Blog Media

At 7pm tonight, Birmingham’s addition to the festival calendar begins in earnest, and with technical and Web support by Bluemilkshake, Rhubarb Radio will be there for the best of it.

In an ambitious project, Rhubarb Radio will be simultaneously broadcasting online from 7 different venues centred around Digbeth’s Custard Factory, a hub not only for the Gigbeth and Drop Beats not Bombs festivals but for the creative community in Birmingham.

Bluemilkshake Limited has had a massive part to play in setting up the physical hardware and developing the Website, which will allow people to listen to any venue’s output throughout the two days of music, or to “listen again” to a particular gig. Listeners will also be able to hear the station’s normal live output, which will combine interviews and reviews from other gigs with live streams from the ones covered online.

In Rhubarb Radio’s press release, Station Manager Paul Hadley said

“This is truly a first for Birmingham. We’ll be taking feeds from all the major events, so listeners can hear their favourite bands for free via their computers and mobile phones, even if they can’t get to the gigs in person.”

The station has high hopes that after Gigbeth, the foundations being laid and relationships forged with the venues will allow them to continue providing its listeners live content from gigs they’re unable to attend, or a chance to relive a memorable night.

I’ll be there today and tomorrow as will a whole host of other volunteers, to ensure the event goes off without a hitch. If you can’t make it, check out the Events page of the station’s Website, pick a venue and have a listen from 7pm.

When I was at uni I imagined a TV system where no channels existed, and you simply picked a program to watch without having to wait for it to start. A couple of years later, NTL:Telewest made this a reality when they launched their Teleport service (now called On-Demand), and now three years later you can get it on your phone, but for real this time, not in a “isn’t it nice but no-one will use it” kind of way.

While I was at uni, not going to clubs, getting slaughtered or missing lectures, I learned a lot about the Big British Castle (as Adam & Joe call it) and really grew to respect this massive corporation. Yes I’m concerned by the ongoing threat of service cuts and yes it would be nice it their podcasts contained more original content rather than just “best of the week” stuff, but when it comes to online media they’re streets ahead of any other broadcaster in the world.

In mid-to-late 2007 the BBC unveiled the iPlayer in all its shiny pink and black glory. I took part in the test run back in 2005 and my, hasn’t our baby grown? Then in early ’08 they announced they were to make many of their shows available from the iTunes store (spit, spit).

Obviously this is all ”because of the unique way the BBC is funded” and its erstwhile public service remit, but that doesn’t stop them being jolly good at web stuff! Take for example the iPlayer: at the moment you need a PC and a decent Internet connection to catch up on the week’s TV and radio, but the Beeb are changing that, not only by bringing the iPlayer to Virgin Media (what? no Sky? boo hoo) but by making it available on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and on other devices like the PlayStation and Xbox in the coming months.

If I weren’t a Virgin Media customer I’d be quite excited by the prospect of having UK TV content on my Xbox (and I don’t mean the stuff that winds up on Dave), as it’s already a great platform for downloadable video, but am more anxious to be able to download and watch BBC stuff on the move with my iPod Classic without having to use iTunes (I like Winamp: it works with an iPod and isn’t evil).

Nitpicking aside, this news coupled with rumours of a merger of on-demand services between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, makes for exciting times. The only question is, in a few years’ time, will the Beeb have much content to distribute via their fancy new services except reruns of Dog Borstal and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps?

The other thing to mention of course is that, if Murdock can lift his fat arse out of his money-counting sofa and put a rocket up Sky’s overpriced and overhyped rump, we can kiss goodbye to TV recorders because it’ll all be available whenever we want it. Super, smashing [pause, rewind], smashing [fast-forward], great.

I’ve just downloaded Duffy’s debut album Rockferry, from 7Digital, a nice music site offering music downloads, protected and non-protected alike. I could have sworn I’d seen this advertised on play.com as a DRM-free download but when I looked on Saturday, Duffy was there none, which leads me to wonder whether

1. there was some sort of a falling out between Play and Universal Ireland (her record label) or
2. Universal had decided against going DRM-free

Since I wasn’t able to find the album (legally) without DRM on any other site I guess it’s the latter. So I trotted off to 7Digital, bought the album in WMA format and reached straight for Tunebite, a lovely piece of software which harks back to the late 80s by reviving the term “high speed dubbing” (ask your parents).

The software plays back your protected WMA or M4A files using its own virtual sound card and can play up to 9 tracks at once, meaning you can strip the protection from the average album in about 10 minutes or so, without feeling dirty about it (Tunebite is a well-made piece of software so you don’t feel as if your computer is going to get infested by spying maggots or whatnot).

“Why”, you might ask “have you paid for the album then stripped it of its DRM if you could have just bought it for £1 from some Russian site or downloaded it for free via BitTorrent?” and the answer is simple. I still believe that the people responsible for making a record “happen” (be it obviously the performers and writers but also the engineers, producers and yes, those responsible for promoting and distributing it) because they do a job just like anyone else.

I had a discussion with Danny Smith at the last Birmingham Bloggers meetup about the idea of paying for music, which Danny found abhorrent. I understood his and Kev’s viewpoint about making the tracks free in lew of charging for the live event, but the fact is that I won’t spend £15 to see the top of Duffy’s head. I do love going to gigs but I really have to like a band or artist before I’ll spend over a fiver on them (I’ll happily go and see someone new or relatively unknown for £5) and I should imagine that most of Duffy’s listeners have (and will never) go to a gig in their lives (a Party in the Park doesn’t constitute a gig!)

