TUN3R: Give me Radio or Give me Death

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.

Interview: James Kent sheds new light on music and psychedelics

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Hi folks, this interview blog is a bit different. It's on the topic of music, but from a completely different angle that may take you by surprise. As such, you'll find my introduction a bit longer than normal.

I have a confession to make. I've been looking for an excuse to interview James Kent for some time now. Most people have never heard of Mr. Kent, which is a shame since he is one of the most intelligent, articulate, and daring individuals I've come across in a very long time. I would describe James as cross between Leonardo Da Vinci, James Randi, and Gordon Wasson.

James started his career as journalist. During the early days he set out to get to the bottom of the mysteries surrounding psychedelic experiences (which is a bit like starting off your mathematical career by trying to prove Fermat's Last Theorem). After some research and spending time with key members of the psychedelic community, the answers James was getting were more mystical than scientific. People like Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna - while insightful and articulate - were beginning to seem more like modern-day Shaman, rather than critical thinkers.

On the flipside, the scientific community hadn't produced much insight either. The reasons for this are mainly twofold: Firstly, publicly funded research into psychedelics has been all but completely suspended in most Western countries since the late 1960s, mainly due to the legal restrictions of substances like LSD and psylociban/mushrooms. However Britain has recently re-legalized psylociban, and research has now resumed in earnest there. There are also pockets of privately funded research like at the Hefter Institute which has shown evidence of psychiatric benefits. However, most research comes short of explaining HOW psychedelics actually produce the effects and experiences they do. This is mainly because the scientific method is predicated on publicly observable data. In order to observe the various phenomena produced by psychedelics, one must be on psychedelics. So any results obtained under the influence would be considered suspect. Furthermore, the experiences tend to push the limits of what we can describe in words, images, or even video.

All that notwithstanding, psychedelics are not for the faint of heart. Embarking on subjective psychedelic research can quickly lead the curious astray. When you're experiencing things like ecstatic trances, delusions of grandeur, spiritual awe, altered states of consciousness, and oneness with the universe, it's pretty hard to keep your eye on the ball and record your observations with a critical eye. But somehow James Kent has kept his hat on and done this and a lot more. This is a guy that has ramped himself up to a graduate level understanding of optics theory, and a post-graduate level understanding of neuroscience. As a result, James has for the first time connected the psychedelic experience to the brain's systems level, down to the synaptic level.

Most recently, James published a sure-to-be seminal paper entitled "Multi-State Theory of Psychedelic Action". The paper accurately describes the effects of tryptamine psychedelics on perception and consciousness. However, what caught my eye while reading the paper (and hence the reason for this interview), concerns the relationship between music and psychedelics. Something, which I hope to learn more about here.

Q1 Neil: First off, thanks for giving me your time for this interview. I want to talk a bit about your current involvement in the psychedelic community. You started Trip Magazine, then went on to found Dosenation.com. Can you explain the history and mission of Dosenation?

A1 James: After I stopped publishing Trip Magazine there was always the intention that there would be some kind of extension of that project online. I began publishing back-content on tripzine.com, some of which morphed into the structure for "Psychedelic Information Theory". At that time I was also coding a multi-user blogging engine and headline filter for tracking drug-related news. This idea floundered for a while until Trip's former Editor, Scotto, approached me about the idea of doing a collaborative drug blog, and then the pieces for DoseNation just fell into place a few months later. We've been going for about a year and half now. It's blogging. It's mostly for fun. Anyone can join in.

Q2 Neil: I found out about you through your yet-to-be published book "Psychedelic Information Theory [PIT]: Shamanism in the Age of Reason". Can you describe to readers what this book covers, and why it's so unique.

A2 James: The impetus for PIT was creating a comprehensive resource for people who want to know "how" psychedelics work, mostly because I was so frustrated with the lack of good information available. With PIT I wanted to stay away from mythology, spirituality, and psychology and go right to hard brain process; neuroanatomy, network structure and function, mechanics of perception and cognition, pharmacology, hallucinogen and visual rendering theory, all of that inside-the-machine stuff. It gives people who want to study psychedelics a more reality-based direction to go than alternate dimensions and spirit allies. Not that there's anything wrong with the shamanic model, but there's plenty of information on the spirit model of psychedelics out there already.

Q3 Neil: Your most recent paper, "Multi-State Theory...", ties together much of what you've written in PIT, but it is also the culmination of most of your research. What is the paper's thesis?

A3 James: The Multi-State Theory provides a pharmacological model for how psychedelic tryptamines act at specific neural routing sites to increase network feedback and tip the brain into excited multi-stable states. This feedback-induced excitation produces what we would typically call altered states, or states of "expanded consciousness" that begin with heightened perception, grow into hallucination, and eventually lead to complete sensory overload and out-of-body experiences at high enough doses. What I am attempting to do with the Multi-State Model is demonstrate the precise mechanics by which network excitation and feedback destabilizes normal perception, knocks the brain offline for a bit, and then re-tunes the brain at a high-focus, high-energy state that is subjectively mystical, hyper-cognitive, and transpersonal in nature. In a sense it is a neurological deconstruction of the method behind the psychedelic madness of insanity and enlightenment that seem to go hand-in-hand.

Q4 Neil: You argue that the reason traditional shamanic rituals use tribal music is to mediate or smooth the transitions between the changing phases of a trip. How does music improve the trip?

A4 James: Music doesn't improve the trip so much as guide the trip. In the shamanic model rhythm is used to bind tribal energy to a common ground; everyone grooves on the same vibe, everyone shares the same vision. One of the shaman's most important jobs is to store the tribal songs and reproduce them spontaneously when needed. These songs carry the weight of cultural memory and identity, and reproducing them sets the tone for the ritual experience. This is as true today as it was two thousand years ago, which is why the DJ or the rock band is elevated to such mystical god-like status. In the context of guiding a psychedelic trip, there is no more powerful vehicle for locking minds together than music. The shaman instinctively knows this and can use his or her own voice to soothe or excite people, bending them to his or her will and vision. Producing shamanic songs and linking group minds in a psychedelic context is one of the purest true magics that exist in this world. In a very Christ-like way, the shaman literally opens his or her heart and soul to the universe, channels the will of the world, and through their "pure vibe" alone can unite an entire tribe under one vision. I could be talking about Maria Sabina or Metallica here, the metaphor applies universally.

Q5 Neil: Are there still tribes which perform these rituals, and is it possible to find real samples of this Shamanistic tribal music?

A5 James: You can find CDs of the icaros of the Amazonian ayahuasceros or the throat signing of the Tuvan monks, and though these two cultures are displaced by vast spans of space they produce similar tones and themes in their music that are easily confused. Both of these styles at times sound like aboriginal didgeridoo, Mid-Eastern reed-pipes, and Tibetan Om chanters all combined. Some of it is much less complex, simple chanting and repetition of tones and themes that are not musically interesting but have tribal meaning. There's traditional shamanic medicine drumming, and most of it is quite monotonous because it's literally a form of hypnotic trance music. Generally there is a great deal of authenticity and preciousness ascribed to traditional shamanic music, but traditional authenticity is not really that important for good shamanism. All passionate music is shamanic in that it transports you immediately into the world of that song while your listening to it. Pearl Jam's "Evenflow" is just as shamanic as anything you can pull out of the Amazonian rainforest, it just speaks to a slightly different tribal archetype. But the key to maximizing this shamanic principal is being able to share these songs spontaneously for any occasion in a live environment, which is where music has its truest power to unite people. The ability to master the basic ritual skills and use them to channel group synchronicity in the psychedelic space is a core aspect of the shamanic archetype.

Q6 Neil: In your recent paper, you go on to say that different types of music can produce different types of trips. Can you give some examples of the different types of music you have in mind, and what kinds of trips this produces?

