October 6th, 2008
The debate regarding how royalties should be allocated for digital downloads has reared its head once more. This time, the National Music Publishers Association (in the US) called for a 66% hike in royalty rates paid to its members on downloads from sites such as iTunes. Apple declared that this would “significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss” and threatened to shut down its iTunes store if the hike was enforced…
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music technology
September 30th, 2008
Modern computing technology has revolutionised the production of music; a laptop running a software DAW can now achieve things that even a multi-million dollar studio couldn’t do twenty years ago. The range of features on a sequencer can be truly daunting, and sometimes this is actually a disadvantage when all you want to do is sit down and write a song…
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DAW
September 25th, 2008
There has been much speculation about how the music industry can effectively monetise its products in the digital age. Many suggestions centre on licensing deals and royalties, and the decline in overall CD sales has led to suggestions that music will not be a viable physical product of any kind in the future. The folks over at SanDisk, however, have a different idea…
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sales and promotion
September 23rd, 2008
In music, and particularly the realm of electronic or computer music, there can be a significant amount of ‘gear snobbery’ in some quarters. This stems from the notion that professional results can only be obtained by expensive high-end gear, that device X is inferior to device Y, and so on. However, here are a couple of instruments that are pretty much beyond compare…
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music technology
September 18th, 2008
For computer musicians, performing live can be somewhat problematic. Despite the fact that it is entirely possible to craft an electronic set ‘on the fly’ with a laptop, there is no real visual feedback for the audience to respond to. I call this ‘email checking syndrome’, because from the crowd’s point of view you might as well just press play on a premixed set and sit there reading the latest gossip from your friends…
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live performance
