I'd guess you get about 90 seconds of crackly high end out of this process. Nice for novelty, pointless for audio.

So with one of these, one can appear to be less of a loon and more of a tool, or is it the other way around?

Worth mentioning that the market for allergy relief in Japan is in the billions of Yen. No hay fever relief nostrum can be too small, no pollen guard snake oil is too expensive. This article http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080213i1.html outlines the situation reasonably well but they dont build the connection between the fact that although the government caused the problem, the revenue generated by the "cures" outweighs the incentive to remove the cause. This topic is covered more extensively in Alex Kerr's "Dogs and Demons".

@#81

Its ever so kind of you to depict Mr. Doctorow as the champion of the weak and disadvantaged, but my opinion stands. I was perhaps a bit too harsh on Rob though.

YMMV.

IIRC the 14" Alien figure that came out back in the day had a similar translucent head cover. The head details were done with glow in the dark paint and the inner jaw/mouth extended out by means of a lever in the back of the skull.

Also worth mentioning that:
1 hard plastic beats soft vinyl every time
2 14" is of course better than 8"

Brownlee,

Pretty weak directing all this spew towards free tech support.

@22 "Generalized misanthropy and hatred is very un-BoingBoing-like."

Going to have to disagree with that. Take a look at any of Cory's vitriol, or most of what Rob Beschizza writes.

I am in fact a resident of Japan with a non standard bicycle. 99.9% of the bikes here are the type shown in the cue frame of the video, most of the remaining ones are mountain bikes or foldup bikes. Non standard design bicycles are rare probably because most people dont ride for fun, they just ride from home to the supermarket or to the train station (usually while yapping or texting away on their mobile phones)

I deliberately did not include vinyl records or shellac disks since the equipment to play them is still being produced and sold.

Someone may still have functional equipment to playback recordings in the other formats I mentioned, the original recordings may even be in playable condition such that archival copies could be made.

For these MS music files its not that hard to make archival copies at all, the same equipment that plays them today can make the archives. My implication is that the correct way to view this is that formats come and go, no more, no less.

Snark about the Dollar to Euro rate aside, its been like this forever as Nex mentioned. Besides the VAT that end consumers see, there have always been the higher import duties and other assorted fees that non European companies have faced in order to sell their goods in Europe. Before the Euro there was also the problem of pricing and settling transactions across two fistfulls of currencies as well.

gadgets.boingboing.net is starting to have the same smell of shrill nonsense bitching that the main site has had for a while now.

Rob Beschizza being hysteric like Cory? Say it aint so! Same as Edison cylinders, dictaphone wires, DCC or 8 track tapes, formats come and go. Unfortunately whinging wise asses seem to be a constant.

As with many things here, bike parking of all types is "one size fits all". If you dont have one of the standard "mama chari" bikes, you cant use this or pretty much any of the legal bike parking due to wheel size or wheelbase length. Ride a beach cruiser? Wheels too fat to fit. Stingray or Spoiler? Too long and back wheel too fat. Etc. etc. etc.

You fucking fuckers with 100Mbit internet need to fuck right off.

At least youve got the balls to reply directly, unlike some editors on the main page. Anyway, I'm fully expecting that at some point I'll be fucked off this site too.

100Mb full duplex FTTH at home is quite nice, specially with cleverly configured DDNS and DNS zone tables and a bit of devious port forwarding & apache configs, but I can and do walk away from it all regularly.

so is ROB BESCHIZZA really Cory in disguise?

A4! See? Asus's EeePC 900 not only improves on the original, but makes us all see the world as Europeans do.

Not just Europistanians, but much of the world uses metric paper sizes. I've grown to love knowing the exact relationship of different sizes of paper.

this swindle has been popular in Japan in various forms for years. Canned "enhanced" oxygen, oxygen bars, oxygen suppositories, oxygen feminine hygiene products, you name it and the suckers will buy it.

¥130,000? pass. Honestly even for ¥10,000 I'd pass. Just dont see the coolness of a full scale OS on such a small screen/keyboard.

