iPad and what it can generally do. So, instead of running down that boring stuff, I'll point out the little things that I wasn't expecting:

First off, the weight and dimensions of the iPad were pretty much in line with what I assumed it would look and feel like. It very much is a giant iPhone, but there are some minor departures. For example, the home button at the bottom has a crisper feel to it than on the iPhone. Very subtle, but definitely noticeable. It's a reminder that Apple really takes "meatspace" seriously.

The device also feels more natural oriented in landscape than in portrait, which is opposite to how I prefer to use my iPhone. What's neat is that you can switch between landscape and portrait while on the desktop. Compare this to the iPhone which forces the desktop to always be in portrait mode. Another neat feature is that you can lock your current orientation, which is something I wish I could do on the iPhone.

I'm impressed with the sound quality. It's not a big speaker, but for such a small device it's got surprisingly good fidelity even at high volume. Once I get my own iPad, I'll definitely be using it to listen to Internet Radio (through TUN3R of course) in the kitchen while cleaning up after dinner, or over breakfast in the morning.

The keyboard continues to be a weak spot for Apple. While it is fairly large (and a huge improvement over the iPhone keyboard), I felt I couldn't touch type with it and eventually found hunting-and-pecking to be more natural. Furthermore, because the device has a rounded backside, it doesn't sit flat on a table, making it somewhat awkward as a typewriter. It's perfectly fine for plugging search queries into Google, but until I can touch type, I can't see myself doing much writing on it. Although I could see it as being useful for working with spreadsheets (if Microsoft ever decides to release Excel. OpenOffice: This is your chance!).

The iBook application is one of the biggies. Everyone says that Kindle is the killer app, and that people will use that instead of iBook. Well, I just hope the Kindle App is as good as iBook, cause iBook is very very cool. I had no problems reading off the backlit screen, and enjoyed seeing the colour illustrations in Winnie the Pooh. My dad has a Kindle, and I'll say that the Kindle is a bit smaller and lighter, and might be better for novels. But as a general purpose reading device, it's hard to see how you could make something better than the iPad/iBook (except by making it lighter and thinner). I especially like how you can play with the pages themselves. Once again, it's a wink and a nod to the pleasures of meatspace. Sure it'll never be as good as real pulp, but for fidgety guy like me it's not bad.

As you may already know, the iPad can run pretty much every iPhone App. That said, in my experience, these types of emulators are usually inferior to running the app on their intended platform. Not so with the iPad. The Apps are zippier and look better than on the iPhone. Seriously. I was most impressed with the mode that blows the App up to the full size of the iPad. Yes, it doesn't look as good as a native iPad App, but it does look surprisingly crisp.

As a specific example, we loaded up Milk Crater, and lo and behold it actually runs much better than on the iPhone 3GS. Keep in mind that Milk Crater is pegged to the CPU, so on the iPad you can really fly through your music collection like nobody's business. I know I'm biased, but Milk Crater freakin' rocks on this thing!

As soon as I get the chance (and an extra $500) - I'm treating myself to one of these puppies.

MilkCrater: World's First Real-time iPod Browser

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:03:00 +0000

We've just launched the latest App. From the guy who brought you TUN3R!
I've pasted the PR below:

Conalgo Inc. announces "Milk Crater": World's First Realtime iPod Browser
-----------------------------------------------------
Toronto, ON, Canada

Conalgo today unveiled "Milk Crater" the world's first realtime audio iPod browser.

Unlike other iPod applications (including Apple's own iPod application), Milk Crater allows the listener to browse an expansive tiled grid of their iTunes cover art. As the listener glides over a particular square, the audio switches in real time to the corresponding audio track. If the user returns to the same spot, she will hear the same track from where she left off.

Because the transitions between songs are seamless and uninterrupted, listeners are able to enter a mental state of "flow" when browsing music. It is this deeper level of immersion while browsing that becomes a new experience unto itself - not unlike creating music.

In order to assist users, Milk Crater also includes search functionality consistent with its ultra-fast interface.
It is also simple and fast for the user to add tracks to playlists as they browse. Playlists can be saved for later or even exported.

"I've been bringing Milk Crater to parties and get-togethers and am always surprised by the reaction and how quickly people 'get it.' It's been a great icebreaker." - Neil Hepburn (GM of marketing)

Milk Crater has been translated into eight major languages: English, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, French, Japanese, German, Italian. The is currently on sale in the iTunes App Store for $2.99 (http://itunes.com/apps/MilkCrater)

About Conalgo

Conalgo Inc, developer of Milk Crater (http://milkcrater.com), is dedicated to funding and advising research and development of next-generation technology-centric ventures. Conalgo was established in 2002, and is based out of Toronto, ON.

-30

Media Contact:
Neil Hepburn
Co-Founder and GM of Marketing for TUN3R.com

(416) 315-5514
neil@tun3r.com

INTERVIEW: Jim Dolan talks Audio Theater

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Growing up as a kid my parents never let me have a television in my room. Instead they gave me an old General Electric AM radio they weren't using. Playing around with the dial I was able to find a station playing Old Time Radio Audio Theater. As I recall it was a science fiction story about some astronauts that had discovered a planet that was causing them to rapidly age backwards - so quickly that they might not be able to figure out how to get back off the planet. Lying on my bed with eyes closed I found the story as gripping and scary as any movie I'd ever seen.

A few years later I found "Theater of the Mind", a show that played on CHUM-FM every Sunday night. They would play a variety of Audio Theater from yesteryear including Orson Welles' Harry Lime, and my favourite X minus One. Although the show isn't on any longer, through podcasts and Internet radio it's just as easy now listen to these intimate radio plays.

Which is why I was delighted to have Jim Dolan bring his station "Alltime Oldies" to my attention, and henceforth to the TUN3R Dial.

Q1 Neil: Jim, thanks so much for participating in this interview. What's your background with respect to radio? Were you working in radio prior to AllTimeOldies?

A1 Jim: Thanks Neil for having me here today. As a kid in the 60s my dad built a small radio transmitter for me. The neighborhood kids & I were in the radio business and I never looked back in the 70s & 80s I worked on local radio and audio production.

Q2 Neil: How did alltimeoldies get it's start? Was the original vision what it is now?

A2 Jim: Well I did not start alltimeoldies, That station was started by my business partner who runs it today. The alltimeoldies radio theater channel is a joint project to add a professional programmed old time radio station to the web.

Q3 Neil: What are your favourite audio theater shows? Any specific episodes that stand out?

A3 Jim: I dont really have a favorite show. But to me some of the adult westerns stand out especially the ones from the 50's like gunsmoke, have gun will travel. The Fred Allen show & the Phil Harris & Alice Faye show stands out to me as still being fresh today.

Q4 Neil: Apart from audiotheater what other progamming is there on the station ?

A4 Jim: On the theater channel we have some new drama from Jim French & others but the channel is all about comedy, variety & drama. On the website alltimeoldies.com the main channel also called alltimeoldies is programmed with music from the 50' to the 70's and they take requests as well.

Q5 Neil: How do obtain all those vintage recordings? Is there a national archive preserving these shows?

A5 Jim: I've been collecting old time radio programs since the 70's first recording off the air and later buying them on reel to reel tape from sellers. As to a national archive, the Library Of Congress has a large collection but that is largely unavailable. There are large holdings at the armed forces radio and tv network but they are not open to the public. The good news is that there are otr clubs like www.repsonline.org or www.sperdvac.org if you are a member you can have access to thousands of high quality old time radio programmes.

Q6 Neil: From a collector's perspective, are there any rare gems that stand out in your collection?

A6 Jim: To be honest Neil, I'm so busy programming the station that I have little chance to listen to my collection but on the air I've heard news & interviews from the late 20's through the 60's pretty much everything that happened during those years is in the collection and it makes for some compelling listening at times.

Q7 Neil: Do you listen to any modern audio theater? Does anything stand out for you?

A7 Jim: We air the Jim French Mysteries on mondays on the theater channel. These are radio drama's that was made starting in the 70's and is still being made here in Seattle before a live audience. Also we air on the weekend Treasures Old & New from ART. This group writes and produces their own radio drama.

Q8 Neil: I love the opening for X minus one? So you have a favourite opening an old time radio song that could be a sort if theme song for AllTimeOldies?

A8 Jim: No. Although the opening of The Shadow is a classic and stands out in my mind. We play almost everything that was good on old time radio. The presentation is similar to a tv station without the pictures. It grew out of the Radio Entertainment Network started in 1995 as an audio alternative to tv for the blind. We still run REN and it is on Radio Reading Services around the country.

Q9 Neil: Where do see AllTimeMelodies going into the future?

A9 Jim: Well Neil we are adding hours and are continuing to improve our sound quality of our old time radio shows. We have added the Radioent daily download which is a otr podcast available on itunes & from the radioent.com website. In short we plan to make the alltimeoldies radio theater channel the primary station programming commercial old and new radio drama on the web.

Thanks Neil for the chance to talk to your listeners today. You can edit this to fit your format. If you have any questions email me.

Jim Dolan
radioent@gmail.com

TUN3R's Top 10 Pop Hooks in Rotation for 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:28:00 +0000

A reader of this blog recently posted a comment on an old posting by James Wallace lamenting the current state of music, in part due to an over emphasis on Pop Hooks.

I think I understand where this guy is coming from. Pop Hooks provide an effective way to short-circuit the overarching challenging of writing and recording a great song by means of a few clever bars - a key if you will. But in my opinion, this is what makes music so egalitarian and grass roots. Practically anyone has the potential come up with the next great pop hook and in turn leap frog trained singers, studio pros, and composers to the top of the charts.

Take for example the popular show American Idol. Every year the show ends with a winner who then triumphantly sings the final song written just for him or her. The song is probably designed to showcase the winner's powerful vocals. Unfortunately the song is also bereft of discernible melody, and is henceforth forgotten immediately. I'm sure a lot of money goes into writing and preparing that final song, and even more money goes into promoting it. The song represents the culmination of hundreds of millions of dollars of earned revenue. It always sucks.

Nevertheless, good talent can be still bought for a reasonable price, and if you're lucky that talent will produce a killer Pop Hook. But even from this perspective I still believe that there's a lot of luck that goes into generating a killer pop hook, whomever the source of success.

Before proceeding to my top 10, I should warn you that some of these songs may generate a certain amount of cognitive dissonance - you might hate some of these songs, but good luck on un-listening to them.

Ten: Stereo Love (Edward Maya & Vika Jigulina)

I have a soft spot for any song that can invoke imagery through its Pop Hook. I especially like songs that remind me of a different time or part of the world. Stereo Love's Pop Hook invokes Greece and The Mediterranean. Yes, the song has a fair amount of fluff in it, but it does remind me of good times vacationing on Ios Island

Nine: I Hate This Part (The Pussycat Dolls)

This song was released near the end of 2008, but didn't pick up much steam until January of this year. To tell you the truth, when I first found out it was from The Pussycat Dolls, I was a bit surprised. This is one those songs where the vocals form an integral part of the Pop Hook. Sadly, it's so popular you're all probably sick of it by now.

Eight: Party in the USA - Cahill Radio Edit (Miley Cyrus / Cahill)

I knew this song had to be on this list after hearing a distraught and confused sounding middle-aged woman requesting it on a morning radio show. "I'm so embarrassed to ask you to play this song. My daughter played it to me, and I can't seem to get it out of my head". Yes, there is something troubling about this song. Are we going down a slippery slope with The Wiggles, Backyardigans, or Baby Einstein as our final destination, with Mini Pops on the way? Who knows. Anyway, be sure to check out the Cahill Radio Edit version of this song for maximum Hookness.

Seven: Right Round (Flo Rida feat. Ke$ha)

There were a lot of good covers [sorry, "samples"] this year, including another song on this list. I began to wonder why the original "You Spin Me Right Round" by Dead Or Alive had not seen a successful hip hop cover until now; after all it has one of the best Pop Hooks from the 1980s. It probably has to do with the fact the original exudes a white queer vibe (as do most new wave songs from the 80s). Some how Flo Rida figured out how to mainstream the hook into hip hop. If he can do the same for Tainted Love and Come On Eileen I suspect he'll do well financially.

Six: Motherlover (The Lonely Island feat. Justin Timberlake)

This is a song about two recently released convicts who formulate a plan to have sex with the other's mother. Motherlover lives in its own little dead zone: Two weird for the angry anti-establishment crowd to get behind, and too offensive and mainstream sounding for the happy-go-lucky alternative crowd to support. But if it weren't for the lyrics, this song could easily be in high rotation and on the charts. I'm only aware of one Internet radio station that plays this song, and I doubt you'll ever hear it on terrestrial radio at all. Perhaps I've answered my own question about the limits pop hooks.

Five: Fireflies (Owl City)

This was the "unknown" breakout of the year. While not everyone cares for this song, I think it exemplifies the egalitarian nature of the Pop Hook. Just like Whitetown and Babylon Zoo, you too can create a chart topper.

If this song doesn't end up in some quirky romantic comedy by the end of next year, I'll be damned.

Four: Sexy Bitch (David Guetta feat. Akon)

It's been a great year for David Guetta, and this is easily his best release. Just one question about the G rated version of this song: What exactly is a Sexy Chitch?

Three: Major Tom (Shiny Toy Guns)

As strange as this may sound, I seem to find more and more music through television commercials. This version of Major Tom recently debuted on a Lincoln MKZ commercial. Another great song I found this year through a McDonald's commercial is "Blue Steel" by Bot'Ox. It was also through teevee commercials that Moby was able to get exposure for Play, which in turn took his career to the next level. I've read remarks from people critical of these artists for taking this approach. But let's be clear: these commercials provide tremendous exposure, the artists would not normally get. In turn, it cannot be said that the artists are "endorsing" the product being advertised, since the artists are unknowns. Only established celebrities are in a position to endorse products.

Getting back Major Tom. A big problem with songs reliant on Pop Hooks, is that they tend to exhaust the hook by end of the song. Major Tom sets itself apart by building up to a true Pop Hook crescendo - a rare phenomenon.

