I could only drop in for the last hour and had distractions but I’m proud that the wonderfully bizarre and topical Magma Lady had a few lyric donations (polar bear and the santa bit) from me – and the lovely Ben Walker (the guy who wrote The Twitter Song – thought I recognised him from somewhere!) used them!

I think it’s a different songwriter/musician each week so it’s going to be fun…definitely tuning in tomorrow, a bit earlier (ironically I was doing a very acidic remix in Renoise, not very musical though and forgot the time!).

Anyway I think this is more what interactive/online TV should be about – live interaction with the audience helping to obtain a goal which is not just writing a song it’s also raising money for charity – btw I think at least half or more of the proceeds of these songs (if they get a hit) will go to charity, and donations on the site.

You might like these previous posts:

• Radio Clash Show 22: Chair Dancing for Money – April 8, 2005
• The Short and Long of it – February 25, 2005
• RC 159: Parkade Shop Boys – the PSB mix – April 12, 2008
• RavEvil (2009 Prodigify Me Remix) – an original tune! – March 12, 2009
• Music Industry 101; or why the Xmas Factor Rage matters – December 16, 2009

About a month ago I joined Twitter – people were quite surprised, 2 years ago I’d expressed my hatred of Twitter at Podcamp 06 (the audio is floating around somewhere) so me eventually joining Twitter was a surprise.

Why the turnaround? Well one of two things; I feel as part of my job I need to keep abreast of these technologies, and the other that I’d missed hearing about whole conferences because the podcasting community had pretty much decamped wholesale to Twitter, and thus most of the conversations don’t happen outside, or unless you are subscribed to 100s of shifting blogs. Unlike previous times, the only central point was…you guessed it – the ubiquitous Twitter.

So has my attitude changed? Yes and no.

Back in 2006 I decried the fact that Twitter and social media were sucking the life out of real life friendship – there wasn’t really a point to going to see mates to find out how they are when you can read it on a Facebook or Twitter update. I think the social effects of sites like Facebook since 2006 has partly proven me correct, people seem to be using technology to offset traditional contact with friends, and there seems to be a wider base of shallower friends, what I call acquaintances, but under an umbrella of frequent updates so connected as if they are close friends. It’s a sham; a bad reflection of a true friendship. Obviously it’s also a good, keeping people in touch who are the other side of the world and bringing people together, so it’s not all bad. But I find it ironic that through technology I’m more likely to see someone 100s or 1,000s of miles away, but then never see friends down the road in the flesh.

Crazy Half Life

Robert Scoble talked about half-life of a conversation recently; I think in James Gleick fashion it’s useful to try and measure the speed at which these conversations are moving, the stress vectors. It’s obvious that Twitter is a very different animal to Livejournal, despite not that different technology and only about 7 years difference in launchdate, but really in speed they are worlds apart.

Part of the attraction of Twitter is it’s Google-like simplicity, it does one thing, and does it well. Compared to blogging or email, the conversations seem fairly one-sided, like a blog (really most people there are talking about themselves, the amount of PR/marketing and new media evangelists is horrific); but without the depth you can maintain in a blog. The conversations are quicker – gone in 15 minutes or quicker, and very volatile – no not that people get angry but the posts disappear off-screen quickly, and are gone.

So like a more acceptable version of those kids on the bus txting continually, it’s blogging with hyper A.D.D. But this seems to be the way social media is moving – into the realm of fast immediate mobile-friendly short conversations, throwaway, shallow.

And with video – like 12seconds I can see it becoming wham-bam-thank-you-Mr because the time constraints of following 100 or 1,000+ people and the flood of audio and video media means the message has to survive the tl;dw or tl:dl (too long; didn’t watch or too long; didn’t listen) of mobile phones, iPods and online media. Will this affect the message? Of course it will. Or there will be two streams, one of the refuseniks producing niche longer programs, and a massive pool of really short shows with no content.

Living with Numbers

‘Social Gaming’ as I call it, attaining friends for sheer number volume and grooming/attracting/whoring yourself to get people to click that ‘Add friend’ or ‘Follow’ button is not new – Myspace and millions of teenagers have been playing that game for years. But the simplicity of the user interface coupled with the prominence of the Following / Follower stats (thank GODDESS they didn’t make the mistake of calling it “friend’ like Myspace and LJ, what a psychological drama minefield that has been) has led to an almost messianic obsession with collecting followers. It makes the obsessive ‘I wanna be your friend’ popularism from when you were in school seem somehow quaint. At least those teens weren’t pushing a ‘brand’ and a hidden business/marketing plan.

