As you’ve probably seen by now, Emily White, an intern at NPR, posted this commentary about how she’s bought maybe 15 CDs in her life but had a library of tens of thousands of songs, and how people of “her generation” won’t pay for music but will pay for convenience. Go read it; I’m a bit curious how many downloads aren’t included in those CDs but were paid, but let’s assume the answer is “not many.”

And all of the pr0n

In response, we have David Lowrey writing about how horrible this is and stealing from artists, and how evil “free culture” is. He argues that bands do make money from labels (counting advances as income – and wildly understating the sad facts about how all that money is taken right back), and brings up a lot of what I consider economic false-flag arguments about how Google and Apple and Megaupload et all are raking it in from piracy. But read his column yourself.

And over here, Jonathan Coulton finds himself agreeing really with both sides, and empathising with Mr. Lowrey, but saying we’re leaving the age of scarcity here and that there’s nothing much to be done about it. That’s true, but doesn’t go far enough.

First, I’ll admit this right up front: David Lowrey is right, at least in part. This will destroy the old system. Really, it already has, and 21-year-old Emily White is the spectre with cloak and scythe staring its participants in their faces. Understandably, they do not like that.

And in some ways – particularly the earlier versions of this system – this is a bad thing. It did pay people – vocalists, instrumentalists, studio engineers, producers, artists – all kinds of people who made and are still making artistic contributions. Along the way, some artists – even some of the “talent” – made real money.

Now, people who came up in that system find it collapsing around them. That’s brutal, and there is real suffering for it which should not be ignored. Leaving aside the corporate end, and the gatekeepers, and the eat-all-your-money-and-own-your-everything and lawsuit-happy RIAA and MPAA ass monkeys, there are artistic contributors – musicians – of the old system who used to make a living and now don’t.

That sucks. I sing the praises of trying to find new ways to do all this a lot, and of the opportunities, but the wreckage is real. A lot of it’s deserved – Burn, Warner Pigs, Burn – but as always, a lot of artists are going to take the worst of it. That’s unfair.

But the elephant in the room everyone is busily ignoring in their indignation is that the only way to restore this dying system and achieve Mr. Lowrey’s goal would be to destroy everything. Turn off the computers, shut down the net, blow it all up, get out the polyester and pretend it’s still 1971 just like the rest of the baby boomers have been doing since 1982.

Which won’t happen. So instead you’d install comprehensive DRM on everything along with massively intrusive surveillance of everything you do on your computer and your music, and – even in the best version of this – restrict everything you do now to only and exactly those things you could’ve done in January of 1971, just before chromium dioxide magnetic tape made first-generation cassette recordings off LPs worth hearing. Every time you hit “play,” their software would ask their servers whether they think you should, and a copyright lawyer would get their horns.

Sure. That’ll work.

Of course, that’s exactly what they’ve been trying to do. Ironically, I think there’s an argument to be made that they might’ve pulled it off had they been willing to settle for the old status quo, but they are and always have been too damn greedy. They’ve gone after the super-goals of we own everything and you pay us every time you listen, and the one thing you don’t do is get between Americans and their entertainment. Maybe once there may’ve been a middle ground of people willing to say, “yeah, it’s fair to keep paying here” had the industry been reasonable about it, but they haven’t been.

Ever.

Which really, is for the best. The mere existence of any such monitoring system is intrinsically abusive, can only be abused further, and, in fact, has been so abused. It’d be a bigger fiasco and bigger destroyer of rights than the drug war. Political censorship, information trolling, Sony’s infamous audioCD-based rootkits – the list goes on and on.

All these abuses and outrages and the fact that this is one of the few areas Americans actually care make that approach a total non-starter. And all of that, taken together, means exactly one thing:

It doesn’t matter what you think of Emily White.

Where there’s a way, there is a will, and all the protestations and harrumphs and those-kids-today you can cough up do. not. matter. This is reality, and reality does not care whether you like it. They have successfully rejected the old system and superseded it with their own simply by reacting to the new facts on the ground. As we’ve already shown, nobody’s putting the old one back.

