POD, DRM and E. S. Posthumus

We were discussing again in Friday's Podcast about Print On Demand (POD) publishing and whether or not it has any place in publishing legitimately, official and of appropriate quality (in the writing, not in the printing) works of fiction / non-fiction.

There is still a massive lack of faith in it - despite overwhelming stats suggesting cheaper, more efficient publishing (even though one POD publisher said they'd managed 10 million prints in 10 years, and are now able to do 10 million in 11-13 months) - however there is a time and a place. Certainly, I believe established writers would be better off following this route to cut out the middle man of the publishing industry (that ultimately takes all the money) just as Radiohead attempted with their latest album (obviously ignoring the "choose your own price" philosophy). George Michael has promised to release his next album free on the web too, DRM free!

As part of this unrelenting drive towards MP3s and eBooks, the big companies must protect their investments, therefore relying on DRM - Digital Rights Management - iTunes do it to prevent users from downloading their music from the store onto more than 3 PCs. iPods plugged into pcs won't allow DRM'd music to be downloaded. If you want any control you have to burn the music to CD and rip it out again.

Microsoft's XBox 360s won't allow users to upgrade to a newer / bigger XBox and take all their files with them (saved games / downloaded movies). Saved games can only be transferred by buying a cable from Microsoft that must be destroyed afterwards ("This cable will self destruct"!)

There was recently an article bemoaning the use of Netflix and newer HD monitors / TVs. As far as I'm aware, Netflix allows users to download movies to watch and keep (just like iTunes and their MP3s - which aren't really MP3s, but... just don't question, alright?). By connecting a new HD screen forces the software to update its drivers / software, resulting in any files / movies that it does not deem as Netflix official being deleted from your system - any movie the user has downloaded from another service provider!

Then, of course, there is the Amazon Kindle, preventing users from sharing their eBooks, preventing portability, and even suggesting that if Amazon suspects misappropriation of the Kindle / eBooks, the service will be revoked from that user... for ever - Muwahahahaha!

But what is DRM for? Who does it protect? The Artist? The Novelist? Or the Man... the Company?

Last night, I stumbled... finally... upon E. S. Posthumus's website for the 1,000 time in eight months. And there, after 6 long years of waiting, I discovered that their new album - Cartographer - that I had for so long waited, was finally, finally available to buy!


You have no understanding of how long I've waited: E. S Posthumus were instrumental in really invigorating a lot of people's love for the music in movie trailers. Their calling card Pompeii was used in the original Spiderman trailer back in 02. Quickly followed by hundreds of other trailers - you all remember when Moby released his multi-platinum selling album Play back in 99, and it was suddenly everywhere, in movie trailers, soundtracks, TV adverts? E. S. Posthumus had similar success, albeit still in the independent circuit (it was still three years after I first purhcased the album from CDNOW.com that I saw it in the shops over here in the UK - three years).

Anyhoo, why is this important? I'm off to New Zealand at the beginning of February and having watched E. S. Posthumus's website like a nerd waiting for the postie to deliver the next piece in his monthly subscription to "Build your own woman from matchsticks in 20 years" for yonks, eyeballing the meager updates and the promise that there will be more news about the album in the Summer of 07, then October, then November... the promise that the album will be released in December, then the beginning of January 08, and finally sometime in February.

It was released on the 17th January and I only realised last night - my problem still being that there is no way that the album could ship over from the US in under two weeks in time for me to rip it to my MP3 player (stay with me here... I do link this back to writing). My choice was one of two things. Buy and download the double disk album (yes, two amazing CDs) legally from iTunes, or from CDBaby.com.

iTunes were selling the CDs separately. You'd have to pay £7.99 for each. So £15.98. CDBaby, on the other hand were offering both together for $19.98 (£10.20). Of course I purchased through CDBaby, but the price wasn't my only consideration, and here is where we finally return to my thoughts on the future of POD.

iTunes use DRM. It's possessiveness to protect its own music prevents me from copying the files onto my MP3 player, take them to work, and most importantly, prevents me from copying them onto my music server at home, thus preventing me from listening to it through my Squeezebox (the most amazing bit of musical kit I've ever bought - I love it!) and the wonderful world of surround sound. As I said, above, I'd have to burn the music to CD, then rip it back to MP3 (all the while losing sound quality).