Also interesting is a new breed of people who seem to be trying to create a career being a Social Media Whore – consultants or new media professionals, it’s like the professional bloggers of yore (who interestingly have stormed this Social Media space in the same way traditional broadcasters invaded podcasting, using their ‘name’ status and existing readership and other channels to promote their Twitter/Friendfeed to trounce any ‘competition’) except with one difference – blending the prosaic and mundane with the insights and links of old, all in 140 characters, leading to a sort of silent film / talkie divide between those using all media – video, microblogs, maps, moblog photos, work AND play, and those just pinging their Twitter from their blog when they post.

But is it possible to eat off linklove? Can online respect alone pay the bills? Is it a new way of working (I know of people who have gotten work via Twitter and other social media), or just TwitFactor? Your 15 seconds are up, Mr McLuhan43553.

Top of the Class

Something that has always bothered me about social media – and new / rich media (interesting term there) as a whole is that it’s nerdy. white, usually male and most definitely middle class. I’m sure loads of people will now point to exceptions, but it bothers me that diversity isn’t there – when 2nd and some of the 3rd world can now have access to at least mobile networks there isn’t a desire or a knowledge to blog, vlog, podcast, communicate? Is this a purely leisure class pursuit? Is it because the barriers to entry are too high, these shiny toys are way too expensive, from computers to bandwidth to servers? I do feel personally there aren’t enough different voices, and a lot of existing voices ‘retweeting’ or reposting the same old.

Talking class, it’s interesting that sociologists are studying the online habits of teenagers of differing class strata and/or money / social groups. Danah Boyd is doing some interesting work in this area – Facebook vs Myspace was a contentious one from 2007, I can see similar tribal loyalties affecting who signs up for Bebo, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. I wonder if Twitter classes as mid-30s male IT geek in it’s demographic? Certainly to progress past the posts about software ‘mashups’ (grr) and Rails coding it needs to widen it’s appeal – the one sided nature of most conversations and marketing spiel as well will put people off – the ability to track conversations is hard, which as Mr Scoble would say at this point, is why Friendfeed wins in that regard.

Hierarchies in the Clouds

I find it interesting that there is already what is called a Twitterati. but no Facebookati or Bebo Mafia, and it’s already acquired a (jokingly?) negative connoitation. Every bunch of people online creates a clique, but not many have such a visible metric to affirm their status. So you get usually the same old names, with 1,000s of friends, beseiged by their success, so they talk to each other and themselves. Reciprocity failure, the gift that keeps on giving.

Rustle the Brand / Public good?

So the new model that people are building is one of branding yourself (I did say they were in marketing) – but corporate bloggers could tell you tales of drunkeness and cruelty and the problem of openness vs public image. Now multiply this to a whole life, where the personal, prosaic and professional are blended together, where people share drunken tagged photos and videos on YouTube and Facebook (better change your Privacy settings!) with a profile linked to your LinkedIn CV. Now you can develop nicknames and personas, but it does raise interesting issues on what employers expect to know and what employees share (or more interestingly get shared about them), and how those feeds interact and cross-relate. And how it could all go very, very wrong (see the whole Russell Brand debacle for a broadcast version of this).

Is there a public good in social media? Is the act of sharing seen as a public good, or is it just an act of vanity or self promotion? Will people share if it endangers their brand? Or just self-censor so the conversations and connections become banal?

Web 2.0 – Where’s My Money?

Free content isn’t free; someone has to spend time making it, someone has to spend money storing it; someone at YouTube or Twitter has to spend expensive nights awake trying to work out how to make money from it. People have made money from other people’s ‘free’ content though.

I’ll quote Bicyclemark and Richard Bluestein from a Citizen Reporter podcast:

“BicycleMark: But then again sometimes I look at conferences and I think ‘What have we done?’. I’ve seen some very expensive conferences taking place…but you look around and you go ‘Wow look all this money that’s been spent so these people can talk to each other’ and I guess make business deals.

