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The Evolution of The Music Industry

An artifact for later generations to discover
An artifact for later generations to discover

By: Robby RipChord

I Want My MTV MP3!

With the sale of The Pirate Bay to a company and their plans to turn it into a legal file distribution site (the same route Napster went) it would seem to be a monumental victory for the Recording and Motion Picture Industries.  As monumental or bigger than the fall of free Napster.  However, what these organizations fail to realize is that they are treating a symptom, not the problem and effectively putting a band-aid over a bullet wound.

The RIAA has an antiquated business model particularly.  You won’t even see a CD in 10 years the way you don’t see a Vinyl Record nowadays.  While for the last 70+ years recording labels have had a monopoly on where music could be sold and at what price, those days are gone.  The distribution of music for our and subsequent generations will be the digital way, downloads.  The problem with this and the problem that the Recording industry has not yet come up with a solution for is the unlimited amount of copies that a digital version of a song can birth.  As they are leaked onto the internet the copies go up in numbers exponentially. There have been tries to mitigate music piracy, Digital rights management (DRM) is a systematic approach to copyright protection for digital media.  This endeavor has failed miserably to curb illegal downloading although I believe is still used in iTunes.

What some of the smarter Record Labels are realizing is that the money from artists is shifting from CD sales to concert ticket sales.  That’s one part of the equation. Though to really weather the storm that is file sharing, the Record labels and or Artists need to adapt their business models.  Artists like Trent Reznor (a born Pennsylvanian I might add) have shown that you can give your music away for free and still make buttloads of money. Of course Trent and band Nine Inch Nails became famous before the tide turned the way of illegally downloading music and this business model probably would not work in most instances given NIN’s already large fan base but Trent began growing weary of the corporate greed earlier.  A quote from Reznor in states, “…the climate grows more and more desperate for record labels, their answer to their mostly self-inflicted wounds seems to be to screw the consumer over even more.” in response to Interscope’s price gouging of NIN’s latest offering. He even encouraged people to steal their albums online.

I’m not necessarily a Nine Inch Nails fan but I don’t think there’s doubt that Reznor is a true visionary on this battlefront.

Other artists have begun to embrace a new way of distributing their music online, offering something tangible.  Mos Def has offered a free t-shirt with the purchase of his album or rather a free album with the purchase of a t-shirt.  Some artists have experimented with sending autographed album or other band related artwork in poster form to fans who buy limited edition albums. The concept of offering a physical product with a digital download of an album is a novel one and somewhat makes up for the lack of a material album in fans hands.

Whatever the idea, it has been proven that real fans will shell out money for their favorite artists for their newest release no matter if they can get it free or not.  That does not help the struggling garage band make it to the big time without an already large following but if their ideas are smart enough, viral enough and the band is actually good enough that people will want to see them then they will survive.  Just as Music Video’s catapulted artists in the 80’s and 90’s into mainstream consciousness so can it’s cousin YouTube.

The Music Industry needs to embrace these ways of selling albums rather than relying on and defending a dying business model.  There will be piracy no matter what now that we have entered the digital age, the Record Labels that adapt will be around as long as they have a product that is relevant to fans. And true, die hard fans are always going to be there and support their favorite acts.  It is now a matter of making these acts matter to the public and I’ll leave that up to the music industry and the artists themselves to figure out.

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Obama… No Problema?

27_obama_lg
It's only a couple Billion....

By: William J. BeerSlugger

You know I’m really tired of a lot of things going on right now in this Country.  The fact that we have a new President who doesn’t fumble over words written on a teleprompter and who happens to be black does not make him  infallible.  Just because the current administration is proposing Cash for Clunkers or Universal Healthcare does not mean you have to believe blindly in it just because you voted for him. I voted for him and I don’t necessarily agree with everything that’s going on.

I agree Obama should be given a chance to prove himself and I am anxious to the the outcome of some of his endeavors.  However, just because I do not agree with some of the policy’s proposed by the Obama administration does not make me a right wing supporter or a racist or not caring for the well being  of the uninsured.  It just makes me have (I’d like to think) informed opinions which can and have changed with better and better information and opinions I hear from both sides of the issues.

I don’t believe that all people who oppose the war(s) are left leaning, freedom hating socialists so I don’t appreciate being painted that way…. (yes you girl at the bar I was having a conversation with last weekend but was disinterested after we started discussing Obama).

It seems to me that it is very “Taboo” to criticize the President or his administration’s actions in the media or public discussion.  This is due (in my opinion) principally to his relatively short term in office so far but also some of it is race related whether we want to acknowledge it or not. It seems to me that there is an overwhelming want from the general public and media for Obama to succeed and not be ridiculed because of his race (which is ironically half Caucasian).

I do not want the current President to be held up to a higher or lower standard because of race or any other factor.  The President is the President, regardless of sex, race, religion or sexual orientation.  Yes since this countries inception the President has been a white male but that doesn’t mean that we don’t hold the first black President’s feet to the fire just as his predecessors were.  That doesn’t mean the public should rubber stamp every policy the Obama Administration suggests without asking where the money will come from to finance it.  Basically, just because he’s black doesn’t mean we should stop asking questions (and I’m not talking birth certificates here).  I know a lot of people are crazy about him and believe he is some sort of political messiah that will deliver us from all bad but that’s a lot to ask from a 1 and a half term U.S. senator.

