I am so, so psyched for Norine - and really, for all of us.

In short, if you held off on upgrading to Vista, it’s paid off.

If you’re happy on XP, there’s really no pressure to leave.

That’s about where I’d put it. I’m still cross-grading over to Mac whenever my current XP setup falls over (it’s doing fine tho’)

There’s a set of links at the end of the article for those that have already made the Vista plunge. I can’t speak for their reliability and if you’re on Vista you’ve probably already chased down a lot of that info but it seems like a handy bookmark.

What a coincidence, here comes the last.fm API.

There’s no point in comparing the two, the ccH QAPI is a really basic affair with simply a view on looking at the data. To be honest, it’s mainly about making my life easier by having a uniform programming model to add features into ccMixter.

The last.fm API is really about Big Game.

A quick jargon lesson: When a programmer writes the code that makes up a software application it is not done in a vacuum. They are instructing some piece(s) of hardware to act a certain way. The problem is, there are thousands of different pieces of hardware and their instruction sets are all randomly different. So along comes a guy or company or a group of gun-toting Libertarians open-source movement, somebody to relieve that pain who says “I’ll make it so you don’t have to worry about the hardware. I’ll do this by writing a piece of software that goes between your application and the hardware. You just (re)write your application to a new instruction set that I give you and I’ll take care of the rest.” So you forget about the hardware’s instruction set and invest time, energy and money in learning this other guy’s instructions that he calls an “operating system.” Things are going OK except that all your friends are driving faster cars and even faster women and seem flush with the green. You figure out they’re having the bling life because all their applications are on this whole other operating system. Now along comes another set of bozos that say “Forget about all those operating systems. We’ll make it so you don’t you don’t have to worry about that stuff. You just (re)write your application to a new instruction we give you and we’ll take make sure it runs on all those operating systems.” So now you embark on re-investing your time, energy and money in learning this whole other thing and now you’re good to go with what these guys call an “application stack” - yes, as in stack of trays like in a cafeteria. You only worry about your “food” (aka script) on the top tray and the forget about the rest of the trays.

No matter whether the instruction set you use is meant to obscure hardware differences or operating differences or networking protocol differences the concept is called a “platform.”

Targeting a specific platform can be tricky because when you commit to one of these you become dependent on it until it is more cost efficient to rewrite the thing yet again. So at some point you are make the critical decision to pick which platform you are going to take to the dance. If enough application developers pick the same platform then the folks that provided that platform are the Big Winners.

The Web changed the game a bunch but there’ll always be a group of folks who want to be the Grand Gate Keepers and Key Masters. They stock their cubicles with developers who love to invent APIs and platforms because it’s just plain fun. When facebook invented their own platform and the site exploded because of all the cool platform widgets that developers wrote (typical facebook widget guy can pull down $2k per widget which is about a two day job) and birds were singing again. Except at Google which is so big they share mini-APIs out of strategic good will more than anything else. They don’t need to share their actual platform so much, just the applications.

I’ve forgotten where I’m going with this other than to say I hope it’s somebody else who goes and builds the last.fm/ccMixer widget and it isn’t left to me.

Kristin says: “CC is good because…” someone used her song to a cool video. Once you get that first taste of auto-collab….

ficbot at “The Best Media in Life is Free” says: “ccMixter to the rescue…” because he gets to use open music in a slide presentation. …you keep coming back for more.

LA Times says: “Intellectual property law is supposed to balance public and private interests — a feature that Congress often forgets when responding to copyright holders.” Who knew anyone left in Hollywood actually feels this way?

Most boomer icons faded from my eye-line several decades ago so their death is just the physical manifestation of a loss from long ago. But Carlin is someone I’ve been following and enjoying for nearly 40 years. This is one I will actually miss. I’ve seen everything he’s done in TV and films and the peak of his performance chops is, without a doubt “Jammin in New York” from ‘92. I can not imagine a better 60 minutes of entertainment in my lifetime.

The last few years (since the death of his wife 10 years ago and after several heart attacks) has seen him trip up on stage a few times. In the middle of a rant you could catch him miss a beat and catch his breath before continuing. But the writing, oh, the writing had never, ever been better than right up to his death this afternoon. Nobody dug into the soul of the boomer with a sharper razor than George Carlin. I can’t think of an artist whose words I wanted to inhabit more than him because he explained the world to me like nobody else. Fuck him for dying.

I seriously doubt this is a reflection on Magnatune or even tip-jar-fatigue because the music on the follow-ups is different than the first editions and it might just be that the newer ones don’t connect with people like the first ones did. There is the possibility that Magnatune’s new subscription mode which debuted a week after CD 2 went on sale has absorbed my album sales. (Album sales are posted nightly to Magnatune artists, but the accumulation of royalties from subscription streaming is only calculated a few times a year so it’s possible I’ll see big numbers for my music then - but I’m assuming not.)

