One thing that irks me about Apple (only one thing? everyone cries, well the ones reading my blogs anyways!) is that they like to be portrayed as the victim, the lone tiny company against a world of big blue corporates. Especially when journalists cover news stories about Apple.

Well I have news for you – Apple is a large corporate, iPod one of the world’s biggest products, and iTunes is probably the biggest music store in the world – selling billions of tracks a year. So I when I hear the news that poor Apple can’t continue the iTunes Store for want of a dime – well 6 cents – I call BULLSHIT on that. But it’s interesting that quite a lot of the media and blogosphere has followed the David vs Goliath on this, but sadly the wrong Goliath.

What I can gather is that unlike how it’s being presented, Apple is playing it’s strong-arm tactics again – those with long memories will remember that for many months after the launch of iTunes Uk/Europe top seling acts such as White Stripes and Prodigy were not on iTunes. This is because Beggars Group, which XL Records is a part, couldn’t come to an agreement with Apple, with Apple paying the indie group less than the Big 4 major record companies in iTunes in the US….now being the world’s biggest go-to online store wields a lot of clout; and surprise surprise again comes out the petulant child in Apple wanting to take away their toys.

What actually is happening? Well no it’s not big industry fat-cats, it’s not greedy record companies, it’s the royalty collecting agency National Music Publishers Agency (kind of like the RIAA of publishers, but I think less evil unless you had a guitar tab site, then they are) wanting to increase the online royalty payments for it’s members – the members are publishing agencies. Now explaining the arcane publishing system for a Sun reader is not easy, or even you, the more intelligent Radio Clash reader, but I’ll try.

When a track is written and released it has mechanical copyrights (rights) – ie. the right to create CDs/vinyl etc – and publishing rights – the right to literally print the score of the work, if the act/artist has a publishing deal (most do, it’s like Music 101 before even getting a record deal). The publishing rights are important because through ‘publishing’ a work then other artists can cover it, and the songwriter can earn royalties such as those from covers, sale of tracks and sale of sheet music – which tends to be an important and steady source of income for most groups or artists, if they write their own material. So publishing companies sort out the legal stuff and the reclaimation of those royalties, when a track is sold.

So what’s happening here is the NMPA is asking for more money, now when iTunes Music Store started they worked out a deal based on the 1997 deal for CDs (11 years ago!) and it not being a big industry then, everyone complied…now iTunes MS is so massive, it’s probably fair that the songwriters should get the same for selling a CD than selling online, which both are being renegotiated now (and probably brought in line with each other).

So rather than ‘Apple gets shafted by EVIL RECORD COMPANIES!’ it’s actually more like ‘Apple refuses to give songwriters (you know, the ones that create the songs you listen to?) more money’. And we are talking an increase from 9 cents to 15 cents here – tbh if Apple’s profit margin is only 6 cents a track as the retailer, then I’d be very worried for Apple as a business (typically a physical record store takes 50% or more of the price of a CD, so I doubt Apple is taking less than that – with less physical overheads (shops, stores, staff) -EDIT: actually apparently Apple takes 29 cents per track – a third – with 61 cents being the record company according to the Guardian article linked above…)

So who then is being greedy here?

It sure as hell isn’t the songwriters, I mean if they were attacking the record companies I’d say be my guest, but publishers and songwriters seems a really small (but probably more bullyable) target.

Maybe the ‘Brick’ is to throw through the windows of the NMPA?

UPDATE: Sadly the Copyright Judges caved and backed down. it’s not usual I’m for ‘industry’ getting more money, but if it’s the songwriters benefiting and not some A&R wanker, or record company exec, then hell yeah. They write the music I love.

Interesting article about blogging and stress – and the recent stress-related deaths of several professional bloggers.

What I find most intriguing about the article is the description of professional bloggers and he sites, and that it’s become in part a digital sweatshop economy, where speed is of the essence. Certainly in the mashup world there is pressure to use the latest acapella, remix the latest competition tune, take part in this album and that album – something I stepped back from years ago as it’s just stirring the shit cauldron, endlessly recycling the same usually crappy content. Quality is not part of it – and I get that feeling from the commercial blogs I know of, or suspect are so (one tip: if they have advertising and use the same ‘wacky’ font all the time, they’re probably doing it as a brand and a company). I have to say I am slightly wary of those people.

Why? Well weirdly in this supposedly transparent Web 2.0 medium, I notice blogs and forums tend to keep ot secret the money side -  certain blogs and forums in the music world I suspect are either paid or advertising, taking kickbacks or freebies for plugs, taking press releases and regurgitating them, and getting ‘exclusives’ pushed at them directly from the record labels (some are less quiet about this, I notice several talking about ‘only allowed to release the 128k version’ – ie. the record companies have released it to them, it’s official – and now no more than say sending to radio stations or an advert on MTV).

For instance, one former forum I know of sold for 1000 pounds. I was astounded, a) I didn’t know there was a market for such things and b) when I found out I was saddened that the person sold out (if he’d made it clear it was not just for love I’d probably be OK with it, but a forum is more than the URL and logo and a bunch of threads, it’s the people that go to it – you can’t sell those) – I stopped going to that forum.

My blogs and the forums (which was bigger than that one) and the podcast have always been for free, and I’ve never accepted advertising nor made more than 5 quid from them (thanks Pete).

Maybe I’m a chump for doing that?

