Unlimited iTunes

This could be big in terms of getting people to think about music ownership in a different way. On the other hand, I doubt it will happen in the very near future.

FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Apple mulls unlimited music bundle: "Apple mulls unlimited music bundle"

Song Popularity and Video Games

Seems quite directly related to what we have been saying about connections between music and the entertainment industry.

Songs included in Guitar Hero 3 see a dramatic leap in digital sales
The actual details are a bit less convincing than I thought they might be. And there could be some discussion of what it means to license music for use in a game (or in a movie, or as a ringtone). The general population seems to emphasise more of a "rights to use in any context" idea while some musicians find it important to make sure their recordings are only associated with things they can support. After all, it would probably be frustrating for a band following a "Straight edge" hardcore punk ideal to have their music used in a commercial about a Seagram-created caffeinated liquor involving images of recreational drug use, gluttonous meat eating, and promiscuous sexuality... ;-)

Speaking of Participation

An older piece about Charles Keil...

February 4, 1999-Vol30n19: Charlie Keil: he's the 'Musicking' Man: Professor's mission is fostering musical expression in youth

Open Letter to Oliver Sacks

A bit of TAMILDAA going on here. But still...

Sent the following to Oliver Sacks after listening to this radio show/podcast episode: Open Source » Blog Archive » Speaking of Music Again: Oliver Sacks.

Dr. Sacks,

Listened to Christopher Lydon's Open Source show about your Musicophilia book. Was particularly interested, as an ethnomusicologist and ethnographer, in your comments on music mediation.

At 18:30, you began questioning musical universality and mention "pygmies in the rainforest" (which does sound like a composite narrative of well-known ethnographic cases). More interestingly, though, you allow for music to be mediated: "I think I took a little bit of license in that sentence of mine you read out. I think I said, I wrote something about music not needing any mediation. I think it does need mediation, everything needs mediation. But it's a very strange sort of mediation with music and it's like nothing else." (19:27-19:46)
Wanted to thank for your honesty and thoughtfulness.
Lydon didn't follow up on the mediation point. Have you written something to elaborate a bit on the mediated character of music? It might be quite useful for some of my teaching and research activities.

As an aside... You mentioned (McGill figures) Dan Levitin, Robert Zatorre, and Steven Pinker. By any chance, did (Cambridge figures) Ian Cross and Nicholas Cook make their way into your book?

Again, thank you for thoughtful and thought-provoking statements.

My mention of Ian Cross had to do with the music in evolution chapter (preprint PDF) we read in our course. We have talked repeatedly about Dan Levitin's This Is Your Brain on Music during the semester. We haven't really talked about Robert Zatorre during this semester but his name does come up fairly frequently, along with those of other music cognition in Montreal. Nicholas Cook wrote a "very short introduction" to music, the first chapter of which sounded really insightful (as read, in French translation, on another podcast).
I also wanted to mention classics in musical aesthetics (including Leonard B. Meyer, who was mentioned in Charles Keil's article on PDs and is discussed by Keil and Feld). But I found the institutional links too interesting not to use them, even half-jokingly.

The actual Open Source radio show (and podcast (MP3)) was, unsurprisingly, focused on WAM and alluded to conceptions of absolute music. Lydon has something of an "Old School" (erudite dilettante) perspective on music. He also tends to be obsessed with transcendentalism (Ralph Waldo Emerson et al.).

Interpreting Lyrics

Just because it's funny:
YouTube - Crazy Indian Video... Buffalaxed!

But it can also be interpreted as a commentary on globalisation, if you squint real hard.
An interpretation of how the original Tamil lyrics got misinterpreted is available in a very thoughtful blog entry.

"Music Wants to Be Free"

As in "free beer" or as in "free speech?"

An interesting blogpost about the death of the Record Industry:

demonbaby: When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide.

Linking this specific blogpost because it:

• Was linked by a fellow ethnomusicologist.
• Is rather current.
• Contains interesting links.
• Represents a rather clear position.
• Mentions differences between participants in music-related industries.
• Is followed by a lot of comments, many of them interesting and even insightful.
• Comes from a former "industry insider."
• Has "dissent" in the title.

On the other hand, this blogpost:

• Is rather long-winded.
• Doesn't present much that is really new.
• Skips the issue of defining what music itself is (falling in the trap of equating recordings with the music).
• Focuses too much on "music as a commodity."
• Seems to confuse a few issues and terms (for instance "stealing" and "illegal").
• Fails to define "label independance" (apart from lack of RIAA membership).
• Limits itself to the "call your representative" type of action common in social politics in the United States.
• Comes from a former "industry insider."