Two: This is the Life (Amy MacDonald)

Although first released over two years ago, I first heard this song as dance remix on Lolliradio this year, and immediately decided it had to be on this list. I was pleasantly surprised to find out Ms. Macdonald is from Glasgow, Scotland (which is where my parents are from), although the song sounds more Irish to my ear. While most of the other songs on this list are a bit poppy and shallow, this tune has some meat to it. As with Stereo Love, I find this song to be evocative. It reminds me of the day I walked across the entire island of Bornholm (in Denmark) in the rain with a friend. It was a miserable walk that took us a few hours complete. We ended up resting in a cozy pub sipping on pints of Tuborg until it was time to catch our ferry home. This is the life...

One: Day 'n' Nite - Crookers Remix (Kid Cudi / Crookers)

The first time I heard this song, I found it to be a bit simplistic - it feels too effortless. But this is one of those songs that you must listen to with a decent pair of headphones to properly appreciate the nuance of its Pop Hooks - especially its central refrain. I'm also fond of the song's lyrics. For those that remember, the early 90s was a heyday for slacker culture. Bands like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and Pearl Jam framed slacker culture in three dimensional self-reflective way. These days most slacker culture is about celebrating the notion of "it's fun to be dumb". Day 'n' Nite brings us back to a more existential perspective. It is what it is.

So what's up for next year? Although we just launched the TUN3R iPhone App Peter is nearing completion of TUN3R's next app. I was already blown away by the alpha version.

This next app will forever change the way you listen to and interact with music.

Stay TUN3D...

TUN3R Launches iPhone App with Innovative Station Recommendation Feature

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:01:00 +0000

The TUN3R iPhone App has finally arrived!!!!
Search for 'TUN3R' in the Apple iTunes store, or click here: http://appsto.re/TUN3R.

Here is the full press release:
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Toronto, ON - December 15, 2008 - Internet radio aggregator TUN3R today announced the availability of their much anticipated iPhone/iPod application in the Apple iTunes App Store (http://appsto.re/TUN3R).

The TUN3R iPhone app raises the bar for Internet Radio applications by offering for the first time in the Apple iTunes App Store an Internet Radio Player featuring:
-Real-Time audio/visual browsing of over 2,000 stations representing the crème-de-la-crème of Internet and AM/FM radio. Stations are organized as a continuum of genres and cities for intuitive browsing
-Recommendation [Might Likes TM] feature which suggests radio stations based on what iPod artists were listened to last. Recommendations change over time and are always current
-Find stations based on what they play (artist or song title). Or find stations based on the contents of their web home page
-Visual bookmarks for fast and simple switching between stations' live streams
-Live streaming playback options including: Built-in player; Safari (for background listening); and RadioBox integration
-Top 10 lists showing: Most Popular Stations; Recently Added Stations; Recently View Stations; and Random Spotlights

The application - which has been in the works for over a year - represents the ideal embodiment of TUN3R's critically acclaimed approach to Internet Radio. The application also solves a major problem for users new to Internet radio: How to find live stations of interest among the thousands of stations available. TUN3R's solution is very simple and effective: Users can simply press the "Might Likes TM" button on the search screen. The application automatically looks for the last ten artists played from the iPod library, and then searches for stations that play those artists. For example, if a user has recently played classical music on their iPod, they will be presented with classical stations.

"TUN3R is a tactile application to begin with, so browsing on the iPhone's touchscreen feels very natural. Seeing is believing." said Neil Hepburn, TUN3R’s co-founder and general manager of marketing. "With the iPhone's recent iPod API integration, we saw an opportunity to create an entirely new kind of recommendation feature which we expect newcomers to Internet Radio will find very useful. As we like to say 'Your mood. Your station'"

TUN3R plans to expand its business through its proposed Profit Sharing for Webcasters business model, which will provide users with high quality streams, and in turn compensate stations based on usage.

About TUN3R

TUN3R is an early-stage partnership between founders Peter Gray and Neil Hepburn. TUN3R launched in July 2007. Since its launch, TUN3R has had over 500,000 visitors from over 200 countries, all through word-of-mouth. TUN3R is owned by Conalgo Incorporated. Conalgo was established in 2002, and is based out of Toronto, ON.

-30

Media Contact:
Neil Hepburn
Co-Founder and GM of Marketing for TUN3R.com

(416) 315-5514
neil@tun3r.com

Bell Mobility's HSPA network brings Internet Radio to the next level

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

This week marked a turning point for Internet radio - at least in Canada - with the launch of Bell Mobility's HSPA wireless network and the Bell Mobility iPhone. What does this have to do with Internet Radio you ask? In short, everything: As I have repeatedly stated in the past, the biggest obstacle preventing Internet Radio from becoming the de facto radio medium can be summed up by this simple fact: Until people can listen to high quality Internet radio streams uninterrupted in their car when commuting, it will continue to play second fiddle to terrestrial and satellite radio.

Reliability is what's been missing up... until now.

Radio geeks like myself all know that for some time you have been able to listen to Internet radio in your car, even before 3g networks were rolled out. True enough, it has been possible (for at least 5 years now) to listen to Internet radio on the go. But until the 3g networks were launched, you had to listen to a low AM quality stream. Then when the 3g networks were launched it did become possible to listen at high quality - indistinguishable from a CD in sound quality - but with the major caveat that streams tended to drop frequently enough to make the listening experience a bit frustrating, some days worse than others. I myself used to take the bus to work and enjoyed listening to Internet radio, but I always found it annoying when the stream would drop. Some days I would be constantly hitting the reconnect button before giving up and switching back to my iPod music library.

The reason for this is simple: while the Rogers/Fido 3G network was technically capable of supporting high quality streams, it was basically "redlining" the minimum required bandwidth. It's a bit like driving a moped on the freeway: Yes you might legally be able to hit the lower speed limit, but you don't have much room to maneuver if you're being tailgated by bus.

The remedy for this problem is obvious to any iPhone user: Get the cellular network to work as fast as a WiFi hotspot, which almost never drops streams. Listening to Internet radio through WiFi is fantastic, but the second I switch to Rogers/Fido 3G reliability becomes an issue due to the bandwidth requirements.

However, from a carriers perspective there is no easy fix as this requires a tremendous investment to upgrade the network. Bell Mobility has done just this: Upgraded to a shiny new HSPA network that is orders of magnitude faster than the Rogers/Fido network. Fortunately, Bell has also managed to strike a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone which means they've got all bases covered.

Admittedly, as a Rogers customer I can't help but feel that Bell's success leaves me feeling a little envious. Such is life.

So how do I know so much about Bell's new network if I'm a Rogers customer? Full disclosure: I have worked with Bell in the past as an external contractor, and still maintain a professional relationship with the company. As a kind gesture they presented me some preliminary results indicating quite convincingly that Bell's network is orders of magnitude faster than Rogers.

I asked if someone could perform the ultimate Internet radio litmus test which is to tune into a high quality Internet radio station and drive around the city to see how frequently the Internet radio stream was being dropped: Bell vs. Rogers/Fido. While they didn't have time to put together a formal study, they did do some ad hoc tests, and shared the results with me. Apparently the Rogers network dropped the stream "several times" whereas the same stream (Radio Nigel at 128 kbps through QuickTime) never dropped on the Bell network, during a 45 minute driving excursion through various parts of the Greater Toronto Area.

If these claims are true (and I have no reason to doubt these guys), this would indicate Bell has crossed a significant threshold for Internet radio listeners. From what it appears, users on the Bell HSPA network should be able to listen to Internet radio uninterrupted whenever they get into their car and drive to and from work. Not only is this more enjoyable - it's safer! The less I'm likely to fiddle with my iPhone to reconnect to streams, the less likely I am to be distracted and get into an accident. I am optimistic that these claims will be proven out through more testing, not to mention customer testimonials.

That said, I encourage my readers to find out for themselves.

Going ahead, I have asked Bell if they could provide controlled tests to better quantify:
1. How reliable is streaming 128 kbps streams through the iPhone 3G and 3Gs, respectively?
2. How long on average does it take to connect to a 128 kbps when tuning in on the iPhone 3G and 3Gs, respectively?

It's still the first week of their launch, but from what I've seen I'm beginning to believe that the HSPA network has upped the ante for Internet radio, and quite possibly laid the infrastructure making it possible to lift Internet radio out of the realm of geeks, and truly democratize the medium.

Exciting times! Stay TUN3D...

INTERVIEW: Cyr3n and Dekker Deyer on the newly launched 8Bit FM

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Video games have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. My earliest memories are when I was 6 or 7 and my parents took us up to a family resort in The Muskokas called Cleveland's House. In the main lodge they had a table-top version of Space Invaders. Back then my weekly allowance was a quarter a week, but my dad always treated me to a game after dinner every night. It was a nice way to end a long summer's day.

Later, I discovered the Atari 2600 (liked it), the Intellivision (loved it), and the ColecoVision (determined I needed it to "complete me" and never stopped asking for it till I got one for Christmas). Later I moved over to an Apple IIc, and then a few years later a Sega Master System which my parents bought me as a goal reward for losing weight as a teenager (well, it got me there, and back again). I then pretty much stuck with PC games till about 2 years ago when I bought a Nintendo Wii - mainly out of curiousity about its new controls. I also had a few GameBoys, and play games on my iPhone occassionally. At one point in my life I was probably something of a "hardcore" gamer and would construct maps of dungeons for games like The Bard's Tale using pencil and some graph paper. I have fond memories of playing Smurf, Q*bert, Buck Rogers Planet of Zoom, and BC II: Grog's Revenge with Jamie and Jeff for the Coleco. Great memories playing Shark-Shark, Frog Bog, Utopia, and Bump 'n' Jump for the Intellivision with my buddy Aaron. I always loved those text adventures like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Bureaucracy (anyone remember Miser for the PET), and later all those Sierra "Quest" games - wish people would make more games like these. I loved all those "shrimp kid" games like Wonder Boy and Kid Niki for the Apple II, and was possibly addicted to Phantasy Star (the SMS swan song). In my twenties when I lived in Copenhagen, a favourite Sunday passtime was smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and playing Command & Conquer: Red Alert in the various net cafes around the city, followed up by a few rounds of Unreal, and a little BomberMan. These days I mainly play Mario Kart Wii, and consider myself a basic simpleton in the gaming world - but I kind of get a kick out of 8 year old kids passionately advising me on which character I should use in games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl. (Ike is where it's at apparently).

Why am I telling you this? Well, an e-mail came across my desk last week for a new station called 8bit FM - the new brainchild of producer/director couple Dekker Deyer and Cyr3n (Julia Howe). In short, if you - like me - see video games as a part of the social fabric, then this is our soundtrack. While I must pay respect to stations like All-Games Radio, and Slay Radio: Stations which play [among other things] music from video games; 8Bit FM is distinguished in that it plays both retro video game video game music but also music borne out of the culture of game music. I've been listening for over a week now and in summary I would say that its rotations are very tightly and professional programmed - but will need to work expanding it's playlist. If you were to pipe 8bit FM at a party for a slightly geekey Gen-X/Y crowd, I'm certain it would be well received.

In spite of 8bit FM's retro name and inspiration, there's something futuristic about the stream. I am so very fortunate to have Cyr3n and Dekker participate in this interview.

Q1 Neil: Dekker I know a little about your backround from your Wikipedia page, but for the benefit of our readers, what is your career background? Is it true your parents were travelling puppeteers? What was that like?

A1 Dekker: Ha! Well, I don't actually get asked about that much. It was fun. I was very young, and an only child. My mother would tell me the puppets were my brothers and sisters. They were very large. It was... eerie, but just part of growing up in an artistic family.

Q2 Neil: Julia (Cyr3n), what's your background? How did 8bit FM get started?

A2 Cyr3n: 8Bit//FM is probably a closer match to what I do in my day-to-day than Dekker's bag! =D I've been an independant game developer and gamer for years. My first major project was "Rubies of Eventide" mmorpg where my role was scoring original background music. Simultaneously, I was running a terminal-mode BBS system for Cyber Warrior Inc's Internet Service Provider, known as Cyberwar ISP to the '201' folks. Since then, I've worked as a Game Producer on 2 other mmorpg titles, and am now the Community Manager for Vogster Entertainment's larger than life PC game title "CrimeCraft".

Q3 Neil: 8bit FM feels like a new concept - something more than just retro video game music. For example, some segues between tracks have a punchy anime quality. Occasionally I hear some dude who sounds like Dennis Hopper (from Blue Velvet after inhaling nitrous oxide) say "This is MC Frontalot you're listening to 8bit fm." Different. I like it!. How would you describe 8bit FM's concept and vision?

A3 Dekker: MC Frontalot is amazing! It's about artists like him. It's about artists like BitShifter and Glomag. I was appearing at an anime convention where these guys were performing and I was blown away. I'd seen MC Frontalot at a private party for G4 a year earlier and a comedian I worked with on a show named Kimmy Gatewood had made a documentary about him even before that. When I saw him performing with these lunatics playing music on Gameboys I was hooked. That's when I knew that the game music, the chiptunes, and the nerdcore hip-hop could work together in a lineup.

Chiptune artists have become the breakout stars of the station. Chip music is this generation's punk rock. It's people using these low-tech tools to make amazing sounds. At a chiptune show you can feel this thick magnetic energy. We needed to bring this to as large an audience as possible.

A3 Cyr3n: Dekker's summed it up pretty well but I'd just like to add that as a gamer girl, the crowd this music draws is very nonjudgemental. It's all about coming out of the game closet and having fun with people who share a common hobby with you without awkward introductions. One thing that stands out about chiptune events in particular is the lack of "chicken-hawks" and creepy dudes looking to hook up with drunken co-eds. You don't have that element here. Everyone's primarily here to support their friends, dance, and have a good time!

Q4 Neil: You refer to a "nerdcore" as a type of music on your site. What is nerdcore, and who are the major players?

A4 Dekker: Nerdcore is just another flavor of hip-hop. It speaks to people who love sci-fi, comics, video games, anime... it crosses so many themes... but it's about a lifestyle. Most people probably heard nerdcore for the first time on Adult Swim's show Sealab 2021. MC Chris was working at Williams Street and started laying down tracks about things that were insane at the time, like Star Wars characters. He got the genre a lot of exposure, but there are so many artists doing it. It's real. It's from the heart. This doesn't speak to a subculture, it speaks to the mainstream, they just might not realize it yet. There's even a concert, Nerdapalooza, happening in Orlando this year.