Wilcom is however a nice carrier for those of us who dont like the fishy pricing and overpriced handsets of Docomo or AU.

Maybe the minis will be nice, but this long trend of "collectible" whatever games leaves me cold. I've got vague memories of this same kind of thing with a DIY ruleset and plastic toys and I bet many other tabletop gamers did the same kind of thing too.

If all else fails, use your Lego for wargaming, there's a bunch of rulesets out there already like http://www.brikwars.com/ or if you have the sets and the space, try a session of http://www.io.com/~sj/PirateGame.html and mod either one for Cthulhu or kaiju.

Sweet! if I ever need something like that, I want the front forks to be like the ones on a Schwinn Spoiler or even longer.

£99 is alotta shekels for this thing, but for the non building inclined types I guess thats market rate until competition comes along.

Gotta wonder though why its an old style TV and not what would look like a wall mount flat screen. That would be easier to build and look cooler IMO.

I can see a market for this. Lots of people I know always manage to get bits of shell into the bowl when they crack an egg on the edge and if this eliminates little scraps of eggshell from my food then I'm in favor of it. Cant see a reason for mockery here.

that is indeed a thing of beauty!

#2 you remind me of Indie Rock Pete.

#15 Thank you. That was a great insight into the history of a camera I once owned and loved as a boy.

Antinous

Thats an odd statement. Anyway, my life is great!

Teresa,

That doesnt answer the question. Why is it that it seems that you rush to Cory's defense first and foremost?

Teresa,

The editing stance here is really weird. #40 summed it up well that the commentary has been pretty vicious, yet only certain comments got censored.

Xeni seems to be adult enough to tolerate all the looks based comments and has demonstrated in the past that she can accept dissent and corrections gracefully. I believe I've seen the same from from Mark and David but somehow comments about the other contributor get editorial defense.

Hw lng tll #18 gts dsmvwld by Cry's dfndr?

The article did come with a number of caveats so I think the author was not trying to prescribe a one size fits all model.

Please note that the idea of building up a loyal customer base who will give you repeat business for quite a long time. When I first got into any of the music business someone advised me to take a class on running a small business from the local community college's adult continuing education program.

Similar to what was pointed out in that article, the teacher told us that every sole proprietor/small business person should know who their best customers are (80/20 rule) and should contact those people from time to time and ask for new business. Its not exactly knowing who your 1000 true fans are, but its very similar. Some of the pre-selling models discussed there look like new fangled ways to make sales calls.

Of course when I learned this stuff was before Internet, we were taught something like personal computers could help us understand which 20% of our customers provided us with 80% of our business and that we could even create mailing lists and form letters to send to them. There are of course alot of more convenient tools nowadays as well as fancy buzzwords like CRM to describe this stuff.

I guess its a good thing to dust off time proven ideas, give em a new coat of paint and present em to a bunch of sods to lazy to go get the same facts from the public library or Google.

Teresa

I wasn't aware that disagreement and pointing out percieved gaps in logic now qualified as "potshots". Its not personal at all, but my belief is that Cory errs on a number of points and since he is considered an opinion leader in current discussions on maters of copyright, I wish to express my opinions to him.

I think that amongst adults, "I disagree with X and here's why" or even "I think that X's opinions are slanted" is quite different from "X is a doo doo head". The second might reasonably be considered worthy of exclusion from conversation amongst adults.

Takuan,

Thank you for at least attempting to read my comments. To restate as blandly as possible: I found the linked post uninformative rather than good advice. Secondly, I also agreed with DCER on something regarding Mr. Doctorow's public opinions regarding musicians. #15 Was a complaint regarding the modification of #14 in which I stated the above.

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Though I have not played in many many years, I have very fond memories of D&D and other TSR games. Gary's appearance on Futurama a few years back brought it all home to me. Godspeed to you Dungeon Master!

#19 mentioned The Complete Strategist, I only ever got to go there once as a youth, but I felt like I was entering heaven on earth!