It is long past time to stop complaining and start dealing with it.

So, given that: what can you do? How can musical artists make any money doing this, moving forward?

We’ll talk about that next time.
 

This is Part 1 of Music in the Post-Scarcity Environment, a series of articles on, well, what it says on the tin.

Spent the whole morning working with the printer on colour matching for the cover of Anna’s book. Screen-to-print colour matching is still such a pain in the ass.

Non-sarcastic pro tip: Photoshop lets you edit its CMYK output profile curve directly. If, by editing that profile curve, you can duplicate on screen whatever assholery the press software is doing to your artwork on paper? Do that, then hit the little button to invert the curve. This’ll result in Photoshop doing the opposite – overcompensating on screen in the other direction – and the two errors will mostly cancel each other out.

That’ll get you 90% of the way there. Then fiddle with that to finesse it the rest of the way home.

I also have a cool Westercon announcement but it can wait until I have time. 😀

Hey, everybody – I’m hip-deep in soundtrack and book and also some equipment upgrades and tour setup stuff so I’m mostly taking an internet break this week. But I’ve finished another new song for the Free Court of Seattle soundtrack! I wish you guys could hear it, it’s awesome.

Are you coming to Westercon? I’ll have an announcement once they get back to me again to confirm, but it’s pretty confirmed. ^_^

One of the projects I’m working on is a soundtrack for a fantasy novel series by Angela Korra’ti. The trilogy is collectively called The Free Court of Seattle, with first novels Faerie Blood and Bone Walker.

Kickstarter backer copies and pre-orders for Faerie Blood in electronic form are going out now, as in, right now, as in check your inboxes. The first copies of the print edition should be made this week, and ship shortly thereafter. Electronic editions will be available through Amazon/Kindle, Apple/iBook, B&N/Nook, Chapters/Kobo, and the rest of the alphabet as the rollout schedule progresses, print editions will come through Third Place Press.

I’m the book designer – hey, I have an art degree, I may as well use it – and I’ve restarted my old small press to handle taxes. It’s weird being back in the small-press saddle. I never thought I’d typeset LOW ORBIT PUBLICATIONS again, much less announce book releases, but, well, here I am!

I’m really happy with how this book looks. By which I mean, PDF people? We are Retina-display aware and ready. Because that is just how we roll.

I also finished one of the original songs for the soundtrack last night. Anna was all jumping up and down at the lyrics.

This? This is gonna be good.

Suddenly there are CHAINSAWS! next door. So, no recording right now! Enjoy some URLs instead:

Badass of the week: Julie D’Aubigny. Go read that, she was awesome.

In May, Pixar story artist Emma Coats tweeted a series of “story basics.” There are no doubt other versions, but this is one.

Blue lobster! Very rare, caused by a super-unusual genetic defect.

Let’s talk a minute about rooms and sound.

I’ve mentioned spending a lot of time last week on the studio. While at it, I finally set up some proper monitor speaker pairs. I had a pair of AFCO minispeakers, but they weren’t set up right, and I only had the one pair. Mostly, I was working with headsets.

I’ve now fixed that. The AFCOs sound much better, properly placed. But I also wanted a second pair for higher-fidelity monitoring. To do that, I puled my 1982 Bose units from the living room, where they’ve been part of a home stereo.

Bose 301 Series II; three cones, three directions!

Here’s the thing: in that living room, these speakers have always sounded kind of muddy and terrible. Nobody listens to that stereo since we moved. I imagined something was broken – I’d already rebuilt the amp and it sounded great now on headphones – but I thought I was going to have to rebuild the speakers, too.

However, after hauling them upstairs, I found there wasn’t anything wrong with them at all. They’re fine. In my studio, they sound like the speaker version of my studio reference headphones – nice and clean, with good separation and a nice even low-end. Not the most precise speakers in the world, but that’s why I have headsets. Plus, you want variety in monitors; that’s why you have multiple sets.

