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August 23, 2007  Here's a beast not often seen outside of captivity: my new MSN Direct Smart Watch, a Microsoft technology launched in 2004 that didn't exactly catch on. The devices--mine is the Swatch version--are available now for pretty cheap on eBay. The network that Microsoft created for powering "smart" devices is called DirectBand, and it's a low-level FM radio signal that transmits digital information to the watches and GPS devices that use the technology. It's an interesting idea in a Microsoft Surface sort of way, but there are some problems: The transmissions are one-way only; you can get basic news stories, weather reports and stuff like that but you can't send anything. Also, Microsoft wants you to pay a yearly fee for subscriptions to these services. And you can get the same info from your cell phone. Oh, and all the watches are cartoonishly oversized... August 09, 2007
I send a lot of CDs and DVDs through the U.S. Postal Service, and it is obvious now that the recent postal rate hike was a clever move to markedly raise rates without most consumers noticing. Although junk mailers and other mail-based business protested the increase, most people sort of shrugged because we didn't realize that the increase in rates was tied to a change in definition of what a "parcel" is. In the past, you could send a padded envelope with a CD in it at first-class letter rate. Now, the same package apparently has to be shipped as a parcel. This could be because the postal service can't figure out how to automate things like Netflix mailers. I sent a 1.6 oz. CD package today and it was $1.30. Before the change, this same package would have cost 63 cents; the new rate represents a 106% increase. My guess is that these new "parcels" represent a large percentage of what people actually put in the mail; when was the last time you sent a bunch of letters to someone?
August 05, 2007  Here's a random story about the music industry: In the summer of 2002, my band Ganymede did a cover of the Soft Cell song "Chips on My Shoulder" on spec for an "electroclash" Soft Cell covers compilation being put out by a popular indie label. They liked the song and accepted it for release. They paid us $100. We signed the song over to them. Since then, they have put the song out on at least four different CDs with major distribution, including on something called "This Is Electroclash" that just recently popped up on iTunes. Whether the song actually has any fans or traction within the electronic music scene is still an open question. My pre-law school mind didn't realize at the time we were submitting the song that we would make $100 for it in 2002, but the label could potentially make a lot more off of it in perpetuity by releasing it over and over again and then putting it on iTunes forever. It seemed to me that an electro cover of a Soft Cell song was a limited-use item that would appear only on the CD that the label solicited for, even though the contract did contemplate that the label would own the master outright. And because it's a cover song, we're not entitled to songwriting royalties either from radio play or the additional releases. I tell this story not to say that we were ripped off, but rather to highlight the serious challenges of trying to get anywhere in the industry. The music on all those electronica compilations has to come from somewhere; I guess I'm happy that some of it came from me, but it's sad because the whole thing is not necessarily a springboard to greater opportunities, as most people would think. It seems instead to be a kind of anonymous experience in which we don't even know where our music is going and we're not getting any sort of residual benefits. What's also interesting is that the song has shown up on CDs from several different labels, all of which I assume are allied with the label we sold the song to, but it's impossible even for me to know whether it's being legitimately licensed. But our experiences with that label were much better than those with Moonshine Music on their compilation "Electro Nouveau." Moonshine bought three tracks from me in 2002, including "Neon Rain" by Ganymede, and gave us a contract that promised a (small) ongoing royalty as well as mechanical royalty payments for the songwriting. They paid us the $200 per track advance, put the CD out, allegedly moved 10,000 copies of it, and then promptly disappeared without ever paying us another cent. Then, they went out of business or morphed into some other anonymous dance music label. |