DCR cmmntd:

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vn fr th crprt bckrs ts hrd t s ths ds s "gd dvc". f th lbl wns th fn clb nd mrchndsng rghts, sn't tht jst nthr spct f th prvsly vlfd 360 cntrct? f th bnd/mscn/prdcr/mngr wns thm, hw ds tht hlp th thr prts? ctlly ths qstns hv lrdy bn ddrssd mny wys vr th lst fw dcds wth vrs n sdd r prft splttng grmnts.

Nt t sy tht th ss s slvd, bt shrt f gvrnmnt mndtd prft shrng grmnts rtfd by ntrntnl trts wth nfrcmnt by N Blck Hlcptr Sqds, hw cld ll prts nvlvd vr b stsfd nw nd n th ftr?

t sms smtms lk h jst "hs t t" fr mscns nd wll pst nythng t crtcz thm- vn whn t's prly wrttn nd prly thght-t.

Lks lk tht dsnt t? Bsclly nyn nvlvd n msc wh dsn't sbscrb t hs cnvctns rgrdng cpyrght, "frdm", tc. gts nthng bt th rspbrry. Cry shws n rspct nd ctvly ncrgs tht ppl shld ngg n thft f srvc f nn "fr" md.

Good points by DCER, blather by Seth Godin. Too bad he couldnt come up with a better buzzword than "tribe", that one burned itself out at least twice during the 90s.

nikfromnyc

are you trolling or just innocent?

Bad summary headline, no donut.

@29 minamisan

I didnt say it wasnt safe, just that its dirty and has gotten worse in the last few years. Any thoughts on that matter?

Takuan,

Its a nickname I picked up years ago from listening to Peter Tosh constantly. Does yours refer to the pickle or the monk?

Antinous,

"Edo"? Are we in a time warp or something? Should I be booking a passage on a sailing ship to New Amsterdam?

@144 automaton,

Yeah I abused the word Darwinism for comic effect. I also got a cousin in West Virginia who got a few bastard kids planted in her by various "baby daddies". That phrase sure does sound more acceptable than "father of the bastard child" doesnt it?

Yer welcome Jeffkw, I just calls em likes I sees em though.

Just curious how many of the previous posters live in Tokyo and or have ever been on Center Gai in other than a Gee Wilikers tourist context? My bet is zero but of course I could be wrong.

As with most Japanese TV of this sort, things are being hammed up for the camera crews and some parts are clearly setups. I've seen some SCGP activity and it didnt look like that. No these guys arent polite, but they are in fact more polite than alot of the scouts(1), restaurant toffs, drug dealers or kids wallowing in their own piss and filth(2) which otherwise inhabit Center Gai.

Considering how foul Center Gai has become I'm not surprised at all that the SCGP arose to begin with. No one expects Center Gai to be like Daikanyama, but it really has gotten to the point where some response is needed.

(1) Recruiters for "dating services", soaplands, "fashion health salons" (blowjob shops), etc.

(2) Center Gai is pretty much the urinal and vomitorium of Shibuya. As for filth, its becoming more common to find human feces and used sanitary napkins/tampons on the side streets in the last year or so above and beyond the usual garbage.

@122 automaton,

"My sister's baby daddy..."

Start out like that and you want us to actually care about the little tyke when those who spawned it wont? Any tragic story that starts out with "baby daddy" smells like sweet sweet Darwinism to me.

@131 Antinous,

All Im sayin is its funny for you to make punching analogies when it looks like someone kicked you to the to the next county and back.

@#29 Jeff,

Some CC licenses allow others to make money off a creators work, some do not. Its up to what the creator decides to do when they license the work. I do non commercial because what I give I want to remain free to share, like a "free sample" and also because I dont want someone making money off my back without me getting a share (use in commercials, film, etc). Its the same reason essentially that I am choosy about who I license my works to commercially. For example I wont license to Japanese TV because they are notorious for not paying correct royalties if they pay at all. All in all, the packet of licenses offered by the CC just extend the choices of how a creator can allow their work to be used.