The problem with this paradigm is that, it may work really well for smaller, independent labels who are more likely to take a chance on something they believe in, but for the larger labels or anyone owned by the Big Four, it won’t work. Labels are cautious beasts as it is: I’ve been waiting for one of my favourite bands, Misty’s Big Adventure to sign on the dotted line for years but it seems no label will touch them, partly through Grandmaster Gareth (the lead)’s stubbornness but also because they’re too “risky” for anyone who has an accountant to answer for. So if you then take Danny’s idea and apply it here, Misty’s will never find a label, and neither will many others. Unless of course they put on a good live show (which incidentally Misty’s do).

So let’s say record companies don’t get paid when you buy a single or album they release, but they do get paid when you see them. Doesn’t that then mean that they’ll only sign bands that they know can pack ’em in?

The problem here is that bands like Bloc Party who produce very well-made albums but don’t play live music, and the Polyphonic Spree who pack a full orchestra will have trouble cutting a deal, whereas bands that really only work live (the White Stripes for example: terrible musicians but entertaining to watch) will end up with a lucrative recording deal on the strength of their stage skills alone.

There is of course another way to make money from a live event, even for a studio-centric band. The last couple of Barenaked Ladies gigs I went to were recorded, and the last one offered as collection of DRM-free MP3s copied onto memory stick which was made available as you left the venue. Besides being bloody clever and very stressful for the guys who have to do the copying, it could be a great way to make money from a live event. But the problem is you still lose those bands that aren’t as strong (or can’t as accurately reproduce their sound) live.

I’m still happy to pay for my music and always will be, but I don’t agree with the idea that a record company can tell me what I can and can’t do with my music. I recently started selling off all my CDs, partly to make a bit of ready cash but also because I’ve come to the realisation that I’ve nothing to prove (the only reason we buy CDs over downloads is for display purposes), but that’s a violation of copyright laws. But then so is playing your CD in the car when someone else is there (I’m not joking, it constitutes a public performance) unless they’ve bought the CD too.

Record companies are universally hated and I don’t see why that has to be so. Everyone deserves to get paid for doing the job they do and the money has to come from somewhere, however there needs to be a bit of give and take. If I buy an album I want it in MP3 at 128kbps and nothing else. If a friend wants a copy he can have one - it’s called sharing and that’s how people find out about music - but there’s a big difference between home taping (which kills music about as much as oxygen kills hamsters) and producing mass copies to sell out of a car boot, or distributing it via BitTorrent.

There are so many different angles to take on this and lots of other ways to look at Danny’s idea - and it’s a great way of getting people out of the house - but I think there is an irreconcilable difference between a recording a live event, and so any rethink on pricing has to be based on the recording itself.

play.com, the place for CD and DVD on the cheap has beaten Amazon.co.uk to the punch by selling DRM-free music downloads online, via the catchy URL http://www.play.com/Music/MP3-Download/6-/DigitalHome.html.

As a rule, all of their content comes without digital rights management (so no limits on burning or transferring your tracks) and there’s no horrid propriatory software to download. Once you’ve bought your tracks, you can access them again and again through your account. Brilliant!

The selection they’re offering is surprisingly good, considering they must’ve done a hell of a lot of negotiating with the Big 4 in order to secure their distribution rights. and they’re boasting quite a respectable “coming soon” list, including the superb Duffy.

Last year Apple were beaten at this game by Amazon in the US, who offered a much wider range of unprotected music than iTunes Plus, also without the need to download their hideous software, but Amazon UK have been lazy, letting Play.com take the lead.

The UK now has a third player in the market (all other files outside of iTunes came from the OD2 network and its various resellers), taking advantage of the most widely used music format, so things can only get better. Now that a free market exists, we should see competition between Amazon (when they get their arses in gear), Play and the other two - soon to become - dinosaurs.

Bring it on!

BBC Radio 1, not content with polluting the air with garage music and low-grade techno have now found a new, even clumsier way of “relating to” us kids. It’s called Facebook. Heard of it?

Well this is the new bee-in-the-bonnet for Chris Moyles and his team: Aled, their sometime day producer has made it his personal mission to setup and promote what he calls the show’s “fan page” on Facebook. It’s a reasonably-well put together page, and Aled makes good use of the site’s update system.

But what niggles me is not the page itself, it’s the idea that someone thinks they “should be on” Facebook. Essentially the people who inhabit social networking sites “because they should” are those who, ipso-facto, are the least suited to do so (to paraphrase Douglas Adams). If you’re not going to take the time to understand and then fully engage in a site like Facebook - or even, heaven forbid MySpace - then why bother signing up in the first place?

The Chris Moyles Show is a prime example of an organisation or group of individuals who are on Facebook yet - with the possible exception of Aled - don’t understand it. I’ve heard Moylesy going on about how many fans have signed up and how you can find the page (using phrases like “forward slash” and “all one word”) by going to Radio 1 Online and following the link there - because their Web department get grumpy when Chris gives out external links - but you can tell that he really has no interest in it. It’s all just “technical” to him, and he’s ostensibly the most important member of the team.

Bottom line: when it comes to social networking, if you can’t get into it, stay out of it.