CDBaby avoids DRM because of two things: 1) they respect their users, and 2) they respect the artists who sell through their site. I suppose the clincher was that they give 91% of the sales to the artist themselves. 91%! So, from my purchase, E. S. Posthumus have just made at least £9. That is far more than I'd imagine they'd make by selling through an outlet - far more than the overpriced iTunes.

It is clear to me that DRM works to protect only the man and his company. The Artist hangs on the far end, waiting for their meager cut. Is this right? Should we, the consumer, be supporting this? I don't think so.

The counter argument is that these artists, and / or writers who sell through independent websites, and POD publishers aren't going to generate the same amount of sales - well, last night when I hurriedly paid my money, I couldn't get on the site to download the music I'd just paid for. It was fine this morning, but I guess there were just too many people getting hold of their much anticipated music.

Word of mouth is a wonderful thing when those speaking the words truly love the product and aren't getting paid a penny to do so. My money is on POD having a future in the publishing industry, sans DRM and with more of the loot going to the creators.

Withdrawals

So, Police Gig... it's all over now *SIGH*

I'm suffering a depression at the thought of twenty years culmination ending last night. It was an absolutely brilliant concert, though I admit you'd probably have to be a fan and have to have been there to enjoy it.

A basic set up - just the three of them, one rhythm guitar, one bass and a whole load of drums and percussion - a kind of back to basics set.

And they just stormed, with Copeland flinging drumsticks left right and center - he had a quiver by each drum set and midway through he'd grow bored or be primed to move between his drums and he'd fling them high.

Sting wailed as only Sting can and Andy tripped up and down his fretboard as if suffering parkinsons.
Sting's son's band, Fictionplane, opened the concert with gusto and though half of what they played kind of felt repetitious and too samey to what is already out there (I'd have expected more) there was a couple of great sounding tunes.

The Police

As a kid I was brought up on a mix of Dire Straits, Cliff Richard, Neil Diamond, Eddy Grant and Harry Chapin, not really having a musical choice of my own until those Sunday mornings when The Roxy would play on the TV, or the family would all gather in the lounge after an episode of the original Robin Hood television series ended and we switched on the radio to listen to the Radio 1 chart show. 1987 was the year Michael Jackson released Bad, my very first cassette tape - I had to wait until Christmas to get my copy and I was seriously miffed because my best friend, Paul, got his copy for his birthday in October.

At that point in my buck-teethed, bowl-cut hair life I had no idea who The Police were. Their last album had come out in 83 and they'd split up soon after. At that time I was 4 or 5 and more interested in moving from playgroup to the infants and primary school, and whilst their Singles album had come out in 86, it hadn't touched my radar.


It wasn't until another year later, in 1988, that I first came across them and my musical appreciation changed forever. I was 8, approaching 9.

On and off over the years I'd spend time with my nextdoor neighbour, Chris, often playing on their Atari - that old classic Out Run, or Ranarama - discussing or swapping Fighting Fantasy gamebooks or playing with his parent's spanking new hi-fi equipment, reading funny stories to each other with a golden-headed microphone and making funny noises with the effects for our own amusement. We'd met proper at primary school. At the time Chris had a best friend called... Chris, and my first foray into their world was a crazy playground sing off, with them assailing my ears with Michael Jackson's Beat It (as a way of trying to clear me off their patch of grass) and me returning their 'diss' with the strains of Bros's I Owe You Nothing (oh for the love of God, how embarrassing)!

Fortunately we became friends because I desperately needed someone to show me right music from wrong music.