A4 Cyr3n: What can I say... "Nerdcore" is like the cooler hipper younger brother of "Filk" that got all the good genes! There have been mainstream artists in the past who've peppered their works with encrypted nerdy lines, brief homages to their favorite video games and comic book heros. But that doesn't make them nerdcore. To qualify, one has to be part of that cadre of hip-hop artists who are openly rhyming about geeky topics, have a history of doing so, and self-identifying themselves as "nerds". The power players who are getting the most requests on our station are MC Frontalot, MC Chris, MC Hawking, and Optimus Rhyme.

Q5 Neil: I've heard of bands like the "The Minibosses", and travelling orchestras like "Video Games Live" and "Play! A Video Game Symphony". Do you see these as one-off gimicks, or are we seeing a growing proliferation of bands reinterpreting classic video game music?

A5 Dekker: Actually, I got an email from Tommy Tallarico the other day. He's a certified bad @$$ and one of the composers behind Video Games Live. He's been really supportive. Bands like The OneUps have also really embraced the outlet, and I'm glad that we're able to help open up a new venue for this kind of stuff. I don't think it's about "video game music" as some kind of a genre, I think it's all MUSIC which just happens to be composed for games. Games gave us new sounds. It wasn't just guitars. It was strange and we grew up on it. As the games became more complex so did the music we played them to. That evolution is hard-wired into everyone that played Nintendo as a kid. It's about hearing elements of the familiar and using that as a launching pad to something even more exotic.

A5 Cyr3n: Oh yea, I think its here to stay. Why is it that weird though.. Considering music from other origins get remixed and played by cover bands? Maybe people are looking at it as a gimmick because its "game" music and not generally accepted as music for music's sake? As a person with a musical background I don't find game music getting redone as orchestral or chiptunes as weird. Bards will always find a way to make music no matter what the medium =)

I guess what's striking people on the outside of this movement as strange is how connected people are to their video games. But it's not that hard to imagine when the average RPG game can take longer to complete than reading a book. Compared to other forms of entertainment like a movie or a play, you're interacting with a game not just passively observing it. So all things considered, a classic game tune from your past can summon massive feelings of nostalgia. One's associative memory has strong somatic-markers linking childhood with classic video games... especially for our 25+ crowd.

Q6 Neil: I discovered this addictive remix of the Super Mario pipe music - a track called "Super Mario Bros (RAC Mix)". I couldn't find anywhere to buy it. Where do you get this stuff from? Is it possible to buy?

A6 Dekker: It's tough! We have people scrubbing the internet looking for these remixes and new artists. It's still kind of an underground scene. Some of the soundtracks and remixes are available as Japanese imports. In Japan it's been common practice to sell the music of a particular game, especially if it's a series, in record stores for decades. A feature that we're trying to add is a way to track down these albums for purchase and we're going to roll that out as soon as it's ready.

A6 Cyr3n: We're getting new artists into the request catalogue as quickly as our monkey-fingers can handle! Some of our artists are published with fans, others are emerging from the underground scene with their own style. It's a welcome challenge from our end to serve the needs of artists on both sides of the spectrum. Our primary goal with 8Bit FM is to give artists more exposure and help generate numbers self-publishers can work with.

Q7 Neil: Getting back to the original composers (most of whom I assume are Japanese), who are the titans? Do you have any favourites?

A7 Dekker: I'm going to go out on a limb and say Kōji Kondō. His compositions have proven to be so versatile while maintaining an iconic sound. Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, Pilot Wings, Star Fox... his sound is haunting. You can play it with a heavy beat, you can orchestrate it... you can rip it apart and chunk it back together and it still sounds like Kōji Kondō. There's an album we've been playing as nerdcore called The Ocarnia of Rhyme which features artists like Snoop Dog. It uses samples from Legend of Zelda games almost exclusively. It's a perfect example of Kondō's modular music.

A7 Cyr3n: Growing up in Japan, my favorite video game composers hands down are Koichi Sugiyama (Dragon Quest series) and Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross). They take their craft very seriously and really know how to match the mood of their music to their games' visuals. I think the Japanese game studios put a great importance in the quality of sound and music .. moreso than other studios in that era. These days its undeniable how music and sound are key in establishing real emotional value in video games.

Q8 Neil: A common question that comes up in video game circles is whether or not a video game will ever be art in the same way a movie or book is. I go back and forth on this one. How do you see video games in this regard?

A8 Cyr3n: There are many genres of video games these days and some are easier to promote as 'art' than others for different reasons. Games are multidisciplinary endeavors and I don't think the merits of their art department alone can define whether a game is aesthetic or artful. I think the best litmus test is what the game's output is in terms of end user experience. Like all art, its in the eye of the beholder.

Q9 Neil: Is there an 8bit FM theme song/anthem? If not, then what would it be?

A9 Dekker: We're not playing favorites! This is why we have the Top 20! All requests weigh into the Top 20, so make sure you request the tracks you like to hear. Right now Antenna by New York chiptune artist Bitshifter is in the top slot.

A9 Cyr3n: 8Bit//FM is trully the sum of its ever evolving parts! Like the music we play, everything is in motion.

Q10 Neil: Dekker, Julia: Thanks so much for doing this TUN3R interview. What's in store for the future of 8bit.fm? Dekker, Julia, I know you've got a ton of irons in the fire? What else are you working on?

A10 Dekker: I'm gearing up to shoot a horror movie this summer, which I can't talk about yet. But after that I'm slated to shoot a series a created with actor Phil Morris called Emissary. It's a gritty super hero show that has other great guys involved like Aaron Douglas from Battlestar Galactica and Brian Thompson, one of the scariest (and funniest) actors I've had the pleasure to meet.

A10 Cyr3n: I'm primarily working on CrimeCraft, which is now taking closed-beta applications. Anyone who wants to play a totally new genre PC game should head on over to crimecraft.com and fill that bad boy out! For Mnemosyne, we just released a new client for "Rubies of Eventide" with some snazzy new content and "Tentacle Grape" is doing purty well for being a hentai soda brand (probably because we're the ONLY hentai soda brand) but I nerdgress.. 8BIT//FM is poised to make a huge splash this year and we intend to promote the hell out of it! The party calendar on 8bitfm.com is looking ram-jammed with events this Summer so that's definately a destination to bookmark.

Thank you for taking the time to interview us! It's a pleasure being part of the Tun3r network and we look forward to watching the chiptune and nerdcore genres grow with your listeners' support.

-cyr3n

INTERVIEW: Television Columnist Rick McGinnis on TV, Radio, Newspapers, and the Future of The Media Establishment

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:00:00 +0000

For anyone who knows me, I've always been a fan of public transit. Whenever I travel to a new city I always make a point to check out their subway or commuter train. We're also a one-car family. So needless to say I rely on public transit for my daily commute.

Starting about 10 years ago, a free daily showed up called "The Metro", which was distributed around most Toronto subway stations. I must admit at first I avoided the paper as I saw it as an affront to quality journalism

(this was before Fox News, so my concerns seem quaint now). One day, after looking at the same subway ad for the zillionth time, I decided I needed to divert my attention and reluctantly picked up a copy that was lying next to me. The paper is in tabloid form and is clearly designed to be consumed in a single commuter trip. Most news articles are presented as "snacks" rather than a "meals". Nevertheless, The Metro does employ some writers who clearly take pride in their work and strive to create something that people actually look forward to reading.

Rick McGinnis exemplifies this. His television column - "The Idiot Box", rebranded, "Intellivision" - was not only my favourite Metro column, but also one of my favourite columns in general (up there with Roger Ebert's writing). His droll sense of humour grounded in humility was coupled with a sincere interest in the medium of television. These qualities really made his columns resonate in the post Pulp Fiction/Simpsons era. Rick spoke to the modern audience: The audience that can both appreciate pop culture on the surface non-ironically, but also enjoys peeling back the facade to dissect the underlying mechanics and manipulations. While for some this may seem to blur the line between "laughing at" and "laughing with", I feel this approach is actually more egalitarian and inclusive in its nature.

Two months ago when Rick's column stopped appearing in The Metro, I at first thought he was just on vacation. Then after a couple weeks went by I got worried and Googled his name. That's when I found his blog "Life With Father" and discovered that he was "downsized" due to the recession. I must admit, it was one of the most surreal media experience I've ever had. I had been reading his column for all these years in paper form, and now with barely missing a beat, I was continuing to read Rick's daily musings through my iPhone... still on the bus to my office in east Scarborough.

It occurred to me then, that Rick might have some time for a TUN3R interview. While many of us are familiar with Rick's take on television, I thought this would be a good opportunity to explore his music and radio side. Enter Mr. McGinnis...

Q1 Neil: Rick, thanks very much for taking some time for this interview! To get things started, how long had you been writing the television column in The Metro? What was the best part of the job? The worst?

A1 Rick: I wrote the column for just over four years - 500 daily columns as Tube Talk, the original name of the column when I took it over, then 523 as Idiot Box, the name I came up with, and the one I always preferred. At some point last year our publisher and new editor decided that they wanted to change the name, claiming that they thought Idiot Box "insulted the readers." Frankly, I always assumed that everybody would guess that the idiot was the guy writing the column, but you really can't do much for the irony-challenged. They held an internal contest at the office for someone to come up with a new name, and Intellivision won, but before we could use it, the lawyers started fretting about infringement with whoever owns Coleco's trademarks, so it was slightly changed to Intellevision, which is a pretty bad pun any way you look at it. I wrote 136 columns under the name before I got laid off, along with all of the other reporters at the paper.

I guess that was the worst part of the job - working hard on turning an afterthought column into something worth reading, dealing with people who didn't really get it, building up a readership and then getting canned. There's no positive spin you can put on that kind of experience. Apart from that, I guess it was the increasingly tight word counts - 375 per column on average by the end - though any good journalist should consider that a challenge, I suppose. It made me a tighter, more concise writer, I'm sure, though I'm quickly squandering that skill with the blog, which lets me write at New Yorker magazine lengths.

The best thing was having to analyze, over a long period of time, my relationship with television, which had always been a big part of my life, even though I really didn't watch if for about 15 years - roughly from when I started college to the point in my mid-30s when my wife moved in with me. I watched a lot - A LOT - of television when I was a kid, and to some degree my conception of TV remained locked in place in the late '70s, when the big three networks were still unquestionably the industry monoliths, though cable was starting up, and all these small, local, specialty players were starting to nip at their heels.

Obviously a lot had changed by the time I started writing the column in early 2004, and I had to get up to speed pretty quickly. I started with the usual prejudices - reality TV was bad, a successful show had to pull pre-cable network numbers in the multiple millions, TV was an inferior medium to the movies - and had them all swept away in quick succession. It was, really, an exciting time to be writing about TV.

Q2 Neil: In your blog "Life with Father", you argue that there is no such thing as a Golden Age of Television, or rather today is the Golden Age. Do you think the same applies to music and radio?

A2 Rick: I think there have been patently more exciting, interesting eras for movies, music, maybe even books - definitely newspapers and magazine journalism - but TV has actually always been in the process of getting better. Of all these media, it's the one whose fate is tied most closely to technological progress, and all the technologies relevant to television have been surging ahead over the decades since it was invented, which has only widened the possibilities for what TV can accomplish.

Everything from broadcast quality to the sets and recievers themselves, not to mention the internet explosion and digital file-sharing, has made TV better, more integral to the way we live, in a way that movies, for instance, can't quite match. Everyone in the movie industry complains that the time constraints - the 2-3 hours maximum that a mainstream audience will tolerate sitting still to watch a film - necessarily reduce the scope of what they can do with story and character, but now that TV looks as good as the movies, the distinction between the two has been made irrelevant.

The way people consume TV also gives it an edge. Until recently, movies were an event - you had to go somewhere to enjoy them, and you paid to rent your seat for the duration of the program, with extra cash paid for food and drink. You watch TV at home, in a space you own, with your own food, and a bathroom without lineups that's as clean as you want it to be. The atmosphere is far more comfortable, so it's not surprising that people will spend a whole weekend at home devouring, say, a season of 24 - something they'd never really think to do with movies, which in any case are still limited by the duration and economics of the theatrical experience.

Of course, home video has taken film out of the theatrical venue, but it's too late - actors have realized that, if they can get on a series that really clicks, they can have the luxury of an audience, a longer character arc than they could dream of with a film, and something like a steady paycheque. In the long run, I can imagine the distinction between movies and TV blurring and ultimately dissolving - there's just no good reason that it wouldn't.

If it seems like the golden age of radio and music has passed, it's probably because circumstances have changed in the way we've consumed both of those. The golden age of radio as a technology was probably in the '30s and '40s, when it was the fastest and most modern of communications technologies, but its cultural golden age probably came later, when AM top 40 radio was literally an expression of the tastes of the baby boomers who made top 40 - and the music industry - wildly profitable.

It's a simple matter of demographics - any medium that serves such a huge, largely homogenous group will appear vital and timely. The Beatles are still the most famous group in the world because, for at least a decade or more, they were the favorite group of the majority of a huge demographic bulge. Even today, they're the gold standard for success for a musical group, though it's almost impossible that another group will ever duplicate their influence or impact.

I actually think that's a good thing. Any cultural phenomenon so overwhelming is a bit scary to me - like a demagogue, or a political movement. The balkanization of musical taste has been hell for the musical industry, but I think it's made the proverbial thousand flowers bloom. Ten years ago I would have thought that every band would be making music on laptops today, but the music scene is full of young bands playing acoustic instruments in the most arcane combinations, singing multipart harmonies. The irony, of course, is that all this creativity playing to small but loyal audiences is happening past the far fringes of commercial radio, which has come to rely on formats like talk, or that muzak-like "hit radio" formula that's so general it actually appeals to no one in particular.

Q3 Neil: Are there lessons from the current trials and tribulations of the television industry that could be applied to the music industry and/or the radio industry? Were the television networks even to blame for their own decline?