A6 James: Well, Tool will obviously give you a different trip than Enya, both of them will probably be bad. All music evokes a particular mood or living energy, and the mood and energy of the music will infect you at vastly deeper levels when you're tripping. You need to be careful what you ingest when you're taking psychedelics, and that applies to music too. Gangster rap will make you paranoid and fear for your life, Pink Floyd will make you have suicidal out-of-body experiences, Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk will light up your brain with a never-ending loop of cartoony sci-fi electronic fart noises and mechanical drum-fills. Electric genres of beat-timed groove music like trip-hop, downtempo, breakbeat, house, trance, jungle, and ambient were all mapped out along the BPM spectrum because they're all the different cognitive territories you can evoke with same basic 808 drum-machine and 303 bass machine setup. The BPM genres top out at super-hardcore where the beats are so fast they literally become tones, thus deconstructing the semantic illusion separating rhythm and tone. The mind can bend all the way around the spectrum. Rhythm sets the foundation for the trip, the melody sets the mood. Set the BPM and punch in your pattern, instant shamanic space. It all depends on what you're shooting for.

Q7 Neil: I've heard stories of people "seeing music" and "hearing visuals". Can this really happen, and if so, has anyone painted a song, or composed a picture, or anything like that? What's going on there?

A7 James: Seeing music is the classic description of synesthesia, the mixing of senses for absurd or concrete outcomes; absurd would be "tasting seven" and concrete would be "seeing a bell chime". Some people are naturally synesthetic in very particular ways, and will always see the color five as red, for instance, even when they look it on a piece of paper, simply because the concepts are somehow fused in their mind. Psychedelic synesthesia is usually direct audio-to-visual transforms, in which the rhythmic and melodic elements of music and environment are reproduced in your imaginary visual field, typically with eyes closed. A drum beat may appear as a simple strobe of light, or perhaps the literal vision of a drum, but it can also be a warped interference pattern that represents the drum tone, which can give way to all sorts of tangential subjectivity. This is basically caused by a network echo effect that allows audio signal to become excited and bleed-over into the visual processing circuits. At higher doses this synesthesia can become all consuming, so you need to be careful what kind of music you listen to. Metal music can make you feel like you're on a roller coaster being pulled through the depths of hell and destruction, and then after your soul has been whipped bare by a blistering guitar solo the song just ends because it was only three minutes to begin with, and your mind shatters because nothing's holding the roller-coaster together anymore; it all just vanishes into free fall. That whole angry world of noise and metal riffs collapses into a CD or some other piece of mechanical trickery that shatters the music's authenticity and reduces it to some form of electro-plastic mind control transmission. This is why DJ culture and live jam sets that last a few hours or longer are preferred for most psychedelic sessions. There's plenty of time to go up, have a little journey, and come back down again all in one go. Live DJs or musicians programming the show makes for better musical continuity, and smoother transitions makes for an easier ride.

Q8 Neil: In the PIT table of contents, you refer to an archetypal trip known as "The Heroes Journey". Can you briefly describe what The Heroes Journey is, and is there any music which can be used to help facilitate it?

A8 James: The classic Hero's Journey (typically singular) is a quest to defy the gods, travel across the bridge of life and death, find some hidden power or lost wisdom, and then return to the world of the living with your new found power to better the condition of your tribe. This story plays out in mythology and lore and stories of human struggle all the time. In the personal context it is a journey to transcend the self, see the world from a removed perspective, and return to the self with a greater appreciation for one's own part to play in the bigger picture. Of course the Hero's Journey goes bad all the time, there's many wrong turns and hard lessons to be learned. It is a three act saga to be sure, not something you do in a single evening with a list of track names on your iPod. But if I had to pick a single soundtrack for the Hero's journey, I'll go with... um... Mr. Lif's "I Phantom"? Word up Lif. Have Edan's "Beauty and the Beat" in the pocket for coming down. I know I could pick some epic trance here, but the Hero's Journey is all about aiming high while keeping your feet on the ground. The Hero's Journey tends to go messianic if you don't keep it grounded in the real, that's why I choose Lif.

Q9 Neil: In your opinion, what music best captures the essence of a psychedelics? A theme song for the psychedelics if you will.

A9 James: There's so many good "psychedelic" bands and producers making insane music, I suppose everyone has a different idea of what that psychedelic sound should be. I mean, I always preferred the Dead's "Shakedown Street" style funk strutting to their spacey jams, but which is more psychedelic? I prefer psychedelic hip-hop like Edan and Mr. Lif to jam band music, I prefer filtered house, turntablism, and frenetic breakbeat to Goa trance; I like classic rock like Sabbath and heavy riff music more than spacey dub music. I think about this question a lot actually, what is the most psychedelic song? I suppose it's different for everyone, for me it is probably something like the remix of Bomb the Bass "Bug Powder Dust" grafting into Aphrodelics "Rollin' on Chrome" wild motherfucker dub version on the K&D Sessions. It's not the trippiest in terms of production effects, but it has a nice mix of hip-hop, dub, underground references, good natured boasting, and illed-out vibe that always makes me smile, and that's key for any good psychedelic set. If that's too obscure for some people then how about "Little Fluffy Clouds" from the Orb?

Q10 Neil: Many people who have done psychedelics come away with the feeling that they have been exposed to an ancient secret. What is behind this secret, and why can't anybody seem to remember it?

A10 James: The ancient secret is that it's a miracle we're even alive, we take this for granted. When we're reminded of how fleeting and how fragile life is in the larger picture, the whole thing seems like a joke that we even made it this far, and that we spend so much energy making such a big fuss about ourselves. The ancient secret is constantly unfolding in real time, and the answer is you. Live it up, it's your turn now.

Q11 Neil: What does the future of your research look like? Are there any unresolved mysteries for you when it comes to psychedelics?

A11 James: When it comes to psychedelic action there's not too much mystery left, it's all about nailing down detail, which may be years in coming since research is so slow in getting funded and approved. The real mystery is what do we do with these things? How do we adapt their use to modern culture in a way that allows people to explore without going insane or winding up in trouble with the law. In a world where you can casually pick and eat a mushroom and have visions that make you question the very fabric of reality, there will always be backlash and the desire to control that power. My hope is that people on both sides of pro/con psychedelic argument trend away from granting these substances the power of gods and demons. Psychedelics are tools. We are the gods. We are the demons.

George 'Loki' Williams of Radio2020 talks to me about Music, Radio, and New Orleans

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:06:00 +0000

Another interview blog folks! This time, I'm honoured to be talking to George 'Loki' Williams, who heads up the Radio2020 blog. For those of you who don't know it, Radio2020 is the official blog of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB), and the HD Alliance (HDA). While I don't know everything about these organizations, I would have assumed that any communication these organizations have with a schmo like me would have been vetted through a 100 or more lawyers.

And this is why I was pleasantly taken aback by George's candour and effusive love of radio when he first contacted me a few weeks ago to syndicate a blog entry I'd written.

George has made the Radio2020 blog (and by extension the blogging voice of the radio giants [NAB, RAB, HDA]) into something that I feel captures the essence of radio. Namely, something - like George, and like radio - that has real personality. But George also has some real pedigree worth noting: He lives and works in New Orleans - a place that as most of you know went through one of the worst natural disasters in recent memory, and where radio was instrumental in saving lives. George has also DJed for (KLSU, Baton Rouge, LA) and has worked to help modernize the community station WWOZ 90.7 FM New Orleans. In fact, New Orleans was our second choice after Nashville, TN for a US City Dial, mainly due to its important musical heritage (especially jazz). So I find it most apropos that Mr. Williams holds the post that he does.