@28 Irene Delse

Believe it or not, not everyone is OK with fan fiction and I'd hardly say that an intentional degrading of an original work qualifies as that, especially when its not clearly presented as such. Were I to to insert scenes such as I described before into Down And Out and just leave it under Cory's name that would be no labor of love, just one of sheer spite. Fortunately his style is easy to copy so it wouldnt actually take alot of effort to turn the thing into a festival of filth which might actually deceive a naive reader.

Jeff,

I wrote what you are responding to. the "@23 Brit" is a way of responding to a numbered comment by someone else, thats all.

I do think CC is a good thing and I've used it to release music, but as to its long term value for enforceability that remains to be seen. One issue I have, as per my example and yours, is it ignores the concept of the "moral right" of a creator (not recognized in all nations copyright laws, but anyway) whereby a creator can object to certain uses of their works. If a license allows derivative works then the creator essentially gives up the right to decide what derivatives can be created (as I understand it anyways). I'd be rather upset were the Japanese right wing to use some of my music as a bed for one of their messages but under a CC license, I couldnt do a thing about it and Japan recognizes moral rights of the creator.

Of course the "no derivative works" version of the CC addresses this, but it introduces a catch 22 if you intended your work to be freely modifiable to begin with. Anyways, even if it doesnt solve all problems its a good start and addresses an actual need. I have used it to release tunes which I wanted to give away but retain the copyright and forbid the commercial use of the song (no one can resell it). Of course that didnt stop some of them from ending up on russian MP3 sale sites but they sell my commercial releases as well and I dont have any legal recourse in that either.

This doesnt change my opinions about Cory Doctorow's behavior though. In my eyes he's the worst friend a good cause can have since his reputation can poison the cause by association.

#103 Antinous says
Sure. Your smoke gives me a nosebleed and my fist gives you one. No problem.

And this guy describes himself as a "Life coach and yoga teacher". On the other hand, from his blogger profile picture it looks like he made that claim to the wrong person who delivered him with the mother of all beatings.

It sure is fun to watch people argue on the internet!

@#23 Brit,

You pretty much summed up my problems with the article. His use of the phrase 'sharecropping knowledge barons who grudgingly dole us out limited rights to their "property."' in an earlier comment also shows that sort of pseudo populist tub thumping choice of verbiage. In regards to a protest activity, why not take one of his CC stories and randomly add in scenes where the main characters engage in morally repugnant activities (cannibalism, necrophilia, exploitation of children, swindling the elderly and handicapped, etc)? Keep his name intact as the author and redistribute it. "Mashups" are good right? (All hyperbole intended)

Cory,

I think your heart is in the right place and many of the things you crusade for are "right" but the fact is your method of delivering the message is not persuasive and in fact alienates a lot of people I know of. I respect your choice to give away some your work at no cost to the end user but I dont get the idea you show respect to creators, publishers, those who apply or add value to knowledge who choose not to give it all away.

It is reasonable to say that digital goods are a service in that entertainment is a service. Whats being sold is the opportunity to experience the entertainment. Its really the same selling a physical container for the experience (CD, DVD, paperback, etc) but proponents of net.think mostly ignore this as a way to claim that "everything is different now".

I just cant swallow the koolaid on most of this thinking. Even something thats given away costs something to make available and whether or not DRM reduces value is a subjective matter to which not everyone agrees. Zero cost to customer trials of product have been around for ages with the assumption that the loss leader will demonstrate the quality/value of the product and lead to later sales. Even Yahoo/Google arent really giving away anything for free, just like the TV networks, they are making something available in exchange for the ability to present their users with advertising or the chance to gather data on their users which may be sold on at a later date.

To my eyes Chris Anderson doesnt really have a great track record on the topic of reality based economics, but I'll see where this goes, if it is really an exploration of ideas or just more koolaid

Maybe in the long run I'll have egg on my face for thinking this kind of thing, but if that day comes I'll be the first to admit I was wrong.

