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POPSIN-07: Indy Star Endorses Jon Elrod I am truly stunned. This is shock and awe like I have never seen anywhere before. I am pleased to see the editorial staff of America's Worst Newspaper The Indianapolis Star "grew a pair" (h/t Ruth Holladay) and defied the Carson Machine to endorse Jon Elrod for the Special Election this Tuesday. I will not go so far as to officially endorse Jon Elrod over Andre Carson, but I do recommend that Democrats who oppose Andre Carson cannot in good conscience go to the polls on Tuesday. Save your votes for the Primary fight in May. May the best candidate win the Primary.
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POPSUnited Technologies To Buy Diebold The company that makes a large percentage of the voting machines sold in the United States, Diebold, is being acquired by the company that makes a large percentage of the military hardware used by the United States, United Technologies, such as Black Hawk and Comanche helicopters, Pratt & Whitney aircraft and spacecraft engines and British electronic security exxperts Chubb, Ltd. Maybe UT will figure out a way to secure the voting machines using some of theri Chubb, Ltd. technologies. Then again, does it really matter when a member of Big Finance (Diebold) gets sold to a member of Big Guns (UT)?
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POPSNew Nine Inch Nails Album Released Online Yet another brilliant move by a musician who knows his market. NIN's Trent Reznor has seeded The Pirate Bay and several other torrent sites with the first 9 tracks off his new 4 disc set entitled Ghosts, a 2 + hour collection of instrumental collaborations with his band and guests recorded over 10 days last fall and now available online. The first 9 song disc, Ghosts I have been seeded by Reznor himself on the popular torrent sites, and the entire 36 track compilatioin with a 40 page PDF of extras and other digital goodies is available directly from http://ghosts.nin.com for $5. $10 will get you the 2 CD set shipping April 8th and there are options for more goodies for the die hard fans. Yet another fine example of how artists can make it in the music business 2.0 world!
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POPSRIP Music Business 1.0 1876-2008 Today in New York, 500 music company executives gathered for a historic conference at which the music business as we have come to know it was declared dead. Born in 1876 with the introduction of player piano rolls, the recording industry has fallen on rough times in the face of digital competition. Consider that the following statements were made at this gathering which were uncontroversial and would have been considered heresy mere months ago: * DRM on purchased music is dead * A utility pricing model or flat-rate fee for music might be the way to go * Ad-supported streaming music sites like iMeem are legitimate players * Indie music accounts for upwards of 30 percent of music sales * Napster isn't losing $70 million per quarter (and is breaking even) * The music business is a bastion of creativity and experimentation The recording industry was 132 years old and is survived by thousands of digital music companies, independent musicians and geeks lik
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POPSHappy Blogiversary Danger Room I have nearly 300 blog feeds in Google Reader, but I don't read all of them every day. I do read about 75 a day though, and one of those blogs that I read every update from is WIRED magazine's Danger Room blog who are celebrating their first anniversary as of yesterday. Danger Room is one of the best resources on the web for the latest news from the national security war biz and our burgeoning police state. The coverage there is non partisan, just the facts style coverage of the personalities, events, developments and goings on of the Defense Department and Homeland Security establishments. Happy Blogiversary to Noah Schactman and his cohorts for bringing us a fantastic resource.
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POPSSha Na Na Frontman Testifies Before Indiana House It seems the frontman for the doo wop group Sha Na Na, Jon "Bowzer" Bauman, has been visiting state legislatures all over the country to testify in favor of legislation protecting the names of classic singing groups such as his own. Indiana Senate Bill 192 would prohibit performers from posing as another performer in a live performance, making it a Class A misdemeanor. This bill seems aimed squarely at so-called "tribute" bands who perform the catalog of hits from established artists of yesteryear, often times even dressing the part of the original performer. This to me sounds like a law in search of a problem. Tribute bands have been around for a long time and have carved a niche in the dinner theater and casino lounge circuits mostly. Most of them clearly identify themselves as tribute acts in their advertising and no one has ever filed a complaint that I am aware of that Lez Zeppelin deceived them into thinking they were Led Zeppelin.
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POPSMySpace Set to Debut Music Service This could be a significant development for ad-supported free music service fans. MySpace, with millions of users, could provide a huge new market for the Big Four labels. What this will do to the thousands of independent bands who use MySpace as a promotional platform is left out of the discussion apparently.
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POPSFidel Castro Resigns Cuban President Fidel Castro resigned his post today in a letter published in the official Cuban newspaper Granma. This comes as a surprise announcement from the dictator that grabbed power in the New Year's Day 1959 uprising that toppled the regime of General Fulgencio Batista. I've always longhed for the day that the Cuban people would be rid of this monstrous human being. I know there are a lot of people in this country who point to the Cuban health care system and universal literacy as positives in his favor, but the level of hypocrisy displayed by these sentiments are astounding. Any Cuban who dares speak against the Revolution loses their health and literacy when they are brutally murdered by this regime. Not a positive thing if you ask me.
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POPSCD Sales Still A Brisk Business For Some
From Idolator, we have short but sweet post about a small indie record store still succeeding in Green Bay, WI. I have heard other reports of indie record stores still doing well despite the wider turn in the business as a whole. As the indie stores find their way forward it shouldn't surprise anyone that recorded music is still a tactile experience for many fans. Downloads of the legal or illegal variety are great for listening to new music or out of print classics you can't find anymore, but for real fans they want to hold the CD in their hands, read the liner notes and look at the photos in the inner sleeve. Lesson learned: never forget music is an experiential business. Fans still want to experience a connection with their favorite artists. This is why the live music business is still so vital and healthy, that experience at the show and the ticket stub and tshirt to go with it can never be downloaded, neither can the CD case with liner notes.