But maybe he is being treated fairly in the media and I’m just not watching those shows because I’m too interested in the Phillies right now, who knows.  All I know is I’m fed up with people blindly believing and not asking questions about “How” and “Why”.

I have see a couple of people criticize him in the media and I’ll list a couple here:

Bill Maher is a guy you wouldn’t think would take on the left but then again he did it with Clinton.

Jon Voight is one of the few celebrities I’ve seen talk in detail about where the country seems to be going.

Kieth Olberman, one of Obama’s media biggest admirer’s also took aim at Obama.

Anyway, not to get too political on you BeerSlugger’s out there, it just bugs me when someone believes in something blindly whether left or right leaning.  Get the (so called) facts and make informed and rational decisions. Of course this is America what the fuck am I talking about.

In closing America, stop drinking whatever flavor of Kool-Aid that’s being served and have a glass of water instead.

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California Wildfires

ca-wildfires
Maybe we should think about moving?

By: Billy BeerSlugger

It’s hard for me to get worked up about California wildfires.  First of all, this happens every year, there’s some massive widespread fire that threatens thousands of houses in California and always seems to happen at the close of summer ostensibly after the brush has dried up and is more susceptible to going up like a tinder box.

Not that I don’t feel for the people that have or may lose their house in these fires but seriously why don’t you just move out of harms way once and for all.  Granted you might be a little farther away from L.A. than you want but you may not have to deal with wildfires every September.

For as much shit as Californian’s and everyone else who slurps the state talks about how beautiful it is there you really don’t hear a peep from those people during the borderline natural disasters that happen every year. Between wildfires and earthquakes every year the mass media has me trying to feel bad for all these people and their Million Dollar homes who pretend to be better than me for living in California under the sun and surf…. and wildfires. Instead of focusing on the people who lost their house can I get a story about some smart people who actually moved away from wildfire alley?

You know how there’s Hurricane season?  Well this is Wildfire season for California, lets not pretend like this is a surprise development newscasters.  You knew this was coming.  Come up with some sort of early warning system for the poor souls who still desire to live next to acres of kindling so they can spray their houses down with some sort of anti-flamatory resin and get the fuck out of Dodge.

Besides, Wildfires are a part of natures cycle in that region, in fact Fire is an essential part of most wildland ecosystems.  Things become overgrown, there’s lightening or some other event that sparks a fire, shit goes up in flames and begins a rebirth period, removing dead organic material from the area and releasing nutrients from mature plants back into the soil so that new plants may take up root.

The only things that is not natural in this process is that man has taken up residence in these areas and is trying to delay the inevitable.

Or maybe nature is colluding against us like in the M. Night Shyamalan movie The Happening. Man what a terrible movie.  Talk about a guy who peaked too early.  The guys career looks like the second half of a Bell Curve.  But I still got love for you Shyamalan.  Keep making shitty movies in the Philadelphia area.

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Subjectivity On Infidelity

By: Billy BeerSlugger

Now there have been countless stories in the news about this guy cheating on his wife with that girl.  Stories of infidelity about politicians, sports stars, coaches, teachers, CEO’s and every other walk of life. Lately I’ve been following the Rick Pitino sex scandal from afar. All I know is that he admitted on cheating on his wife with a woman and she was allegedly trying to blackmail him.  But that’s neither here nor there.

You look at the lot of these cases whether in court or portrayed in the media and 99% of them paint the guy in a negative light.  Donald Trump, Frank Gifford, Peter Cook/Kristy Brinkley, Bill Clinton, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Rudy Giuliani, Senator Larry Craig, Jim McGreevy, Eliot Spitzer, Hugh Grant, Jude Law, Usher, Kobe Bryant and the list goes on and on and on. I think one thing is for sure that men (and women) will continue to cheat on their significant others.

That being said, there’s two oddly peculiar cases surrounding cheating that women rarely scoff at. David Beckham and Brad Pitt are two people who (allegedly) cheated on their spouses yet received little to no harm to their careers because of it.  Brad Pitt broke it off with wife Jennifer Aniston to get with Angelina Jolie and David Beckham seems to have been in the news a couple of times for banging random girls.

I’m not sure if these two stars just have great PR teams and were able to quell the backlash or if women generally just did not care that these two guys cheated.  Not to say that the stories were not covered but not in the negativity and public outcry of say a Bill Clinton, Peter Cook or Eliot Spitzer.  Granted some of the political figures involved in sex scandals are makers of public policy and should be held to a higher standard but are not they all human.

Now I’m not advocating cheating or anything of the like, all I’m saying is that it’s weird that if you talk to a girl about Peter Cook who cheated on Kristie Brinkley most will say they hate the guy and think he’s an asshole for cheating on his wife but if you ask the ask the same girl about Brad Pitt they’ll say he’s the hottest man alive and leave out the part that he (allegedly) cheated on Jennifer Anniston.  Is Brad Pitt or David Beckham or any other so called “sexiest man alive” held to a lower standard on the fidelity part of their relationships than the rest of us mortal men?  Does being insanely hot get you a pass in some instances?  I know hot women get passes all the time but does this happen for men too?  I’ll bring this point up to women and some say they don’t care if he cheated that they still love Brad Pitt.

I’d like to hear some comments from men and women on this matter.  Given the same level of marital indiscretion from two men, one being average looking and the other being or Brad Pitt status, does the average looking one receive more heat than the really good looking one? From a mass media standpoint and from a woman’s opinion standpoint?