Whatever the reason, I’m using the dead sales figures as a rationale for seriously focusing my music on a relatively narrow target. I recently compiled a playlist on ccMixter of the “Undiscovered fourstones” and especially when held up against artists who have actually mastered many genres (I’m thinking now of Loveshadow) I couldn’t help noticing that my attempts at the various styles seem less convincing than ever, even to me. I can only imagine what potential customers might be hearing. I’m definitely over that.

So while it may all sound very contrived from an artistic perspective, the fact is I’ve been leaning toward this kind of thing anyway (note the drastic and consistent increase in ccMixter uploads using my Cry Baby wha-wha pedal).

For better or worse, this is all you’re going to get out of me a while. Maybe, you know, forever.

1. Do you have any Harry Potter books that you’d like to give away? Here’s my advice about that: duct tape the book to your forehead (I suggest about 4 windings), find a local industrial incinerator in your area (in the East Bay there’s one right off Gillman) and stick your head with the book firmly attached directly into the oven and hold it there for no less than 4 minutes because that will be more enjoyable than dealing with the fucking lunatics out there looking for Potter books.

2. BM has a very handy utility for stating the condition of the book that you are posting. If your child or horse has pee’d on a book I suggest you mention that in the ‘condition notes’ for the book you’re posting. I have been duly flogged for skipping that kind of thing.

3. It turns out it’s a bad idea to randomly label packages when shipping to various moochers. It seems they are particularly picky about getting the exact book they requested and not a totally different one that weighs 5 times the one they wanted which they now have to re-package and send on to someone else at their expense.

4. When a request comes in it is often accompanied with a very stern warning such as “NO SMOKING BOOKS.” At first I thought this means books that have been through a fire so I de-listed about 120 books. Then I realized this was actually about cigar smokers who use their paperback books as a filter when exhaling. So I re-listed my char-fried books and decided the best course of action with the “NO SMOKING BOOKS” requests was to simply lie. Of course, like any sentient being on Earth I’ve used my books as cigar filters but I send the books anyway. I figure if I’m busted I can always promise to forward a point to the moocher. Of course I never follow up on that.

5. I’ve now posted several tech books for programming and software like Photoshop, Reason, etc. When I bought these they came with CDs or DVDs with examples or demonstrations. Who knows where those CDs and DVDs are today, I’ve sent most of them to Netflix instead of returning a movie I really like. If someone asks if the book has a CD with it I just say “Sure!” and stick a copy of “Chronic Dreams 2″ into the little CD jacket attached to the back cover the book. No complaints so far!

6. I like to willy-nilly put “Like new” into the condition notes for books I’m posting. (My dad always told me that it’s every man’s duty to exercise all the power you have in this world to the maximum.) This is especially fun for books that I bought used and there’s a big fat price sticker on the front cover from the used book store. When someone gets one these books and complains about it I reply with a humble, groveling email along the lines of “Oh, jeez, I’m sooooo sorry! I’ve reported myself to the BBB. Make sure to cancel your check and I’ll refund your expenses… oh, wait… that’s right, I forgot, you got the book for FUCKING FREE!”

[UPDATE] (10 min. later) Knuth is gone…

On the other hand, it feels like I have an affinity for other singers like c. layne or Colin Mutchler. Those mixes “just work.” I hear the pell, I get it, the options are endless.

But nothing in my music experience can match what I feel when I get my hands on a pell by Kristin Hersh who started uploading pells to ccMixter a few months ago. Basically, if I could sing I would want to sound 100% like her. She cuts me deep.

Kristin is the lead singer of Throwing Muses a band I was aware of as I was bar hopping around Los Angeles in the record biz in the 80’s but never latched on to. In those days I was seeing between 5-10 bands a week so it’s more than possible that I saw them perform but I never owned one of their records.

All I know is that now, with the separated pells I’ve lost my mind with pleasure. Do my mixes of Kristin connect with anybody else? (or even her?) I don’t really know. They tend to be warmly, received by the other mixers at ccM but really, I know what’s there and I’ve said everything I need about it here and in the music. Here’s the latest:

He also admits that he “[has] a lot to learn about music” which, I guess, is supposed to head off any ironic, snarky commentary.

Even more: “I’ll be reaching out to many of you for help as I figure out how to build the right team to generate sustained, ongoing innovation around music. (Want to work on these challenges? Let me know!)”

I’d suggest a subscription to Gonze but I can’t help feeling the analogy I used previously still holds. In 1994 Microsoft built up a team of Web crazies to produce IE, IIS, ms-Java, et. al. and you could swear the company had redirected its focus to the WWW. Wall Street bought it and that was all that mattered. Every time some exec mentioned the “I” word, the stock popped another 20%. In the end when the Netscape/AOL/Sun smoke cleared and margins remained high every executive who drank the Internet Kool-Aid was eventually shown the door. Since then the company just got more entrenched in XP and finding ways to milk a client-based solution (even one masquerading as a server) .