A3 Rick: Oh, they were certainly to blame. They were able to guess that digital video files were as easily copied and shared as music files, and they've tried to avoid repeating the mistakes the music industry made by ignoring the changes for too long, then trying to litigate them into submission after it was far, far too late. But what they didn't quite see was how the broadcast TV model - which hasn't appreciably changed since the creation of commercial radio in the '20s and '30s - was becoming utterly irrelevant to their viewers. It isn't 1936 or 1956 anymore - people don't rush home to park themselves in front of the Stromberg Carlson or the DuMont to catch the latest Rudy Vallee with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, or I Love Lucy.

The PVR was the mp3 player of this transformation, and it caught on because people wanted convenience, and they got it in a technology that refined what VCRs and cassette tapes had offered, but in a far less sophisticated user experience. I just don't think the broadcast TV model has any life left in it, and the sooner the industry gets it the better.

The sooner they move from the scheduled broadcast model to the marketplace one the better for everyone. For instance, by June of this year the first leaks of the fall's TV pilots will start hitting the file-sharing networks, either put out there surreptitiously by the shows' producers to build buzz, or by people from all the points in the production chain - PR assistants, interns, staff at editing, duping and mastering facilities - who can get their hands on a screener DVD and slip it into their computer and out onto the net. I had the pilots for Life On Mars and True Blood weeks and months before they aired, and for the life of me I couldn't understand why the networks were waiting to air these shows when they had them in the can already.

No one thinks the strictly delineated fall TV season makes sense anymore, but it persists regardless, mostly because it's hard to get the industry to break from their stasis. It's partly laziness, partly fear, and partly the unwillingness of any single competitor to break out and do something new while everyone else nervously strains at the starting blocks, unwilling to try something that might fail, or might work spectacularly, or at least become something that works with some refinement forged by the market.

Q4 Neil: On a related note, do you believe that now that big media giants are beginning to crumble that we're seeing or going to see an increase in quantity, but a decline in quality?

A4 Rick: Not at all. Smaller players like AMC have produced shows as good or better than their competitors, and as long as you can spot talent - and get it to come up with an idea that doesn't, for instance, require you to build ancient Rome on a studio lot in Italy - you can make a show that people will want to watch. Digital technology has made cinematic sci-fi possible on TV, but TV's strength has always been attracting young, hungry talent willing to work long and hard to make their name, right from the early days of TV when New York was producing intense chamber dramas in tiny studios with all these Broadway and method names, or budding talents like Paddy Chayefsky and John Frankenheimer.

Frankly, I can't see why someone can't make a really compelling show with a consumer video camera, freeware video editing software and a YouTube account. It's certainly been anticipated for a few years now, though the fact that it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't.

And besides, as the big media players start shedding staff and productions, they'll be freeing up people who - if they're at all serious about what they want to do - will want to do it wherever they can, and not just under the umbrella of a big, lumbering - and frequently interfering - media conglomerate's production arm.

Q5 Neil: A bit off topic for radio, but I have to ask. What ever happenedto the sitcom? It seems like a pinnacle was reached with Seinfeld, and we've never been able to reclaim that high ground. Is there a reason why this once popular genre seems to be stagnant?

A5 Rick: The genre just got tired. I assume you're talking about the 3-camera, "live" audience and laugh track sitcom. Don't forget that they still make them, and that one of them - Two And A Half Men - is still one of the most popular shows on network TV, even if it gets no critical love. There's definitely nothing now like the "golden age" of the sitcom - roughly the '70s, with shows like Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Barney Miller and - though I'm not a fan - Norman Lear's shows.

It was a long, slow decline for the genre after that, at the end of which Seinfeld was a freakish little renaissance all on its own, mostly because it was such an ironic, knowing take on the sitcom, and one that assumed that the audience was perfectly aware of the traditional sitcom's inherent flaws, which Seinfeld both spoofed and defied. But it was a death blow to the genre, I think, and good riddance.

Q6 Neil: Getting back on topic. Growing up, what radio stations did you listen to? What kind of music were you into? How have your tastes changed?

A6 Rick: I grew up with this sort of schizophrenic radio experience as a kid - my brother and sister had CHUM AM and the top 40 music of the '60s, and my mom's was devoted to CHFI, which was on a total MOR "Music of your life" format, playing everything from James Last and Andre Kostelanetz to Sinatra and Tony Bennett and old big band swing and light classical. I still listen to most of that stuff today - well, maybe not the Last and Kostelanetz.

And then in the '70s I discovered my own taste - prog and FM album rock at first on CHUM FM, then punk and new wave on CKLN, which was broadcasting out of Brampton then, I think. Punk rock was really my music - the first music that I really owned, and wasn't passed down to me by my mom or siblings. I loved it - still do - but I quickly learned that most of it was wildly uncommercial stuff that even an FM maverick station like CKLN wouldn't play. If you wanted to listen to punk rock, you either made a lot of money and collected every record you could find, or you traded tapes with friends - or made friends with people who had the huge collections. If only we'd had file-sharing back then!

In fact, the single largest iTunes playlist I have is my punk rock one - over 20GB, and growing all the time. Almost everything on it was recorded between 1976 and 1982, and it's the soundtrack of my youth, albeit idealized, as if I'd grown up all over the U.S. and Europe, and picked up hundreds of singles a week in every record shop I'd find. I listen to a lot of music - jazz, old blues, prog rock, indie, ethnic (not "world") music. I have gigabytes of '60s garage music; are you aware how many little bands in the U.S. were printing nasty little singles on tiny little regional labels between 1965 and '68? The Beatles might have made a lot of people pick up guitars, but most of then ended up sounding like the Seeds, or ? and the Mysterians.

It was this kind of connoisseurship and packrat collecting that made writing about music the most natural choice when I left school, and I did that for years, until I burned out. I used to think it was unique, but there were obviously a lot more people who hoarded music and created their own radio stations using mix tapes and trading, creating a need for custom music experiences in the absence of the technology that would make it possible. Basically, I've been waiting for an iPod all my life (though I actually prefer the Zune.)

Q7 Neil: Have you ever listened to Internet DJ-mixed radio (e.g. Radio Paradise) or custom radio (e.g. Last.fm, Pandora, Jango)? Where does most of the music you listen to come from?

A7 Rick: I used to listen to the channels on Live365, and we have an XM satellite radio in the kitchen, where the family is together most of the time, but most of my music is downloaded, from iTunes, band and record label online stores, or file-sharing sites for obscure and out-of-print stuff, and I hear about new things - current bands or obscure old music - from mp3 blogs, which are the greatest thing out there for a music fan, as far as I'm concerned.

I discovered great new bands - Fleet Foxes, My Mourning Jacket, The Black Keys - thanks to mp3 blogs, most of whom got the tracks from the bands, as previews for albums, with permission to make them available for promo. When you find an mp3 blog run by someone whose taste you trust - something like Sound Bites, SirensSound, The Unblinking Ear or Milk Milk Lemonade - it's as good, or better, than reading Rolling Stone or Creem or Spin or Maximum Rock and Roll back in the day.

Tivoli loaned me one of their PAL internet radios to review last year, and we had it in the kitchen. It was great - the selection of stations was better than decent, there was a lot of variety, and the sound was fantastic. I love internet radio, but its lack or portability compared to, say, a plain old car radio would be a big drawback for most people and their radio habits. It's a technology issue, though, not a content one. People want more variety and choice in what they can listen to, and that need's being addressed very creatively - the technology will follow, I'm sure.

Q8 Neil: Recently, CBC Radio 2 has undergone a transformation from a mainly Classical Music station, to a station that plays a more eclectic music - sometimes indie pop music. Traditional CBC Radio 2 listeners got angry and felt that the programming consists of music that is "ephemeral" (note to readers: CBC Radio 2 also launched 4 Internet streams, one of which is classical, so it's only the FM broadcast that's been impacted.) My question isn't so much whether or not CBC made the right decision - although I'm interested in your opinion on that - but do you think the Canadian government, or any government have an obligation to intervene and shape culture? What should the government's role be in this regard?

A8 Rick: Government should get out of the culture business as much as possible. There's really no other way for me to answer this question. I think that the CBC is in a great position right now to get out of the business of competing with commercial television networks like CTV and Global - and the U.S. networks that they share the dial with, and compete pointlessly with for audiences.

I agree with Colby Cosh, a columnist at the National Post, who wrote a few weeks ago that the CBC should get off the airwaves and go online. Newsworld might make sense as a bare-bones news channel that commissions some original content but mostly licences news and documentary programming from other English-speaking countries, but a CBC that tries to pretend it's a player in the same league as CTV - or ABC or NBC - is an expensive joke. I think TV programming will go online eventually, so why can't we enhance our national prestige by leading the way?

I actually think CBC Radio is in more viable, but I think they should pare down to one, very basic national station focused on news, weather, and the most politically neutral current affairs programing possible. It sounds unexciting, but providing the country with the most utilitarian radio service imaginable is the essence of their mission. The rest of their programming - all the music and arts and cultural chat show stuff - should go into internet radio channels and podcasts.

I used to work in a record store classical music department back in the '80s, when classical music aficionados were replacing their LPs with CDs, after which the classical market collapsed. It's a niche musical interest, and it's most economically served by small, local broadcasters in cities, not a national, publicly funded radio network.

Basically, I just don't think you can legislate culture, or fund an audience into existence. We've been doing it for years, and there's never been any kind of unqualified success story; the movie industry has been an exercise in producing films for the smallest possible audiences, and CanCon regulations in music have become completely irrelevant in the internet age. We have to grow up, and the first thing we have to do is shed these old, counterproductive habits and assumptions about building culture, which barely made sense forty years ago, and have become anachronisms today.

Q9 Neil: Obligatory question: If you could have had a theme song for your Metro television column, what would it have been? Actually, make that two: One for "Idiot Box" and one for "Intellivision".

A9 Rick: No question - T.V. Eye by the Stooges: "I got a TV. You got a TV. We all got TVs. Big fucking deal." Words to live by. In a more sophisticated mood, "TV Is The Thing" by Dinah Washington.

Q10 Neil: Apart from typical freelance work, do you have any larger or personal projects in the works?

A10 Rick: I'm trying to get a couple of book projects going, and I have the usual unfinished novel in my desk drawer. Newspapers certainly aren't hiring these days, so whatever freelancing I do will likely be more online than anything else, which I'm actually excited about. Most of my reading happens online, so I can't see why I shouldn't be working there. It's a strange, anxious time in my business right now, though - no one knows where things are going, and I'm thinking that the fewer assumptions I have, the better.

TUN3R's Top 10 Pop Hooks in Rotation from 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:17:00 +0000

One of the things I'm always on the lookout for is the next addictive Pop Hook. Pop Hook's by their nature tend to be ephemeral and can be annoying after a while. I once heard a story that George Harrison wrote the song "I've got my mind set on you" to prove that it's trivial to write an addictive Pop Hook. Harrison actually never wrote the song (it was written by Rudy Clark), but to me, that's like Albert Einstein saying that science is easy if you just give it a shot. But I sort of get Harrison's point. What I will say is this: in the same way that Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt tend to have access to better scripts than say Christian Slater, many big pop stars tend to have access to better Pop Hooks than your average performer. But there's something Darwinian about Top 40 charts which allows so many unknowns to appear, and in fact I would say that the Top 40 depends on an unending stream of "One Hit Wonders" to consistently engage listeners.

Although I'm not a Musicologist by training, I reckon that the first person who could regularly crank out Top 40 Pop Hooks was Johann Sebastian Bach. In an interview in Wired magazine, Brian Eno put forth the argument that "structured" music was necessary during the baroque and classical eras because you might only be able to attend a live performance once in a lifetime and would want to get your money's worth. He went on to point out that Jazz music was only possible through the invention of the phonograph because it was possible to listen to the same piece of music several times over, and thus begin to appreciate its nuance. To prove his point, he placed a tape recorder at a busy urban intersection and recorded 20 minutes of audio. He listened to the tape at least 50 times and noticed that what previously sounded random began to sound structured. It's cool stuff, but today I'm here to talk about Pop Hooks, and lay out my list.

What makes a great Pop Hook? I don't think there are any hard and fast rules, but I'll list a few basic criteria:

You should derive enjoyment the first, second, or third time listening to the song.
You should be able to listen to it at least 50 times before growing sick of it.
Young children should also be able to appreciate the melody.
There should be some aspect that is unique and distinguished to the Hook. Many Pop Hooks sound recycled from previous songs, and are already spent by the first listen.
Often a Pop Hook benefits from a unique dovetailing of the singer's voice with the melody. As such, Pop Hook's can even emerge from unlikely sources like Ozzy Osborne. You can't separate "Crazy Train"s melody from Ozzy's voice. To do so would surely undermine its Pop Hook.
The Pop Hook is in a way modular, and can be easily repurposed into other genres, such as: uptempo dance music. You'll often hear baroque and classical melodies repurposed into modern dance and hip hop songs.
In rare circumstances, lyrics and the story behind them can drive a Pop Hook.

If you're hunting for Pop Hook's, a good place to go is the Dance Hit stations. Stations that stand out for me are: Energy 98, iPartyRadio, Maxxima, and Lolliradio Dance. If you're more into alternative music, an excellent station is Pig Radio which really stands on its own, but Soma's Indie Pop Rocks! ain't bad either. And I would be remiss not to mention both Luxuria and Soma's Illinois Street Lounge which live in a parallel Pop Hook universe. But this is only a tiny smattering of picks, and many other similarly excellent stations are out there which I haven't listed (but feel free to ask me).

Without further ado I present to you my picks for Top 10 Pop Hooks in rotation from 2008:

Ten: Because I Love you (September)
What is it about Scandinavian singers and world class Pop Hooks, I'll never know. Actually, having lived in Copenhagen for 3 years, I do have some theories which I'll blog about another time. In this department, honourable mention should go to Lucky by Lucky Twice which would be on this list if there was enough room, but there's not. Better luck next time Lucky Twice.

Nine: Just Dance (Lady GaGa & Colby O'Donis)
This is probably the most recognizable song on this list, and some of you may be sick of hearing this song by now. Sure it's been overplayed, but I still enjoy it. While many songs with great Pop Hooks struggle to fill time between the Hook, this song never feels like it's killing any time. It's what I admire about great bands like The Beatles, The Pixies, Nirvana, and The Strokes.