UPDATE: George is a busy man, and has just written to tell me that over this past weekend he has begun working with the Soros Foundation's pen Society Institute as the online organizer and content producer for KatrinaMedia.org. His new blog will be kicking off within a few days to a week from now. The site recently won a 2008 Webby Award, and is one of the most powerful reactions to Hurricane Katrina, with its mission:
"... to spark a national debate around poverty and racism in America beyond the Katrina anniversary. The site is devoted exclusively to the aftermath of the hurricanes as documented by investigative reporters. Very few news outlets have the resources to do this."

Q1 Neil: Hi George. First off, thanks for taking this time for an interview! I want to first talk about New Orleans the city. You've mentioned before that it played a major role for you after the storm when you returned. This topic deserves more space. But for now, briefly tell me your story, and what part radio played.

A1 George: Hey Neil, thanks for having an interest in what we are doing. It's odd to think back on those days, the weeks following the levee failure were a blur of emotions for all of us. My wife, then my fiancée, and I were exiled with our five cats and little else comparatively close to your location. We ended up in my home away from home: New York City. I had a broken hand and was unable to do any real work for the six weeks of our "exile." It was at about this point that we discovered that the BBC had written an article about our blogging of the evacuation and the aftermath on my New Orleans team blog HumidCity.

Its amazing how time's passing can feel like broken glass in your brain when you have no idea where or how your friends and family are. Think about that for a moment, everyone you know and all of your family members missing with no way to verify if any of them are alive or dead. It took almost three weeks to find my immediate family. Being a native New Orleanian the lack of "home cooking," and strong creole coffee just aggravated the situation. Then, one evening while I was blogging away on a borrowed laptop I did my nightly check to see if WWOZ was back up. As the stream connected and the sounds of Dr. Michael White's horn came wafting out of the tinny little speakers I felt as though a sixteen ton weight had been suddenly lifted from my shoulders. Immediately I emailed the webmaster, who i knew on a personal level having worked with his band The Zydepunks in the past. After a few quick exchanges I had found a focus for all of my frantic emotional energy. For the next few weeks until our return I scoured the Internet for reports of missing musicians and music industry people from NOLA as the station attempted to find the missing members of our music community. This gave me purpose while in a limbo of red tape and conflicting news reports. Enforced idleness and, quite frankly, fear had been a wicked combination for me until then. I cannot properly express how much it helped to hear "our music" again.

Q2 Neil: On a lighter note, tell me about the musical history of New Orleans, and how radio has played a part of that.

A2 George: New Orleans musical history impacts almost every aspect of modern music. It was in Congo Square that the percussive backbeat met the European style melody lines creating a contemporary sound. Everyone thinks of Jazz and Blues in relation to the Crescent City, but without the union of those two factors we would not have Rock 'n Roll, Punk, Swing, or almost any other genre. I know it sounds egotistical, but if you do a bit of research you'll find that I am right.

As to radio's place in that history i must confess that I am rather ignorant of details that fall before my own memories growing up. My parents had little interest in the local sound so I grew up around a lot of Classic Rock and Prog Rock. (Yes, I am in my 40s. Lets move on.)

Once I hit high school age I began to notice a difference in sound between the homegrown musc and the records my parents played at home. Soon I was listening to The Meters and Dr. John as well as local underground acts like The Normals (New Orleans first ever punk band).

It was about this time that WWOZ started up. Between their Jazz and Heritage programming, the indie sounds of college station WTUL, and the Classic Rock offerings of WRNO (which has now switched formats to talk radio). I immersed myself in a muti-genre program of self education. Being a kid I could not just run out and buy a record album at whim, so radio was my introduction to music of all kinds.

Q3 Neil: You were instrumental in bringing WWOZ into the digital age. Most people don't know what it takes to accomplish this. Is this just a matter of buying new equipment, or does it also demand a change in the way the station is being managed and operated?

A3 George: I don't know that instrumental is quite the right word. The station was already streaming online before I ever entered the equation, a step that is hugely important in today's age. I have worked for them in several capacities since then including providing social networking consultations and acting as web producer for their main site. Thanks in great part to the efforts of Arianna Hall, who was my superior, each year has seen more advances into the digital frontier. Unfortunately she would have to be the one answering questions about how it impacts the management level of the station. I do know that there are consistently a number of projects in the pipe geared towards using the technology. Non profits are by nature slow moving creatures, I think 'OZ has managed to stay ahead of the curve in that regard.

Q4 Neil: You've told me in a past conversation that you've worked in a collaborative fashion with both commercial and non-commercial stations as a music and art promoter. I take it you've met a lot of DJs, and been to a lot of stations. You've got a broad perspective, and I'm curious about this. Were there any DJs that really stood out, and how did they stand out?

A4 George: Well, like other people most DJs stand out due to force of personality. Back in the late '90s there was one guy on KKND named Wolfgang. He impressed me with his constant efforts to bring the local rock scene to the mainstream airwaves. In New Orleans that is often harder to do than other places because the Jazz / Blues / Funk scene tends to overshadow everything else. Gina Forsyth, probably my favorite Cajun fiddle player and songwriter, had a long running show on WTUL that introduced me to an array of folk sounds that blew my mind. Her down to earth perspective and vast knowledge of acoustic music created the atmosphere of sitting in someone's living room playing one single after the other.

The great thing about New Orleans is it has always been full of characters. As a result we have better than average luck in the DJ department because character is what makes a show.

Q5 Neil: On that note, how would you describe the station/DJ sub-culture in general?

A5 George: In the immortal words of Mark Twain, "No generalities are true, including this one." Among the DJs I have know over the years the one unifying factor has been individualism. A stupendous array of personalities united by a love of music and a love of sharing it over the airwaves.

Q6 Neil: As a former DJ yourself how did you approach putting together sets and shows? What was your proudest achievement?

A6 George: I would often agonize over what to play for hours if not days beforehand. I ran a Thursday night show in the late '80s that ran from 3am till 6am and absolutely loved it. At that hour of the evening I could get as peculiar as I wanted in my choice of music, and if anyone called in they were usually drunk or entertaining or both.

I would have to say my proudest show was a memorial for Snakefinger. I was running from the control booth to the stacks (at that time way down the hall) and back frantically trying not to miss a segue. I pulled off a solid three hours of obscure music from his various efforts both as a solo performer and with The Residents bookended by all the trivia about him I already knew (and more that I swiped from the liner notes). It was manic, and crazy and born of an inspiration that his death from another DJ.

Q7 Neil: During your DJ days, have you had any weird or crazy callers. Did you ever put them on the air? How about guests?

A7 George: I had guests frequently. Mostly other DJs stopping by after the bars had closed, but sometimes local musicians would come by at random. I did get some pretty funny calls over the three years I did the show. Women asking me out, people so drunk they could hardly speak, and a few bizarre late night philosophers. On a few occasions I put people on the air, particularly if they were sharing some trivia about the artist playing. I had to stop doing that though after one guy dropped an F bomb on tha air. No digital delay back in 1988.

Q8 Neil: Tell me about the Radio2020 blog and what your mission is.

A8 George: The blog is one facet of a campaign to reawaken people to radio. I know that you and I are of similar mindset when it comes to this issue, but there are those who are not. It is not that radio's importance has diminished, rather it is the ubiquity of radio that has led people to take it for granted. I got lucky, when this contract came our way my boss knew of my passion for the medium and dropped it on my desk. There is a huge future for the medium, and that is inclusive of efforts like your own as well as other undreamed of permutations. Broadcast radio is important. In Africa they are using it to educate farmers on better growing techniques. This is something that computer driven media could not do, but for nations lacking literacy but based on oral tradition it is the perfect delivery mechanism. In New Orleans when we returned it was radio that kept us up to date on the little things, like where the water was safe to drink. All over the world are musicians whose careers were built off of the free air play they received at stations all over the nation. The love affair is not over. It's just in need of a "date night."

