The article about how SoundExchange is collecting (and demanding) royalties for all internet radio was first handed to me via email by my friend and Fake Science legal expert, Cyrus Wadia. Just as soon as I finished reading the post I see that Gizmodo has jumped on it to… I like their post photo, very befitting.

The gist of the article is this… The RIAA created firm SoundExchange is in charge of tracking and collecting royalties for what we all thought where RIAA/SoundExchange members. But, as DailyKos points out:

The RIAA has secured legal authority to administer a compulsory license that covers all recorded music.

What it gets down to is that if your song gets digitally streamed then SoundExchange provides a compulsory license to collect the royalty for you and then its your responsiblity to go to SoundExchange, become a member and then get your money only if you actually own the rights to the music. But wait, there’s more!! What it also appears to mean is that Webcasters who have been following the assumed safe process of working directly with non-RIAA labels and artists may still have to pay royalties because its the duty of the SoundExchange to collect for all members and nonmembers.

Of course this is all relatively theoretical and will need to be played out in court… but the fact that it has to be thought about is truly flabbergasting.

I have been a fan of Air since Moon Safari… well, that’s not fully true. When I first saw the video for “Sexy Boy” on MTV’s Amp (the best show MTV ever produced) I didn’t really like the electro-70’s throwback sound in my electronica. Over the next few viewings I began to grasp what they where doing and then by the time the first Amp sampler CD came out I had to add them to my collection.

My overall perception of Air has been heavily influenced by how I initially found them, i.e. on a electronic music focused show. Around that time I began to start actively djing and for the following 8 years my taste in music was solely focused on the electronic genre. It wasn’t until about 2 years ago that I returned back to the live rock/indie genre because I felt the overall trend of dance music was becoming uninspiring. Amazingly enough, as the years went by, Air always found a way into my listening habits. I first perceived them as an electronic act with a taste for live instrumentation but how much was really live vs. samples, loops, processing… it was hard to tell and honestly I didn’t think too heavily on it.

Now that I have finally had a chance to catch their live stage show, I realize that my initial thoughts of them being an electronic act with a penchant for instruments were pretty off the mark. They are a live band with an obsession with electronic synths and production. Looking back, my view was based upon the music I was focused on and because they crossed genres (and how they where marketed to the electronic fan) they always fell into my current musical taste.

The show itself was an impressive feat with a metric shit ton of gear, both new and classic… Rhodes, synths, amps, drum kits, guitars, basses, percussion racks, etc. The live band was made up of Air (Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin) and 3 backing musicians playing keys, drums and assorted instruments (stringed, synths and percussion). The frontmen wore white based suites throwing a suave and sexy stance with a heavy 70’s/mod style playing their instruments with an ease and talent that raised both feelings of intense admiration and a bit of fellow musician jealously.

When Nicolas first started playing guitar it appeared almost that he was faking it for the complexity of notes coming out barely matched his movements. I had to scrutinize his actions before I realized that he not only was really playing the part but he was nailing the patterns with ease. Another moment that stood out was during a switch where Jean-Benoit had to jump from the rhodes to another piano to perform a complex solo that he did so smoothly it took me a moment to comprehend how hard the transition he just performed was.

After their set they came back for a 3 song encore that built and built with until it climaxed in a wall of sounds and analog synth madness that instantly brought the crowd to a standing ovation when the last note was played. It was an overall stunning show and being able to sit back in theater seats to enjoy it made it all the better.

Elites TV is reporting that Napster and NTT DoCoMo has announced a partnership to allow DoCoMo iMode customers who are also member’s of Napster’s service to access music via their phones. Their new service called Over The Air (OTA) will be rolling out when the 904i phone is available in the market.

Napster’s new OTA subscription functionality will be available to DoCoMo’s customers as an extension of the Napster To Go service at no additional cost and will be available to both new and current Napster To Go customers.