So, I’m not going to be snarky, just pessimistic. Is a company the size of EMI really prepared to chew off its own limbs in order to get out of the trap? For all the talk that Microsoft was ready to cannibalize itself during 1994-99 browser war era, having execs (figuratively) conduct investor video conferences in tiger-skin loin clothes and holding spears, at the end of business day, it was just an act.

Meanwhile, Pollack is definitely of my time. He was an unabashed Hollywood director and producer who made several schmaltzy blockbusters that I found unwatchable. I don’t know that anyone would call him a risk taker, but as a talented provider of escapism there was a sensibility, yes, OK, a boomer sensibility to his films that makes his overall body of art “important.” His legacy will be tied to a line of dialog that he used in at least three different movies (that I know of):

“You think not telling a lie is the same as telling the truth?”

How boomer is that? He was totally tapped into the Watergate-J. Edgar Hoover-paranoia from “Three Days of the Condor” through “The Firm” and even later as producer on “The Quiet American” and “Michael Clayton” and that’s why we loved him.

But my favorite work he’s ever done, just on a shits-and-giggle level, was as an actor (he’s acted in as many movies as he’s directed) in “Husbands and Wives” by Woody Allen. He has several scenes in the film but the one that stands out for me is when his character literally drags his new young, trophy wife away from a party of his hyper-intellectual contemporaries after she tries to engage them in a discussion about astrology. Pollack’s delivery of this character’s embarrassment and rage was as genuine, heart-wrenching and hilarious as anything you’ll ever see.

Lucas’ conversation brings up the idea of the collective (A. K. A. musicians’ community sites, net labels, etc.) acting as the new version of a recording label. Not a full replacement in terms of what a label does today, like Amazon replacing brick and mortar book stores, but more like blogging, which has parallels in the pre-Web world but is a service industry born of the Web itself.

The musicians’ collective and it’s implications, commercially and otherwise, are not new ideas to me. After all, I run one for Creative Commons called ccMixter. Unfortunately with the confidential nature of the way the ccMixter RFP was held under wraps for 18 months I chose the better part of valor (for once) and did not discuss these things in public because I was scared out of my mind that CC’s tax exempt status could be hurt if the ccM hand-over was screwed up. This, of course, turned out to be one lawyer’s opinion but it was the only information I had at the time.

The business opportunity implications lurking around ccM would take more than a blog post to relay but here’s one highlight that makes the ccM collective even more interesting than other sites that pool album shopping carts and other resources.

Lucas and Neeru’s original vision for the site was a re-use model obvious to them, new to musicians. They saw the site laid out as:

a) source material
b) remixes
c) recursion

From day one of my involvement I felt that with a few additions (e.g. giving a cappellas a top-tier status, creating a Sample Pool larger than just the one site, focusing on quality via the Editors’ Picks) that we could help propel the concepts into a model musicians could wrap their heads around. This combined vision has given ccM a unique process for creating really good music that, like blogging, has parallels in the pre-Web days but has grown into something different.

Somehow, unlike hiring a producer (A.K.A. your boyfriend) to create an album based on a singer/songwriter’s material and unlike collaborating with other band members to jam together until a vocal and instrumental work as a unit, the act of tossing things into a sample pool with no fixed objective or assignments has yielded some fantastic music. When I say “no fixed objective” I mean we even stopped having remix contests over a year ago and the music only got better. It got better because the thing drawing in better singers was better producers. And the thing drawing in better producers was better singers. There’s the recursion thing writ large in real terms.

fwiw I walk around these days thinking “I can’t believe it fucking worked!” because maybe Lucas and Neeru and folks at CC are used to having their visions pan out in the real world but this is new to me. I tried for years to convince singers and musicians that open music was good for their careers and the world and exposure through sharing was the sane route, not the inverted distortion field of handing over 100% of your rights to a huge corporation in return for financial debt you can never repay. Of course, all of those are still true and certainly part of the attraction, but it wasn’t until this recursion-in-the-pool thing starting taking off that all of a sudden the best musicians I know are forking over stems and pells without blinking. I look up now and I realize in two years I’ve gone from nearly full-time evangelism to nearly none.

Now, maybe the CD is dead. Maybe a ccM model isn’t amenable to selling songs at $0.99 a pop.

But how could this thing not be marketable? Especially if we’re talking about, like blogging, a new type of service, born of the Web. Assuming all the other fundamentals of business skills are in place (clever marketing, good people connections, profit oriented bookkeeping, etc.) I would say it’s worth a shot to go after the huge B2B music consuming marketplace.