Still, it might be a fairly decent representation of the current consensus opinion against the Recording Industry. And it might be a good jumping board for discussions of changes in the way music is conceived.

Squares

YouTube - Hip To Be Square - Huey Lewis & The News

Lyrics About Recording Industry

Didn't know about the song before today. Strongly-worded position against some aspects of the recording industry. Should be relevant in our discussion of Attali's Noise.
NOFX - DINOSAURS WILL DIE LYRICS

Music Scholarship Roundup

A few recent items of scholarly interest for the ethnographic study of music.

• FolkStreams: A Singing StreamA movie about a reunion of the Landis family, which includes a number of singers. A classic for folkloristics and ethnomusicology.


• Music and Language conference(July 10-13, 2008, Medford, MA)


• Music and Politics journal (Open Access)


• Recent publications from Université de Montréal's Laboratoire de recherche sur les musiques du monde (LRMM).


• Music-related terms in the American Folklore Society'sEthnographic Thesaurus.

Noticed other interesting items, lately?

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.

• Snocap CEO on layoffs: 'pioneers take arrows' | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
• Snocap's association with MySpace could have had a greater impact on the recording industry. It seems, though, that there's a difference between music discovery and sales of recordings.
• Universal Music Takes on iTunes
• Are labels really getting new ideas?
• Homepage | Jam Sessions | Ubisoft
• A music-playing "game" for the Nintendo DS, used in performance by Montreal's DJ Champion.
• BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Madonna signs radical record deal
• Touring is where some musicians make their money.
• Free? Steal It Anyway - Forbes.com
• Radiohead's initiative shows that convenience is key.
• Apple, Tesco 'most to blame' for music biz crisis | The Register
• The economies of the recording industry should be reassessed.

Participation/Performance Playlist

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.

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:

• Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses and Content vs. Context, a Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends at FISTFULAYEN
• An open letter to the RIAA

People and sites:

• The Powergeek 25 — the Most Influential People in Online Music
• Download This: YouTube Phenom Has a Big Secret
• Facebook Working On a Music Platform For Bands; Not iTunes Killer, But MySpace; Apple Tieup

Music distribution, business models:

• Brier Dudley | Amazon's unlocked music still might get you sued
• First Radiohead...now Nine Inch Nails bids adieu to music label
• Has-beens jump on free downloads bandwagon
• Band releases album on floppy disk

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:

• New Models for Music as Business
• New Models for Music as Business: Attali Got It!
• New Models for Music as Business: Brazilian Tecno Brega
• Fun with Music Business Scenarios
• New Models for Music As Business: Majors Edition
• New Models for Music as Business: NIN Edition

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

• RIAA’s Landslide Victory
• Thinking Back on the Record Industry

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

• Majors, Indies, and DRM
• DRM-Freedom and Artist Recognition
• Effects of EMI’s DRM-free Downloads on Apple’s iTunes
• The Premium for DRM-freedom

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

• Reactions to Ringtone
• Cost of Ringtones (Rant)

Some of my posts tend to be playful:

• Music and Coffee: “Fair-Trade” and The Global Order (Draft)
• The Day The Music Undied?
• Zune Debacle: The Silliness Which Goes On Going On

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.

Blogging Ethnomusicologists

The author of the World Music textbook that I put on reserve has a blog with notes and YouTube links
Bakan WORLD MUSIC blog
He recently posted links to YouTube videos of Balinese music, including gamelan playing. It'd be interesting to discuss some of these excerpts in class, as we spend some time to talk about ethnomusicology as a discipline.

Acoustic Analysis of Music

Musical Acoustics/Physics of Music
Seeing the Sound
Praat Tutorial for Musicologists
Acoustics and Sound Technology

French Rap: A Podcast

Probably the first English-speaking show about French Rap and Hip Hop.
Yo La La ! The French Rap Hip Hop podcast mp3 online radio show.
Though the podcast's host (and programmer) has obvious preferences for specific styles and genres within French Rap and Hip Hop scenes, the program showcases an interesting musical diversity.

Future of Music (Coalition and Interview)

A podcast interview with a number of insightful comments about current changes in what people do with music.

Well-Rounded Radio: Episode 041: Jenny Toomey of The Future of Music Coalition

Among the issues that the coalition has focused on are music licensing, payola, low-power radio, health insurance for musicians, network neutrality, record label contracts, Internet radio licensing, and many other topics that are key to the current and future era of music-making for both independent and rising musicians.

Presentation (Week 1)

Course Outline

Here is the long version of the course outline (syllabus), in PDF format.
ANTH398D/2A