Q9 Neil: I'm sorry to have to ask this boilerplate question, but if there was a theme song or music for the Radio2020 blog, what would it be?

A9 George: Understand I am speaking only for myself here (as I have been throughout this interview), but I would have to fall back to the early days of Freddy Mercury and Queen: "We Will Rock You."

Q10 Neil: What does the future of radio look like to you?

A10 George: It looks like a string of adjectives: turbulent, exhilarating, innovative, growing, singing, dancing, toe-taping, and lasting!

Thanks lot for having me on, Neil. If you're ever in New Orleans the
first drink is on me. -George "Loki"Williams

Interview with Matt Gunter from All Comedy RadioNET

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:59:00 +0000

For those of you who don't know, TUN3R (all two of us), is based out of Toronto, and Toronto is a serious comedy town. This is an underappreciated fact (and something the Toronto tourism board has woefully under-marketed), but if you come here to visit, be sure to check out The Laugh Resort, Yuk Yuks, and Second City - all of which are a 5-10 minute walk from each other downtown.

I myself have always had a love of comedy, and radio-wise one of my favourite shows growing up was the Sunday Funnies on CHUM-FM (which sadly no longer plays on this station). This was my introduction to stand-up comedy, and what introduced me to such greats as Richard Pryor, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Cosby, Steven Wright, and Jerry Seinfeld.

I routinely attended the local clubs (mainly the uptown Yuk Yuks), and always had a great admiration for the comic. There is something so incredibly raw and egalitarian about this form of live performance that I just love. The vernacular says it all "kill on stage" or "die on stage". I was even inspired by a friend [Jon Ezer who did a lot of stand-up himself], to prepare my own routine for amateur night (there were some horrible jokes about a threesome between The Mighty Hercules, Helena, and Newton, which I won't get into here). I also spent enough time seeing amateur comics failing to realize just how damn hard of a profession stand-up is. But like I said before, there's an honesty to the audiences reaction that can be addictive.

I could go on and on about some of the greats I've seen (like Billy Connolly's 3 hour unrehearsed act at Massey Hall, or the first time I saw Mitch Hedberg live on the Mike Bullard Show, or the weird club I went to in Joburg South Africa), but these days I'm out of the loop, and I want to catch up with Matt Gunter - the man behind "Comedy & Talk RadioNET" (a.k.a. Comedy104) - one of the Internet's best comedy radio stations.

Q1 Neil: Matt - thanks for indulging me on this one. I'm going start this interview on a more serious note. Every now and then I'll see a heckler who gets offended, and tries to take the club down with him. Are you ever worried that a listener might get offended and take it out on your station - or worse, threaten a Fatwah or something like that? Have you had any complaints?

A1 Matt: Glad to be here :) Hate mail is one of the frequent types that I get. Some hate the old comedy like Bill Cosby or Lily Tomlin, others love it (although people never complain about the new stuff for the most part). I'm always fine-tuning the mix so that things stay "fresh".

Q2 Neil: Is there a particular focus for your station. I've heard a lot of contemporary material. Do you play older stuff like Woody Allen's stand-up, or Lenny Bruce?

A2 Matt: Whatever I can get my hands on, there's no such thing as "bad" material. The biggest obstacle for me is many older comedy albums have never found their way to CD. I am always looking for new stuff and the listeners even send me some, in addition to the unsigned comics that e-mail me as well. Right now my format focuses on playing more new material with older stuff mixed in (sort of how a Top40 station will play mostly newer music).

Q3 Neil: How about sketch comedy (like Monty Python or The Frantics), do you play any of that stuff?

A3 Matt: I really enjoy the Frantics' "Boot to the head" but that is the extent of that. Problem with some of that type of humor is there are a lot of visual jokes that wouldn't be understood over the radio.

Q4 Neil: What original material do you have on the station?

A4 Matt: Not as much as I'd like to have. I just assumed everyone sends their CDs to my competitor :) I've been running promos lately to get more sent to me. To date the only original material I've been sent is from the Reverend Tim McIntire out of Boston. I had an idea for visiting comedy clubs and broadcasting live but that's still in development, many people are skittish about live broadcasts.

Q5 Neil: I'm so out of the loop these days. Apparently Dane Cook is where it's at, but I have to wonder if there are more risque guys out there than him? Who do you see as being on the cutting edge of stand-up these days? Can you describe what sets them apart?

A5 Matt: I think the popularity of the "Blue Collar" style comedy from Jeff, Bill, Larry and Ron has made some comics rethink how far they want to go, seeing as how a clean comedy tour made big bucks selling out large venues. However, on the other scale, if you are interested in dirty Blue Collar comedy I would suggest Rodney Carrington who is hilarious! He might actually be one of the more cutting edge comics, its too bad his TV sitcom didn't work out, having to tone down his humor for a family show didn't work out too well.

Q6 Neil: You're based out of Topeka, Kansas. What is the local comedy scene like? Does anyone bother to make jokes about Dorothy or The Wizard of Oz, or is that always a big groaner?

A6 Matt: Yes I think they wore that one out :) Most of our comedy comes from the Kansas City area though there is a small club here with some traffic...

Q7 Neil: Have you done any stand-up or sketch comedy yourself, or is your background more in DJing?

A7 Matt: Although I think that I can identify what is good comedy and what is funny, people probably wouldn't find me all that hilarious (plus stage fright wouldn't help :). Our sister station (big sister) is Oldies104 www.oldies104.net. It's the one that actually pays the bills because believe it or not the comedy station doesn't make any yet :( That's where I can be found occasionally on the air.

Q8 Neil: I subscribe to the notion that comedians are actually philosophers in disguise as entertainers. I've got two young kids, and every now and then when I'm at my breaking point I think of Bill Cosby saying "All children have brain damage!", which somehow calms me down. Are there any comedy bits that help you make sense out of this crazy world we live in?

A8 Matt: Bill Hicks is one that comes to mind, he brings up a lot of good points during his comedy bits: the meaning of life, religion, and drug legalization. Of course Carlin and the Cos and many other have their own hidden commentary but I think Hicks' is very profound.

Q9 Neil: Who are your all time favourite comics? Why do you like them?

A9 Matt: Oddly enough I like comedy that is very "blue", Dom Imus' early standup from the 70s is great alone with Rodney Carrington and Bill Hicks. People that are basically frank with you during their set, no hidden agenda, just laying it right there on the line.

Q10 Neil: I normally ask what the theme song for your station would be. Instead, is there a bit or joke that best exemplifies your station? Or is it a song?

A10 Matt: Wow, I don't know which one to pick :D I'd say though George Carlin's famous 7 words you can't say on TV would fit though!

Q11 Neil: What does the future Comedy & Talk RadioNET look like?

A11 Matt: As I write this we're in a transition (just a new name change) but at the request of a lot of listeners I'm changing the format to play fewer of the old comedy bits and hopefully add some more new material in the weeks to come. I'd like to someday be the one stop outlet for new and exciting comedy plus new acts and even that live broadcast I mentioned earlier.

In Defense of Cultural Elitistism

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:44:00 +0000

I just came across this interview with Last.FM's Martin Stiksel in Wired's Listening Post blog. As I was reading through it, I came across this passage:

The site [Last.FM] differs from its competitor Pandora (he called it a "friendly rivalry"), because Pandora hires experts to classify music, while Last.FM tracks users' collections in order to generate associations between songs. Stiksel compared Last.FM's system to democracy, and Pandora's to aristocracy. He also said this approach makes Last.FM more scalable than Pandora, and that the inspiration for this feature came from the way the original Napster let you search for a band liked, and then browse the other songs shared by users who had that song.

