The Invasion of the Pod Snatchers; On the future of podcasting.
I wrote on the podcasting mailing list yesterday in a long thread Re: 'Podcasting - is it radio, audio blogging, both?';
How much of this is going to be like the web was, or blogs are becoming? I.e. the corporates will move in with their big budgets and then suddenly 2004-2005 style personal broadcasting seem so ... quaint?
[ . . . ]
One thing that needs to happen is someway for the player devices and software to link the downloaded content file with the original information and meta-data about that content, so that for example, textual information, links to other materials, and so on can be included in the podcasted environment for the user to utilise. Unfortunately none of the podcatchers appear to do anything about this and certainly none of the players support it, but it is a conceiveable development path.
Someone responded to a point about the RSS enclosure and subscriptions mechanisms, and said that the problem is that at the moment the whole thing is just way too geeky for the average Jane or Joe.
I responded;
Yes, I would fully expect that if this is going to become a mass movement, that iTunes and Windows Media Player would have to include fully functional and mostly pre-configured podcatcher clients inside them, from the factory. Or that plugins are easily downloaded or something.
The problem then will be for podcasters, how to prise the audience away from their now preset-from-the-factory channels! The problem of the media conglomerates again.
Then just now I found this post by Ross Rader from a week ago. Key quote;
... I am left without any doubts that Windows Media Player 11 must include a fully integrated OPML directory browser and and RSS parser - i.e. a built in Podcatcher.
Yep, I must have asorbed that part by osmosis or something. Prepare for The Invasion of the Podsnatchers.
Closing the loop: iTunes music store the reason people will buy iPod shuffle?
It's been suggested by JohnQ (-/206.72.88.132) that the reason people will flock to the iPod shuffle is that it's the only solid state memory player that will support the DRM found in files bought from Apple iTunes Music Store. I would suggest at the moment that it's the iPod driving demand for the store, e.g. consumer lusts after some iPod bling bling, buys iPod and thereafter discovers the joys of iTunes. After all if they want to buy downloaded music (i.e. the type usually encoded with rights management 'protection') they pretty much have no choice but to use iTunes. Now I suppose that the many iPod users who have bought songs from iTunes and want to listen to those songs while they work out at the gym or jog in the park will no choice but to buy the iPod shuffle. But this sounds an awfully familiar and closed-loop system. At every point in the purchasing equation you've got no choice but to go back to the same source.
So how much does closed-loop music ecology will Apple demand? Will they buy Apple Corps out (the original Apple music label, the record company of the Beatles in case you're not familiar) and become a record label? Does this smell like Sony or what? Content, format and players. What lengths will Apple go to in order to prevent its customers from playing back their content on anything but Apple software and portable players?
Wake up The Caution is coming (mp3)
'The Caution', another Now Zero track, is on disc two of the 1992 Volition Records compilation 'High'. Credits: "Written by Lawler/Steel/Mcphee. Produced and mixed by Scot Art and Stewart Lawler. Edited by Robert Racic for dB Productions." Vocals by Simm Steel. Now Zero was an attempt at electro pop; we performed this material around Sydney venues 1990-1993.
TO DOWNLOAD: As usual, click the "attachment" link on this entry if you are viewing the HTML web page - or use a podcasting client RSS feed of the blog to get automated downloads of any new music placed on this website. See www.ipodder.org for more info about podcasting and podcasting clients.
I can feel it falling (mp3)
This track, 'Falling' by Now Zero, an old band of mine dating from 1990 to 1995, is from the Volition Records compilation, 'High', released 1992. Credits: "Written Lawler/Steel/Mcphee. Produced and Mixed by Scot Art. Thanks to Paul Bolger Jason Gee and Chris Basset." Recorded and mixed on a Tascam 688 8-track home studio cassette multitracker. Vocals by Simm Steel. This was one of the first tracks we ever wrote in the studio at the Palmer Street squat. Midi sequencing on an MC500 and analogue sequencing with an MC202.
TO DOWNLOAD: As usual, click the "attachment" link on this entry if you are viewing the HTML web page - or use a podcasting client RSS feed of the blog to get automated downloads of any new music placed on this website. See www.ipodder.org for more info about podcasting and podcasting clients.
iPod Shuffle fashions
The iPod Shuffle is only the first blip of much larger phenonema still coming to us. Apple's foothold here is much less secure than in the hard drive player market.