Richard: You know what bothers me…It’s interesting though that the business people that schmoozed and squeezed the money out of VC’s – they are not having any sort of problems paying for their health insurance, they’re still flying first class, you know what I mean..That’s the case pretty much anywhere in Silicon Valley…the people that Twitter everything and talk about the trends and eat constantly…just constantly! They just fucking always have plenty of money…they’re relying, they’re sucking off people like us that produce content…If you have a business based on podcasting or video…or streaming, there wouldn’t be any website if there wasn’t people makiing stuff. Most of the time they aren’t paying anything for that content.”

What the quote displays is the widening digital and social divides is also reflected online – the differences between rich and poor, free creators and paid producers, those with VC money and those with not and different classes. The internet has been seen as the great Communicator, crossing boundaries of race, class and gender, yet people are getting rich reinforcing those differences. Rich media indeed.

And the book publishers (Mr O’Reilly invented the term to sell books remember) and people who created startups and got the sponsorships and VC funds (and even refuse offers from Facebook) are the ones who got rich off the podcast (failed) boom, or the recent online video goldrush. Only the fail whale of the economy will put a pinprick into this small bubble. Maybe Baron von Blubber should sue.

But the ethics of making money off someone else’s content – which might not be owned by them, well I think it’s dubious at best. Funny to hear people moan about 99% of the videos on YouTube not being ‘monetizable’ – what you want people to post videos for free that conveniently fit into your business model and sponsorship deals? Do you want gold-plated hundreds and thousands on that cake or are you gonna eat it as is? No I’m surprised the companies have been very lax in revenue sharing, apart from some laughable contracts – it’s the media that brings people in, support it. Or it dies…oops too late.

Summary

Maybe the economy will change all this – unemployed people become social media professionals, selling their network as much as their skills (why does that sound like some 21st century cyber Austen novel?) and have time to create amazing videos on YouTube. With no house, rent or need for food. And pigs tweet.

I think it’s more likely the freebie time other than kids at school or retired people is over; companies are going to have to attract people to create media for them, especially if it has to be short snappy and sweet. Yeah the conversational tweet/video microblogging will stay; but podcasting and online video are going to have a tougher time. When people are stressed about their rent, they aren’t going to make loads of Mentos videos…unless it’s of protests. Maybe like with the Obama campaign we’ll see a start of mass use of social media as a political tool, if so that does give me hope.

You might like these previous posts:

• Second Degree Life? – January 30, 2007
• Andrew Keen RSA lecture – September 5, 2007
• Monkeying around: The Myspace Musical Revolution – November 1, 2005
• Podcamp Report – September 3, 2007
• Lawrence Lessig gets DMCA’d for fair use by Warners – April 30, 2009

hi, it’s Tim,

This is an email I hoped I would never have to send.

As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the
U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming
in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a
solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently
with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee.
After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which
represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music
publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high
to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing
to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.

Based on your email address, we believe you may be listening from the UK. If you are
in fact listening from the U.S., please disregard this email. It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not
working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce
listeners to new music and that are totally supportive of paying fair royalties to
the creators of music. I don’t often say such things, but the course being charted
by the labels and publishers and their representative organizations is nothing short
of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent – and by that I mean both
well known and indie artists. The only consequence of failing to support companies
like Pandora that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the
future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of
opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening drought of new music for fans.
As a former working musician myself, I find it very troubling.

We have been told to sign these totally unworkable license rates or switch off,
non-negotiable…so that is what we are doing. Streaming illegally is just not in
our DNA, and we have to take the threats of legal action seriously. Lest you think
this is solely an international problem, you should know that we are also fighting
for our survival here in the US, in the face of a crushing increase in web radio
royalty rates, which if left unchanged, would mean the end of Pandora.

We know what an epicenter of musical creativity and fan support the UK has always
been, which makes the prospect of not being able to launch there and having to block
our first listeners all the more upsetting for us.

We know there is a lot of support from listeners and artists in the UK for Pandora
and remain hopeful that at some point we’ll get beyond this. We’re going to keep
fighting for a fair and workable rate structure that will allow us to bring Pandora
back to you. We’ll be sure to let you know if Pandora becomes available in the UK.
There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal for your support to
move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no
choice but to turn off service to the UK.

Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.

Again, on behalf of all of us at Pandora, I’m very, very sorry.

