da Blog

OK, so I’m already breaking one of my rules for the T-shirt blog posts.  I’m not currently wearing this shirt.  But, this is one of my more rarely worn shirts, the delirious? jersey:

Just in case it’s not immediately apparent, this is an actual soccer jersey made by a company in Brazil.  (This is one reason why I don’t wear it often, because that type of fabric feels weird to me.)  It has a UK logo and a red stripe on the front as well as the “delirious?” and “d:” logos, plus a “DELIRIOUS?” and “5″ on the back.  This is one of my most prized shirts, partially because I bought it directly from the UK webstore for a bit more money than I usually spend on a shirt, and partially because it’s my all-time favorite band.  (I also don’t wear it much because it’s a bit small for me, to which one of my roommates remarked, “Dan, most of your shirts are a bit too small for you.”)

I mostly wear this shirts to concerts, mostly because those are special events.  I wore it last week to the Music Builds tour in Chicago, where Switchfoot, Third Day, Jars of Clay and Robert Randolph & The Family Band rocked the ampitheater.  (Incidentally, I also got another shirt which looks like it’ll be rather tight on me, my first T-shirt ever from Jars of Clay, who are one of my favorite bands as well, but that’s another blog post.)  The show was great, and I got to spend the weekend with my two youngest sisters.

However, today, August 30th, is also an important day on the delirious? calendar.  Here’s a clip from their biography on h2g2:

The next major event, although horrific, shaped the history and gave us Delirious? as they are today. On August 30, 1995, Martin was driving his wife Anna, and Jon (Anna’s youngest brother) home from a late night gig. They’d almost reached Littlehampton when they had an accident – as a result of tiredness from the long journey, Martin fell asleep and drove the car straight into a wall just around the corner from his house. Jon and Anna escaped with minor injuries but it took the rescue workers a few hours to get Martin out of the car, and it took a couple of months for Martin to rehabilitate in hospital as he had suffered a broken leg. During this period he spent a lot of time on his own thinking things through. He also read Bill Flannagan’s U2 at the End of the World, and this inspired him into a decision, to which the others agreed. They found a bassist – Martin’s brother-in-law Jon (In fact, he’s Tim and Stew’s brother-in-law as well. Confused yet?) – and on April 1, 1996, Delirious?, and their own independent record label Furious? Records, was born.

A song based on this part of the delirious? history is the song “August 30th” and is on their King of Fools album.  It is a rather terrible event to remember, but it’s likely that without that experience the band would probably never have became a full-time band and would have just stayed a church worship band.

Check this out! According to this post from Engadget, Gibson Guitars has developed a version of their electrics that require no manual tuning at all. For an extra $899, it has a set of pickups that are solely for tuning the guitar. The guitar can be tuned in a few seconds by pulling out the Master Control knob. It looks like the pickups take the tone to a computer and it tightens the strings within a built-in motor system. More information is also available, and here’s my friend Mel’s thoughts:

Gibson will start selling a self-tuning guitar. At first I thought this was cool. No more lame guys who desperately try (and fail) to be witty while they wrangle their axe into harmonic shape! Hooray! Maybe we’ll be able to forever nix “so how y’all doin?” from stage repetoire.

On the other hand, what a bummer to take out this relational step between a musician and an instrument! I’ve tried to draw a proper comparison (robotic dog? online boyfriend?) and none of them quite fit. I know not everyone has a bond with their instrument. But I do. Willie does. BB King does. Clapton does. Tuning is the most common opportunity you have to feed the relationship. To care for it, pay it due attention, get it to it’s best form, and then work together to play the most frickin’ beautiful song you know. Work for it a little! Just a little!

As many of you know, for almost a decade now I’ve been running a music review website. It started out on GeoCities, but thanks to the writing and hard work of many people, it’s been at cMusicWeb.com for years, and it did pretty well as an independent, alternative source for honest reviews of Christian music. It was a good run, but in the last couple years the contributors have just gotten too busy with family and other commitments so the site has lacked a bit.