Eight: The Longest Road (Morgan Page remixed by Daedmus)
There's a line in the movie "The Blues Brothers" where Belushi and Akyroyd arrive at a bar they are scheduled to play at. They ask the owner what kind of music they normally play. She responds by saying: "We play both kinds of music: Country and Western." It's a joke, but I've always wondered if there is an element of truth to it. Is there such a thing as "Western music" that is distinct from "Country Music". I dunno. But if there was, I would peg The Longest Road as one of the best "Western" songs I've ever heard. In fact the very first time I heard this song on the radio, I paused and thought "Wow! That's a very cool sound I haven't quite heard before." I once drove from San Francisco to Toronto, and this song reminds me of driving through the stretches through Nevada and Utah.

Seven: 4 AM (Kaskade)
As anyone who knows me, Blade Runner is one of my favourite movies of all time. The soundtrack by Vangelis is untouchable. As Moby described it:

The contrast makes it: a relentlessly gritty film with this ethereal music on top of it. Without the music, the movie would have been good. But with the music, it was close to perfect.

While I hesitate to compare Kaskade to Vangelis, there is something very Blade Runner-esque about 4 AM that appeals to me. In fact, if you were to replace the end credit song of Blade Runner with this one (perhaps in some new Full/Alternate/Fan/Directors Cut), I wouldn't take offence.

Six: The One (Sharam & Daniel Bedingfield)
Award goes to The One for the least time wasted to get to the Pop Hook. What is it about male falsetto singers and Pop Hooks? I once saw a movie called Farinelli about a Castrato singer (of the same name). That's right, there was a time where people would sacrifice having children to achieve the perfect voice. We don't have Castrati singers anymore, and the best grown men can do is a falsetto voice. There may be some hope for us Castrati deprived listeners. I recently read that researchers in Turkey have located a puberty gene, and there are actually rare instances of people who can never hit puberty. Hey, where there's crisis there's opportunity.

Five: Sensual (PhonJaxx)
If you enjoy listening to music while having sex, you may appreciate this song.

Four: Underneath (Alanis Morissette - remixed by Morgan Page)
One of the more substantial songs on this list. Alanis has one of those incredibly versatile voices that has its own ability to generate Pop Hooks. Morgan Page's remix nicely re-frames the wonderful Hooks in this richly textured song.

Three: What You Got (Colby O'Donis featuring Akon)
This song is grounded in its narrative and lyrics. From a pure melody perspective there are better songs on this list, but what this song illustrates to me at least, is that the Pop Hook can often transcend melody if it is well supported by the right lyrics. In some ways written poetry pre-dates the musical Pop Hook, and while I'm sure my friends would tease me for saying this - there is some decent poetry in this song.

Two: Your Love Still Haunts Me (Joseph remixed by DJ Bam Bam)
This song is State-of-the-Art for 2008. If you asked me to define what a State-of-the-Art song for 2008 sounds like, I would play Your Love Still Haunts Me. Apologies for the useless circular definition. This song will put you in your own Starship.

One: You You You (James Kakande - remixed by Alex Gaudino)
This song came out in 2006, but is still in rotation on some stations - and rightfully so. It's one of my favourite songs of all time. There is something perfectly effortless, playful, and sentimental about this song that it can often bring a tear of joy to my eye. There are a few perfect songs out there. This is one them.

Looking over this list I've probably missed a lot of big name Pop Hookers. Where's Madonna, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, and Beyonce Knowles you ask? I like a lot of this stuff too, but it tends to get overplayed to the point where I'm burned out. But I also find that they tend to be more risk averse and will write songs that are enjoyable after the first or second listen, but burn out after 10-15 listens.

So what's in store for TUN3R in 2009? That would be our iPhone app.

Stay TUN3D.

Interview: ErrorFM's Eric Howey discusses the past present and future of collaborative radio

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:45:00 +0000

A while back I interviewed a deejay (Manny) from a station called Nekkid Radio. What intrigued me about Nekkid Radio was the fact that they are distributed all over the world across hemispheres and continants, and yet manage to keep the music flowing as well any terrestrial station. To whit - Manny referred to Nekkid as "a global party". Since then I've encountered other stations that have also adopted this model. ErrorFM is one of those stations.

Listening to ErrorFM is like listening to a well funded terrestrial station. The imaging is great, the deejays sound like pros, and there is a decent amount of talk programming. While a lot of people strictly want music, I quite enjoy the context a good DJ provides to the music experience.

But what are the limits of this model. Is it the way of the future, or a temporal niche. In this interview with Eric Howey from ErrorFM, I hope to shed some light on the matter.

Q1 Neil: Eric, thanks very much for taking part in this interview. How did ErrorFM get its start? What's the back story?

A1 Eric: Neil, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for your interest in ErrorFM. We are quite proud of the station we have built. ErrorFM is a listener-controlled radio station based in the UK. It was originally a small shoutcast server run by Emohawk of External Error, streaming off his own pc. He used to broadcast a selection of whatever music was found cluttering up his hard drive. Today, it has turned into a fully-operational 24/7 Live radio station, with all kinds of DJ's all over the world. As Manny from Nekkid said, "a global party" is the best way to describe us.

Q2 Neil: What music does ErrorFM mainly play? What is your average listener profile?

A2 Eric: ErrorFM has two channels that are totally different from each other. Channel 1 began in 2002, a free for all where hosts log in and broadcast whatever they like. There were no rules, and no restrictions. We created channel 2 because we wanted a place listeners can listen if they don't like what they hear on ch1, and to experiment.

We decided to play indie pop/AAA music in the summer of 2007. We created a programming design out of all of the songs we enjoyed listening to. We narrowed down the list by looking up the Wikipedia page of all the artists we collectively believed made up the core of the format. We have 6 ch2 Music Directors, from other countries all over the world looking for music for ch2. We built clock patterns & experiment with specific programming, targeted to the young adult and their parent. You can call it a Daddy & Daughter station. The format is called indie pop/AAA to reference what we believe is the next progression in rock radio, but the format has no specific catchy name or reference. It's closely related to New AAA.

Q3 Neil: I like the fact that you've got a decent amount of talk programming. Can you tell me about some of the shows you've got in this regard?

A3 Eric: Our talk shows are what radio used to be. They empower the broadcaster to say whatever they want, speak what's on their mind. A lot of our talk shows are very opinionated and some are just flat out silly. The Friday Shot Day Show is a show that features a bunch of guys drinking the strangest concoctions of alcohol while talking about showbiz. Tilted Talk radio is a talk show about life, culture and every day stupidity with blunt opinions and political incorrectness. It's talk that actually interests people and isn't controlled by a program director on a power trip. We also encourage an interactive radio experience by utilizing our chat room. If you ever want to talk with the DJ's, more than likely you will find them in the chat room. If you haven't checked out the chat room yet, you're missing a huge part of the true ErrorFM experience.

Q4 Neil: Where are all your DJs and personalities logging in from? How do you manage this.

A4 Eric: Using a combination of standard software and custom built applications; we make the technical management possible for DJ's to broadcast from all over the world. We have put years of development into this process and created a solution that works for us. Our DJ's also find our custom system easy to use and manageable on their end.

Q5 Neil: Can anyone participate as a DJ for ErrorFM? What do you look for in new applicants?

A5 Eric: Absolutely! Our DJ staff is located from all around the world. We have DJ's ranging from the United States, to Europe, to far east Asia. We look for applicants who have a passion for music or radio and have the creative spark that brings a unique experience to our listeners. Experience is not required but creativeness is. Anyone who would like to apply as a DJ for us can visit http://www.errorfm.com/apply.htm and fill out our application.

Q6 Neil: Is ErrorFM as a commercial venture, a not-for-profit, or something in between? If it's not commercial, do you see this model as being a viable commercial alternative to the current mode of running a radio station?

A6 Eric: As of now we are a listener supported station. We have considered going commercial but we are finding it difficult to figure out an approach that won't interfere with our feel. We really frown on having commercials on air. I feel we could go commercial if we can still cater to the small artist; we also strongly feel that we should continue our "free for all" channel 1 broadcasting. If we could find advertisers that would be interested in this kind of programming, then I don't see we couldn't switch to a commercialized model.

Q7 Neil: Once of concerns about the collaborative model is that it tends to be DJ-centric. For example, there is a dearth of kids music stations on the Internet. I have two young children who would love a station that plays Raffi and The Backyardigans, but don't know many people interested in actually playing that stuff. Forgetting about ErrorFM - do you see the collaborative model as viable for all types of formats, or only certain formats?

A7 Eric: A format is only as collaborative as the program director will make it. Our Director of Programming Barry Funkhouser works in the commercial radio industry and he knows where it has gone terribly wrong. Its technology restricts it from being able to broadcast that kind of programming without having a major listener tune out. Web radio makes this possible by offering channels that can vary in programming to accommodate this. This goes more along the lines of our channel 1 model. We can have certain DJ's that play Raffi and if certain listeners do not like it, they can switch to another channel without leaving the station.

Q8 Neil: Is there an ErrorFM theme song? If not, what would it be?

A8 Eric: Well for years our transitional DJ music has been Sofa Surfers – Sofa Rockers the Richard Dorfmeister remix. I suppose this qualifies as a theme song. Why not break tradition.

Q9 Neil: What are the future plans for ErrorFM?

A9 Eric: Honestly, we have no idea! ErrorFM has been an experiment since its first day of broadcast and as of now we are still in those stages. We know that we want to be a supporter of independent music and artists, but we are still figuring out a strategy to make a business out of it. As an independent artist, I feel that it is way too hard for us to get any airplay. I would like to change that.

2008 Webcaster Settlement Act / The Payola Paradox / My advice to Webcasters

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0000

CNET News just reported that the 2008 Webcaster Settlement Act has passed. I'll be honest with you, my knowledge of this Act is scant, other than the basic gist of it. In fact, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I hadn't even heard of it until today. I checked Wikipedia and couldn't find any info on it. Googling "webcaster settlement act" turned up a number of results for news stories, such as the CNET story. There are also results for a 2002 Webcaster Settlement Act, which I'm presuming is different from the 2008 Settlement Act. I occasionally check in with Kurt Hanson's Radio and Internet Newsletter (RAIN), and Radio World Online, and don't recall any mention of this bill in the last few weeks (admittedly I don't check these sites every day). I also read a number radio blogs, and no mention there either. I'm not implying anything conspiracy-like. Rather, I'm amazed how quickly this thing has gone from virtually unknown to congressional sign-off. But let me explain why I think this is...

In essence (and this is all based on my reading of the CNET article) the Act allows for webcasters to negotiate directly with copyright holders (read RIAA), and negotiate lower royalties than what are stipulated by the Copyright Royalty Board's decision. So what does this all mean, and why did this new Settlement Act pass through so quickly when the Internet Radio Equality Act stalled?

My guess is that Tim Westergren (founder of Pandora) convinced RIAA that it was making them more money than it was costing them. Namely, Pandora (like many other webcasters), sells music through it site. While I have no idea what kind of margin Pandora gets for each sale, I do know that most of that money goes back to RIAA's major labels. While the overall amount of cash going back to the labels might be less than what RIAA could have got had they received the original CRB rated royalty, it's still an overall net profit for RIAA's labels. Therefore, if Pandora were to shutter its service, the music industry would effectively be "cutting off their nose to spite their face". I suspect this is why Pandora has restricted its service to US customers only. I suspect this is why Pandora has been publicly threatening to shut down its service.

I will get back to the Settlement Act in just a minute, but want to discuss a related piece of news first. Namely, a couple weeks ago Wired reported that Adman Doug Perslson proposed a business model around Payola. Wired's journalist (Eliot Van Buskirk) did a good job at explaining the background and the idea, but was ultimately dismissive of the concept. My take on payola? It's now both inherent and irrelevant to radio. This sounds like a paradox, but let me explain. Payola as you may know is the illegal practice of paying off stations to force their deejays to play music so as to boost the music's sales. The reason it failed listeners is that the music wasn't always what deejays wanted to play, and by extension what listeners were counting on the deejays to play for them. Now things are different. Because of affiliate programs (like the iTunes affiliate program), anyone and everyone is in a position to "sell" music. Remember all those innocent mix tapes you made as a teenager for your friends. Back then it was all about making a cool tape that you were hoping your friends would appreciate, or that you could turn them on to new music. Now all you need to do is fill out a form or two and get paid for doing just that. Does this mean you would create a tape that would sell better? Take some time to think about this. I think you'll realize that you would make the same recommendations since your objective (unless you're some kind of sadist) is to turn your friend on to new music that you think they would like. Not only do you know your friends and family better than anyone else, but you also influence them the most too. Take me for example. My friend James (who's blogged here before) turned me on to tons of music, and never saw a cent from any of this. While I doubt he would have got rich off me, he was always a guy I looked to. For a non-conformist, and skeptic of capitalism, James probably made more money for the music industry through his recommendations than anyone else I know. If he were to be paid after-the-fact with no pressure on his decisions before-the-fact, I doubt he would have changed his behaviour much, apart from possibly recommending even more music.

So what's my advice for webcasters? My advice is (if you haven't done so already) to sign up for one or more affiliate/associate programs (e.g. iTunes, Amazon.com), and remind listeners that if they like the track they're hearing they should buy it from your site to keep the station going. For now, streams are not the same as a custom radio application like Pandora or Last.fm, so it's harder to be sure that your recommendation results in a purchase from your site (hence my skepticism that webcasters are out of the woods yet). This is why it's important to remind people of where they should go to make their purchase if they like the song. It will be these numbers which will be your strongest argument if it ever comes to negotiation with the labels.

The good news is that the message is finally hitting home that Internet radio is making the labels money and not taking away. Common sense prevails!

Stay TUN3D.