And so it was in 1988 that one day I knocked on Chris's door and he invited me in with such enthusiasm that I thought we'd (as in his dad) had bought a new game for the Atari (Leisure Suit Larry was on the horizon), but no. Chris wanted to show me firstly his parents' new CD player (the first I ever saw), and notably one of his Dad's first albums: The Police's The Singles. He wanted me to listen to his favourite song - Every Little Thing She Does is Magic - and whilst I struggled with the notion of choosing the track you wanted to listen to instead of having to fast forward and rewind, finding first which side of the tape you were trying to listen to before choosing direction (I wouldn't get my own CD Player until late in 93) he played one of what I thought was a truly phenomenal song - that building open of keyboard and guitar, the dash of hi-hat, the drop out followed by a carribean chorus sound, was like nothing I'd heard before, and Crikey! I'd been on this planet for some 8 years.

We sat on his parents's lounge carpet for most of the day skipping back and forth through that album, him always returning us to Every Little Thing, and me pushing for Message In A Bottle.

I think that what struck me most was the drumming. I'd had no previous experience in the music I'd listened to previously of a drummer playing an active role. In the majority of songs I'd listened to the drums seemed to follow a simple set pattern that was repeated adinfinitum, but in Copeland's drumming there seemed little uniformity and it was as if Sting and Andy Summers were rushing to the chorus so that Stewart could unleash himself.

The songs all sounded so different (I'd no idea they spanned 5 years and 5 albums or that these had each been a hit) and yet they went together like a strange story I'd no real concept of - I wouldn't properly understand Roxanne until my parents explained prostitution, that Invisible Sun concerned Northern Ireland, what the hell The Scylla and Charybdis were, referred to in Wrapped Around Your Finger or the irony of Don't Stand So Close To Me (my brother would end up in a similar situation some 15 years later).

The whole album was alive, every instrument playing as if to assert itself over all the others, and Sting's voice, and his lyrics drawing it all together, making it all real.

Somehow I managed to buy a tape copy, whether from my own pocket money or begged off my parents, and that tape sat solidly in the tapedeck for years to come, accompanying us on holiday in the car tape player, or when my family grew bored and wanted to listen to my brother's Billy Joel album, I'd pop it in my walkman. Either that or Dad' would turn it off because he found the gorgeous King of Pain too depressing.

I pored over the lyrics until I had them down and I sang and sang. Dad would later ruin Roxanne for me by squealing the title as Sting did just to annoy me (at the time I was going out with a South African girl, funnily enough called Roxanne - yes, we were quite young), and long after we split up and I was in emotional turmoil over my loss, Dad would remind me: "rrrrrrrrROCKS-ANNNNNN". I wonder what ever happened to her? She moved to the States the year I went to secondary school. *SIGH*

Message in a Bottle I'd ruin myself, only this year in fact - with the release of Guitar Hero 2. Those damn chords are just too quick to play without breaking my middle digit.

Anyhoo, they're back! And tonight, the first of the UK concerts, starts in Birmingham, and - YAY - I'm gonna be there, 14 rows from the front on the floor in front of the stage.

14 rows! They can sweat on me!


So, this is a big thanks to Chris for giving me musical sense and helping me fall in love with the greatest rock band in the world... in my opinion ;)

The Hoosiers

Saturday night, we're driving home from the Yangtze (best all-you-can-eat Chinese), in Windsor, when on the radio, we heard a fairly catchy tune, though it had the strange lyric of "tippy-toes, my tippy-toes". Laura surmised that there's a big book for musicians where artists get extra credit for working in the odd lyric. Take Just Jack's "casting aspersions" for example.

Anyhoo, the song was darned catchy, but I forgot about it. Then, round my hairdresser's, she tells me, you remember Alan Sharland? Well, erm, of course I do. I went to school with his brother, of course I know Alan. He was in the year below.

Turns out his band finally came of age. The Hoosiers are here with their first single Worried About Ray... and it rocks. Buy their album!

