Qtrax – When Is a Launch Not a Launch?

So. Today is/was supposed to be Day One of a new online service with an irresistable headline: “From today, feel free to download another 25 million songs – Legally.” blared the Times of London this morning, breathlessly announcing the launch of a “game-changing intervention in the declining record industry” at the MIDEM Conference [...]

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Music Lessons from Seth Godin

I’ve been an admirer of Seth Godin for a while. His book “Small Is the New Big,” (among others) is one of the seminal publications of the so-called Web 2.0 era. Godin periodically weighs in on the music business, (I think I mentioned this fascinating dissection on the future of the [...]

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The RIAA – They Can’t Be Serious

Noticed that the top e-mailed story from the entire Washington Post site the other today was regular radio columnist Marc Fisher’s latest Report from the RIAA front, containing this loaded handgun of a paragraph:
Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather [...]

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A Tale of Two Sites

…both in the “music discovery” category (sometimes called “Music 2.0″) are worth investigating:
First is a site called MOG “a music asylum run by its inmates,” (with a tip o’the’cyberpen to UTunes Advisory Boardster Andrew Dell’Antonio for pointing it out). MOG uses an impressive amount of social-networking tools and techniques to build a site to (in [...]

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The Madonna Model or the Radiohead Revolution?

So Madonna has given Warner Brothers the boot in favor of concert promoter Live Nation, while at the same time Radiohead has devised a pay-what-you’d-like scheme for their latest self-produced, self-distributed release, thumbing their noses at long-time label EMI. All in the space of a few days. [...]

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So Much For My Business Plan

Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero

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The Experience Economy (Engaging Art, Pt II)

Note to self: Spare the prose and save the reader.

Have to confess that after reading ALL of the various posts and comments in Doug McLennan’s “gangblog” called Engaging Art: A Public Conversation, my first takeaway is sheer exhaustion – we got some lonnnng posts, ripostes, and rants going on here! On Sunday Artsjournal.com Editor Doug [...]

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We Can’t Rewind, We’ve Gone Too Far

Yes, there have been a lot of silent days at the RoeDeo lately, but not for lack of anything to say; been busy lately in some computer-less pursuits, such as constructing the new World Wide HQ. Lots to post about, but to Break The Silence, let me point you to [...]

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If You’re Going To San Francisco….

…Flowers in your hair are no longer necessary (what, you don’t remember the song by Scott McKenzie?), but do make a point to check out the History of Audio exhibit in Terminal Three (mostly United Airlines gates). Word has it that it was put there to coincide with the AES [...]

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The Klassical Komeback, Pt III: Surge or Free Fall?

A couple of mainstream media outlets have picked up on the Great Classical (crossover) Comeback of 2006 lately: My old employer NPR had a story on All Things Considered The hook in the Tuesday (Mar 20) New York Times story was the just announced Classical Blowout Store from Amazon.com – a response, in the [...]

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