JK Wedding Entrance Might Save Chris Brown’s Career

If you listen to groups like the RIAA, they will tell you that people using songs in their videos with express written consent and a high license fee will be the death of music.  RIAA and labels like Universal Music have gone out of their way to police sites like YouTube and block or ban anything using a copyrighted song they can claim to own.

Of course, this sort of behavior actually results in endless negative impacts including pissed off fans and even pissed off artists who actually like to see their music used and shared and recognize the huge potential upside of not behaving like a law-suit junkie.

The most recent proof of this comes thanks to the biggest web meme of the month, the JK Wedding Entrance (below) featuring, without permission, Chris Brown’s song, “Forever.”

Instead of doing what, say, Universal Music does, which is to force YouTube to mute the music track, it appears that Chris Brown and his label, Zomba (a part of Jive Records) has instead embraced the video and created a direct link to the buying of the song on iTunes.

The result?

The wedding video now has a direct link to buy “Forever,” which, despite being released last year, is now in the iTunes top 10. Brown’s own attempt at a viral video, a recently released apology video for the Rihanna “incident” which he calls “inexcusable,” has been viewed more than 2 million times. As BlogPulse shows, July buzz about Brown and “Forever” reach almost as high as blog discussion that occurred around the time of the assault.        LINK

Why Jon Stewart is the Most Trusted Name in News

Lots of folks have been pondering how it could be that, according to a recent Time Magazine poll (see above), Jon Stewart is the most trusted newscaster on TV.  Not only that, but this holds true well outside of his presumed bases of NY and LA.

According to Neatorama:

It’s a sad statement that the most trusted name in news is actually a comedian. I’m not sure if it speaks badly about Americans in general or about the state of our news media.       LINK

I’m sure Neatorama isn’t the only site with such a view but it strikes me as completely missing the point.  In fact, I have to wonder if the author of the above statement has every truly watched The Daily Show with any regularity.

The biggest reason people trust Jon Stewart is authenticity.  Stewart is, at heart, a skeptic who just wants everyone to please explain themselves.  He doesn’t have to portray either a fake neutrality like, say Brian Williams, or a hot-headed reactionary like Rush Limbaugh.  Instead, Jon is reasonable.  He is surprisingly centrist.  Most important of all, many viewers clearly believe that the Jon Stewart on the TV is the same Jon Stewart one would meet at a dinner party.

The lesson is that nothing sells like authenticity.  Unfortunately for many, however, authenticity can not be faked or learned.

Tracking Trash from Can to Pile

Trackers are really nothing new.  James Bond was slapping homing devices on evil-doers cars back in the 60’s.

Now, thanks to ever smaller and more powerful devices, these trackers are on to more scientific work.

The team behind the experiment, MIT’s Senseable City lab, led by Carlo Ratti, have made a device that is about the size of a small matchbox and that works like a cell phone – without the phone bit. A SIM card inside the chip blips out its location every 15 minutes, the signal is picked up by local cell phone antennae and the chip’s location is relayed back to MIT.

Ratti’s team and New Scientist have already deployed a test run of 50 tracked items of trash ranging from paper cups to computers in Seattle. Several thousand more will be released in Seattle and New York garbage cans later this summer and we’ll chuck a batch into the London trash for good measure.    LINK

Eventually, the team hopes to track hundreds of types of trash from the moment they are tossed to their eventual final resting place.  Imagine being able to get this data as a Google Maps layer.

I wonder if there would be any positive impact on our own trash habits if we actually saw where every single item we tossed actually ended up?  I think the whole “out of sight, out of mind” mentality makes it incredibly easy to toss without care.

Five Bucks a Month for New York Times Online? Yeah, Right.

Lot’s of people are talking about a New York Time’s survey asking if folks would pay $5/month for full online access to the “paper.”

Gawker thinks its a great and necessary idea while Business Insider says they should charge more.

They’re both wrong.  Here’s why:

1) If the NYT erects a pay wall bloggers will be far less likely to link to them and their own readers will be less likely to share links. This is the life-blood on the online world and without it no site can survive.

2) There is FAR too little original content to convince readers to pay the New York Times for news that is widely reported by, well, everyone else.  Unless every single news reporting site agreed to similar pay walls (not gonna happen) the New York Times simple places itself in a barren desert with nary a reader in sight.

There are more minor reasons this would fail, but those are the big two.

Oh, and in response to Business Insiders comment that:

Kindle pricing also forces the question: If Times stories without video, without interactivity, without color — and without all the other stuff at nytimes.com — are worth $14 a month on the Kindle, why in the world is the web site only worth $5?

Except, how many Kindle owners are actually subscribing to the NYT via their Kindle?  Even if a good number are doing so, Kindle owners are by definition affluent and so what’s another few bucks.

Vancouver Set to Become Terrorist Photography Haven

Thanks to BoingBoing, I have learned that Vancouver is throwing all caution to the wind and opening themselves up wide for the unspeakable terrorist acts they are now all but supporting with their official stance on public photography:

Vancouver police are not allowed to seize cameras or cell phones from anyone, unless they have consent, a warrant, or the person has been lawfully arrested. Constable Lindsay Houghton tells the Province newspaper the policy has always been there, but it’s now in writing and updated in their official regulations manual.    LINK

Can you imagine the chaos that would erupt in a city like New York if police officers simply allowed people take pictures of anything they could see with their own two eyes?!

Luckily, for the citizens of New York, police officers regularly harass tourists and locals alike for treasonous behavior such as taking pictures while riding the subway or, even worse, of the actual subway cars.

I certainly feel safer in a city where police feel completely entitled to stop anyone they think looks “funny” and force them to turn over not only their cameras and cell phones but makes them empty out their bags and purses just for the right to ride the train.