This behaviour difference shows how rooms matter. My studio is essentially a sound-dampened squarish box. By contrast, our living room is long and narrow, and has this slanted ceiling that’s one storey up at one side, and two at the peak in the middle on the other side, with skylights, and at one end, there’s a giant dormer, and in the other, kind of a box window.

There are angles everywhere. See?

Our ceiling, lying down, looking up. No, really.

The Bose 301s were built for squareish rooms that might need a lot of sound-scatter. (Bose is kind of famous, or infamous, for this, depending upon your opinions of scatter.) Their individual elements are angled in multiple directions intentionally, to defeat the rectangular-room problem of heavily localised sound loudness, and poor imaging.

If your room is scattering your sound to hell and back already, just by having many weird angles, you end up with far too much scatter. Everything ends up sounding like mud, because everything is going everywhere and you start playing wave cancellation games. There’s no distinction or isolation.

Not that bad

So, studio sorted! But since I still needed something for the living room, I dug a pair of early-1980s Realistic Minimus 7s out of the closet. I know, Radio Shack mini-speakers; my excuse was that nobody used that stereo anyway. I remembered them fondly, but, still, minispeakers.

Turns out these are sought-after classics. I had no idea how much until this weekend – look up the mod kits and the GearSlutz articles and stuff, it’s kind of amazing. So, surprise!

Despite that, in most objective terms, they aren’t nearly “as good as” the Bose in lab conditions. They’re quite precise, but being tiny, don’t have so much in the low end, and can’t handle too much higher levels of output. Response curve is good, but below 100hz…. well, let’s just say bassheads need not apply. And all the drivers face straight out, so there’re sound-concentration problems; they don’t fill a room of any size. It’s very uneven.

one of the 18 million variants

Or, turns out, they don’t fill a normal room. In this room, with a little bass boost, they sound significantly better than the Bose did. There’s better staging, a better sense of place, lots more depth, and the muddiness is gone. They do fill the room, even at pretty low volumes, and the sound is very even – if a bit shy in the low end.

Why? Because the room matters. This room doing all the scattering you could ever want. As a result, the tight focus of these speakers is perfect.

So the moral of the story is simple: Figure out the room first, and then go buy things. You can do a lot more with a lot less if you pay as much attention to to the environment as the equipment, and all the speaker budget in the world won’t fix a mismatched room.

For those curious, a pair of late-70s/early-80s Minimus 7s will run you $35-$70 on eBay, depending upon condition and any mods. Crossover mod kits vary from $15-$30, depending on type.

This post is part of The DIY Studio Buildout Series, on building out a home recording studio.

LAST DAY FOR LEANNAN SIDHE’S KICKSTARTER! They made minimum goal but have not yet made stretch goal! They have like 10 hours to go as of this morning so GO NOW!

Cool part about building a studio is that you’ve built a studio! Uncool part is that you’re never finished, because even if you don’t want to add anything, all the parts you switch around all the time end up turning into WRITHING PILE OF INFINITE RUBBER SNAKES, by which I mean cables, and you get crosstalk and loud and and and.

Also, you bring stuff in and take stuff out and you already had too much in there^* and now EVERYTHING IS IN THE WAY. Everything. IN THE WAY. All of it.

So once in a while you have to take it all apart and put it back together, and then you get ideas, and then you’re in for it because now it’s a project. Now I have a new shelf out of scrap wood so I can use some previously wasted space in the closet^**, I got better power into the closet and built a charging area for battery devices, a bunch of stuff is GONE GONE GONE, I fixed most but not all of a noise problem (only affecting monitor speaker playback, and only really loud, so not actually a work-stoppage issue), AND!

…improved my speaker monitor setup so much omg you guys.

Seriously it is so much better. I have speaker output now that sounds like reference headset output, only, you know, the speaker version. I have no idea whether this sounds important to you, but totally is.

Also it’s kind of a demonstration of how good my baffles are because the sound comes from ONE DIRECTION ONLY. ONE. NO BOUNCING. NONE FOR YOU.

Which is a little weird. But cool.