@#41 Teresa

Best description I've read on the matter.

I got nothin to say on the moral rights and wrongs on this. Im a heavy smoker, though I no longer drink, I like going to bars (no I dont buy one drink for the whole night). If I go to a place thats non smoking its because I want to be there for a reason so I deal with it for that time period. If Im someplace thats designated as smoking permitted and someone asks me not to smoke because they brought their precious little crotchberry along, I put out my cigarette as a gesture only, realizing that this person has probably passed their stupidity along to the little tyke and whether or not I finish that particular cig wont change a thing.

Oh ye would be dissenters! Beware the heavy handed vowel thief!

contrasting viewpnts my b sbjct t lss f vwls

Remixable as in the various component audio tracks are offered up to make a new mono/stereo mixdown or remixable as in the intardnet usage of editable?

More histrionics please. FLV hardly lends itself to editing(1) to begin with and as others pointed out grew in popularity due to the ease of use for the viewer rather than anything else.

(1) Please note that "remixing" and "editing" are not the same thing. If you have trouble with this concept please consult your local audio professional to have them demonstrate the differences.

Copyfight eh? I must be missing something since the concept of version has been part of JA music history for decades now. Dont believe the hype that all that went down as some rights holder rebellion either, just follow the money and see who got paid (Juno Lawes, Bunny Lee) when and who died for the master tapes (King Tubby). Nowadays the money goes to Greensleves or Trojan but the song remains the same.

Thats a piece of Garvey history I havent seen before. Nice that!

One giant cockroach got squashed and now a million baby cockroaches flourish. Whether the Russians call it legal or not, what I know is they sell my music and dont pay me. Just about every small reggae producer/label guy I know is having the same problems with the Russians. allofmp3.com may be gone but now theres more sites than I can keep track of doing the same thing and they all point back to Russia.

Some people sure do care alot about politics in places where they cant or dont vote.

As said before do not use one of these on a record you care at all about.

@9 You forgot the Numark PT01.

By now we know it was all a hoax, nothing but a male Cinderella fairy tale to line the pockets of various publishers, movie and video distribution companies and Fuji TV.

Wonder why no one mentioned the "moral rights of the author" aspect? Or am I simply asking a question thats been hashed out here before?

Mark @139

I stand corrected. Anyway its still a clever song about how we all gotta grow up sooner or later now innit?

David Byrne is a smart, nice guy for sure, but he's just that, not an object of worship by a long stretch. I care no more about this one than if he were to write something about the consistency of his bowel movements.

Not all the comments got restored, but I will once again attempt to compare this to a bar mitzvah for BoingBoing and offer my congratulations to them.

Readers of a certain age may remember this bit from The Clash song "Death or Glory":

Every cheap hood makes a bargain with the world and ends up making payments on a sofa or a girl

I remain unimpressed by Kelly.

Why is this tagged copyfght?

Teresa,

The comment in this page wasnt addressed to Cory at all. I found something I missed from awhile ago and replied. If theres a time limit on replies, why not have the server close the feature after X amount of days? Aside from that, your comment is about as worthwhile as someone asking if you are on the rag for replying out of context.

So all of that considered, why in gods name don't more artists do things this way?!?!

Because very few have the existing financial (studio time, production services, etc) and promotional support of already famous people like Trent Renzor. Self releases are not in any way the gateway to fame and riches (or even recouping costs) that some folk might have you believe.

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sspct thrs rsn y cn nly shll ths srt f bllcrp t tchnlgy pblctns nd tht n pblctns fr mscns, ctrs, flm mkrs, ngnrs r prdcrs wll pblsh yr wrk.

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Mr hyprbl frm Cry bsd n nprvn ssmptns.

I did recall a semi functional example of personalization: in the reggae music world, the norm is for singers & players to do "work for hire" receiving a one time payment for recording a song for a producer. Popular vocalists sometimes supplement their income by recording "specials" for sound systems (a sound system is equivalent to a "DJ" and equipment plus the people who operate the equipment). The "special" is where the vocalist praises the sound system by name. These unique recordings are used in "sound clashes" (essentially popularity contests between multiple sound systems).