Benny Goodman Shows How It’s Done – 50 Songs in One Day

I was listening to 89.9 FM in NYC last night and they were playing a tribute to jazz great Benny Goodman.

In introducing the next set of songs, the DJ said something pretty amazing.  He said that the next four songs would be from “one of the most productive recording sessions in jazz history,” during which Benny Goodman and a small band including Gene Krupa on drums recorded fifty separate songs!

Now, I have not been able to confirm this online, and it was late and I wasn’t completely paying attention at first.  If you want to do some digging, I believe the DJ said the date was June 6, but I can’t remember the year, and that the session took place in New York.

Anyhow, I am going to assume it was true if only to make the point that this is how artists succeed.  There is so much discussion today about how the business of music or writing is breaking down and making it so hard for people to make a living pursuing these careers.  The truth is that it has always been hard and the ones who truly make it do so regardless of the conditions of the economy or the state of the industry in which they work.

In Benny Goodman’s time, the real money was selling recordings to both make money and build audiences for live tours.  So, what did Benny Goodman do to suceed beyond being very talented?  He recorded FIFTY SONGS IN ONE DAY! How many aspiring garage bands do you know who are willing to make that sort of investment in time and energy?

Just as another example for this weekend post, take a look at Charles Dickens, a writer I don’t much enjoy but whose success is hard to question.  Where did he get his first big audiences? Not from publishing a best seller but from what was really not much different from an earlier version of fictional blogging. He published his stories in increments, making sure to include lots of cliffhangers to keep ‘em coming back for more.  While today we might think of Dicken’s work in terms of novels read in high school, during Dicken’s time he was likely very popular bathroom reading.

And there is nothing wrong with that.  That was the best way for him, at that time, to reach his audience. He didn’t whine about the fact that people were reading his work in drips and dribbles or that they were being published in a magazine instead of a leather-bound volume (ok, maybe he did but it didn’t stop him), he wrote for his audience and he was rewarded.

As we move ever deeper into the digital age, a few things will always remain true:

1) If you are really talented and really driven you have a much better chance at reaching your goals.

2) If you think you “deserve” to be paid you will likely be disappointed in the results.

3) If you are able to give the audience what they want in a way that can be easily and affordably consumed you will probably have a hit on your hands.

Lots more will remain the same, too.

People will continue to tell stories and share them with others.  People will continue to write and record music for others to hear.  The detailed dynamics of how one is able to do this while being fed and clothed will constantly shift, but that’s just opportunity for those who are paying attention.

Time Warner Cable Forced to Abandon Caps (for now…)

It turns out that if enough people express enough outrage than even a company as stubborn and unresponsive as Time Warner Cable is forced to respond.

Such is the case with TWC’s misguided plans to do a test rollout of metered bandwidth pricing.  Once everyone from top bloggers to major politicians weighed in on the myriad problems with the plan, TWC has be forced to reconsider and will not proceed with their current test programs in Texas and upstate New York.

Still, it isn’t all good news:

Not that the company believes anything about the plan was fundamentally misguided; as CEO Glenn Britt put it today, “There is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing.”

Sadly, Britt did not go into detail on just what we all misunderstood about a plan that could force users to pay up $20 just to download and view TWILIGHT in HD.

LINK

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Great Gatorade Subway Poster Remix

Although Poster Boy has been getting most of the credit for the very creative remixing of the NYC subway ads that plague us riders, it has been going on for years.

Recently, I saw this incredibly simple but totally brilliant little remix of a Gatorade ad:

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My 15 Seconds – Quoted Front Page NYT Business Section!

Well, it isn’t everyday I get quoted in the New York Times so that makes today pretty cool.  In an article exploring the rise of the netbook and the “trend” of cutting expensive cable for free/cheap online alternatives I am the lead voice!

SAN FRANCISCO — The global credit crisis may have caused the decline in consumer and business spending that is assaulting the giants of high tech. But as the dominant technology companies try to emerge from this slump, they may find themselves blaming people like David Title just as much as they blame Wall Street.

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Mr. Title, a 35-year-old new-media manager at a film production company in New York, has dropped his cable subscription and moved to watching most of his television online — free. While shopping for a new laptop for his girlfriend recently, he sidestepped more expensive full-featured computers and picked a bare-bones, $200 Asus EeePC laptop, also known as a netbook.

“We’ve reached one of those moments in tech history when there are low-priced and free alternatives that are both user-friendly and reliable enough to make the switch,” Mr. Title said. “Then there’s the extra bonus of saving some cash.”

You can read the whole thing here.

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Inching Closer to Reigning in MPAA/RIAA et. al.

Image via Wikipedia

One of the many incredibly outrageous things that RIAA tries to do is to recoup “statutory damages” from file sharers that massively outweigh the actual financial damages incurred.

Now, at least a few judges are beginning to see the light.  TechDirt points to a recent NY court ruling:

“In a recent case in the Southern District of New York, Yurman Studio, Inc. v. Castaneda, 07 Civ. 1241 (SAS)(S.D.N.Y. November 19, 2008), District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin reminds us of the well settled principle that “At the end of the day, ’statutory damages should bear some relation to actual damages suffered’ [citing RSO Records v. Peri, 596 F.Supp. 849,862 (SDNY 1984); New Line Cinema Corp. v. Russ Berrie & Co., 161 F.Supp.2d 293,303 (SDNY 2001); 4 Nimmer Sec. 14.04[E][1] at 14-90(2005)] and ‘cannot be divorced entirely from economic reality‘” (via)

More people are waking up to the reality that the current manner in which copyright law is being applied to digital content is just plain crazy.  It is an extremely complex problem but it will not be solved unless more individuals stand up to these powerful organizations.