Interview: Athena Reich Shares an Artists's Perspective on The Business of Art

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0000

I've known Athena since I was in high school (or maybe it was middle school). She was friends with my sister but unlike other friends my sister brought over, Athena always stood out. Back then I knew Athena as a "free spirit" who was passionate about all things artistic: Singing, writing, dancing, acting, and even painting. But at that age it's sometimes hard to tell apart those that talk about going off and becoming an artist, and those that actually do, and succeed. I even know someone who was on Degrassi Junior/High during the same period. And although he's still working in the film industry, he's no longer in front of the camera. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Choosing art as a career path is incredibly risky. But if you were to choose the arts as a career path, you'd do a lot worse than to follow in Athena's footsteps. Here are but a few small lessons I've learned from Athena:

Move to New York City and start showing up to auditions.
Always keep writing and other acts of creativity going. Keep releasing stuff and booking gigs.
Nurture all of your talents.
Learn how to market your abilities.
Look for other opportunities your talents can be used to earn a living (e.g. teaching).

Because it's rare to find such a savvy artist, I thought I'd take this opportunity to learn more about "The Business of Art" (to use an expression borrowed from another great Canadian artist, Tegan & Sara)...

Q1 Neil: Thanks for taking the time for this interview! Last time we spoke you were recovering from surgery to remove polyps on your throat. You're not supposed to sing. I know you've got a lot of other talents to fall back on, but this sounds rough. How are you coping with this? What's the prognosis?

A1 Athena: I got hit with a really bad bout of bronchitis last spring and there might have been some pneumonia mixed in with it. The doctors are guessing that the virus damaged a nerve in one of my vocal chords and partially paralyzed it. Or, it is possible that I was born with a partially paralyzed vocal chord, and never noticed it until now, although that scenario is less likely. At the time, I was also teaching a lot (music & theater), auditioning constantly (musical theater), and recording my 5^th CD on the weekends. Partially paralyzed vocal chord + extensive use = polyp.

A polyp is a little bump, caused by a blood vessel bursting. Luckily, mine was small, and stuck out from the vocal chord, so it was easily removable. I went to the best doctors in the city, who specialize in working with professional singers. The surgeon removed the polyp with laser surgery, using the latest technology. I went through speech therapy afterwards. All in all, I couldn't talk, off and on, for 3 months. It was really challenging to live life as a mute!

couldn't sing, write songs, or audition. I couldn't even talk when I went to the grocery store, or to my lover at night. So I typed a whole bunch and started drawing constantly. I took life drawing classes and created oil pastel portraits in the middle of the night when all my pent up fears and frustrations would surface.

Visual art was my first love, before I discovered performing at age 9. I always thought I would come back to it, when I was ready to calm down a bit. Well, this was a forced slowing down!

I ended up having one of the "quickest recoveries ever" (as quoted by my speech therapist), and am now back to singing, auditioning, and talking as much as ever. There is no evidence that I had any surgery on my vocal chord. Even the doctor was surprised that there was absolutely no scaring, only 2 weeks after surgery. I still have partial paralysis on my vocal chord, as that is not something you can heal with surgery. The doctors say it might go away over time, or it might stay, but that it doesn't really matter. "The proof is in the pudding", they say. If I can sing, talk, and belt out a tune as much as I could before (which I can), then I am golden. Apparently, lots of professional singers (opera, rock, musical theater etc), have funky things like partial paralysis. All it really means is that I have to continue to take good care of myself.

It's a good life lesson, in the end. I am taking Pilates classes, and maintaining a healthier lifestyle, with less stress and more fruits & vegetables. I've become a better singer, and voice teacher, with all that I have learned. And I am still drawing. I have even begun selling my work!

Q2 Neil: Your background is diverse and quite robust. Napoleon Dynamite famously said people need "skills" to be successful. You're flush in this department. How would you describe your "skills", and what talent gave you your first big break?

A2 Athena: Acting, Singing, Writing, Performing, Business, and Teaching are some of my strongest talents. I think my secret is that I am also talented at learning. I can quickly pick up new skills. For example, I just started learning tap and am having a ball! Maybe it's because I'm a Gemini that I constantly crave new creative outlets.

What gave me my first break was acting. I was intensely devoted to it as a child and got my first agent at age 12. I quickly began performing in TV, Films, Commercials & Theater. Sometimes I worry that I might be spreading myself too thin, by nurturing my visual talents at the same time that I'm auditioning, releasing my 5th CD, and taking up Tap. But, they say "Follow Your Bliss". And I am so happy when I just let myself create, learn, and express as I please.

Q3 Neil: I've asked you about royalties in the past, and part of your income is being supported through royalties as a writer. Is this system working for you? Is there any way in which you would change it?

A3 Athena: Honestly, I'm not making that much money through royalties. There have been times when I performed on commercial radio or TV and never saw a cent. But then every now and then I get a check and I have no idea why. I think all in all it's a pretty good system. It would be great if we could start making royalties off Internet radio. Although that won't happen until Internet radio starts making money, I imagine.

Q4 Neil: As for music itself, with the Internet it would appear that many smaller artists are now able to get a toehold and launch a successful career, whereas before they couldn't get beyond a local "scene". Is this how you see it?

A4 Athena: Yes, we do have the tools to launch ourselves into cyberland more than ever now. But there is a plethora of talent, and now that anyone can create a CD or YouTube Video, it's more difficult for the average consumer to really support any one artist. Although anyone can gather hundreds, or even thousands of fans on MySpace, it does not mean those fans will translate into dollars. And now, more than ever, the most successful artists are those who have millions of dollars in publicity behind them. In the 70's A & R reps used to actually go to clubs, scouting for original talent. Today, labels are very conservative, and mainly sign artists who fit into their cookie cutter molds for success.

For example, I have a friend who got a major record deal. He was a model and dancer. He told them, quite bluntly, that he can't sing. They said they didn't care, that they could teach him how to sing. He had a marketable look and body, so he got the deal. Now, on the other hand, the Regina Spektors and Arcade Fires of the world are still getting signed, so how do you add them into the equation? Basically, it's the luck factor. Most original talent is not getting signed, but every now and then, the golden rays of "being discovered" shine down on an original soul and give them a break. How do you increase your chances of getting a 'break'? Build fans, create a cyberpresence, perform live, audition, do what you love, take care of yourself, don't give up, and leave the rest up to fate. You might get a big break, you might get a series of small breaks, but if you stick with it, I believe good things come to those who are talented and work hard.

Q5 Neil: When I last saw you perform at "Not My Dog" in Toronto, you joked that it was the gig that Facebook built. I agree, but I also thought it was one of the coziest performances I've ever attended. There was a convivial mood in the room that night that was palpable. To what extent does Facebook and MySpace help nurture your audience?

A5 Athena: Facebook helped me reconnect with friends and acquaintances I had lost touch with over the years. That night was my first gig in Toronto in over a year, and since that time, I had joined facebook. Toronto is my home town, and I've been living in New York City for the past 8 years. That night was one of those rare nights where everyone showed up and most people were connected to each other in some way. It was a completely magical night. Not every gig is as magical, and I sense that people are losing their lust for facebook, just as the addiction to MySpace has slowed down. I wonder what the next networking buzz will be?

Q6 Neil: You're the NYC correspondent for Toronto's ProudFM 103.9, and have worked in their studios. What's it like working for a radio station? What does your job entail?

A6 Athena: I report on gay life & culture in New York City. I phone in, a couple times a month, and talk about the arts, night life, and queer scene in New York City. I got the gig because I had emailed them, and asked if they would be interested in interviewing me, in promotion for my upcoming performance at "Not My Dog". The interview went great, and I emailed them afterwards to suggest that I become their NY correspondent. They thought it was a great idea. So basically, I got the job because I gave them the idea for the job. If I were to give advice to newbie artists, I would say use your creative faculties when promoting yourself. Create your own work. Create your own visibility.

Q7 Neil: Radio used to be (and still is according to recent stats from Jupiter Research) a major means teens discover new music. I think radio's role is shifting though. How do you see radio?

A7 Athena: I think that it's very hip to discover new music on YouTube or MySpace. Radio does expose teens to new music, but the underground Indie scene is very alive and prominent in their lives as well.

Q8 Neil: Your music is very personal and emotional, so this is perhaps a tough question. Is there a single song you've written (or heard) that best captures the essence of Athena Reich?

A8 Athena: That is a tough question. My first instinct is to say that that's an impossible question to answer, as my essence is wildly diverse in feeling, expression, and genre. But.. if I had to pick one song, I think it would be "White Bandages". It starts out tentative and sad, and builds to a passionate cry for survival, amidst a sea of destruction and self hatred. A lot of my songs express a struggling spirit, determined to thrive in the throws of adversity.

Q9 Neil: What's on your horizon?

A9 Athena: My 5^th CD will be released in the next few months. I will promote the CD by touring, creating YouTube Videos, and getting it out to important people in the industry, like Film & TV Music Directors, agents, etc. I also have some exciting auditions coming up. I will continue to draw and sell my work. I will continue to take care of myself, follow my bliss, and create art for the love of it, despite adversity.

[James Wallace recalls] Some Memories From the Past

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:39:00 +0000

This is a guest post from James Wallace.
---
I became a teenager in the late 1980’s (I was born in 1973) and like most kids, I was interested in music. Having spent my elementary and middle school years being saturated with the commercial pop of the day such as Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, Bananarama, Corey Hart and Phil Collins, I began to suspect that there might be more interesting music out there to listen too. I always suspected that the pop of the eighties was based far more on hype and media saturation, rather than real substance. I could see a direct parallel between the way which this music was consumed and the desire of many of my classmates to wear all the hip brands like Polo, Roots, Ocean Pacific or Lacoste. There was a certain disposability to these songs.

My instinct about the nature of this music was confirmed for me when I began listening to music from the 1960’s and 70’s such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Now here was music that was rich, passionate and seemed to place a greater emphasis on creativity and artistic vision rather than commercial marketing. I began to feel cheated that I was living in the culturally vapid acid wash jeans wearing era of the late eighties. I wished that I had been entering grade nine in the late sixties or early seventies.

However, as my knowledge of music expanded, I soon realized the time I was living in was not as bleak as I had once thought. I began to discover the huge underground music scene of the eighties. This music represented numerous genres and I soon found myself listening to everything from The Violent Femmes to Danzig, from the Forgotten Rebels to Bauhaus, from Bad Brains to Sonic Youth. This music had the same focus on creativity as the music from the sixties and seventies that I loved so much. What was also interesting to me was that the vast majority of my high school classmates seemed to have no clue that any of these bands or artists even existed. This rich tapestry of sounds was there for me and my friends to enjoy.

When Nirvana’s breakthrough came in 1991(I was in my final year of high school), a whole generation of music listeners felt that they had been waken out of a cationic state of bad eighties music. “Grunge” and “Alternative” had become the soundtrack of a new generation and it seemed that some really decent rock music had finally permeated the mainstream. It was great to see bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden at the top of the charts and bands like Mudhoney and even The Melvins getting all kinds of press coverage. Much harder edge bands like Ministry, Helmet and The Rollins Band were even becoming better known. What I found tragic about this situation though was that all the bands that were the pre-cursors to this current crop of bands didn’t get anywhere the same amount of recognition. Bands such as Black Flag (well at least Rollins was getting his due), Hüsker Dü, Flipper, Killdozer and Mission of Burma remained relatively unknown to mainstream ears and were not touched by commercial alternative radio. The musical revolution that had hit mainstream radio in 1991 had been in fact at least ten years in the making. But it was still wonderful to see decent music becoming part of the mainstream.

It only took a couple of years before the mainstream tamed and reformed this “new” musical sound. Soon we were subjected to The Presidents of the United States, Sugar Ray and other easily digested forms of pop. The good music was generally back in the underground. Since then there have been a few moments where really good underground music has punctured the mainstream, but in my opinion the state of mainstream rock radio is as boring and uninteresting as ever. Please no more Nickelback!

Here is a sizeable list of great bands from the Eighties American (and Canadian) underground. I am sure there are many more that I have missed.

Black Flag
Flipper
Scratch Acid
No Means No
Mission Of Burma
Minutemen/Firehose
Misfits/Samhain
Band of Susans
The Wipers
The Gun Club
Voivoid
Big Black
Bad Brains
Dead Kennedys
Whitehouse
Husker Du
Minor Threat/Embrace/Fugazi
Rites of Spring
Live Skull
Savage Republic
The Dream Syndicate
The Big Boys
Killdozer
Swans
Butthole Surfers
The Replacements
The Feelies
Sonic Youth
Social Distortion
Die Kreuzen

-James Wallace (jwcwallace@yahoo.com)

The Culture Wars on CBC Radio 2

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:36:00 +0000

Short blog this week.
I wanted to draw your attention to this article by Robert Everett-Green of the Globe & Mail which is the first in hist three part series regarding culture wars that are currently being fought out on CBC Radio 2.

It's a fascinating topic and revolves around the government's role in defining and promoting culture. The crux of the argument is this: The CBC (and by extension the elected Canadian government) should promote "permenant music", and eschew "ephemeral music", as it always has... until now. At least this is how the debate is being framed by the old guard. Of course "permenant music" is code for Western Classical music, and "ephemeral music" is code for contempary [pop] music. In actual fact the "ephemeral music" could hardly be considered mainstream fare and is usually on the experimental side of the equation. No matter. In the "permenant" camp we are on a slippery slope to cultural ruin.

Why I find most interesting is that Canada is not unique in this view that Western Classical music somehow represents some version of the truth. If you look at all the state run broadcasters, they all dedicate at least one station to classical music. Even KBS of Korea feels obligated to dedicate a station to mainly Western Classical Music when there's plenty of eastern classical music out there.

While I enjoy Western Classical music as much as the next guy (do film scores count ;) ), I welcome this debate since it exposes the undefinable nature of art. To define and quantify culture and art is chasing rainbows, but you learn a lot along the way. In the meantime, I'm happy to enjoy the debate.

3G iPhone: Revolution or Evolution for Internet Radio?

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0000

I happened to walk by a few stores selling the new iPhone last week. They instantly sold out and pretty much everyone in line had been there since the store opened its doors. There was even some dude who was standing by himself since 3pm the day before. I'm sure there were several others like this guy around town at other stores. I never see women doing this though...