The only kinda silly part is that Reference Speaker Set A are along one wall and Set B are along a different wall so you have to spin around in the chair to get stereo comparisons. SHUT UP IT’S THE ONLY WAY IT FITS. If I turn them all on and spin around fast enough maybe I’ll get surround sound^⁂.

Now all I need are to add are shelves for the good monitors and also some shitty computer speakers on the desktop, since that’s sadly what most people use! Maybe I can use something off a old CRT monitor. Remember these?

Man, those sucked

Kickstarter!

*: ALWAYS TRUE REGARDLESS OF SIZE OF ROOM OR NUMBER OF ITEMS
**: No really this helped so much, because now I have a place for gig bags. It was a really tall empty space.
⁂: I love weird typographical symbols^‱.
‱: Like, is this just a box for you, or do you see it?

Hey, check this shit out – a progrock concept album about the fall of Princess Luna and the rise of Nightmare Moon. It is epic. Also, another reminder: Leannan Sidhe’s album kickstarter closes on Friday. Best go now while good backer rewards are available. 😀

We got some suggestions in various places (Livejournal, Facebook) about new names for the local hardware store which has decided it needs a liquor license. Pick y’r favourite!

[poll id=”24″]

Finally, here, have this awesome NASA video of the Venus transit. I watched a few live feeds at once, because I could! HI THE FUTURE!

Oh rite, it’s Monday. Hi, Jango listeners! Nice to meet you! I should upload some more songs for you guys over there. For CONVENIENCE! But I hope you’ll look at the band website, because you can play everything here. ^_^

Private liquor sale is new in our part of Cascadia, and while I was busking at market yesterday, I discovered the local hardware store got themselves a liquor license. They’ll begin selling spirits in a couple of weeks.

Chainsaws, nailguns, and vodka! What could go wrong? All that’s missing are fireworks.

Suddenly, this seems like a good idea

I think they need a new name. I’ve already come up with NAILGUNS’N’GIN and AMPUTATIONS R US. Comment with suggestions, and I’ll make a poll on Wednesday. XD

Today, I’m working today on the soundtrack album for Faerie Blood and Bone Walker. The soundtrack was originally mostly for the first book, but it’s evolved into an equal treatment of both. There’s one song where I need to figure out licensing, but it should be pretty straightforward; we weren’t going to do any covers, but, well, Anna had an idea, and if we can get the right vocalist, it’d be awesome. But we need the right male vocalist, somebody who can be a bit of a crooner. I only know one who has the right voice, and he’s pretty busy. But I’ve asked. Fingers crossed.

Leannan Sidhe’s album kickstarter is on its last five days! (Yeah, it says four, the last day is day zero to go and it counts down in hours and minutes.) They’re quite close to funding now, so if you’ve been waiting, get yourself over there and back it!

These guys

They’ve come this far in a 21-day sprint run (vs. the usual 30-day), so their metrics are actually really good. It’d be cool to pop them back onto the Popular pages in the last few days, get a little bonus attention, maybe trigger their newly-announced stretch goal. I’ve already backed, so g’wan, do it.

Up early, waiting for my partner and occasional collaborator Anna as she gets dental surgery done – it’s nothing serious, but does involve anaesthetics which mean Anna requires babysitting. Note: DO allow texting (because hilarious), but do NOT allow root access.

This diurnal thing is for the birds.

We have a winner on the review lottery; thanks to 403 on Dreamwidth for the kind notes about Cracksman Betty, particularly the songs Song for a Blockade Runner and Columbia. Get me your address so I can mail you a signed physical CD! The band address works fine. 😀

Leannan Sidhe’s Kickstarter project has hit $2500, or 83.3%; statistically speaking, they’re sure to make it at this point. So go pick a level, ’cause at this point you’re pre-ordering. 😀 They’ve also announced some stretch goals.

And finally congratulations to friend-of-friends Mira Grant, whose novel Blackout has made the New York Times mass-market paperback best-seller list. I’ve read the first two (Feed and Deadline) and have this concluding novel queued up to read today while babysitting Anna. I’d’ve read it before, but I didn’t want to lose a day, which is what tends to happen with these things.

Have a good weekend, everybody!