OK you techno-g33kz out there can help me – I have been creating video podcasts but having nothing but problems, because although if you follow Apple’s specs for video that will play on an iPod, it still won’t work depending on what software you use (does this sound familiar? And people wonder why I have a dislike for Apple – it’s like QT Pro encoding, it runs really fast if you upgrade to Pro, and use their presets – yet runs slow even then encoding from other programs..hmm).

Sadly the best encoder I don’t have a copy of *ahem* and is really really slow – the first video podcast I did was created using the rough n’ready export function of After Effects – really slow, needs literally 10′s of Gbs of space otherwise it balks out, but weirdly the most compliant. How odd).

Anyway as I don’t have a video iPod or Zune I’d be really grateful if some of youse fling these files at them and see what happens (and yes surprisingly Zune does mp4 and m4v, at spookily the same specs LOL).

And can you let me know what iTunes (if you use that) says if you (right) click and say ‘Convert for iPod’ whether it says ‘No conversion needed’ or tries to do so, and if the original file works regardless.

Video podcast – encoded by QT Pro, Mp4

Video podcast encoded for iPhone, m4v

Video podcast encoded by Videora – 5G iPod, 320×240

I won’t include the iTunes created version. It seems to think everyone wants a m4v file at 640×480 HQ at 110Mbs. Nice. Thank you Apple for your bloat-friendly AppleTV-stealth-supporting specs. I’ll let you know when I win the lottery and can afford the bandwidth/file storage, mmmkay?

Thanks in advance – I’m this close actually dropping support for downloads/devices and going YouTube only, ironically that’s far easier, unless I can find a solution.

And they wonder why video podcasts didn’t take off like YouTube? I think their answer is right here in this post….

EDIT: I think I partly worked it out – strangely old MPEG-4s seem to not need being recoded – looks like only certain sizes or certain types (?) of H264 files are supported, but I’m still interested whether the iPhone ones work with iPods too. The first one should be the most compatible – or is it?

And yes those of you who’ve had problems playing it on your iPod try that one – it’s a new (not H264) version.

If you don’t know of my love of Delia Derbyshire and the mostly unsung heroes of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, well then start here.

She produced and engineered the famous Dr Who theme (and if you watch the great Alchemists of Sound documentary, Ron Grainer asked  ‘Did I really write that?’ when he heard it, “Most of it” she replied, as she added a lot to his tune and was almost completely unrecognisable) and worked almost purely with tape, not synthesisers. So I’m amazed to find out via many blogs about the tapes she recorded, being catalogued by Manchester University which several excerpts the BBC has posted to hear – including a track which sounds like modern techno:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7512490.stm (someone tell the developers at the BBC of this new technology, it’s called ‘embedding’, it’s all the rage at this young whippersnapper upstart called YouTube).

Amazing stuff, so I want to call for this music to be released – either on CD or publically free – Delia deserves better than stuck in some library somewhere for the odd music historian to come across and the odd clip in TV shows. Sort it out! None of the posts or articles I’ve read, with glowing remarks from many people such as Phil Hartnoll from Orbital – mention what will happen to these tapes. In fact there’s been a dire lack of re-releases of all of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop tracks apart from a double CD set a BBC Records CD (which you can now buy for 85-100 quid it was so limited!) and some Warp 10″s which are equally rare in the early 00s – and some very limited re-releases on small labels such as Electrosonic or the Tomorrow’s People OST. No wonder people don’t know about her.

Isn’t it about time there was a full retrospective compilation CD of all her work? Say a Double or Triple CD Best of – surely all these radio plays, plays, tshirts, documentaries, songs and several sites about her should indicate there is a market for that? Add these new rare tapes and you could have a beautiful tribute to one of the most talented electronic musicians this country has produced. (And ignored).

Oh and Firefox 3 can suck my balls – doesn’t work with the editor in LJ and now WP 2.6. Crap. HTML links put in manually? How, err, sweet. Bless. So RETRO. *eyeroll* Sort it out Moz-developers!

It seems like music the book selling model is changing – Boing Boing has had a lot of posts recently that support the fairly obvious theory that giving away free e-books actually increases sales (it makes total sense, try before you buy always increases sales, and like CDs sometimes you want the physical object, more so with books.

So when Mr Holy13Nation recommended a book to me, The Pirate’s Dilemma by Matt Mason, it was great to see that as well as the usual Waterstones/Amazon gubbins they were using the same ‘pay what you like including $0′ model as introduced by Nine Inch Nails (no not Radiohead, they just stole that idea, and it was just a fan-gimmick cos as soon as it hit the shops the ‘free’ copies magically disappeared!).

You get the feeling that the likes of Mr Mason, BB’s Cory Doctorow and Lawrence Lessig get it, that the future will be free electronic versions, or donation/pay what you like model, which will actually increase people buying books, CDs etc. as they’ll get a chance, as with P2P to ‘try before they buy’ – the idea that these technologies destroy the artist getting any money is ludicrous – who loses out is those with bad stale content.

It also makes sense as unlike the physical product the outlay is far far less – server space, bandwidth and setting up a paypal/ecommerce payment are far cheaper than the oil, shelf-space and outlay of a physical product. I think we will see more of this – and I’m pleasantly suprised to see a major publisher like Penguin get involved in this.

The book? Well only read the first few pages so I can’t give a review yet, but so far if you are into the sort of remix/mashup/open source and indeed YARR! pirate culture here at Radio Clash, then I think you’ll love this book. And at a nice price – one you determine.

Oh and even the book logo is Creative Commons, and available on the website, hence my ‘remix’ above.