I don't have the stats to back it up, but my perception is that the "Long Tail" has been skewed. The short head is shorter. Fewer big stars are making less money. The top end of the fat middle is doing a bit better. There's a rise in the number of people just about able to do music and have no proper job. They're not getting wealthy but they're surviving. The bottom end of the fat middle and the long tail is more numerous than ever but basically making no money. There are more people making music than ever before but the vast majority of them are doing it as a hobby that generates a little pocket money or a free festival ticket and that's it. Total all of that together and the music GDP has probably increased. But the internal spread has changed. The Biz only ever made money from the short head and that's not doing as well as it used to.
As for me, I hardly spend money on music at all. I spend it on overpriced alcohol at music events.
I think the mess of GPG might well be an object lesson in what happens when a commercial organisation takes over an open source project. A lot of the current mess of PGP/GPG can be laid at the door of the PGP Corporation that took over Zimmerman's code.
"Be wary of click bait articles about diet and nutrition." There's an entire industry devoted to taking advantage of worried, and sometimes desperate people.
It's not just the Daily Mail. That includes tech blogs as well.
So perhaps this explains Tower Hamlets re-locating sheltered housing and council tenants to Dagenham or Middlesborough. With the added benefit that the vacant council property can then be sold off to the Buy-To-Let crowd. Just re-label "benefits cheats" to "TPIM subject" and you've solved several problems in one go while also enabling a tidy profit for your friends and appeasing UKIP and the Daily Mail readers.
There are cameras everywhere in London. But try reporting some petty crime like a stolen bicycle or motorcycle. Or an accident like a pedestrian being hit by a bus in Oxford St. And the cameras are no use at all. More and more I'm convinced that the forces of control have neither the manpower, time nor ability to do anything with them. The cameras are on but nobody's watching. However it's clear that fully automated systems like the speed cameras, minor traffic cameras and Congestion Charge cameras do work.
In the last year or so, ID systems have appeared in clubs, venues and even some pubs. To get in you have to present some ID like a driving license and have your mugshot taken. I wonder exactly who is training their facial recognition systems.
Mine's the one with the ultra powerful IR LEDs sewn into the lapels.
B ruce Sterling: Come 2013, I think it's time for people in and around the "music industry" to stop blaming themselves, and thinking their situation is somehow special. Whatever happens to musicians will eventually happen to everybody.
Nobody was or is really much better at "digital transition" than musicians were and are. If you're superb at digitalization, that's no great solution either. You just have to auto-disrupt and re-invent yourself over and over and over again.
It's pretty awful to be a musician and have no possibility of health insurance (as Jaron Lanier keeps pointing out), but you could have been a Nokia engineer. You'd have been blindsided even harder and faster, and you wouldn't even have had the girls and the weed.
I don't seem to have seen much discussion on the right to demand (via the courts) that the original source implements noindex, nofollow for the page containing your data. That might have been an acceptable compromise between the journals right to publish information about public records and making it easily found by search engines.
As with McKinnon: It pisses me off that a British citizen, with a British passport, who is not charged with any crime in the UK can be considered for extradition to the USA because some court in the USA thinks they may have committed a crime there.
Try and imagine the same thing happening the other way?!?
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Julian.
Remember the shoe thing? (as Julian Bond)
http://wondermark.com/220/
(untitled comment)
"Whatever happens to musicians will eventually happen to everybody."
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/459/State-of-the-World-2013-Bruce-St-page02.h tml#post38
I don't have the stats to back it up, but my perception is that the "Long Tail" has been skewed. The short head is shorter. Fewer big stars are making less money. The top end of the fat middle is doing a bit better. There's a rise in the number of people just about able to do music and have no proper job. They're not getting wealthy but they're surviving. The bottom end of the fat middle and the long tail is more numerous than ever but basically making no money. There are more people making music than ever before but the vast majority of them are doing it as a hobby that generates a little pocket money or a free festival ticket and that's it. Total all of that together and the music GDP has probably increased. But the internal spread has changed. The Biz only ever made money from the short head and that's not doing as well as it used to.
As for me, I hardly spend money on music at all. I spend it on overpriced alcohol at music events.
Open source goes commercial
(untitled comment)
It's not just the Daily Mail. That includes tech blogs as well.
Re: Advertising
Tower hamlets
Anyone watching?
In the last year or so, ID systems have appeared in clubs, venues and even some pubs. To get in you have to present some ID like a driving license and have your mugshot taken. I wonder exactly who is training their facial recognition systems.
Mine's the one with the ultra powerful IR LEDs sewn into the lapels.
Re: PR for Idiots: Extend leg, pull out gun, aim at foot, pull trigger (as Julian Bond)
Super simple solution: Get the trademark owners to authorise and sponsor the ads. "This PSA brought to you by Frito-Lay".
Charles Stross - The Laundry Files
What happens to musicians
B ruce Sterling: Come 2013, I think it's time for people in and around the "music industry" to stop blaming themselves, and thinking their situation is somehow special. Whatever happens to musicians will eventually happen to everybody.
Nobody was or is really much better at "digital transition" than musicians were and are. If you're superb at digitalization, that's no great solution either. You just have to auto-disrupt and re-invent yourself over and over and over again.
It's pretty awful to be a musician and have no possibility of health insurance (as Jaron Lanier keeps pointing out), but you could have been a Nokia engineer. You'd have been blindsided even harder and faster, and you wouldn't even have had the girls and the weed.
noindex
Ich bin ein journalister
Troll (as Julian Bond)
Espionage Porn?
McKinnon (as Julian Bond)
Try and imagine the same thing happening the other way?!?
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Julian.
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