Sunday, October 21, 2007

Link Roundup, October 21

I keep accumulating links about music online, partly from listening to podcasts, partly from reading mailing-list messages, and partly from noticing shared items on Facebook.
Here are a few links to recent pieces I found interesting.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Community Through Participation

Pop Geek Jonathan Coulton Succeeds by Giving Music Away
one advantage of giving away your music becomes readily apparent: The fans know all the words.

Not that the principle is really new but this is a good example of something we were discussing in class recently.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Online Businesses on Music

Been saving several links to share with you, having to do with music online, specifically with financial issues. My previous post should provide some context for my thinking about those issues. This post is an attempt to bring a few recent links together. Hope we can discuss some of those issues in class or in the forums for the course.

Opinion and, possibly, insight:

People and sites:

Music distribution, business models:

Of course, many other things are happening in the online world, in terms of music.

Where to Start with my Other Music Blog

I set up this Ethnomusicology blog to post items relevant to the course ANTH398D Selected Topics in Anthropology: Ethnomusicology. Thought these blogging activities might complement what we do in class and through Moodle. I tend to think a lot about music while I'm browsing and blogging tends to influence my teaching, so the connection was obvious.

But there's another music-related blog to which I contribute: blog.criticalworld.net. This other blog is associated with CriticalWorld, a site dedicated to Thinking Globalisation Through Music. (Though that blog is part of CriticalWorld.net and though I have been involved with CriticalWorld for a while, my blogging activities there are completely autonomous.)

Through that other music blog, I tend to think a lot about financial issues relating to music in the context of "Digital Life." These issues have been mentioned in class so I thought I'd give something of a rundown of several of my very own blog entries about these issues. This is not meant as a shameless plug, a "vanity post" or an anthology. My hope is that looking at these entries, you might understand my approach a bit more.

For instance, I've been having fun with "business models" relating to music in a broad context:

As is probably obvious to anyone, one of the main targets for reflections about music-related businesses is the so-called "Recording Industry":

Digital Rights Management (copy-protection on commodities related to copyrighted items) is a frequently mentioned issue:

As I mentioned in class, there are things to say about ringtones:

Some of my posts tend to be playful:

And, overall, I've set up broad categories to classify posts on that blog:

  • Fresh for Direct reactions to news pieces and current events
  • Soapbox for Rants, monologues, tirades, personal reactions, advocacy
  • Sandbox for Playful, fun, distracting, collaborative items
  • Ongoing for Open discussions of items relevant to CriticalWorld
  • CriticalWorld for Events, activities, internal links to the CriticalWorld site and contributors

Of course, I'd appreciate your comments on any of these items and my hope is that some of them can generate discussion.