January 2008 Archives

I don't know what's funnier about this -- the caricature of a 16 year that Corey Worthington is, or the way the bottle blonde interviewer becomes an increasingly prudish schoolmarm during the interview.

And his closing line in response that he should “go away and take a good hard look at” himself... Pause... “I have. Everyone has. They love it.” is brilliant. Is this what they mean when they refer to idiot savant?

Apparently he has an agent now.

I walked to work a couple of months ago, and it took me just over 35 minutes. I took the TTC today because it was snowing and I had my guitar, and it took me 55 minutes. This is why this stupid system is dying on the vine.

Sheesh.

As my millions of regular readers know, my band The Porktrashers recently recorded an album and released it online. We managed to get listed on iTunes, eMusic, plus physical distribution through CDBaby. It’s cheap to do, we sold a few (I suspect to friends and family), and getting “sales figures” has made for some cheap entertainment.

But recently, a Google search showed us our little CD was listed on a Russian Mp3 Torrent site for free download. And then shortly afterwards, on another mp3 site. And another! We were fascinated by this: where had they got the CD from? Surely no one would bother uploading our album — I mean, who would want it aside from our friends anyway? Do these sites employ some sort of bottom trawling methodology, where they simply troll BitTorrent and scoop up whatever’s out there, in-demand or not? Or perhaps someone simply uploaded it as a form of social currency?

Oddly, one site also offers users the ability to “Download it legally for .09¢ a track!” Now, obviously we have no agreement with them, so we were mystified by the legal claim (aside from it being an outright lie). It turns out copyright law is, not surprisingly, quite different and a little murky in Russia. As long as they are giving a piece of sales to the Russian Licensing Societies, it’s arguably legal there and hard to stop -- as the RIAA found out when they finally managed to shut down the huge allofmp3.com, only to see it replaced by myriad others.

What this makes clear is that the scale of music sharing/piracy has shifted - it’s a big business now, presumably based on site traffic - as has the definition of “legal” in a global digital marketplace. And while The Porktrashers are amused to see that our album - our little album! -- has been downloaded a couple of hundred times already, if you are a big label, or anyone trying to earn a living selling music the traditional way, this can’t be amusing so much as terrifying. The question is, will this be the shift that finally forces the big labels to change their business model?

I just noticed that on my Rogers’ Blackberry bill this month there is a little paragraph at the end which states, “Please note that effective March 4 2008, the monthly fee for your Voicemail service will be changing to $7 per month plus applicable taxes (previously $6). All other aspects of this service will remain the same.” (Emphasis mine)

Whew! Thank goodness that when Rogers’ increase their charges by more than 15% (and there’s the same increase for call display too, because that doesn’t come in the $90/mo plan), they’re not going to confuse me with any pesky service “enhancements” or anything. All I need to do is just give them more money and we’re done! How easy is that!?

This is why Canada’s cell phone system is the envy of phone companies the world over: it’s easy money when there’s no competition.

Campbell was actually excited to go back to school today as he's been missing his friends. Amazing. This state of mind probably lasted until about halfway through the morning, and I suspect we'll be back to the (considerably less enthusiastic) status quo by this evening. Sigh.