Once again however, this does not scale meaningfully. These personalized tracks must be recorded over an already popular "riddim" (music bed of a song) to be of any use. As mentioned above producers are the ones who fund the creation of new riddims and the money for this comes from sales of recordings. No sales, no new music (or certainly a great reduction). No new popular riddims, less work for vocalists. This is already happening in Jamaica.

Brit,

Regarding games and embodiment, in Korea at least people actually do gather to watch someone else play games. Otherwise I'm pretty much in agreement with you that the article was mostly techno utopian hot air.

Antinous,

until the next technological advance knocks everybody down

The problem of piracy is not a technological one its a problem of ethics and morals. There just isnt a way to justify around it. We are not born with a god given right to be entertained or to have everything our little hearts desire. None of the "free culutre" blather or "information wants to be free" crap changes that.

As you say, most businesses fail, but overall industries do adapt and go on. There isnt that big of a market for buggy whips but there are plenty of companies providing accessories for the personal and commercial vehicle industry. The recorded music industry has changed in many ways over the last 20 years or so and will continue to change. I wouldnt give good odds to subscriptions or personalization being a big part of the future though.

I listed some business reasons why doesnt scale well enough to be a really viable model, lets see what Outerjohn comes up with.

Antinous,

Why can't a musician sign a contract to produce twenty songs to be released every week or so?

That was kind of my point with the Sony Music salarymen. There are a few problems with this idea relating to scale however. Music as a trade is at least as technical as many IT jobs. To do it at the level where you can put out 20 market worthy tracks a week that are not all remixes or variations on a theme takes alot of talent and discipline. You have to be able to play several instruments in a variety of styles and keep your chops current with market tastes.

There are not so many musicians who can work on that level. Realistically you cant pay them by the piece you have to pay them salary. To run that sort of production shop you need a few of them on staff, so in addition to salary you have all the associated employment costs, insurance, taxes, etc. About the only way to support this is to deliver mass market product to a corporate distribution infrastructure, or in short, the standard Hit Parade or backing music for commercials, grocery stores and dentists offices.

What happens in these cases is not so different from the old Tin Pan Alley system, its just larger and better organized.

Takuan,

How much would I pay to have my beloved's favourite musician do a custom birthday piece?

Well tell us please, how much would you pay? The rich still commission famous musicians to do new works or performances for special occasions. Costs run from 5 to 7 digits in USD. Your local bar band can be hired to cover The Beatles version of Happy Birthday for much less. Heck you could just go down to your favorite Mexican resteraunt and slip the leader of the mariachi band a Jackson to play something special for your sweetie. Whether were talking Elton John or Bar Band, in both cases the extra income is nice but its not really a way to make a living.

The truth is 99% of the listeners dont want a custom personalized song, they want to enjoy the song that all their friends enjoy or that they already know, thats why we still go listen to cover bands at bars or pay outrageous money to hear the Rolling Stones play their best hits of the last 30 years. Sure people need something new, but I've yet to meet someone who listens to nothing but new music.

@52

Most people settle for distressingly low quality in cultural products.

Good to see elitism is alive and well! How's your latest symphony going? Seriously though, most music isnt art by any stretch of the imagination nor are most musicians or performers artists. The mass market stuff is entertainment and believe it or not songs about beer drinking and lust are just as much cultural artifacts as the Ode to Joy.

As for your hatin' on "large, soulless, greedy corporate users," dont forget that even those people have families and children to feed ^_^

@53

They have cable radio subscriptions here in Japan. Its a few hundred channels of pre-programmed playlists that are mostly hit rotation just like any Clear Channel radio station in the US. And its not any better for the musicians because theres a separately negotiated royalty rate. Then again most musicians for the big labels here work on a very twisted salary system from their management agencies and dont end up ever seeing much in the way of direct royalty payments anyways.