With a shuffle-triggered price war looming in the memory player market it is pretty simple to ask yourself who has the lower overhead. The real expense of the machine is probably the design effort and tooling to make the object. The computer hardware is only a moderate part of the cost. While a jog or gym player with music on it you don't really need a screen, but if you scale to 5GB and you do. I think the solid state player market is harder for Apple as they are not market establishers in that field. The smaller-cheaper player market has already got players and shakers that have a better opportunity to compete as they don't have to play catch up. There's some expensive and nice iRivers that will probably halve in cost the next six months. The only way for Apple to compete with them is to use their design experience and move the item into becoming a fashion necklace, a piece of jewelry or a branded clothing accessory. And then their competitors change.
The next level is fashionable aftermarket accessories. Expect more bling - probably Armani and Adidas are Apple's competitors. Apple will enter the fashion market - a market it already knows how to operate in. Just what I've said about it in the first place. But Rio will come cheap for Adidas.
Expect movement in Tom Ford's spring collection this season. Carting your entire collection around is entirely another thing. Apple will rule supreme for a little while longer. Karl Lagerfeld already has sets of porters carrying his exuberance of ipods around in his latest pod luggage collection. Lines of coolies to load them into the boot of his mercedes. Airlines are demanding excess baggage. It's just FRIGHTFUL!?, darling. Imagine.
iPod shuffle
I think the iPod Shuffle is a piece of junk and Job's comments, as always, when introducing it are completely risible. Complete spin that only a complete jackass would swallow whole.
This 'no screen' bullshit is hilarious. Lisa has a flash player and it can show her a small window on the list of tracks and thus is perfectly useful for locating to play that track she wants to listen to. Jobs' comments about the other players in this space are way out of line.
Also all of his players have inferior sound quality. The iPod has some redeeming features but only a moron would buy this piece of shit.
But then this opinion is written by someone who thinks that iTunes is a totally evil play to control the music retail market and the iPod is just a way to capture that market. That's why they won't let anyone else in that space or operate their players with iTunes or sell their DRM algorithm to any other retail outlet (something Microsoft has done). As a music producer, it's the most terrifying thing I've seen since Palladium. Soon enough I will be forced to deal with a monopoly distribution outlet with more power than any record company ever had. I'd sooner give everything away than deal with the Scientology of the computer world.
But their new flash player has no redeeming features. Whatever.
Cheese Please Mister Wheeze (mp3)
An electro wig-out with four types of cheese; 80s influences really showing here. Just a bit of fun, really, without trying to be too serious.
If you don't have podcast client software installed you can just click on the 'attachment' link at the bottom right of this entry. If you are reading this from a news aggregator of some type that doesn't support enclosures, visit the blog entry to get the link. Copyright 2004-2005 Victor X-Ray. Commercial use prohibited.
Warehouse squatter war story
Tim Bray on podcasting - "I still think the killer app is music"
Tim Bray comments on podcasting - a very interesting read. For one he pays out on Adam Curry (one of the two big cheeses of podcasting), but the meat of the piece is that Tim think that the killer app for podcasting is still music. Being a music podcaster, I completely agree with him. And when Tim says "So I’m still waiting for musicians to start podcasting to route around the wasteland of commercial music radio," he should note that some of us already are! Yes it's damn easy now as plenty of blogging software supports the necessary RSS tag, and the potential listenership is definitely growing.
(Tim should note however, before he goes too far into podcasting, that using music without permission in your podcast - even as 'background music' - still breaches several copyrights in the recorded work. DAC Cromwell's label, Magnatunes, even has an easy 'licence this music' link off their artists' pages).
Audacity and podcasting, or, the attack of the 50ft professional
In reference to Julian Knowle's critique of Audacity, a few people have remarked to me that Audacity is really coming from the very low end 'beginner' base - the sort of people, non-professionals mostly, who are really getting into making podcasts.
Well, I'm not going to argue with that, it is after all Audacity's target market. There's been an excellent exchange in the comments between Matt Brubeck one of the Audacity developers and Julian, who wrote the review. As I said, Julian's critique is really from a professional's point of view. But why is this important?
