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Spotify v. Radio – A Study in Dubious Conclusions

Spotify v. Radio – A Study in Dubious Conclusions:

…radio trumps Spotify both in terms of revenue and in terms of promotion. A single radio spin will not only bring in more money than thousands of Spotify streams, but will also put your music in front of thousands (millions?) of people who would’ve otherwise had to actually seek it out in order to hear it.

[Without any certainty to the numbers the whole thing is kind of a farce. But I believe that the aggregation of listeners or fans must belong to the artist.]

Source: The Cynical Musician

Peter Frampton Reunited With ‘Best Guitar’ After 31 Years – NYTimes.com

Peter Frampton Reunited With ‘Best Guitar’ After 31 Years – NYTimes.com:

It turns out the guitar did not burn up in November 1980 when a cargo plane crashed on takeoff in Caracas, Venezuela, on its way to Panama, where Mr. Frampton was to perform. Instead someone plucked it from the burning wreckage and later sold it to a musician on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao.

The guitar was returned to Mr. Frampton in Nashville last month after a two-year negotiation involving the local musician who had the guitar, a customs agent who repairs guitars in his spare time, a diehard Frampton fan in the Netherlands and the head of the island’s tourist board.

[Crazy. And interesting that it still feels like “home” to him.]

Death of the sports interview

Death of the sports interview – ESPN:

What is lost amid the swirl of random information? What died along with the interview? Texture and perspective, to be sure, and any true sense for who an athlete really is and what he stands for. There is more demand and less access, more information and less knowledge. The repeated Kabuki of the group press conference is institutional dehumanization. It’s easy and efficient, but the result is a detachment that makes it easier for a fan to call a show and say a coach or player should be cut or benched or fired, or worse.

The death of the interview has spawned a generation raised on generalities and clichés.

[Other people divide the same issue into long form vs. short. Either way, the canned, ffed the machine, pre/post, coming off the field, interviews are never interesting. There’s better ways to fill “air” time.]

Beyond the Uncanny Valley

Beyond the Uncanny Valley:

One of the great charms of the Tin Tin movie (besides its solid story, and uplifting sensibility) is the incredible degree of detail, texture, lighting, and drama that infuses every scene. Because the whole movie is synthetic, every scene can be composed perfectly, lit perfectly, arranged perfectly, and captured perfectly. There is a painterly perfection that the original Tin Tin comics had that this movie captures. This means that the stupendous detail found in say TinTin’s room, or in a back alley, or on the ship’s deck can be highlighted beyond what it could in reality.

[It’s already on my “toosee” list.]

Source: The Technium

inrng : tinker, tailor, cyclist, spy

inrng : tinker, tailor, cyclist, spy:

The “Russian global cycling project” wording on the jersey, team bus and website is not a slogan, it is a statement of fact. These billionaire oligarchs, with vast wealth and power, curiously run a cycling team. Just as the Soviet Union once sought sporting success, Moscow is today aiming for similar glory. Cycling is a chosen sport but there are others, the 2014 Winter Olympics are another part of this impressive spend and Katusha even sponsors a sailing team, making it surely the first cycling team to be a sponsor, rather than sponsored. And note the overlap between the state and sport, for example the Russian intelligence services knew a week in advance of the announcement that Russia would host soccer’s 2018 FIFA World Cup.

The pro team is just one part of Russia’s spending on cycling, there is the Rusvelo development team (previously Itera-Katusha). With a man in the UCI it can only be a matter of time until Moscow gets a World Tour race and if the Putin kommanda retains power for long enough, we can probably expect the World Championships there before 2020.

Some teams sell flooring, banking or satellite television. Katusha sells Russia. This is a team like no other.

[Sheesh.]

Occupy Geeks Are Building a Facebook for the 99%

Occupy Geeks Are Building a Facebook for the 99%:

Knutson, Boyer and the other Occupy geeks don’t have to build everything from scratch. “These are standards that have been around for a while, and we are not reinventing the wheel,” said Boyer.

For instance, the projects will rely on set of technologies known as Open ID and OAuth that let a user sign into a new website using their logins and passwords from social networks like Facebook, Google and Twitter. Those technologies let you sign up for a new service by logging into a Twitter or Google account, which vouch for you to the new site without giving over your password or forcing you to get yet another username and password to keep track of..

[snip -Ed.]

“I think any type of small or medium-sized group or a team that has one person in eight different cities,” could use it for collaboration, says Knutson. And he sees no reason against spinning off the tech to businesses.

“Every small and medium business owner is a member of the 99%,” said Knutson.

[Sooo let me see if I have this correctly. A system that is being built because the Occupy movement doesn’t want to rely on corporate hosts will… A) Rely on the current corporate identity systems. B) Rely on crafting human agreement that historically has never happened around RDF C)Is trying to solve too large a problem. D)Is willing to spin technology off to business (and says I with some cynicism, vaulting the coders into the 1%? Oy. Despite my “never bet against youth” belief, I don’t think these efforts will come to anything. Either way, building a social network is either about inclusion or exclusion. Neither works in this case.]

Dave Winer had this to say…:

4. Now there are news reports that some people associated with Occupy are taking aim at Facebook. They want to make the Facebook for the 99 percent. Oy. Here we go again. There is no market for that. Facebook is the Facebook for the 99 percent. The goal should be to make something open and non-monolithic that provides many of the most valuable services of Facebook without the silo walls. It should not be something that an individual does, or a small group laboring heroically, rather it should be something that the Internet does.

[I totally agree. He also mentioned the solving small pieces of the problem thing that I spoke about to a couple of you. I wish they would, they’d stand a better chance.]

Mocked And Misunderstood

Mocked And Misunderstood:

I woke up thinking about this because before I went to bed last night I watched last night’s episode of Rock Center with Brian Williams. They had a piece on our portfolio company Kickstarter. The piece itself was pretty good. But at the end, Brian Williams discussed it with the Kate Snow (who did the piece), and he said something like “so this is like the guy on the street asking for a handout?”.

[I saw this Rock Center piece as well, and I thought the conclusion was worse because Kate agreed or said that there are nothing to enforce that someone who raised money to do “x” has to do it. I disagree. First of all, it seems like some of the most successful projects are “I can’t make this unless you want it” projects. When people support those projects they’re saying two things. 1) I would like one or more of these items. (A sale!) 2) I’m willing to take the low risk that enough other people will like this that I’m in early. (the risk is low because if it doesn’t fund you don’t get charged). And since you’ve been “promised” a reward in most cases, they have to make the item in order to at least fulfill the rewards. So there is some “insurance” in the social contract. I’m not sure if there is any within the kickstarter agreement.]
Source: A VC

GoDaddy accused of thwarting domain transfers

GoDaddy accused of thwarting domain transfers:

after losing more than 72,000 in five days, things may have changed.

[Is it that ethics is the first thing to go, or where they not there to begin with? (For those of you who don’t know, GoDaddy was supporting SOPA until word got out and people reacted by moving domains away from GoDaddy’s services. Now it would seem that they’re trying to frustrate people into giving up.)]
Source: The Loop