-Tim Westergren (Pandora founder)

This is not an unusual occurence – If I go to MTV the video streams are blocked cos I’m from the UK, and it seems Pandora is following suit. In this digital age the record companies, industry bodies such as BPI/RIAA and collection companies such as PPL and MCPS-PRS seem to want to put the genie into the bottle. They would love to reinstall the cultural apartheid that existed before the internet with ‘zones’ (like DVD, I’m sure if they could do that with DRM they would) and country-based markets, and restrictive practices and a legal minefield that make streaming, podcasting et al difficult, rather that embracing the cross-country and cross-market opportunities that exist today, and accepting that internet streaming does not have the same commercial clout than broadcast radio and is not broadcasting in the traditional sense.

Really they are shooting themselves in the foot, because UK artists and music won’t get the opportunities overseas and vice versa because blocking the cross-pollination via demanding high royalty rates – which tbh are mostly eaten up by the agencies themselves – will prove bad and uncreative for the traditional music industry; and those who want to create online will move to CC and self-publishing models, because if more podcasts and streams go non-MCPS/PRS/RIAA it won’t be viable to join those associations – in fact it’ll be commercial death, at least on the Net. But it’s sad because Pandora is a great service and I heard some great music via their intelligent suggestion system, and it’s going to be only the big companies like Yahoo and MSN who will be able to afford those rates, so the whole of internet radio will become like mainstream podcasting a reflection of the takeover by large conglomerates like ClearChannel….large, bloated and boringly commercial, promoting the latest bland urban cack like Souljah Boy and Umbrella rather than anything specifically niche or related to these local markets….

Related, I heard a stupid conversation last night on Radio 3 proposing that intellectual thought would ‘go global’ in 2008, more stupid inane middle-class chatter from the likes of Jonathan Miller; but we don’t want ‘global’ thought, we need local action and thought; but not so local to restrict the cross-talk from other localities. Global does not always equal good; you need to apply to local to the global, rather than what these corporates are doing which is applying the global to the local.

You might like these previous posts:

• Mixwit goes the way of Muxtape: RIAA still stupid, News at 11 – December 18, 2008
• Pigs might fly – October 26, 2007
• Greedy Apple – October 2, 2008
• Radio goes digital? – June 14, 2005
• Orphans and Widows – September 26, 2008

This Trevor Dann (yes that one, formerly Radio 1 and now Radio Academy) session from PodCampUK taken by Dean is very good…interesting analogy with the fanzines, and pirates.

I wish I’d gotten out of bed to see that (this was the first session around 9)…I agree with what he’s saying about radio changing and different media, but I don’t totally agree with what he said about the softly softly approach – history will bear me out on the fact that both softly softly and disobedience are needed; the pirates had to go and do their thing first – I’m sure the people doing the pirates tried the established approach and got pissed off.

Fanzines are closest to that spirit cos they also ignored most of the legal and design red tape, and the 6 months+ before an article about a long-dead scene even appears, and proved very popular. I’m reading ‘Rip it Up and Start Again’ by Simon Reynolds atm, which talks about Sniffin’ Glue and the importance of other alternative media to get the punk and post punk message across -which was mostly ‘Do It Yourself!’

I have a sense that all of what Trevor calls ‘radio’ will become less and less about frequencies and analog broadcast and more about niches and DAB and online streaming and satellite, and the digital explosion will bring more ‘podcast’ style shows, like Chris Vallance’s PodsAndBlogs whereas unlike now where form is aping the media it’ll be about everything and specific niches, yup nichecasting. And targetted niches will become more valuable; rather than this current scattergun approach.

Remains to be seen if the Podcasters Will Inherit the Earth though. What I do know is that it won’t happen if we all play by their (old media) rules.

Podcasters totally pwn social media, the online space, the blogosphere, etc. compared to old media broadcast entities, we are from around here and mostly they are the slightly suspicious weekend punks sniffing around for some cool. Don’t let them steal it.

You might like these previous posts:

• Andrew Keen RSA lecture – September 5, 2007
• He seeks them here… he seeks them there – January 11, 2008
• Why I don’t like internet radio (or Yahoo) – November 22, 2005
• Podcamp Report – September 3, 2007
• Streaming Wars: The Great Switch Off – January 9, 2008

Contact me in the, err, studio!

