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.

Freely Streaming Music

Deezer and similar services could become interesting. It's a bit like other music streaming services but it allows anyone (from anywhere) to stream any music in the Deezer catalogue and blog/share it at will. Of course, there have been other services like this but none of them seemed to offer this level of freedom. As it's a French site, it has a number of tracks from France and other Francophone regions, including this track from Guinean musician Ba Cissoko.

Posting Comments

Oops!
I had set this blog up so that only registered Google users could comment. Comments are now open to anyone. If there's abuse, I'll close it up but register all students in my ANTH398D class.