I'm going to revisit Custom Radio in a future blog entry, but given that one of the points I wanted to make has been explicitly stated, I thought I'd quickly seize the moment.
While I agree that the democratic process makes sense in politics (well, if you live in a wealthy secular country with a large middle-class). But when it comes to the arts, I'd have to say it flat out sucks!

I could go on and on about the reasons for this, but there is a much simpler explanation. For those of you living in the US or Canada, tonight is the night of judgement for American Idol. From this day forward, we will be blessed through an intensely democratic process (one that has more participation than the US elections themselves, I might add) with a new "Idol". We even have 6 idols already, and there is no doubt that when the history books are written, they will all stand head-and-shoulders alongside: Mozart, The Beatles, Bob Marley, Can, Charlie Parker, Nirvana, and Radiohead.

And hey, if you don't believe me, just go ask any 12 year old boy or girl. They're sure to have an opinion.

---
Stay TUN3D.

Daily Session channels the New York Underground

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:14:00 +0000

It's been a while, but today I've got an interview blog. Btw, if there are any stations out there that would like to participate in an interview, please contact me at: neil@tun3r.com.

I've been looking for a station like Daily Session for some time now - a station which channels a large city's underground into a 24/7 stream. So when Jonathan Schippers contacted me to add Daily Session - a station which profiles and exclusively plays New York's underground (based out of Brooklyn) - I was thrilled!

In my mind, this is a big part of what Internet Radio is about. This is the true grass roots stuff which normally you need to get off your duff and walk into a club reaking of stale beer and cigarettes. To be sure, there is no substitute for going out and experiencing live music (more on that in the interview), and it could take weeks or months before you hear something genuinely groundbreaking on the level of Nirvana or Fatboy Slim. But for the music geek, I strongly encourage regular visitations of Daily Session.

Case in point: A couple weeks ago, I was surfing around the techno stations. They all seemed to be in a rut that night, but I was hungry from fresh electronic sounds, and nothing was sating my appetite. I zipped over to Daily Session, and there was this brilliant set playing which I can only compare to something from Wendy Carlos' A Clockwork Orange soundtrack (one of my favourite films and soundtracks). The piece was electronic, but seamlessly morphed to and from uptempo trumpet playing. I had felt as though I had gone from downing a Burger King combo, to chewing on a nice fresh piece of ginger. It's a great feeling.

But if I was to level a criticism against Daily Session, it would seem to play a lot of "Live Set" inspired material. I like Live Sets, but quite often I feel that I'm missing the physical setting's context, and that the artist is not making the same connection with me that she might if I were physically present. I guess that's why I prefer to hear the sound of the crowd, to get a better feel of the interplay. But these are minor quibbles. If you want to keep your hand on the pulse of new music, a site like Daily Session will please you.

Btw, before getting on with the interview, if you've never been to New York City, I highly recommend it. I've been to NYC four or five times, and each
visit I come away more impressed than the last. I hate to say it, but it makes our own Toronto look like a hick town in comparison (but a nice and friendly hick town).

Now on with the interview...

Q1 Neil: Who came up with the idea of Daily Session, and how long has it been around for? What's the story?

Jonathan: I conceived the idea for dailysession in the summer of 2007 and spent about six months in development. We officially launched in January 2008! I think our press release best describes the motivation for pulling it all together:

In recent years, New York City has undergone a physical change, losing many of the cultural institutions that helped provide its creative edge to high priced condos, velvet ropes and block after block of national corporate chains. Most of the enduring independents have fled Manhattan, leaving behind a heavily fragmented community. Not surprisingly, the artistic ethos that these places helped sustain has suffered a similar fate; drowned out by banks and bottle service, it has been forced into a disjointed existence. As a result, for the first time in its colorful history, New York City is without a cohesive underground culture. As the city concedes its remaining character to corporate America one question can be heard echoing throughout its streets, ‘Has New York Lost its Soul?’

The good news is that New York’s soul is alive and well just beneath the surface but because of the rapid changes that so many neighborhoods have undergone recently, it’s a little harder to find these days. Our mission at dailysession is to reunite the city’s fragmented underground community and support the businesses and individuals that are playing such a vital role in keeping New York City on the world’s underground map.

Q2 Neil: Are there other stations out there which cover other city's undergound scenes that you're aware of, and do you have relations with them?

Jonathan: I’m not aware of anyone doing internet radio in the hyperlocal sense that we are.

Q3 Neil: How would you characterize the New York underground, as compared to other cities' underground scenes?

Jonathan: New York’s underground music scene is unlike any other in the world. A quick glance at our events calendar this week shows Louie Vega, Kevin Hedge, DJ Premier, Brand Nubian, Carl Craig, KRS-ONE, Turntables on the Hudson, Tony Humphries, Danny Krivit, Francois K, Joe Claussell and Danny Tenaglia all playing in the next few days - and that’s pretty standard! However, it is true that the once unrivaled energy that pervaded our music and nightlife scene has been somewhat watered down by current trends like bottle service and the bar mitzvah style of DJing that compliments it.

Q4 Neil: How do you select new material to play. Are you hanging out in clubs and approaching artists, or do they come to you?

Jonathan: A lot of the surviving record stores here in New York host weekly shows on dailysession.com. They have relationships with many of the city’s prominent DJ’s and routinely book them on their shows. As a result, we have a constantly expanding network of underground contributors here in NYC that helps us inch closer and closer to our goal of one day accurately representing the city’s underground music scene.

Q5 Neil: How much material do you plow through before you play anything? Are you tossing out a lot of crap, or is most of the source material you're reviewing decent?

Jonathan: We do receive a steady stream of submissions, most of which is just average. Of course, there is the occasional demo that stands out (and not always for the right reasons).

Q6 Neil: What is the worst thing you've had to listen to? How about the best?

Jonathan: Thankfully, the worst things aren’t that memorable. The best mixes we’ve received came from DJ Monchan who now hosts Monday’s dailysession at Zakka, NYC!

Q7 Neil: Have you "discovered" any artists that have gone on to sign with a major label?

Not yet. We haven’t been around that long and a lot of the music that we broadcast isn’t on the Major label radar.

Q8 Neil: Do you have ties with local clubs. Are you mainly active in Brooklyn, or do you venture into the other burroughs?

Jonathan: We’ve been speaking with many local clubs about broadcasting some of their events live on dailysession. In the upcoming weeks and months, we plan on integrating these live broadcasts into our regular programming.

While we are based in Brooklyn, we broadcast everything live, on-location to emphasize the community aspect of dailysession.com. A few of our regular weekly shows are broadcast from record stores in Manhattan (A-1 Records, Fat Beats) so we venture out of Brooklyn regularly!

Q9 Neil: Are there different "scenes" in each NYC burrough (e.g. how might Brooklyn differ from Queens), or is the entire city fluid?

Jonathan: If you just look at the city’s underground music scene, it’s pretty fluid. Parties tend to pop up wherever there is available space! The outer boroughs (Brooklyn and Queens) generally host more warehouse parties thanks to the greater availability of space while Manhattan is known more for its clubs and lounges. But, as more and more people are priced out of Manhattan, you see more and more clubs and lounges opening up in the other boroughs.

Q10 Neil: What does the future of Daily Session look like?

Jonathan: In the short term, we plan to continue diversifying our programming by involving all of New York’s major underground contributors. Beyond that, we’ll begin exploring the possibility of expanding to other cities with strong underground music communities.

Q11 Neil: If Daily Session had some theme music or a theme song, what would it be?