Sooner or later, though, if podcasting is all it's cracked up to be, there will be a handful of people here who will end up making some sort of living - or at least recognition - out of it. And if it's that successfull, then you'll find that there's a whole bunch of audio professionals who'll get in on the game. Already, with the whole engadget crowd on the bandwagon, it's attracting some serious interest.
I think at points of disruption like this, is an opportunity for new softwares to displace the old. The 'old' here being Pro Tools and it's completely closed world view of the universe. So Audacity, if it gets it's act together, can capture a nascent market. Perhaps after it fixes its basic editing capacities it should add a 'publish podcast' feature which uses XML/RPC Metaweblog API to send the resulting audio mix to a podcast/blog server.
But in order to do this they have to able to capture the low end of the professional market. Because if this podcasting thing's got any legs then it's about one or two years (or less) before the professional market reaches us. Which is why I'm looking at using it for music publishing, as opposed to an offline talk-radio format apparently favored by most podcasters. In many ways, I'm the *vanguard* of that professional market, looking to outplay my bigger and slower competitors in a virgin territory.
Audacity's capacities (for audio editing)
In a music mailing list I'm on, a senior music and sound design lecturer and active musician has been discussing his evaluation of various open source tools for use in their university studio and labs. His report about Audacity was absolutely scathing. The key quote I think is "I would find this tool almost impossible to deploy into even a beginner's lab, as it lacks the simple features which allow people to grasp some of the basic principles of non-linear audio editing and production." It appears that open source audio software has a fair way to go before it truly competes with professional editors like Pro Tools or Nuendo. Maybe you do simply, get what you pay for.
Reproduced below with permission.
From: Julian Knowles <xxxxxxxxxxxxx@mac.com>
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 5:31:40 PM Australia/SydneyAfter this morning's email reading, I was genuinely enthused to do the rounds of the open source community in a renewed search for an audio editor/production environment which could at least be a viable substitute at the low end for teaching purposes. I seriously want to find one.
I downloaded 'Audacity', because open source geek friends keep telling me that it's 'great'.. It is platform agnostic, open-source, free, and supports VST plugins.... Sounds good so far.. I then spent the last 2 hours mucking around with it.
Man... what a disappointment. It has about the same level of functionality as SoundEdit 16 on a Mac from the early to mid nineties, albeit with proper undo. Here are some of its limitations
1) No real-time FX.... only file based processing with a 2-3 second preview. GUIs for VST plugins also not working at present, resulting in very non-intuitive parameter lists and generic faders.
2) No 'region' capturing, or clip based editing... you have to chop into the waveform and do copy/pastes to make a simple loop.. no way of slipping clips around in a track - you can only slip the whole track in time.... very SoundEdit 16, very primitive, unusable.
3) Every time you import a new audio file, Audacity creates a new track. This is annoying. There is no 'audio clips bin' like most basic editors and no dragging and dropping of clips into the timeline from a 'library', which is a fairly basic requirement for any sort of editing.
4) You can cut and paste selected audio from one track to another, but when you paste, Audacity automatically butts the copied audio up against the previous and you are not able to paste at a point beyond the end of the previous audio, nor slip the pasted audio in the timeline after you have pasted it. The only way of creating a gap between the previous audio and the audio you wish to paste is to 'generate silence' from a menu before pasting. Once you have done this, you still can't easily vary the silence gap or slip the position of the pasted audio. To shorten the gap (bring the pasted clip earlier in the session) you have to select some silence and 'delete' it.... then the pasted clip slips back closer to the previous.... You can't do proper editing this way and you will end up tearing your hair out fairly swiftly!!
5) There is no such thing as a cross-fade edit in a track. This makes cutting and pasting audio between tracks unworkable. To achieve cross-fades (even small ones) you need to use two tracks and write volume automation on the outgoing and incoming audio. I cannot see how you are able to do any real editing in this kind of environment. Even simple 2 track editing becomes difficult.
6) No video clip import/sync
7) No midi file editing or playback, or support for VST instruments
8) A frustratingly clunky volume automation editor, where you can't nail the break points properly without zooming in to micro level.