Or comment here!

You might like these previous posts:

• Radio Clash Show #115 ENDED – April 1, 2007
• Radio Clash LIVE! – Ghey Metal Edition – March 17, 2007
• Ch-Ch-Changes (to the Radio Clash Feed) – July 15, 2008
• Radio Clash LIVE: Recording 108 (ENDED) – February 12, 2007
• Radio Clash Show 20: Easter Extravaganja with Kirk and Tim – March 22, 2005

I, well DjNoNo Ulysses (pictured above) will be playing mashups, remixes, cool tunes, even some drum and bass at the Parkade club in Second Life tonight from 10pm-12pm GMT, 2-4pm PST/SL time - click here for SLURL and here just for the MP3 streaming feed.
Will be handing out free t-shirts to who ever wants one…

This will be a regular thing, DJNoNo Ulysses Djing at Monday nights at the Parkade…hey it’s one way to make a living (poledancing wasn’t going to well LOL)

And I promise not to get this drunk and poledance like this *embarassment* (virtually NSFW):

I’ve heard of chicken poledancing for bears but this is ridiculous…

More snapshots from a virtual bear’s life…

You might like these previous posts:

• Parkade launch tonight! – May 9, 2007
• Cruise Control #4 – NOW in Second Life – February 19, 2007
• More SL adventures and an interview! – February 25, 2008
• Parkade Shop Bois (and Girls) – Finally PSB’s set – April 3, 2008
• Cruise Control in Second Life – STREAM ONLY? – February 12, 2007

Error

Sorry, OS 8.5 or higher (not OS X), Netscape 4.5 (not 6.0+), and Windows Media Player 7.0+ required

Error Code: 5 – 0

That’s pretty funny. A company with the resources of Yahoo, and their online player (which you have to use to make you see their annoying ads) only supports Mac Classic, and NS 4.5? Talk about shutting out an entire audience…

This is why I prefer podcasting, and MP3. Less issues like this…although the iRiver seems slightly more fussy than the iPod I don’t get messages like ‘Error! WMA, OGG or VBR not supported, please downgrade back to 1997…’

You might like these previous posts:

• Web 2.0…sequels are so dissappointing aren’t they? – October 14, 2005
• Streaming Wars: The Great Switch Off – January 9, 2008
• Public vs Private 2.0 – October 24, 2005
• Interesting article on iTunes & podcasting – July 22, 2005
• Loneliness of the Long Distance Podcaster: Podfading a year on – February 8, 2006

I think Netscape is, or was the most important Internet company there has been so far.

You won’t see that in the histories – Netscape is deemed a valiant failure against the mighty juggernaut of Microsoft. But were they a failure? They forced Microsoft, a company not known for it’s willingness to give it’s intellectual property away. They developed RSS initially and let others such as Dave Winer develop it (maybe they abandoned it, lost interest, but they didn’t do a Microsoft lawyer attack or a British Telecom style sneaky patent to trip up people like Dave who continued the work). They developed the first viable browser, and I seem to remember was the first to do such things as frames and objects – then used for awful Java applets of shimmering lakes, but eventually becoming the all important .NET ActiveX objects that power Microsoft’s MSN online world.

I’m a child of the Web 1.0 (or web beta revolution) – I started programming in HTML in 1996 when Netscape 2.0 had tutorials and you could fit it all in one (slightly crammed) page…without Netscape I wouldn’t be here…are they a failure? I don’t think so.

And they did so by being open and probably dooming themselves to commercial failure giving away all their assets…but the children of Netscape live on (oops I’m becoming a bit Dave here) in the Open Source movement, in all web technologies, and the fact that Microsoft never could charge for IE (although I seem to remember it tried). Online streaming? Yep. Annoying animated gifs? Err, well you can’t have em all…

They also inspired Firefox, my browser of choice…but that’s another story.

You might like these previous posts:

• Why I don’t like internet radio (or Yahoo) – November 22, 2005
• Another instance of Big Brother CD DRM & Disable your Autorun NOW! – January 4, 2006
• Parcelforce? More like Parcelfarce… – September 20, 2005
• Q: why do I hate the police? – September 22, 2008
• Emperor’s New Pod: Whole Wheat stops the Rants… – May 14, 2005