Jonathan: I’m going to have to simplify this one by narrowing my choices to music that we’ve featured on dailysession thus far. With the options narrowed, the answer is simple: Nina Hagen "New York, New York." Check it out at 11:42 on Session 84 Hour 2: A1 Records, mixed by K.Life Walks!

Tuning your mood.

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:25:00 +0000

I just made a weird discovery that I thought I'd share with you.

Today was a busy day with lots going on a ton of different angles. My wife was out, and my kids were all over me, when they were supposed to be in bed. I was feeling a little antsy and sat down to do some work. Since I was feeling a bit frazzled, I decided throw on the 'ole TUN3R ;)

Normally when I can't think, I just go for guilty pleasure. In this case, one of the Euro Dance channels. It's pure fast-food, but you're talking to a guy whose favourite meal is Kraft Dinner and a Coke. At any rate, this music wasn't helping me. I got up and started pacing around the room. I needed to do some boring admin work, and just couldn't focus. So I started fiddling around in Live Mode, and eventually landed on a classical station. Within a few seconds I started feeling more sedate and focussed. It was like I took a dose of Ritalin.

One of our ideas with TUN3R is to allow you to play off your mood, and I've had similar experiences like this in the past, but this one was very pronounced.

If any of you have had similar mood altering experiences through music or radio, I'd love to hear about them.

Stay TUN3D,
Neil.

Is TUN3R the perfect tuner? / S&P 500 of Radio / Sponsor a City Dial

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sat, 10 May 2008 15:54:00 +0000

Hi folks,

As you now know we've made some big changes to how the stations are organized and presented. We've also made it possible to browse the live streams by switching to "Live Mode" (you can toggle modes just below The Dial).

Is TUN3R the perfect tuner?
Is TUN3R perfect now? I would say yes and no. It's not perfect because the controls aren't intuitive to new users (especially the dual audio modes), and the thumbnails themselves do not explicitly show what the station plays. Furthermore, "Live Mode" directs sound to either Winamp or a pop-up browser window, and may be confusing to some. While I could go into the reasons for this, it all comes down to the fact that we were not willing to compromise on quality of stations, and quality of audio. We refuse to be beholden to a streaming format, and therefore had to make a trade-off between quality and user-friendliness. This could very well be our death knell, but for now we're hoping there are people out there who value quality, and are willing to reach for it. If you are a novice user, struggling with TUN3R, and are frustrated even after reading the updated FAQ, please e-mail me (neil@tun3r.com), or even call me on my cell (+1-416-315-5514). I am confident I can get TUN3R working for you to your delight.

However, for Power Users (i.e. nerds) and City Dial residents, TUN3R is pretty darn close to being perfect because once you've taken the time to orient yourself around the Dial, there is simply no faster way to zoom around within and between genres, and actually find music or talk that grabs you. I would say the one big shortcoming, is that you can't yet add your own stations. If TUN3R ever gets off the ground, this will come.

If you're willing to give TUN3R a chance, and you've got the right software (i.e. IE on XP or Firefox, and Winamp ), you will quickly develop a sense of control and power over The Dial that is akin to driving a car, or playing a video game like Audiosurf. Which leads to my next point.

The S&P 500 of Radio
One of our objectives with the new TUN3R is to present a definitive index of Featured stations. For now, we're deliberately biased towards English based content - especially talk. We do have quite a few non-English music stations, but admittedly the talk portion (with the exception of the national media bureaus) is all English. This bugs me, but there are so many trade-offs we've had to make to get this far, and this is one of them (another is the fact that we're optimized for broadband users - sorry dial-up guys). It's on our to-do list to have national versions of Featured stations.

So, with that said I'd like to put out a challenge for anyone reading. Namely, what would an S&P 500 of Radio look like? For those that don't know the Standard and Poors 500 is an index of [American] publicly traded companies which represent leaders in their respective industry. The S&P 500 is used as a baseline for comparison, and is a bellwether for the US stock market's overall performance. What I like about the S&P 500 versus other indexes, is that the companies are all hand selected by a committee of human experts, and is not strictly rules based.

So getting back to radio. We've tried to select stations which are leaders in what they do with respect to the various genres and formats. The selections have largely been informed by popularity. But I prefer to look at as many factors as I possibly can. Take for example a station that we recently added to the featured list, KPFA (http://tun3r.com/?hp=kpfa). The reason I upgraded it to Featured status, was that a TUN3R visitor (Barry Brooks) put forth a compelling argument (based on the station's history) as to why it should be featured. After reading through KPFA's history, and learning about the Pacifica Foundation I became convinced that KPFA was deserving of a spot alongside the NPR Internet stream. This is not to say that there aren't other similar stations out there which deserve to be highlighted. I fully suspect there are, but I would first like to understand why, before including them. So, if you know of a station that is deserving inclusion on the TUN3R Featured short-list (or can point to a station which should not be featured), please contact me at: neil@tun3r.com as I'd love to hear about it. As far as I'm concerned, debate and discussion is still one of the best tools we have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Sponsor a City Dial
On a slightly different note, we have effectively stopped selling Dial Space. Originally when starting TUN3R, we thought we had this great idea that the "invisible hand" of the free market would self-select the best stations. Alas, this never happened (I won't go into all the reasons for this now, but if you're curious e-mail me, and maybe I'll blog it). So, we decided to organize the Dial ourselves. We soon realized that so many of the radio stations people love and know are strictly local. I may love CBC Radio 1 Toronto, but I'm less interested in hearing CBC Radio 1 Winnipeg. I don't have anything against Winnipeg, it's just that I have no frame of reference for its local affairs and personalities. So, we figured that anchoring the S&P 500 of stations to the local AM/FM stations is the way to go. I still feel it's the way to go, since I regularly use the Toronto Dial as it has everything I need. If I was to change one thing, it would be to allow the addition of peronal stations, and as I've already mentioned.

However, as you may have gathered, putting together a City Dial requires some effort. Namely, we must do the following for each new city:

Gather and cleanse all the station data.
Properly classify the stations' various attributes.
Prepare and touch-up thumbnails for each station.

Once that is all said and done, we then need to capture audio samples, and maintain the station streaming and pop-up URLs on an ongoing basis, as they tend to drift over time.

The end result however, is something you can actually use, so I genuinely see a sponsored city as something more than just a vanity license plate, or pixelboard advertising. Furthermore, since we currently don't have banner advertising (and I like to keep it that way), a colour sponsorship logo is likely to receive a distinguished amount of attention, not to mention association with the city in question.

If this is something that interests you, or someone you know, you can indicate your interest here, or you can just call me on my cell at: +1-416-315-5514. I suspect local stations, ISPs, and community portals may find that there is a lot of value in having their logo and link branded into their respective city.

Stay TUN3D,
Neil.

New major press release sent out

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:05:00 +0000

Hi folks,

We've just sent out our second major press release. I have pasted the contents below.
I have some interesting interviews lined up for the next couple of posts.
Stay TUN3D!
---
TUN3R Launches City Dials for Internet Radio; Introduces Profit-Sharing for Webcasters
TUN3R Responds to Royalty Rate Increases

Toronto, ON – May 6, 2008 – Internet radio aggregator TUN3R today unveiled major changes to its service
and business model, in a bid to break the “willing buyer / willing seller” logjam that is forcing some popular
webcasters to shutter their service.

Listeners visiting TUN3R.com will now be able to visit any one of the ten new “City Dials”. Each City Dial
displays a tiled mosaic of all Webcasting AM/FM stations for the given city. Stations are ordered as they
would be on a traditional AM/FM tuner. The cities featured are: Toronto; New York City; Nashville; London;
Paris; Glasgow; Stuttgart; Rome; Seoul; and Buenos Aires. Each City Dial can be accessed via a dedicated
web address (e.g. nyc.tun3r.com, london.tun3r.com, paris.tun3r.com). For some cities, all AM/FM stations
are available as streams. Additionally, over 350 Internet stations are featured adjacent to the local AM/FM
stations. For the first time, listeners will be able to seamlessly browse between terrestrial and Internet radio.