I know some guys who work for Sony Music whose 9 to 5 is to go in every day and lay down tracks in the style thats on the day's work orders. Of course the downside to this is they are subject to layoffs just like anyone else with a job.

@45

You described aspects of Findability but those are not "producer" things as much as distributor/retail things. The distinction is important.

@#37

Some small labels are essentially co-ops, allowing one or more musicians or groups to share the working knowledge required to get something out there. The label I work with is like that.

I've got a pretty simple definition of a "lost sale". I believe that we are essentially selling the experience of hearing the music, not the delivery vehicle. If someone obtains a copy of the vehicle without paying and chooses to experience it more than once, thats a lost sale.

So basically, the person who downloads once and never listens or listens once and deletes is not a lost sale, they got no value. The person who downloads and puts it on their portable player and listens X amount of times, thats a lost sale.

I refuse to split hairs about hearing the song on the radio or checking it out from the library or a mix tape from a friend. Thats about fair use, discussion of lost sales is about transactions.

@#38

Whose this "we" you are talking about? The "we" I'm involved with sells records to distributors & stores and contracts with various digital resellers and has no illusions of changing the world but wishes we didnt get ripped off so much.

Also not sure why you conflate the NSA, AT&T and Sony into this since question as I understand it is really does the Better Than Free article offer any real insights.

@#1,15

Either of you guys ever hear of a double ended 1/8" stereo cable? Thats how I've always imported minidisc audio into a computer. If you were recording to MD in the first place, perfect fidelity wasnt your priority so one stage of DA2AD isnt going to kill you.

---

So a format is being abandoned, big deal. I'm sure anyone who ever put money into media on 8 track, DCC, Quadrophonic records, Laser Disc (not to mention the 3 or 4 other large format variant video disk systems) or even Betamax felt like complaining as well but its not that big of a deal.

I like my Kaossilator alot. Its not the be all and end all of synths, but it is fun to use and the included sounds & patterns are musically useful as long as you want Korg's techno-ish flavor.

I dont find it enough on its own to build entire tracks that are more than novelty, but on its own its good enough to sketch out ideas or build up loops for later studio work. Also like the big Kaoss Pad and KP Mini, its a fun thing to have in your DJ toolkit.

@Elnico,

No MIDI, no save after power off, no editing of sound/pattern parameters. Still worth the money to me.

@The Reverend #35

Please dont confuse your personal CD buying habits with the habits of others. Personally, I'd love to see "hard facts" in this area but all I've seen to date is puff pieces on the pro piracy sites.

As far as your claim of indie labels gaining market share at the expense of the majors, theres no doubt that a few labels are showing growth but there are many possible reasons.

My experience running a small label that does not compete with the majors since we serve a genre they dont has been that we do loose sales to illegal copies, DJ mix CDs and Russian MP3 sales sites. In the same genre, I've heard the same complaints from every other small label owner I've talked to.

Truth is indies have a much harder time getting product in front of customers. Even the Internet is not a complete replacement for having your CD/record/tape right there in front of the customer when they got money in hand and are ready to buy. That plus the fact that unless you can cut a deal with an aggregator or direct with large online retail, the costs of doing your own payments processing can be prohibitive, especially outside the US.
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In regards to the article itself, I dont see anything new said there. Every one of those aspects has been done in one form or another by sales campaigns in many industries for many years now, yes, even in the music business. Dont much see how any of it relates to smaller content creators or companies without big number budgets to perform those services.

re #32

Sometimes different mixes are done for different purposes. The same track might be mixed differently for normal release than for inclusion in a videogame or film. As long as the client is paying, the engineer will make as many mixes as they want!

re #40

actually, one does have to mix (or master) differently for vinyl than for digital due to how records work physically. See http://www.urpressing.com/advice.html and http://www.urpressing.com/tips.html

Also, I've mixed & produced alot of music in my day and can attest to the crappy speaker check.

No one here has yet mentioned the "club speaker check". Back in the day that meant getting a dubplate of your tune cut and taking out to local club DJs to hear how it would sound, lately I've seen people do as many as 10 different club mixes since burning them to CD-R costs almost nothing.