Here in Canada there is only one wireless carrier that can sell the new iPhone. Namely, a company called Rogers. Since they're the only GSM carrier in Canada they basically got the iPhone by default. (Interesting factoid, Rogers was founded by Ed Rogers Sr. who invented and made a fortune from the world's first batteryless radio - prior to Rogers' 1925 invention, radios required expensive batteries). Rogers flouted their monopoly position by gouging customers, and generated a lot of bad will which they're still recovering from. They backed down a bit, and offered a 6GB plan for an additional $30 per month. But the cheapest plan costs $60/month, and only gets you 150 minutes of outgoing talk-time. Most people will want at least 300 minutes talk time and will have to spend $75/month for that. You'll probably also want call display, so add in another $15/month. Oh, but we still need to add in the dreaded System Access Fee which is another $6.95, and of course the 911 service fee for $0.50. We're now up to $127.45 per month plus tax. But not so fast, you still need to pay for the phone itself ($199 for the 8GB model, and $299 for the 16GB model). To be safe, I recommend the 16GB model. There is also a $35 activation fee. This gets us to $324. If I add in all the taxes (federal GST + Ontario PST) I get a whopping $366.12 plus $144.02 per month. Oh, and that requires a 36 month contract. Damn!!! To put things in perspective, I can get a brand new Kia Rio for zero down and $167.06 per month.

Looking at the economics, it's hard to imagine the iPhone will be a truly mainstream device for some time to come. The biggest problem of course are the wireless carrier fees. While I suspect the carriers will try to provide more value for the price (e.g. increase your data quota), I'm not sure if prices will decline so quickly.

But there are other problems with the iPhone. For starters, it doesn't provide decent support for background applications, so you can't really listen through an Internet radio application and surf the web at the same time (there may be workarounds to this that I'm not aware of though). The iPhone also lacks a proper QWERTY keyboard like the Blackberry's have. The design is so pure I wonder if it ever will. I know for a lot of people this is a major showstopper.

I'm not trying to poo-poo the iPhone. It is easily the greatest smart phone ever created. No other device of similar form factor behaves nearly as well, and is as easy to use. The iPhone represents a benchmark and toehold for practically all future cell phone development. Just the touchscreen technology alone with its pinch gesture is incredible. It certainly has the potential to usurp the PC as the de-facto computing device. Steve Jobs may have the last laugh after all.

But will the iPhone provide the much needed Internet radio lift-off that we've all been waiting for? I certainly think it will be a shot-in-the-arm. Internet radio is an "application" that does a nice job of showing off the 3G bandwidth improvements, so I think a lot of people will take advantage of this. However, the poor support for background applications may hinder its adoption.

Ultimately, I see Internet radio as a niche application until the advent of dirt-cheap wireless data. The base fees for wireless data alone relegates these services to the wealthy (or those who live outside their means). The roaming fees are even scarier, and if you've got your Internet radio tuner going while driving your car outside of the city, you may be in for a nasty surprise after your next wireless bill rolls in.

I still stand by my guns that WiMax is really the only viable path we have for mainstreaming Internet radio. If things go according to plan, there will be no distinction between wireless broadband and wireline broadband. We'll also see a slew of new hardware devices to further simplify Internet radio's adoption. The bad news: none of the telcos or cablecos are in any rush to see this happen.

Stay TUN3D.

Last.fm Launches new Royalty Scheme: Activism or Confusion?

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0000

This week Last.fm launched a new royalty scheme. What makes this royalty scheme new and original is the fact that unsigned artists (i.e. artists that are not affiliated with a label or collecting agency) now have the opportunity to collect royalties.

To be sure, there is a positive message here. The largest collection agency - SoundExchange - has been widely criticized for only paying royalties to 31,000 artists through 3,600 labels. It is worth noting that there are tens of thousands of artists that do not get any royalties. There are also questions of transparency (to be fair, some of these restrictions have been mandated by the Copyright Act)

However, it's one thing to criticize the shortcomings of an existing scheme, and another to do something about it. When all is said and done it is worth asking: Is this this new scheme beneficial or detrimental for artists and radio at large, or does it even matter? Time will tell of course, but that's not going to stop an amateur pundit like myself from throwing his two cents in.

Some relevant background: Last.fm is an automated Custom Radio service that builds playlists based on what music you already listen to and by extension, what others who also like the same music also listen to. It works reasonably well, but I've argued that human DJs can do a far better job. Because Last.fm utilizes the Wisdom of Crowds (or tyranny of the masses depending on your perspective), it is important to note that artists (or anyone claiming to be an artist) are now in a position to game the system to boost their music's popularity - in much the same way Google is constantly being gamed to boost a site's PageRank. While this has always been a possibility with Last.fm, it's not as likely given that artists receiving royalties through collection agencies are confirmed artists. Now, it may be possible for an enterprising hacker to create a song and game its popularity, and get paid for this. That said, the damage is not so much that this hacker is bilking Last.fm for royalty cheques. Rather if it ever got out of hand, it could undermine the integrity of the system from a listener's perspective.

Getting down to the nitty gritty, what is being paid out here? To simplify matters, I'm going to ignore the on-demand download service (which pays out higher royalties), and focus on the radio royalties. If you read the Terms and Conditions, the payout for radio is divided into two categories: Premium and Free. I'm going to attempt to figure out what the payout might look like, but it would be nice for Last.fm to publish some actual numbers to give us a clearer idea of what to expect.

Okay, so for the free service, artists receive:

10% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the free radio service

For the personalized premium service, artists receive:

the greater of 10% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the personalised radio service or US $0.0005 for each complete transmission on the personalised radio service of a track which forms part of Your Content transmitted on the Last.fm service.

Let's contrast this to the royalty rates set out by Copyright Royalty Board (payable through SoundExchange): For this year, 2008, SoundExchange is entitled to collect $.0014. Next year, it will jump to $.0018, and in 2010 it is $.0019. Furthermore, SoundExchange states that it pays 45% of their collected royalties to Featured artists, and 5% to non-featured artists. I'm not quite sure what happens to the other 50%. I think it has something to do with the split between performers and song writers (but don't quote me on that one). The language used in their 2007 annual report is confusing, and no concrete examples are provided. Furthermore, since there isn't much transparency we don't have any concrete examples to go by. Beyond that, it's not clear how much a label hands over to the artist at the end of the day. The whole thing is utterly confusing. SoundExchange could clear this up by providing a few examples of how a dollar is divided up when it's collected, and what an actual artist is getting. But they're a slipperly bunch, and won't even tell you what constitues Fair Use (rather listing a bunch of things that are possibly NOT Fair Use). Aaarrgh!

In an attempt to simplify things more, I'm going to focus on featured artists and the premium service. From what I can tell, a Featured Artist (e.g. an artist like Moby or Eminem) would still get more through SoundExchange than through Last.fm's royalty scheme. So, Moby and Eminem would be crazy to forfeit SoundExchange's deal and go for Last.fm's scheme.

However, once you start crunching the numbers a subtext emerges: Namely, (and I'm not going to pretend this is breaking news) you are either a Featured Artist (like Moby or Eminem) , in which case you can earn a living making music. If you're not, then you're probably working towards becoming (or working with) a Featured Artist. Looking at Last.FM's model I have to wonder if a $10 cheque once a year is really going to make a difference for anyone (and as an artist, you need your track to be played in full at least 20,000 times to get just that!)? Of course life is not so cut-and-dry and there are other options still on the table. But realistically you better be prepared to hustle your ass by continually marketing yourself and/or showing up for live performances, even if that means swallowing your pride from time to time and doing weddings and Bar & Bat Mitzvahs.

I came to the conclusion ages ago that the music business is both fun and insane. As a career path I don't recommend it. However, if you can find the time, and you enjoy it, go for it. Don't expect to make very much money though - there are too many people willing to work for nothing. Coming up with original sounds and lyrics is also harder than it looks. However, if you're one of the few that's been blessed with a combination of talent, luck, and a strong work ethic, and you can find a respected label to back you you may be in a position to go full time and pursue music as a real career. At this point, you're going to want to protect this privilege. Hey, it's good work if you can get it.

As for this royalty quagmire. I'll let you know if I ever figure it all out.

Holes found in The Long Tail theory. What does this mean for radio?

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0000

In a recent article published in The Harvard Business Review, Anita Elberse presents strong evidence to suggest that Chris Andersen's Long Tail theory may be overstating the facts.

For those of you who don't know what The Long Tail means, I'll briefly explain the background. The Long Tail takes its name from the long tapering line of the normal distribution when presented in line-graph form. This graph is also known as the bell curve (for its resemblance to a bell). The typical example people site when talking about bell curves (and the long tail, before it was called this) is IQ scores. Most people have an IQ of around 100 (in fact IQ tests are occasionally re-calibrated to ensure this). Most people have either slightly above average IQ or slightly below average IQ. But the farther we go in either IQ direction (i.e. those that are extremely "mentally disabled" or "supergeniuses") the fewer we see, and they drop off from the curve quickly. The same goes for purchasing patterns. We know that most people cluster around the same movies, music, and television shows, and the more exotic we get, the fewer people we see consuming these products.

What The Long Tail theory argues, is that because the Internet creates such a massive marketplace, it is now possible to serve these exotic tastes like never before, and so industry is moving away from serving up hits and blockbusters, and moving towards niche products. While I have no doubt that there are more opportunities to sell niche products over the Internet, the big question remains: is there as much spending and interest in hits and blockbusters? Ms. Elberse's research suggests that in fact we do not compromise on the blockbuster front. Rather our niche purchases are just more sliced up, and we make more of them. To use an analogy with food: We're still buying meat, potatoes, milk, and all those staples as we did before (and probably more so). But instead of going out to a Chinese restaurant once in a while, we dine out more frequently and those outings are now split between: Dim Sum; Sushi; Ehtiopian; Korean; Indian; Persian; etc.

But how does radio relate to The Long Tail? The short answer is: In a big way. The long answer is...

From one perspective, radio has always been the biggest influence when it comes to pop music hits. While I don't believe that radio DJs can actually control what constitutes a hit, they can quickly accelerate the popularity of any given song or artist. The hit (or blockbuster) relies on Opinion Leaders to get the ball rolling. From there, the masses will take over, and a new hit is born. Critics point out that this isn't very democratic, and that services like iLike, Last.fm, and YouTube better serve the masses. However, I would argue that these services effectively replace the DJ with with a hitcounter which serves the same purpose to guide the masses.

Whether it's a poor DJ (or unethical, in the case of Payola) or a gamed hitcounter, we often run into a problem known as Information Cascade and its close cousin GroupThink. This is why we often see songs like "Who Let the Dogs Out" take on a life of their own, without any one person in particular claiming it to be a song they actually like. In fact most people agree it's one of the most annoying song they've ever heard. Indeed, a stinging moment in my own childhood was going to see a film called "Sky Bandits" for my birthday. I happened to see the trailer in the same room as some of my classmates. They all exclaimed "That movie looks awesome, I gotta see it!" I didn't have quite the same reaction, but second guessed my instincts and chose it for my birthday party. It was a dreadful film and we all walked out shaking our heads. To this day my friends will ask me why I forced them to sit through this boring crap.

Critics of radio will say that bands like Metallica thrived without airplay, and point to the successes of "Ride the Lightening" and "Master of Puppets". True, artists don't require radio to be successful. But keep in mind that Metallica's self-titled 1991 album was even more popular, while getting airplay on the top 40. What's the difference between The Pixies "Doolittle" and Nirvana's "Nevermind"? Why do we know The Smashing Pumpkin's "Siamese Dream", but not "Gish"?

It's easy to be cynical and assume that there is some kind of conspiracy at work here. I don't buy this for a second. Chosing to listen to music requires decision making, and decision making is inherently stressful. If we desire to broaden our artistic horizons, there are plenty of DJs and stations to cater to this. Many people simply just want to hear a catchy hip tune to get them through their day. Admittedly, I've made, and will continue to make bourgeois arguments protesting this. But I'm also a realist (and possibly a hypocrite).

But most interestingly, The Long Tail has come to rest on top of radio itself, which I believe will be a driving force of change to how the next generation of hits will arrive. Like never before, we have the most incredible options available to us when it comes to variety of formats and stations. I suspect a lot of people (myself included) will continue to cluster around the big names like Ryan Seacrest and Howard Stern, but at the same time we are in a better position to elevate the discovery process. I don't know if we'll see a radical change, but there is no question in my mind that we're definitely seeing a positive one.

Is Radio Still Controversial?

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 05:00:00 +0000

George Carlin's passing last week has forced me to reflect on radio's controversial history, in particular with respect to free speech. For those that don't know, George Carlin recorded a now legendary stand-up piece on what you cannot say on the radio. Seven Dirty Words poked fun at our uptight and puritanical values. This bit was played by WBAI (a Pacifica Foudation member station), and led to a formal complaint to the FCC by John Douglas who was unhappy his son had heard it. What are these seven dirty words? They are:

Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Motherfucker
Tits

To this day you cannot say these words on radio air in the USA. To be fair, a big part of the reasoning for this argument (on the government's side) is that there is a scarce supply of frequencies, and sooner or later children would tune into a station and hear this foul language. Keep in mind that the crux of this argument is frequency scarcity. Since satellite and Internet radio don't have this limitation, all bets are off, and these media are not restricted in the same way. In fact, when it comes to television, this argument is all but meaningless since most Americans watch television through satellite and cable now. This point was raised again during Janet Jackson's famous wardrobe malfunction at the Superbowl. And let us not forget about Howard Stern's standing fine for having said the word "masturbation" on air.

But are dirty words and nudity still controversial, even though it's still illegal to say them on the air? Maybe, but it's basically a resolved issue. We know there's an arbitrary rule that prevents it on public airwaves and that's that.

But here's the good news: Foul language is nothing more than a distraction. The really really dangerous ideas and controversial topics are not only still out there, and legal to discuss, but they are just heating up. Some may think I'm referring to Don Imus' "colour" comments. Actually, I'm thinking more along the lines of Rafe Mair who recently prevailed in a 9-0 Supreme Court of Canada decision to uphold his right to use hyperbole when criticizing Kari Sampson and her decision to uphold the banning of three books depicting same-sex parents (the books were banned within a Surrey school-board's purview). This decision is good news for free speech and radio!