Check them out on You Tube

Book and Roll

What could be more rock and roll than the library, eh? Over the years, rockstars have taken copious amounts of drugs, fallen out of coconut trees, thrown furniture out of hotel windows, had vast amounts of sex, played to millions, and contributed vastly to the carbon footprint by jetting all across the world.

The library, by contrast, is an often quiet place, where old dears come to bitch about public services, foreign nationals surf the web for hours on end, communicating with their family back home whilst trying to apply for permanent visas, or simply applying for jobs, whilst stinking, wretched regulars make everyone sick on their fumes. And here in the basement some idiot runs amok with the IT equipment, some writing, lots of loud music, a chair on wheels and anything he can find to leap out at people from behind pillars just to scare them - what a crack!

Anyhoo, the library, that wonderful place where, recently, my boss pointed out that only 10% of the town's population come, that lonely, grey building that every other corporate worker looks down upon for being "just the library", that down-sizing establishment of old folk and kids schlepping of school, is soon to be home... to a rockstar.

I kids you not, and no, this isn't about Michael Jackson, anyone from Kiss, or Scooch (as soon as they lose... ahem, win, Eurovision). No! If this person gets the job, and it's fairly difficult, I'm sure, to get a job having spent the past 10+ years doing nothing but strumming and wailing, then the library will be home to a member of the Coo-

Er... I think that would be against the Data Protection Act actually, if I gave the band name - I shouldn't know anything about, which means, neither should you - perhaps I'll let you know which recently split band this person is coming from... perhaps.

In the mean time we must sit back (it's better than working) and ponder upon how rock and roll it is to go from gigging to shelving?

A Night at the Orchestra

Went with friends to see The Cinematic Orchestra last night at the local Art House South Hill Park which was really amazing - they have a six piece band that focuses around a drum and bass style instrumentation with the infusion of seemingly freeform Jazz. It's the kind of music that draws you in and sets your mind off on thought tangents, wondering upon if's, and but's, and why's.

I've had their music for some time... I've just never listened to it. Too many MP3's I guess :). Anyhoo, they had two opening acts: Eva Abraham whose soulful talent opened the night brilliantly. Just her on guitar and her friend on the biggest double bass in the world. Her songs are predominantly happy, but they're played through a really thougtful set of melodies, seemingly downbeat, and yet they draw you in. Acoustically driven, like a downbeat KT Tunstall, and as beautiful voice as Norah Jones, without being over-produced. I had to buy her CD then and there.

Second opening act was Patrick Watson who fused Coldplay and Radiohead in a way that at times was absolutely amazing, and others, your typical boys-on-stage rock-band music out-of-control, where all the instruments play at once, and someone to the side tweaks all his knobs (yes, the lucky boy has more than one) to create special effects of madness. But for all the weirdness, and the funny way he sang out of the side of his mouth, like a permanent disfigurement, and when he really got into his "oooohs" and "arrrrrrs" he jigged on the spot like he needed the loo, there were moments of absolute brilliance.

His band started with a somewhat funny "Oooooh" that interlaced their voices, in an embarrassing way for the audience (uh-oh cheap-chumps on their very first gig), but it opened out into an amazing tune. A few songs in and the saxophonist from Cinematic Orchestra brought his Clarenet out, bent his right leg around the end and began to blow and suck, whilst the Patrick pulled on the lips of a balloon to make it squeak - I kid you not.

But, outstanding from Patrick was his last song, where he, his guitarist and drummer came out onto the floor, amongst those standing (we had seats at the top of the theatre, which gave us the best view of everything - we didn't want to be on the ground with the riff-raff). The drummer set down a detachable drum and flicked at it with his brushes, the guitarist was unplugged into acoustic mode and Patrick sang through his hands, like a megaphone - silence but for these three at our centre - really beautiful song too. Like Eva, his voice was really distinctive (so, I've had to order his CD too).

And of course the Cinematic Orchestra - 10+ minute tunes of blissful chill. Why is it that the more interesting, diversive artists have to nibble at the edge of the creative industries?