9) No decent navigation keyboard shortcuts, like for example jumping to the beginning or end of a selection when zoomed in, or parking the cursor at the end of a clip etc... or selecting from a point to the beginning or end of a clip. The basic editing necessities aren't there - you need basic keyboard shortcuts for navigation and selection... if you are expected to shift click, drag and zoom everything, you will go completely crazy in a short space of time.
I then went to the Audacity Wiki server to look at some of the discussion... There is a development wishlist, which seems to be arse about with some of the basic issues above not even appearing... There are also occasional examples of excessive hubris such as this Audacity developers statement about Pro Tools in the comparisons page - "[pro tools is] Cumbersome at times, but the basic functions of Audacity closely emulate those of Pro Tools",
I don't think so pal.... (please see list of limitations above!!!!) and i really want to believe you!
There are a couple of good things, such as support for 96khz/32bit, capacity to have files of different sample rates in a session, mp3 and ogg vorbis export, 'batch like' processing for exports and an undo history list - but that's about it.
Some may say... well what can you expect for a free, open-source tool? Well, fair enough, the price is right and the politics are too, but the truth of the matter is that I would find this tool almost impossible to deploy into even a beginner's lab, as it lacks the simple features which allow people to grasp some of the basic principles of non-linear audio editing and production. Herein lies the frustration of the exercise, I think. It is difficult to generate enthusiasm for open-source tools if the experience is a really frustrating one. As for me, I would rather use the lite version of Bias Peak over this for simple 2 track editing tasks, and i really hate Peak. I might use it for some ogg vorbis or mp3 exports.. but that would be it.
the search continues...... meanwhile the software corporations bring home the bacon.
Metaluna Monster (mp3)
metaluna monster (non-vocal mix) I'm not sure how to describe this, a little bit of drum and bass, a little bit dancehall, a little bit of electro. There is a vocal mix which I'm never getting around to mixing because some of the vocals need to be re-recorded and I just never can will myself (or convince lisa) into redoing it. Anyway enjoy this mix.
Observatory Hill Dub (mp3)
This track is called 'Observatory Hill Dub'. It is based on Augustus Pablo's 'Up Warrika Hill' - can you tell that Augustus Pablo is my favourite dub artist no? The mix and possibly the arrangement in this track are not complete, it's only a rough mix for the time being, and I'm still working on the arrangement (if you've got any advice or feedback - even 'you suck' - please dump it in the comments of this blog entry). I originally put the skeleton down for this track some months ago when I did a whole batch of reggae rhythms for my use later. More of these tracks will appear over the (southern) summer months January - February. I have been steadily learning as many dub/reggae basslines from the 'classic riddums' as they say, and recording them or transcribing to keyboard parts.
victor xray podcast feed
Thanks to Simon Brown's excellent Pebble 1.6.1 Blogging Software, 'My cummerbund fell in the toilet' now supports the RSS 2.0 enclosure tag, which I will be using to podcast new original music from Victor X-Ray, and maybe some historical pieces as well. Mainly, the podcasts will be in the Victor X-Ray Audio System category.
If you want to know more about podcasting, I suggest you visit ipodder.org or visit the podcasting group at yahoo. Point your iPodder or equivalent software at the following feed URL: http://modular.autonomous.org/pebble/scotartt/rss.xml, and it will automatically download any new Victor X-Ray material that I place on the site, ready for you to listen to when you get up in the morning (or whenever).
As a test I have attached the track 'Radiation Yes Indeed' that's included on the Clan Analogue compilation 'Doppler Shift'. Big girly chorused vocals and piano over a old-school bassline and a classic rant about the neutron bomb. Music copyright Victor Xray 2004, used with permission. Commercial distribution prohibited.If you don't have podcast client software installed you can just click on the 'attachment' link at the bottom right of this entry. If you are reading this from a news aggregator of some type that doesn't support enclosures, visit the blog entry to get the link.