For the Internet portion of the City Dials, TUN3R provides links to up to 30 stations for each of the 29
genres. TUN3R has found that listeners prefer to casually flip between stations instead of searching by
keyword. TUN3R’s genre-based organization allows listeners to quickly find a song or program playing that
satisfies their mood.

“When the stations are properly organized and presented, DJ-mixed web radio provides far greater
satisfaction and enjoyment than any of the custom radio services we have evaluated,” said Neil Hepburn,
TUN3R’s co-founder and general manager of marketing. “Listeners enjoy the very act of flipping around
stations, browsing the various music genres, talk, sports and news as their moods change. TUN3R acts as a
‘meta-DJ’, mixing the very best stations to match most moods and personalities.”

Listeners can browse stations in Discovery Mode, or in Live Mode. Discovery Mode is TUN3R’s traditional
means of tuning, and is analogous to an old-fashioned radio. Discovery Mode is ideal for finding new
stations, and allows listeners to rapidly flip among audio samples taken recently from the stations’ Webcast.
Conversely, Live Mode is ideal for flipping between the live streams of a listener’s favourite stations. Both
modes allow listeners to discover stations through the artist/song track search feature, or station homepage
search feature. Listeners can easily navigate back to their favourite stations by saving them as a Dial Preset.
Because each station tile is an image, stations are instantly recognizable regardless of language or literacy.

Currently, all City Dials feature the same 350 Internet stations. Over time, the mix of Internet stations will be
localized to accommodate regional tastes and preferences, and to comply with national content regulations.
Webcasters will then have the opportunity to create regional versions of their streams to support targeted
local advertising.

Profit-sharing for webcasters

For webcasters, TUN3R is proposing a new subscription profit-sharing program. Designed to address the
difficulty individual Internet radio stations face in obtaining paid subscribers, this business model allows
listeners to subscribe to all 2,000+ TUN3R-listed stations via a single subscription. TUN3R will manage
these subscriptions and allocate the fees to the stations that are providing the content based on actual peruser
listenership. Any Webcaster that participates in the Profit-Sharing Program will have these variable
costs covered through subscription revenues, and will earn additional revenue per Internet-based listener.
Stations may participate in the Subscription Profit-Sharing Program without offering exclusivity. As TUN3R’s
overall subscriber base increases, TUN3R will increase the margins it pays out to Webcasters, in order to
further strengthen goal congruence.

“We have relationships with dozens of DJs, producers, and station owners from all over the world,” said
Hepburn. “We are committed to preserving their independence and creative control. Our consumer
subscription model embraces that principle and rewards the talented DJs and producers that make Internet
radio such an exciting domain.”

TUN3R will build out its Internet radio subscriber network infrastructure by developing software on existing
wireless devices, consoles and set-top-boxes, and through strategic partnerships that will further distribute
premium Webcaster content and provide a range of billing options. In particular, TUN3R will design a
custom application for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.

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 250,000 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.

TUN3R would like to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance in assembling the City Dials:
Sébastien PETIT; Alex Hood; Victoria Bemibre; Paolo; Samuel Hilsheimer; and Jinsuk Shim;

-30

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

(416) 315-5514
neil@tun3r.com

The Theory of Mind / The Shared Experience / The Passive Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:29:00 +0000

The discussion of the future of radio has reached a feverish pitch. What's being debated is whether or not radio is in denial, and that the current business model is out-dated and obsolete. The Internet offers unprecedented possibilities, including interaction and customization.

Furthermore, many new custom radio sites have cropped up to take advantage of this potential. The idea behind custom radio is that you tell the site what you like to listen to, and it generates a custom station tailored to your preferences. It's a bit like those recommendation tools that Amazon.com and Netflix use. The big heavyweights are currently Pandora and Last.FM. But there are newer start-ups which aim to take these guys on. The most recent being Jango, MeeMix, and Radionomy.

All of these custom radio services tend to be based on either a "nature" approach (such as Pandora), which analyzes the underlying attributes of the song to determine what songs you might like. Or, the service is based on a "nurture" approach (such as Last.fm), which looks at who else has listened to the song, and then attempts to recommend other songs that were recommended by a similar group of people. Steve Krause has provided an excellent overview of how these services work, which can be found here.

I have used most of these services at one time or another, and while I used to be impressed with the technology, I found myself getting either bored or annoyed with them pretty quickly. To paraphrase Roger Waters [commenting on the first non-Rogers Water Pink Floyd album, Momentary Lapse of Reason], I feel that these stations are nothing more than "a reasonable facsimile of radio".

To give you an example of what I mean by this, check out Condition30's ZenStrings music (all free mp3s). Condition30 has developed an engine which can effectively generate a song that never ends and never repeats. The application they had in mind was for video games, which often suffers from overly repetitive music. When I hear ZenStrings, it all sounds like music, but it also sounds very bland and forgettable, and it never really builds to anything. It's a reasonable facsimile of music.

Getting back to the live DJ. What makes them any better? After much thought, I have concluded that it boils down to three key points:

Real DJs can predict how you might react to what they're playing, and can craft their sets accordingly. The most advanced DJs are not viewing their sets as "a bunch of songs in a row", but rather as compositions unto themselves. Many techno DJs take this a step further, and even understand how your mind is working in various altered states, and customize their sets accordingly. To be sure, creativity is at work, but a key aspect of creativity is being able to imagine how your work might be perceived under various circumstances. In general, this ability is often referred to as The Theory of Mind, and is a cornerstone of the human condition.
Live streams provide a genuine Shared Experience. I believe that radio is the last great bastion of the shared experience. The Internet, as collaborative as it is, is surprisingly bereft of Shared Experiences. It is one thing to tag a photo, or write on a Facebook wall, but these all happen out of sync. Nothing comes close to the emotional pull of a true shared experience. If you've ever gone down a roller-coaster with a good friend or companion. If you've ever done something cheeky or naughty with someone else. And, if you've ever had sex. You will know what I am talking about here. For me, listening to music with others provides that shared experience. It may not always be at the forefront of my mind, but when that certain song comes on, I will knowingly grin to my friends, and that's all it takes to have that feeling.
Radio is in essence, a passive experience. This is a good thing. However, because the Internet invites so much interactivity, some people believe that radio should also be interactive. However, radio that requires or expects that I interact with it is not what I'm looking for. I like being able to do other tasks while enjoying radio. I can do my work, I can drive the car, I can make dinner, I can read, I can socialize with my friends. All while listening to radio. Radio relaxes me. Anything requiring interaction requires decision making. Decisions stress me out.

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. If I'm wrong, or you disagree, I'm all ears. As those who know me, I'm pretty open minded, even to ideas that I'm inclined to disagree with.

Stay TUN3D.

Interview with Manny from Nekkid Radio

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:18:00 +0000

Nekkid Radio (http://nekkidradio.net) is known by its fans as an eclectic "raw" station with a leaning towards rock and metal (but open to other genres). I've listened for a while and have heard artists from the more mellow Bryan Adams and Pink Floyd, ratcheting up to Slayer and Rammstein, with a good measure of Black Sabbath in between. Another thing I really like about Nekkid is that they also play some excellent stand-up and spoken word. A few weeks back while listening around noon, Rollins' "I Know You" poem came on - which as a Gen-Xer is one of the most resonating poems I've ever heard.

While I love this variety, what intrigues me most about Nekkid Radio is the way the station is run.