Antinous,

Its not like I'm trying to hold back the tides with a bucket, but a sea change in business models does not change right from wrong. Sure the old model is corrupt, but its still the guys & gals doing the actual work who get the shaft, only now even more so.

I'm not fool enough to expect to make a living only by putting out niche records but I do want to loose as little as possible on them. One thing thats worked reasonably well is to have records for sale at clubs & shows where one of us is DJ'ing or playing. We give a nicely printed CD-R of the tunes with the purchase of the record so even people without turntables can enjoy the music. They wouldn't buy a CD-R with only a few songs, but if it comes with a physical thing that they can enjoy looking at or touching which evokes the spirit of the music, it does seem to increase sales. Its not practical to extend this idea to distributors and retail, but every little bit helps. We also do bonus mixes for tunes which go to online digital sales. Not sure if thats helping or not, but the time required to make one more mix is not going to kill me.

My comment before in this thread is just to support the original poster's point that too much of Cory's "copyfight" stuff involves a lot of handwaving which amounts to quasi-justification of theft. The good points about fair use & CC get lost amongst all the screechy anti-DRM and outright celebrations of piracy.

@Brit #11

So often I think I'm the only one who smells bullshit around the whole copyfight meme. Glad its not just me.

@Antinous

Thanks for clearing those things up. I misunderstood the use of "orphaned".

@Teresa #60

For me personally, a lost sale is a downloader who keeps the file and listens to it more than once. Might seem too strict, but realistically someone who just listens once and deletes or leaves the file to clutter up their disk, well they did get the experience w/o compensation but got no value, so I cant loose sleep over them. The person who got some value, enjoyed the experience repeatedly but didnt compensate, I'd be happier if they'd paid.

Also I think I made it quite clear that we do make digital product available for those who dont own a turntable. We do make effort to deliver the experience the customer wants and try as best we can to keep the price reasonable.

As a person involved in publishing fiction, I think you know the common factor is that the product of the business is an experience rather than the delivery package.

In any case as Prinzhal pointed out in #62, our back end costs dont go away. The up front setup costs of building a small studio are much smaller today than they were 10 or 20 years ago, but its still not free and we still sometimes have to go rent time at a large studio when we need features or equipment we dont own. Singers & players outside of our in house talent arent free. The time involved (not even counting the time to learn the skills required) isnt "free" and sometimes not freely given (believe it or not, some people really would rather spend time with their family than playing the same horn part over and over until 2AM).

Anyways, good luck to Gama Go and their efforts to sell their product no matter how despicable I find the message of the product to be.

@ANTINOUS #35,

Its interesting to me that no one objects very much to the idea that there is a cost to making a quality shirt but people object to the idea of the cost of making and distributing music.

I'm part of running a small record label and I engineer & produce for other small labels. We release on vinyl and then to various digital stores in that order. Its a niche genre and vinyl is what our customers say they want. Of course our material ends up on the pirate file sharing networks or the russian MP3 sale sites. I've had people come up to me and tell me how much they like our tunes that they admit they downloaded.

Of course it costs us to build and maintain studio equipment & instruments and bands and singers dont work for free, but somehow people feel entitled to consume the experience of listening to our music without paying. Were someone to copy this same shirt and give em away or sell em for half the price, I'd bet my bottom dollar that the crowd here would be all up in arms like that guy who copied the art of various webcomics artists.

The old "home taping is killing music" was hyperbole, but its not unreasonable to say that piracy networks are killing labels both big and small. Some would say that we shouldnt release physical product, just digital only to save costs, but DJs and lots of fans in our genre still want vinyl. Are we supposed to ignore our customers wishes? Still costs us to make the music in the first place.

Sharing a tune you like with your hand full of best friends results in negligible loss. Putting songs on p2p networks for the whole world, well I can say I've seen the impact for myself.

So #35 wasnt orphaned, but the obvious parallel seems to have been.