Bret Easton Ellis and Andy Warhol
Housesitting here in Bondi, Lisa is reading The Andy Warhol Diaries. One of the things that strikes about this heavy tome, is the simularity between its style and Bret Easton Ellis's book Glamorama. Interestingly here I found an interview by Casey McKinney with Easton Ellis that also mentions (in part 3) this very similarity. Easton Ellis says that this influence was more apparent with Less Than Zero than Glamorama. I think though that Glamorama stands out more both for the similarity of style and subject matter:
Warhol Diaries, p49, "Tuesday June 7, 1977";
Dennis Hopper and Catherine Milinaire and Terry Southern and a photographer from Time came by. Her job was to follow Dennis around, and he wanted to come to the Factory and have her follow her there. There was just an article in Time or Newsweek on the Apocalypse Now movie that Coppola is finishing. Dennis is playing a crazed hippy photographer in it. The photographer from Time took pictures of Catherine taking pictures of Dennis taking pictures of me taking pictures of Dennis. Dennis Hopper came and was watching me photograph the nude boy, but Victor didn't know who Dennis was and threw him out.
Warhol Diaries, p49 "Thursday June 9, 1977";
Got to the St Regis at 11.30 for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League testimonial to Elizabeth Taylor. Liz and Halston weren't there yet. I met the president of Cartier. Eugenia Sheppard was there. Hermione Gingold was there. A woman who didn't even have to say she was Bob Feiden's mother came to me and said that, because she looked just like Bob Feiden but with jewelry. John Springer and Liz and Halston arrived. There were two or three Liz lookalikes there, one introduced herself to Liz. I was next to Mary Beame, the wife of Mayor Abe Beame. There were a few anti-defamation people on the dias, and Hal Prince and Mike Todd, jnr. Liv Ullmann lead the prayer, and Dianne Von Furstenberg was there. Livia Weintraub who was good-looking gave a speech about being in a concentration camp, and she ended it a plug with her new perfume, "Livia". ...
Glamorama, p6;
The "reporter" from Details stands with us. Assignment: follow me around for a week. Headline: THE MAKING OF A CLUB. Girl: push-up bra, scads of eyeliner, a Soviet sailor's cap, plastic flower jewelry, rolled up copy of W tucked under a pale, worked-out arm. Uma Thurman if Uma Thurman was five feet two and asleep. Behind her, some guy wearing a Velcro vest over a rugby shirt and a leather windjammer follows us, camcording the scene.
James Wolcott also has a series of Andy Warhol Diaries quotes from Christmas Day.
Education saves lives
From The Sydney Morning Herald (via Los Angeles Times, Agence France-Presse):
Also in Aceh, 10 Western tourists were found relatively unscathed on Weh island, 25 kilometres off Sumatra. It was one of the closest points to the epicentre.
In Britain The Sun said a 10-year-old, Tilly, holidaying with her family on Phuket's Maikhao Beach, saved hundreds when she grasped what was happening thanks to a lesson on tsunamis in the last term of school and alerted her mother.
"Last term Mr Kearney taught us about earthquakes and how they can cause tsunamis," Tilly was quoted as saying.
"I was on the beach and the water started to go funny. There were bubbles and the tide went out all of a sudden.
"I recognised what was happening and had a feeling there was going to be a tsunami," she is quoted as saying. "I told mummy."
She had raised an alert that prompted the evacuation of the beach and a hotel before the water crashed in, saving hundreds of people from death and injury.
new years eve
It got very messy: |
but nowhere near as messy as andrew: |
he managed to provoke: |
what looks like an all in brawl: |
|
but it's all in a night of good revelry. MORE HERE | |
What is a cummerbund? Why are you doing this to me?
This post's for all the google searchers out there who regularly hit on my website.
The "American Heritage Dictionary" (not normally my preferred dictionary) says;
SYLLABICATION: cum mer bund
PRONUNCIATION: kmr-bnd
NOUN: A broad sash, especially one that is pleated lengthwise and worn as an article of formal dress, as with a dinner jacket.
ETYMOLOGY: Hindi kamarband, from Persian : kamar, waist + band, band; see bund1.
So why is this blog called "My cummerbund fell in the toilet"?