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POPSAnother Wacky Court Ruling There has been no shortage of wacky court rulings in recent years regarding what is or isn't copyright infringement, but this latest case profiled in Techdirt takes the cake. I clipmarked the first paragraph from the article below but you have got to read the whole piece to let the real outrage burn into your head. This ruling puts into question whether an entire industry segment, the second hand CD/DVD market, is engaging in wholesale copyright fraud.
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POPSI Got Friends I love it when my blog buddies send me cool stuff to share with everyone. Robert Rouse of Left of Centrist sent me a video today that I had to share with my other buddy Howie Klein of Down With Tyranny and FireDogLake's Blue America. Howie of course jumped right on it with the following post.
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POPSThank You WIRED! Thank you to everybody stopping in at DonitaSparks.com who saw the WIRED article on Wednesday February 13th! Be sure to check out the rest of our site, especially our store where you can order a signed copy of Transmiticate, releasing nationwide February 19th, 2008!
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POPSOpenID Going Mainstream I am a big fan of the OpenID project and hope to implement it in the near future on my projects that will benefit from using this technology.
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POPSScorsese to Direct Bob Marley Biopic Martin Scorsese has announced he is working on a documentary of the life of reggae king Bob Marley. The film will debut on February 6, 2010, the date Marley would have turned 65 had he lived to see it.
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POPSPut Me In Coach! I've talked to a number of folks this week who are echoing some of the sentiments mentioned in this article from IndyStar.com about the Land of Indians actually getting to be a player in the selection of the Democratic nominee for President this year. People who I've known for a long time who I KNOW never vote in the primary are checking their voter registrations twice to make sure they are eligible to vote and are practically salivating at the prospect of having their vote count for something. My man Chris Dodd dropped out long ago so I am a bit less excited at getting to choose between the Exelon/Consolidated Edison candidate or the Walmart candidate. While every other Democrat I know are licking their chops in anticipation at having a Real! Live! Democrat! in the Carlyle Group Home on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC, I am beginning to get a sinking feeling in my gut that the next four years will be the wildest ride yet this nation has experienced regardless of the President's last nam
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POPSBlogging Your Way To the Top of the Charts The idea that "online chatter" leads to increased album sales has been a long held belief by some of us in the music business, but until now a definitive study to determine if that meme was true had not taken place. Turns out the digirati were right according to this article.
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POPSFSM In the News Since converting from Christian Deism to Flying Spaghetti Monsterism last year I have found my fellow Pastafarians and I are being discriminated against in some unlikely places. YouTube has banned the user account of an FSM evangelist, and MySpace has even shuttered certain accounts of FSM devotees. Have I managed to convert just in time for a backlash against our faith? Will Pastafarians unite in a Pirate Jihad? These questions and more get answered in the following videos found on BoingBoing.
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POPSBonnaroo Lineup Announced The headline in the feed reader from Yahoo News/AP said Led Zeppelin would be headlining, but it looks like in reality the closest Bonnaroo attendees will get to that show is a set by the all female tribute band Lez Zeppelin.
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POPSZazzle Goes Hollywood Zazzle is an interesting on demand printer who has made some inroads in recent months into the online music scene. This deal with Hollywood Records ought to go a ways further to attract more musicians and bands to use their service.
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POPSAnother Democrat Enters 7th District Primary Fray Frances Nelson Williams is a faith based community leader and domestic violence awareness advocate who is the staff chaplain for Methodist Hospital. She filed for the Democratic primary in May, joining an already crowded field of candidates, including Indiana House Representatives David Orentlicher and Carolene Mays, along with Indianapolis City-County Councilman Andre Carson.
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POPSYahoo Sells Music Service to Rhapsody Yahoo ( YHOO Unlimited Music was a service as was stated in the Techdirt piece below, a service designed to fail. They bought the wonderful MusicMatch player only to dub it down and screw it up for use as the Yahoo Unlimited player, and now they are selling their subscriber base to Rhapsody owned by Real Networks , the clear leader in the music subscriptions category.
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POPSU2 To Stay Put with Universal The Internet rumors were flying recently that U2 would soon be leaving Universal Music Group ( VIV ) to head to greener pastures at Live Nation ( LYV ). Turns out that was not quite true.
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POPSLet's Make A Deal I'm with MBH on this one. Oh lord, I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but it seems teh Interwebtoobz are all a-Twittering about the possibility of a Brokered Convention. Well the only convention I will be attending this year is a Brokeass Convention where the delegates all pool their loose change to buy a slice of pizza and a can of Coke to split 10 ways. Anywho, it looks like Indiana might actually play a role in the selection of our Presidential nomination for a change. This has never happened in my lifetime of 36 years and it is a rare thing. I only hope we can all come together in the fall to elect whoever the Democratic nominee is.
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POPSSibel Edmonds Was Right Sibel Edmonds has spent the last several years trying to raise alarms about a plot by Turkish and Israeli intelligence to gain access to secret US nuclear technology that she uncovered while working as a translator for the FBI in the months after 9/11. Turns out she was right and the evidence is starting to come out.
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POPSLawfare Thats a new term for me, but RollingStone has a great article on their website about the proliferation of Federal Joint Terrorism Task Forces, or JTTFs across the country. JTTFs are kind of like Federal agent Superfriends for ever city or region lucky to have goonsquads. Their specialty seems to be in setting up would-be dangerous terrrrrists like the hapless video game store clerk from Rockford, IL who was intent on using those vaunted Weapons of Mass Destruction known as hand grenades to blow up food court trash canisters to have a shrapnel effect when they blow up. I'm not making this up folks, read the article!
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