Much of the diversity of Nekkid Radio stems from the fact that the DJs themselves are all located in different parts of the world. In my mind, this is the quintessential Internet radio station in that it is in essence a distributed project just like the Internet itself. As a friend pointed out, the Internet and Punk DIY culture have a lot of parallels. Coordinating something like this over the Internet can't be easy or simple, and must have some unique properties.

Nekkid Radio's station manager Bill Biles "Manny" has been kind enough to let me pick his brain with a few questions for this blog entry.
---
Neil: Manny, what is the story behind Nekkid Radio? Was it always a collaborative venture with DJs around the world?
Manny: Well Neil it actually started as a fun thing in the Cu-Seeme Video chat room. It was started by Dan Brewington who now owns The Web Radio World Network based in Chile, as Bouncer Dan Radio. Dan and another party turned it into Naked Radio until Mike Colvin came aboard. Then the 3 of them created NEKKID Radio as it is today.
Then gradually more and more wanted to join in, soon it was 5 DJ’s then so on. And being on the Internet it couldn’t help but be collaborative with DJ’s around the world as time went on. Through the years we have had DJ’s from the UK, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Japan the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Chile and Germany I am sure I missed a couple its been 6 or 7 years for me

Neil: How do you co-ordinate everybody, and what kind of rules do you have in place to ensure things run smoothly?
Manny: Well through the years we had a plethora of rules it seemed, a management team etc. and even those seem good idea sometimes it became more of a hindrance that held us back so we took a step back got rid of the rules, got rid of titles except one. Rules now Rule 1 Have fun Rule 2 respect and have fun doing it. Rule 3 if you can’t make a show post it cover some one post it. Makes it pretty simple really. Coordinating everyone well having DJ’s in different time zones can make it tricky so we use GMT. GMT makes it universal and no daylight saving time to deal with so the hardest part is sometimes doing the math for the schedule.

Neil: How many DJs are there, and where do they reside?
Manny: We at the moment we have 21 DJ’s it’s a Global party Neil

Neil: Can you summarize some of the higher profile DJs in terms of what they play and how they differ from the others?
Manny: Well Neil that’s hard for me I consider all my DJ’s as awesome. They each have something to add to the unique diversity to the station. Most play a mixed genre only a couple does a central genre.

Neil: Do you DJ yourself?
Manny: Yes I do. I do a all blues show every Friday night and Sunday evening Manny’s Blues at the Tiki bar through the years I have done everything from Classic rock, to Reggae except country

Neil: What does the future of Nekkid Radio look like?
Manny: I think with the great crew we have now looks Great, Great DJ’s awesome web designer just over all a awesome bunch to work with. I think the future for NEKKID Radio looks the best it ever has.

Neil: If there was a theme song for Nekkid Radio what would it be?
Manny: Well since you asking me I might say Robert Earl Keene, The Road goes on forever (but the party never ends). But there are several that would fit.

Why are Internet radio commercials not more subversive?

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 15:09:00 +0000

I was flipping around on TUN3R the other day, and landed on the punk station PHC Radio. After listening for a few minutes, on came a commercial which sounded like something out of the X-Files. There was a very ominous voice telling the listener about how "they" [RIAA] want to shut down Internet radio, and that we should send an e-mail to the US government protesting this. Both the tone of voice and content of the message sounded very conspiratorial.

It's certainly not the first time I've heard a commercial critical of excessive royalty payments, but it's certainly the most memorable. I certainly agree with the content of the message, but was taken aback by how subversive the delivery of this message was. It came across as though there was some kind of global conspiracy to shutdown Internet radio, almost like some kind of secret Internet Illuminati or Bilderberg society (there are legitimate concerns of RIAA's motives, but we're not talking The Da Vince Code here). I must admit that at first, it made me feel a bit uneasy. Then I thought about what was said in the commercial, and recounted the fact that there was nothing false being said, and it was really more the tone of the commercial that jarred me a bit. If nothing else, it got my attention, and I began to wonder why not more Internet stations were running these types of spooky advertisements, and why more stations were not running any Internet Radio Equality commercials.

While I'm sure the reasons are as varied as the stations themselves, I've come to believe that Internet radio has some very new opportunities that have yet to be explored on the advertising front, especially when it comes to non-mainstream topics. Internet radio advertisers have barely scratched the surface.

Backing up a bit, I used to read a magazine called AdBusters, which as some of you may know is one of the more well known anti-corporate left wing rags out there. While they attack all things corporate, they focus a lot of their attention on the mind-control aspects of advertising. While I don't agree with a lot of what AdBusters says, and I tend to find them a bit militant and unrealistic, they have brought some important points to my attention.

One of the most signficant movements that Ad Busters fought for, was "Culture Jamming". In its crudest form, this was the act of manipulating billboards or bus ads, so as to publicly criticize the subject. For example, a common target might be an ad for latest apparel, featuring a [clearly] anorexic model. A Culture Jammer would throw on a sticker saying something like "I'm hungry and depressed. Feed me." While some people might see this as clever, it's clearly illegal and doesn't play fair. However, the Culture Jammers would argue that there is not much of an alternative since most mainstream media bureaus would not allow an ad to be disseminated that criticizes one of their large clients. Case-in-point: Adbusters has filed a lawsuit, accusing the major Canadian television networks of denial of free speech for not allowing Adbusters to air commercials (at full price), which are highly critical of a number of high profile sponsors. Adbusters have had the same problems in the United States, and intends to embark on the same legal battles in the US, should they prevail in Canada.

With the Internet, many people may question the necessity of such lawsuits, given how decentralized and uncontrolled the medium is. That may seem to be the case, but unfortunately most ads shown, are either banner ads, and do not command a captive audience. Furthermore, the more controversial topics are difficult to communicate effectively in a single banner ad, or pop-up, or voken. Video ads are the most effective, but video ads are, for now, just glorified banner ads which don't command a captive audience. Even YouTube has balked at showing full-blown 30 second ads, opting instead to show translucent banners above the video the user has chosen to watch. Furthermore, "the mother of all mediums", television commercials, are themselves being undermined by the spread DVRs.

So, going back to the anti-RIAA commercial I recently heard on PHC Radio, I honestly can't think of a medium [over the Internet] which commands such a captive advertising audience, whereby the advertiser can articulate such a complex and nuanced messages. From an advertisers perspective, this is incredibly encouraging. Internet radio allows the advertisers to enjoy the niche marketing advantages of the web, but convey a message that would normally be too complex or nuanced to catch the average person's attention.

I see both positive and negative consequences here, but mainly positive ones. On the downside, it allows for charismatic flimflam scam artists to more easily lull the naive into buying their products. But on the upside, it allows for arguments that are generally not popular, but have rational merit, to directly confront listener who wouldn't normally go out of their way to hear the message. Whether you want to educate people on: Global Warming; the negative consequences of "Fair Trade"; or specific reasons why the car you are selling are better than your competitors are selling. I believe that Internet radio currently offers the best format over the Internet to deliver these intricate messages to the right audience.

But there are threats too. Consolidation of media outlets generally stifles what can be said or advertised. Also, at the micro level station managers themselves may feel moral obligations to censor certain messages. But more than anything else, fringe movements tend to not have as much money as mainstream organizations, and simply lose out on the cash front. Furthermore, rationalists tend to waste time appealing to people's logic, rather than their base emotions (witness the failure of John Kerry).

The "free world" (whatever that means these day) has always supported a Battle of Ideas, and I am not aware of any society failing for being too transparent, or too open to new ideas. So, I welcome with open arms a new, more cerebral wave of advertising that Internet radio allows for. I can only hope that the right ideas win out.

The future is unwritten, so stay TUN3D.