It's a Simpson's quote. Barney Gumble says it, stumbling out of the toilet in the back of Moe's. It's the high school reunion episode (Lisa tells me, I can't remember these things, I'm more of a name-date-place sort of guy). If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch more TV. No just watch the Simpsons. We have observed over the years you sort people into two categories - those who watch the Simpsons, those who don't. Guess which sort of people we prefer (I don't even get how you can't NOT watch the Simpsons even if recent series have been losing their edge and many episodes are lazy and obvious, the old stuff is still GOLD).
Lisa and I usually use the phrase to indicate when one of us has done something to FUBAR the situation. Particularly when we lose something.
So one night I walked right off the gangplank
When I was in the Navy (Royal Australian Navy - RAN) in the 1980s I walked right off the fo'wd gangway one night and off the ship (a DDG air defence destroyer) onto my motorbike. I was AWOL for 4 months, although technically I was a deserter as I had never any intention of coming back.
While I was "jumpers" (jumped ship) I had to have a job to support myself - claiming the dole probably wasn't a good idea. Naturally the Navy stopped paying me. I took a gopher job with a construction company. They had one job on 'the Island' (Garden Island, Sydney), which is the main east coast Navy base if you didn't know and the scene for my scarpering off the DDG.
I drove straight up to the gates and the veggies (naval police) let me straight through. My real name was given at the gate before I arrived. 'Yes Mr M-----, Building E is ..." - "Its ok I know where building E is!".
After a time, I had another job, at an electronics company. Anyway it turns out that the receptionist was the girlfriend of my mortal enemy on board the ship. Well just this guy who is a dickhead and I didn't get along with him. Anyway, about a month later some plain clothes Naval Police turn up to the community radio station where I did a bit of volunteer work looking for me. It was the weekly meeting and we were upstairs at the time. Someone came up and said 'Theres two cops looking for you' and I took the bolt.
They caught me running down the corridor and arrested me. My friend nearly got arrested too because I demanded to see their ID and they wouldn't show it, and my friend grabbed me in a bear hug and asked for them to show their ID. After some threatening of arresting him for obstructing a commonwealth officer they relented and showed some ID and dragged me off to face martial punishment.
They took me back to the 'Island', processed me, and handed me back to my ship. Once I was on board the chief coxswain asked me if I had been back onto the island while I was gone. I, tentatively, said yes and told him about the gopher job. He was then right pleased with himself and said - with some admiration - that I had been seen by someone but people refused to believe the witnesses.
Anyway the coxswain wanted to give me my leave back until my charge was heard, on my promise I wouldn't run away again. Which I gave him. However next day I was transferred to HMAS Watson where I was thrown in the brig for the weekend and my summary charge was heard the next Monday by some officers I had never seen before. I explained my intention in going AWOL was so that I would be discharged. He sentenced me to 28 days 1MCE (1 Military Correction Establishment), Ingleburn.
After a month of the army drill (stupid army drill, navy drill is heaps better and the uniforms are sexier anyway) I told the psychologist if they didn't discharge me I'd keep running away until they did. On the day of my release I was sent to HMAS Penguin (at Balmoral) and paid out and discharged (a 'Snarler' - Services No Longer Required). I even got to keep most of my toolkit!
ABSMN V.Xray S12895x (retired)
victorxray December 23, 03 at 11:06 am (on mono.net)
dandy warhols "welcome to the monkey house"
We bought this CD when it first came out at the beginning of last year or the end of the year before. It came with a bonus DVD with some videos of the Dandy's work, which could have been more comprehensive, but at least included the great clips for 'Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth (Heroin Is So Passe)' and 'Bohemian Like You' last spotted advertising the GM Holden Astra in Australia.
At the time my impression of the album itself was it was good, but not as good as the two previous albums. "Monkey House" has extensive electronic production, possibly courtesy of the producer, Nick Rhodes (yes, of Duran Duran). But after listening to it now for a good year the album has really grown on me and displays the still-considerable talents of the Dandy Warhols. It has some killer songs on it like 'Plan A' and 'You Were The Last High', some nice airy numbers, a track that dead-set displays the up-front Duran Duran influence (!) and one or two rockers which are the weakest points of the album. I think it's been the best album I've bought the last 12 months or so. Definitely worth checking out from your local music retailer. And their T-shirt from last year's Big Day Out gets my vote as T-shirt of the year.
They've got a new record currently being remixed, let's hope that one's a blockbuster too.