For the last year, we’ve been slowly building a new site, inReview.net. Over the years, we’ve found, like many Christians, that the small subcategory of “Christian” music does very little to define the listening habits or lives of most Christians. With inReview.net, we’re hoping to build a group of Christians who like writing about music and sharing some of their favorite music.

Speaking of which, this is where y’all come in. I know that many of you, as Christian brothers and sisters and (some of you) members of the People of Praise, enjoy music a lot. We enjoy all kinds of music – not just “Christian” music, but music by rappers, rockers, and folk artists (among others) who have something meaningful to say. (Let’s face it, I also listen to some who probably don’t have much to say too.)

I’m looking for people to write for the site. Our writing staff at the moment is very small, and we’d love to put out more reviews, but that takes people and time. Writing really isn’t that hard, especially when it’s about an artist or album that you’re really passionate about. Or, if you’re a music lover who wants practice in writing, this is a great place to start too. Not many of us, and certainly not me, are considered professional writers, but we strive to write honest, in-depth critiques of the music we hear and the music we love.

We’ve got a number of things lined up for this coming year, and if you’re interested in joining us, please contact us at inReview.net. We’d love to have a regular commitment of about one review per month, but just a good one-time feature or review is great. Also, persons to cover music news or maybe even avid music listeners who just want to blog free-form about it are welcome. There’s no pay at this point, but if we can start to sell advertising and cover costs in the future, there may be some. This isn’t just open to you as my friends, but if you know anyone who is interested please pass on the word.

In other news, to better keep the website going, I’m thinking of getting a new computer, more specifically a MacBook Pro. If anyone has any comments or thoughts on other computer options, I’d love to hear what you think.

Yesterday a press release issued from Amazon.com announced that they will be opening an online music download store. There are many players in this still-emerging market, but having another big player is definitely a good thing.

Not much was really stated in the press release except the music will be DRM-free MP3 files. Also, it was duly mentioned that EMI, often listed as the third or fourth-largest music company in the world, will be partnering with Amazon.com from the outset to put their music in the store. No word on pricing or dates of availability have been given at this time.

What does this mean for the music industry? Well, it will only accelerate the idea of selling DRM-free music, which any consumer is for. Plus, it could give a major competitor with Apple’s iTunes if Amazon’s Jeff Bezos can cut a good deal with the labels. And finally, it shows that EMI did not make an exclusive deal with Apple for non-DRM’d music, which is a good thing.

Amazon.com has the funds and the longevity to take on this challenge, but they definitely do not yet have the style points that Apple has. However, in a commodity market like this, we’ll have to wait to see how they can compete on the bottom line: features and price.

Here’s a bunch of my recent favorite videos. First up, here’s my sister and her roommates in a little production about South Bend, IN.

Second, Andy Osenga posted one of the best music videos I’ve seen in a while. It’s not as professional as the Mute Math one, but it’s a keeper:

Lastly, there’s the dual-video selection that Shaun Groves called “Crowder Versus Squirrels”. First, there’s David Crowder telling it, which is hilarious, and then there’s the anime version of the story in their first-ever music video.

Enjoy them all!

On Monday, Apple and EMI Music announced that EMI will be taking DRM off of their music on iTunes. The DRM-free singles will cost $1.29 instead of $0.99, but besides being DRM-free, they will also be twice the audio quality. Also, if you purchase the whole album, it is the same price and is the higher-quality, DRM-free tracks. They announced that this would be going live in May. Apple’s Steve Jobs says that he expects that more labels will jump on the bandwagon and that by the end of the year, more than 50% of the music in iTunes will be higher-quality and DRM-free.

So is this good? Heck yes. Steve Job’s open letter really paid off. People will like it because it has no DRM and/or is better quality. I like both and will be more inclined to buy off iTunes now. However, I still think CDs are a bit nicer and I like the album artwork and such.

I love Mute Math. ‘Nuff said.