For those of you who remember the 80s, Talk Radio was at the time a relatively new format. In Toronto, I used to listen to Pat Burns. Like most Talk Radio personalities at the time, he was pretty right-wing and loved to talk about the death penalty. Back then, Talk Radio was exhilirating. Some of you might even remember Oliver Stone's film Talk Radio (IMO one of Stone's best movies), whose protaginast Barry Champlain (played by Eric Bogosion) was inspired by the late Alan Berg, who was brutally murdered by an angry caller. Berg never used any of Carlin's seven words. His style was provocative for sure, but the topics themselves were even more provactive.

I pray that nothing like this ever happens again (and to my knowledge it has only happened once), but I do hope radio continues to push boundaries and remain controversial. Carlin's seven words are just hand grenades. Current and future hosts are still building up their stockpiles of ICBMs in the battle of ideas. We ain't seen nothing yet.

Stay TUN3D.

The Media Guru, Paul Levinson talks radio, media, and his new book

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 05:00:00 +0000

About 10 years ago my sister gave me a book for my birthday entitled The Soft Edge, by Paul Levinson. My head was deep in the "dot com" boom, and at the time, I was living in Copenhagen working for a large Yahoo-esque portal called Jubii. Those were heady days indeed. The current Web 2.0 push - while still exciting - cannot compare to the confusion and optimism I was experiencing in 1998. I had my own instincts, but was hearing crazy stuff like "profits are no longer relevant", and major companies like NBC were already proclaiming that television was a thing of the past (anyone remember the original snap.com?). It felt like all the rules had gone out the window, and we were rapidly heading towards some kind informational singularity utopia, but with little or no direction beyond "The Internet".

The Soft Edge was the closest thing I had to a compass. For those that have never heard of it, "Edge" is a history of media, and media revolutions. Recommended.

While I can't recall everything in the book, here are a few things that really stuck with me that I never knew before reading it:

The printing press was invented in China, hundreds of years before Gutenberg was even born. It never took off in the same way as Gutenberg's, mainly due to the inherent complexity of Chinese script.
Levison argued that Gutenberg's printing press filled a necessary pre-requisite for the European settlement of The Americas. Namely, it would not have been possible to convince the greater masses of the existence and opportunities in The Americas without a means of direct and reliable communication coming from the Kings and Queens of the time. In other words, a key piece of the "broken telephone" puzzle had been solved. A problem that hindered the Vikings from settling North America, even though they had discovered it earlier.
Black and White photography, while thought to be doomed after the invention of colour photography, found a respectable niche after it was recognized that colour could obscure an image's essence. As a side bar, you might say that Mr. Levinson indirectly helped shape TUN3R and bolster our own convictions that a B&W Dial is more usable than a colour Dial.
Radio's eventual popularity was almost accidental. Levinson points out that Marconi invented radio communication as an improvement over Bell's invention of the wireline telephone. Marconi set out to create a wireless telephone, but the radio technology quickly took on an unintended life of its own as a one-to-many broadcast medium. How's that for serendipity!

After reading this, you might take Mr. Levinson as a full time media researcher/theorist, kind of like Marshall McLuhan. Far from it. Paul has one of those epic careers that would make anyone green with envy. He started out as both a singer and songwriter, then moved into radio production. He has since spent a great amount of time in academia, earning all manner of degrees and distinctions, and is now the Chair of the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University. During this period, Paul has published several books both non-fiction and fiction (mainly science fiction). He has also served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

I believe that Paul is one of those rare guys you actually want to be sitting next to on an eleven hour Greyhound bus ride from Toronto to Wawa. So by that key measure, I feel incredibly fortunate that he has agreed to this interview.

Q1 Neil: Thank you so very much for giving me some of your time and insights. You write about media, but you're also a part of it. I want to first learn more about your radio background. What did you mainly focus on as a radio producer, and how has that experience factored into your writing and teaching?

A1 Paul: I put together "sets" for Murray the K and Wolfman Jack - groups of records around a similar theme. For example, for Murray, one of my favorites was a "law and order" set, consisting of "Take a Message to Mary," "I Fought the Law," "Indiana Wants Me," "Gotta Get a Message to You," "Tom Dooley," etc. The "set" idea originated with Murray, when he pioneered FM progressive radio on WOR-FM radio in NYC in the mid-1960s. Murray and Wolfman were attempting to make Top 40 radio more sophisticated when I worked with them at NBC Radio in NYC in the early 1970s.

This behind-the-scenes work in radio gave me keen insight into all that goes into a seemingly live, unscripted medium such as radio - I often make that point to my students. As for my writing, no disk jockeys have yet appeared in my fiction, but music from that era populates most of my science fiction novels - music recordings make good markers for time travel stories.

Q2 Neil: You worked with "Murray the K" and "Wolfman Jack". What were these guys like to work with? What do these DJs have in common? Are there contemporary DJs you've seen that compare?

A2 Paul: Both were egomaniacs, but I'm more or less one too, so we got along fine. Murray and I had more in common - I'd been a fan of his since I'd first heard him on WINS radio in the late 1950s (I was 12 years old, then). In fact, Murray invited me to work with him after reading my "Murray the K in Nostalgia's Noose" (not my title, just a line in an article I had published in the Village Voice in 1972). It was my second published article. (My first was in defence of Paul McCartney.) Wolfman Jack was a tough-as-nails businessman - behind that big hug lurked a lot of industry know-how. Bob Shannon, long on WCBS-FM Radio in NYC, is about the closest to Murray and Wolfman nowadays. Shannon has a lot of Murray and Wolfman's historical savvy, maybe even more.

Q3 Neil: Changing lanes now. There is clearly a trend towards on-demand, and personalization (think iPod, YouTube, PVRs). The trade-off (as I see it), is a loss of The Shared Experience (i.e. many people having the same experience at the same time). Television and Radio defined the mass Shared Experience, but it is less common with the PVR (I love my PVR btw). I reckon that radio will survive for some time as a primarily live medium, but for how much longer I can't say. Do you believe that we are indeed giving up on The Shared Experience and living in our own media cocoons. Is the Shared Experience going through transition, or will history see it as a 20th century fossil?

A3 Paul: I don't know that radio - at least insofar as a rock 'n' roll medium - was ever primarily a completely shared experience. Of course, when a record is played on the radio, all listeners hear it at the same time. But almost all of them are not in the same place. So is that a shared experience? In the non-mediated pre-technological world, a shared experience entailed seeing the faces of those in the sharing, hearing their voices.

Nowadays, listening to a CD or mp3 or radio station in my car is pretty much the same experience as listening to radio - except that I have no control over what's on the radio, which can be pleasantly surprising. (The iPod shuffle is a limited form of this surprise - because I'm the one who programmed it in the first place.)

I think this exhilarating lack of control over live radio will keep it kicking for a long time - maybe even forever. It's part of what I call the "media ecological niche" - radio can do something we enjoy, that no other medium can. The other parts of the niche, for radio, come from the fact that we can listen to radio while doing other things - this makes radio different from reading a book, jumping around online, or even watching television. Indeed, this is part of what enabled radio to survive the ascent of television in 1950s (the other part was rock 'n' roll). But it's true of all acoustic media - CDs and mp3s as well as radio. I therefore think it is the lack of control we have over radio that will keep it viable in an age of mp3s.

Q4 Neil: This is a similar question. In The Soft Edge you discuss how after the invention of colour photography, Black and White photography repurposed itself. Given radio's small decline in numbers (although it is still one of the most popular mass mediums), do you see radio going through a repurposing of its own? If so, where do you see broadcast radio's strengths? What do you think radio broadcasters should be focusing on to stay relevant to younger audiences in the 21st century?

Well, adding to what I said in Q3 above: Radio's been wrongly counted out at least twice. First, when television came on strong in the 1950s, and co-opted radio's serial, sitcom, soap opera, and news programming. Radio defied all expectations, and became more profitable than ever was a medium of rock 'n' roll. Second, contrary to "Video Killed the Radio Star," radio survived MTV quite well - the Buggles had it wrong. Broadcast radio's main, enduring strength is that you can turn it on, and then do whatever else you like, and be pleasantly surprised by what the radio gives to you. It is a multi-tasking medium par excellence - you can drive to it, wake up to it, etc. Radio broadcasters in the 21st century should just keep surprising its listeners with great mixes of music. A good DJ can help, too.

Meanwhile, talk radio adds the additional factor of listening to other listeners speak. And, of course, the DJ in talk radio is essential to that use of the medium.

Q5 Neil: A topic that's near and dear to my heart is Custom Radio vs. Human DJ mixed radio. While I believe the current spate of Custom Radio (e.g. Last.fm, Pandora.com) is a far cry from what a decent human DJ can pull off, I wonder more about Custom Radio's potential. Do you think that the Human DJ's days are numbered, and by extension do you think that within the next 25 years we'll see chart toppers composed entirely by computer algorithms?

A5 Paul: Much as I love a good DJ, they're hard to find. The upshot for your question: I think a good DJ is always better than what any kind of computer mix can put together. But a good computer mix is better than the average DJ. What makes a DJ good: a combination of incredible savvy about the music, and a good sense of humor - Bob Shannon, as I mentioned above, is a good current example. My guess is that human DJs will continue, but as more of a specialty item than is the case today. I would therefore expect that, 25 years from now, we'll definitely have some humans beating along with the algorithms.

Q6 Neil: You're both a media commentator/theorist/futurist and a sci-fi writer. Do you approach the two as one-and-the-same? I'm guessing there's a lot of entanglement here. Do you have any examples of how a sci-fi idea influenced your non-fiction writing/teaching and vice versa?

A6 Paul: My critics often say that my non-fiction reads like science fiction, and my science fiction deals with important media issues - I take that as compliment, though it often isn't meant that way (hey, wringing compliments from insult is a fine art, and, I think, essential to anyone in the creative arts). I started writing my doctoral dissertation, "Human Replay: A Theory of the Evolution of Media" (1979) at the same time as a time travel novel, back in the 1970s. I soon found I was enjoying the novel so much, I didn't want to write the dissertation. So I put the novel aside. (The first part was published as "Loose Ends," an award nominated novella, in the 1990s.) By the late 1990s, I was able to write Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium and my first science fiction novel, The Silk Code at the same time - and both were indeed published in 1999. Much of The Plot to Save Socrates (2006 science fiction) and Cellphone: The Story of the World's Most Moble Medium (2004) were written at the same time. Right now I'm writing my next nonfiction book, New New Media, and two science fiction novels - Unburning Alexandria (sequel to The Plot to Save Socrates), and a new Phil D'Amato novel. I'm also working on a television script (science fiction).

So, yeah, all of my writing comes from the same source, and sometimes it comes out as science fiction and sometimes scholarly non-fiction. In The Consciousness Plague, science fiction from 2002, I pick up on the question of why the Norse discovery of America in 1000 AD had so little world impact - an issue I explore at length in The Soft Edge in 1997. And I explored questions of physical v. cyberpresence in The Pixel Eye, science fiction from 2003, and Realspace: The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age, also published in 2003.

Writing fiction, in general, is like daydreaming. Writing nonfiction is more like just thinking, or hearing myself talk. I enjoy doing both, and having each spill over into the other is entirely natural (at least, to me).

Q7 Neil: This is a variation of a stock question I like to ask: Let's say a director like Darren Aronofsky or Shane Carruth came to you to make a movie based one of your books (published or imagined), and asked for your input to select a piece of music that would set the tone for the movie. What would you choose to suggest, and in what context?

A7 Paul: First, I'd be thrilled. But in answer to your question: John Lennon's "Across the Universe" is one of my all-time favorite songs, and performances. It always brings tears to my eyes and heart. It would work in movies from any of my novels - not just Borrowed Tides, (2001) about the first starship to Alpha Centauri. It would probably work best in a movie made of my "Loose Ends" saga - since Lennon's murder may well play a role in its ending (which I have not yet completely written - so far, three parts of four have been published of the saga - all as long short fiction). A character in an earlier segment is already talking about "Real Love," which also breaks my heart every time I hear it.

Q8 Neil: I started using the Internet in 1991. I was a big Usenet junkie, and remember a time before SPAM and AOLers. There was a sense of optimism that lasted well into 2001. I naïvely thought that the Internet would lead to a greater enlightenment, and that most bullcrap would be weeded out through trust networks. But Fox News seems to do just fine. Are we better informed than before the Internet, or do we just think we are?

A8 Paul: Fox News is largely irrelevant - the Internet, not television (broadcast and cable), and certainly not newspapers any longer, is where people are increasingly getting their news. Obama's getting the Democratic nomination, and Hillary Clinton coming close to it, are examples of the enlightening effect of the Internet - an African-American and a woman would not have done that well even a decade ago. Wikipedia, YouTube, Digg, hundreds of blogs in different ways are getting out the truth. I think these "new new media" - in which readers and viewers are writers and producers - are fulfilling some of the optimism that was felt about the Web in 2000. It was just a little early. In fact, I'm flatly predicting that the neo-con Republican party will go the way of the Federalists and the Whigs in the US, in the next 20 years. How's that for optimism?

Q9 Neil: You're working on a new book called "New New Media" scheduled for a 2009 publication. Can you briefly describe what the book is about? Do you have any plans beyond this horizon?

A9 Paul: New New Media is about the revolution in user-driven media that I mentioned in my answer to Question 8. For the first time in history, experts are being replaced by everyone as sources of information and knowledge. Blogging, YouTube, Wikipedia, Digg, MySpace, Facebook, Second Life, these and other leaders of the new new media revolution will be the subject of my book - which will explore what is gained by this overthrow of gatekeeping, but also what may be risked (there is no such thing as a 100% beneficial technology).

Other projects:

Nonfiction:

The Flouting of the First Amendment, about how Congress and the FCC have systematically spat in the face of John Milton and Thomas Jefferson, and endangered the freedom of all Americans with unconstitutional fining and bullying of broadcasters, The New Golden Age of Television, how The Sopranos, The Wire, Lost, 24, Dexter, Rome, The Tudors, to name a few, have made current television the best it's ever been, and every bit as good or better than current theater and movies.

Fiction:

Unburning Alexandria (sequel to The Plot to Save Socrates), new Phil D'Amato novel (Phil has appeared in three novels and three short stories so far), and a sequel to Borrowed Tides. And a pilot for a television series that I'm co-writing, but can't say anything more about, without risking being kidnapped and never heard from again.