The very interesting text of a talk by Andrew Orlowski of The Register projects the problems and opportunities for the music business in the next ten years. The main problems are that attempts to restrict music distribution through Digital Rights Management are destined to remain very ‘leaky’. The opportunities are that record companies will still […]
Month: September 2004
Usability of museum web sites
Paul Marty and Michael Twidale’s article A conceptual framework for analyzing the usability flaws of museum web sites is very clearly written and pretty much delivers what its title promises. It reports evaluations of 36 museum web sites (I’m guessing that most, if not all, were for US museums), on the basis of which usability […]
This is not a music museum
Next week there’s a seminar to consult on proposals for the Manchester District Music Archive. Now I like a cheeky acronym, but how popular are they going to be when staid grown-ups who control grant funds imagine teenagers googling for MDMA? Very Madchester. No-one (not even the press) has mentioned comparisons with Sheffield’s National Centre […]
Me and Mr Mu
I went to the Planet Mu album launch gig last night — courtesy of a Mixing It competition I won — and someone asked me if I was Mike Paradinas (a.k.a. ยต-Ziq, and founder of Planet Mu Records). Hmmm. Well it’s better than being compared to Hugh F’ing-Whittingstall.
Handy ways to listen to online radio
Imagine a service where you could select your favourite radio programming from around the world, have it recorded for you, and then provided in a format you can load onto a portable player for you to listen to when you want. Wouldn’t that guarantee more fresh and exciting listening than you get even with 10,000 […]
Enforced licensing of BBC radio archive
There’s a new spin on access to the BBC’s archive in this article in today’s Guardian. The regulator Ofcom is proposing that the BBC could be forced to share its radio archive with the commercial world. The idea is that this would make digital radio more attractive and thus drive take-up by listeners. In his […]
The BBC’s digital direction
Based on interviews in the last fortnight with the BBC’s Director General (Mark Thompson), Chief Technology Officer (John Varney), and Director of New Media & Technology (Ashley Highfield), you might hope to be able to discern, by process of triangulation, a clear corporate position and direction. But what you get is a much more postmodern […]
The ingredients of online radio
Here’s an article about MSN radio in the US, which I found interesting because it presses my buttons on both online radio and new ‘gatekeepers’ for discovering music. Microsoft is producing online stations that mimic local radio stations by adopting their playlists, but without DJs, traffic news, weather and commercials. The coup de grace is […]
Cues for learning about and discovering new music
Imagine someone who’s interested in jazz and has heard a little bit about Miles Davis’s reputation. A bit of web searching may give you an overview of Miles’ extensive career, such as this brief overview or this more extensive review. But if you go to Amazon.co.uk and search on “Miles Davis” you get 872 results. […]