You’d think that one of these times the RIAA would make a smart move. Well, I guess the only word in their vocabulary is “money”. One of these years, they will figure out that just means, “losing money”.

The Copyright Royalty Board recently released its updated rates for Internet radio stations. Five or six years ago, the board finally required online stations to pay royalties and it killed most of the small radio operations on the Internet. It was the case that many did not make enough money to pay the eight cents per song played to the right persons. It’s just insane, too, that the real over-the-air and satellite stations are not required to pay these fees. Thank the Lord for that, because RadioU can still be on the air despite a much higher Internet streaming cost.

However, even the biggest names in online broadcasting are crying foul because the rates are going up drastically. Many, including the Music Genome Project’s Pandora, are saying they will have to go out of business. No online radio will be left unless its sponsored by companies that can bleed cash. If you run the numbers, stations will be required to pay thousands or millions more per year. But there’s even something more at stake.

As the folks at This Week in Media were saying, the RIAA has almost run out of town all the ways to get free promotion of their music. If online radio does not exist, there’s only boring over-the-air radio that is free for listeners. How am I supposed to listen to music that I like? Where am I to find new music? The guys on TWiM were saying that they don’t buy any new music because they don’t hear any new stuff. I’d love to bring the music of inReview.net to the Internet in the form of podcasts or something, but with all the fees, it’s never going to happen.

What can you do? Write your state representatives, the Copyright Royalty Board, and at least sign this online petition.

For the uninitiated, DRM stands for “Digital Rights Management“. It is usually some sort of encryption put upon content to restrict the usage of data. For example, DVDs came with encryption that was intended to make sure you didn’t copy it. Music from Apple’s iTunes music store comes with DRM that only allows you to play it on 5 computers and burn it 10 times (or something like that). DRM on Microsoft’s new Zune player allows you to send a song to your friend’s Zune, but it will not work after 3 plays or 3 days.

The biggest seller of DRM’d music is Apple with their iTunes Store. They announced early this year that iTunes was now outselling Amazon.com at the rate of 58 songs per second. We all thought the reason they used DRM was because then you can only put your purchased music on an iPod and run it with iTunes. But, apparently that is not the case. Two days ago, the head of Apple, Steve Jobs, published an open letter to the music industry calling for the removal of DRM from music.

Why would Steve Jobs try to throw out the DRM completely? Doesn’t it help him sell iPods? Apparently not. The real reason he’s realizing this is because of lawsuits and regulations against Apple and iTunes over in Europe. Last week, the government of Norway declared iTunes illegal. There have been lesser statements made against iTunes in a couple other countries. The past couple weeks, Steve has found out what the record labels and movie houses refuse to believe:

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

To be honest, I’m not so sure that we should let Steve Jobs off the hook this easily. It seems that selling DRM’d music has been to his advantage, and now he looks like he’s blaming it all on the record labels. On the other hand, Steve still has a bit of that “free-for-all”, hippie spirit, so he could be telling the truth. Either way, he’s right.

If DRM did not exist, I might buy more from iTunes. Right now I only buy from iTunes if it’s an exclusive I cannot get anywhere else. However, the bigger reason I don’t buy from iTunes is the audio quality. Although I usually rip my music at 128k for space-conserving purposes, I expect there to be some day in the not-too-far future when I can re-rip all my CDs in good audio quality. That’s why I still buy good ol’ CDs whenever possible.

Sometime in the future, the labels will figure out that Steve Jobs is right. If not, they will simply die and independent labels that don’t use DRM will become the majors. We just don’t know when it will happen.

One of these days we’ll talk about the movie industry, DRM, and the AACS encryption system built into HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc. Stay tuned.

Ha! I think that picture’s hilarious. John Reuben is my guilty pleasure, if you know what I mean. I know he’s not the best rapper ever, but I identify with him a bit, he’s my type of humor, and he’s definitely not afraid to push the boundaries. Just to show you all the fun, here’s a couple things on YouTube (after the jump):

(more…)