posted by david on Wed 25 Jul 2001 @ 08:36 PM

It's probably not news that Napster is suffering a slow and painful death courtesy of legal actions by the record companies. While the addition of file blocking technology has made the service more-or-less useless, the RIAA still succeeded in having the service pulled off air altogether for a few days. It looks like it will live on but I don't think they'll ever have 60 million users ever again. Instead, it appears that many of those users have now turned to the range of alternative mp3 sharing services, as this article in Salon discusses in some detail. A few cliches spring to mind: they've won the battle but lost the war; they can't put the genie back in the bottle etc. And now the record companies are bragging about new technology they're surreptitiously adding to new CDs which prevent them from being "ripped" on a computer. How did they do that? Well, it's complicated but they're basically screwing with the error correction features of CDs, deliberately adding errors that fool CDROM drives but hopefully, not your normal CD player. Will someone figure out a way around it? Wait and see I guess. And finally, Alanis Morisette has said her bit about online file-sharing at the Plug.In digital music industry conference in New York. She argued that the demise of mp3.com and Napster is a blow for artists because they "offered a link between artists and audiences and was a way for less-established artists to have a forum to reach those who will be touched by their art". And so the debate rages on...

posted by david on Tue 24 Jul 2001 @ 08:38 PM

Graham Lee over at the WMinc website has noted that acclaimed but reclusive singer/songwriter Fred Neil has passed away. From what I recall, Fred came to attention in New York in the 60s but became disillusioned with the music industry and instead decided to devote his life to working with dolphins. I haven't tried any of Fred's stuff myself but it's on my list to track down in the future. A number of newspapers in England were reporting that Beatles producer George Martin had stated George Harrison was close to death but Harrison has since denied this emphatically.

posted by david on Mon 16 Jul 2001 @ 08:39 PM | read or post comments (2)

To me, good journalism is not about telling a story but telling the story. In that respect, so much of the journalism about Eminem has covered the story of the controversy but not really delved into the heart of the matter. Is he homophobic? Is he racist? Is he sexist? Sure, you can quote lines here and there but is that the truth of the matter? What about taking it in context, not one verse of a song or an entire song but at least over an entire album? Jon Casimir at the Sydney Morning Herald has written a refreshingly insightful piece that dissects the art (yes, I'm going to call it art) and attempts to place the controversy in some sort of context. We need more music journalism like this instead of the gushing nonsense that "journalist" Mike Gee regularly coughs up. For the record I haven't heard the album (I'm not fan of rap) but I've been fascinated by the controversy to the extent that I tracked down the album lyrics in an attempt to educate myself of the facts.

posted by david on Thu 12 Jul 2001 @ 08:40 PM | read or post comments (5)

I apologise for being so slack in updating gstring recently but I've been busy working on the CDROM component for the upcoming new album from Stephen Cummings. I forgot how much work was involved in putting one together. Anyway, the graphic artist who worked on that with me, Ross Robinson, has pointed out an article about Bob Geldof that turned up in the Sydney Morning Herald. It touches on Bob's upcoming album release 'Sex, Age and Death' but talks mostly about Bob's non-musical activities. You may have heard some hoo-ha about the album a few weeks ago when some of the lyrics that obviously referred to Paula Yates were being pored over.