This is an interesting twist to the mobile music market because up to this point only wireless providers have been offering singles sale services. The Cingular or Virgin offerings allow you to buy a song at an extreme premium that is then download and store it on your phone. With the new OTA, the song is streamed down as requested and then more then likely thrown away when done listening. With this functionality and the ability to create playlists on your PC, that you can access via the phone, you have in a sense an on demand XM radio that allows you to have unlimited access to music as you move around. Storage no longer becomes an issue only access to the network.

Of course, only Japan (and probably South Korea) has this kind of high bandwidth and full country network coverage for this technology to make sense. But as other carries get their networks fleshed out in other countries you can bet that this kind of service will become more prevalent.

Last Friday night I had the pleasure of attending “Yuri’s Night 2007″, hosted by NASA at their Ames Research Center in Palo Alto, Calif. What was “Yuri’s Night?”. It is “a celebration of humanity with a focus on space, technology, art and performance” in honor of Yuri Gagarin who, in 1961 at the age of 27, made the first flight in space by orbiting once around the entire earth and then landing in the plains of the former USSR.

I showed up with friends a little on the early side and found myself at a downsized mixture of a technology expo, Burning Man, and a dance party. The event was contained in and around an airplane hangar, and attractions were spread out all over the floor of the inside space and surrounding tarmac. Inside were vending booths selling anything from water, funky clothing to food, as well as a slew of interesting demos. One of the more interesting exhibits displayed samples of these things called “microbial mats”, which are moist, pond-scum looking ecosystems that host thousands of different bacterial life forms. The reason this is interesting is that NASA is using data collected from studies of these things on Earth in research on Mars, and the possible discovery of ancient microbial mats there. Finding traces of microbial mats on Mars will have implications on where life here on Earth came from, if it is found that ancient bacteria on Mars shares DNA and RNA ancestry with our own. It could mean that we’re descendant from Martian life forms. If microbial mats are found on Mars that bare no resemblance to life here, that is also very interes ting because that means that life as we know it is not something unique to Earth. This in turn greatly increases the likelihood that there is life in greater abundance throughout the universe, and in much truer sense, we are not alone. Chris McKay, a scientist from the Ames Research Center working on this Mars project gave an interesting, informative, and entertaining talk on the subject.

(more…)

I’m a huge fan of Paris, who is a rapper and general cultural luminary. He’s sold several million records strictly underground, and mostly on his own Guerilla Funk record label. Paris and the other artists he works with send out a message of pure respect for themselves, family, community, and culture while spitting pure disrespect for the establishment, the government, lies, and the main stream rap industry that supports misogyny, drugs, and black-on-black violence. Hard edged music, pure street.

This arrived in my mailbox from Paris yesterday…

Since the Imus controversy recently erupted there has been a lot of finger-pointing and blame-placing as to what the root of the problem really is. Of course, we all know that racism and sexism existed before hip-hop — that’s a given. But it’s completely beside the point when our (black) culture is dictated to us by white corporations. Follow me…

For the record, most folks in our communities didn’t even know Don Imus before he made headlines with his slurs (and many still don’t). For the most part, we remain oblivious to the tirades of him, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and others who constantly malign us and foster a climate of intolerance simply because these talking heads don’t speak to US. For Imus to blame black culture as being the reason for his ignorance is both sad and backwards. He’s a racist and a sexist, pure and simple, and he can’t blame an art form or a culture that I’m certain he has little knowledge of for his actions. The fact that he named hip-hop “culture” as a culprit is telling, however.

If you haven’t noticed by now, life imitates art — it’s not the other way around. There is no stronger cultural influence on people now than popular media, and hip-hop is at the forefront. Ask almost any child about the lyrics to a popular song or a scene from a video or movie and more often then not they will know the details better than they know their school lessons. Entertainers and the culture of celebrity that we find ourselves living in often hold more weight with kids then parents, educators, preachers politicians or even sports heroes. Can we blame some rappers for selling completely out? Of course. Be we have to look at the entire picture.

{more after the jump…}

(more…)