photo of Jim Dickinson by Steve Jones
Jim’s last words,

I refuse to celebrate death. My life has been a miracle of more than I ever expected or deserved. I have gone farther and done more than I had any right to expect. I leave behind a beautiful family and many beloved friends. Take reassurance in the glory of the moment and the forever promise of tomorrow. Surely there is light beyond the darkness as there is dawn after the night. I will not be gone as long as the music lingers. I have gladly given my life to Memphis music and it has given me back a hundredfold. It has been my fortune to know truly great men and hear the music of the spheres. May we all meet again at the end of the trail. May God bless and keep you.

World boogie is coming,

James Luther Dickinson

Luther and Cody Dickinson decided the best way to honor Jim’s legacy is to keep the Zebra Ranch open for recording with Jim’s sonic genius and musical ambiance intact. Contact zebra@zebraranch.com for more details.

“I’m just dead, I’m not gone.”
Jim Dickinson

Music Dealers Artist Tips

The Recording Studio System
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

Part 1 - Acquisition

I’ve seen and read many “how to” articles over the years about how to put together a home recording studio but let’s face it, this is not something you can really cram into one article. So I won’t try and cram such a broad subject into one blog. This blog instead is about my personal philosophy in terms of picking the right gear for your studio. I will focus on the major studio components and how you can get the most bang for your buck. It won’t be a “money is no object” blog because let’s face it, money is an object and you’ve got to spend it wisely. There’s a definite philosophy in terms of the recording studio as a collection of devices that, once grouped together, make up a recording studio. It’s a good idea to keep this in mind when you’re making your purchases.

I started assembling my recording studio around 1985. This first studio was a 4 track cassette recorder, a small mixer and a few guitar effects. It’s amazing to think about how many songs I wrote and how many hours I logged on that setup producing recordings. I must say as primitive as it was I sure had a blast doing it and the lessons I learned on that little rig helped me to this day with the fundamentals of the recording environment. If you get anything out of this blog, I hope it’s the understanding that a recording studio is not just bought and put into place over night. If you really are interested then you need to grow and cultivate your gear collection so that when the time comes; you’ll own and have mastered, all of the tools that you need. It’s not a good idea to rush out and make a major purchase on one piece of equipment that some sales man is telling you is “all you need” or that “you’ll never need anything else”, truth is, a real recording studio is a system of tools that work together and no one tool is any more important in the chain than the other. It is an overall system and the system is only as strong as its weakest link. There is simply no magic recording device that does everything you need to produce good sounding recordings, although, many marketing specialists are currently trying to convince you otherwise.

So where do you start now that you know this? Well everyone’s situation is going to be different and everyone is going to be at different stages of growing their recording studio, so all I can do is really advise you on the decision making process and hope it helps you to make the decision that is best for you. It truly depends on what you already have, in terms of tools and in terms of the skills needed to use the tools.

PC
For my money, by today’s standards, you need to start with a decent computer. Notice I don’t say you need a top of the line quad core Apple monster workstation. If you went that route, right there you’ve blown way too much money on one item for your studio system. The computer is pretty all encompassing but you do still need other items. A modest PC will do the trick and I would advise that you don’t spend more than $1000 on one if you’re just adding one into your studio. If you already have one and it’s in the 2 to 5 year old range, you should have a great start, you just need to learn how to streamline the system so that it can function in a recording environment. A critical rule for the computer in the studio, do not use it to check your email, surf the web or any other recreational activity other than recording. You shouldn’t even have Microsoft Office installed on this system! Right there you’ve eliminated the need for antivirus software and made your system run at least 25% faster! If you have a computer in your studio and it’s running slow, ask yourself what else you’ve been using the system for other than recording. I bet you could think of ways to clean it up and improve its performance just by streamlining its use. Take the money you saved by not buying an expensive system and get a second computer for your office needs.

Interface & Software
Next in the chain is an audio interface for the computer. Again while top of the line A/D converts have a great quality about them, you have many more items your studio that you need to purchase to complete your system, so spend wisely. $1000 and you’ve got a pretty great interface with some decent preamps. There are so many interfaces today it really depends on how many inputs you foresee using at one time. If you plan on recording a drummer then I would recommend a system with at least 16 inputs. While you probably won’t use them all you may very well need more than eight which is what most interfaces seem to have. If it’s more affordable, get one interface that has eight inputs and also has a digital interface that will allow you to chain another unit which will give you the option to expand when you need to. Make sure you go with an interface that already has software bundled with it. More than likely you will be starting out with a light version of the application but you should still be able to crank out quality work even with its limitations. Save the expense of a major software purchase for later.

Ears
Third is to make sure have some decent studio monitors. This is probably one of the most important investments you can make in your studio. Essentially you are buying your ears and you should expect to spend at least $1500 on a great pair of powered monitors. Head into your favorite music store and you’ll have many options. Just don’t think you can get away with using a pair of speakers from your home stereo. Home stereo equipment is not professional recording equipment. In fact home stereo equipment is usually “enhanced” to make it “sound better” to the audiophile. What you really need as an engineer is equipment that does not color the sound at all. You must know what is really being recorded and if you are using speakers that color or alter the sound in an effort to “enhance” it; you will never know what you are recording in your studio. It’s almost the equivalent of being blind. You’ll take your mix out of your studio and play it on another system and it will not sound anything like what it did in your studio. If you’re having this problem with your mixes traveling to other systems and still sounding like it did in your room; check your speakers.

Microphones
Now you’ve got the computer, the interface and the monitors, the next critical device in the chain is the microphone. There are so many applications for using microphones again it depends on what you intend to record. You should probably start with a good large diaphragm vocal condenser microphone ($500) unless you intend to work with all instrumental material. If so then second in line would be a good pair of small diaphragm condenser microphones for recording instruments in stereo ($700) such as acoustic guitars, pianos, and drum overhead. For the guitar amp a ($100) shure sm57 dynamic always does the trick here, even in multimillion dollar facilities it is usually what ends up in front of an amp first. A well rounded mic collection for the various types of instruments you plan to record is a vital element in the recording studio system. Start growing the collection as you can. The vocal condenser you purchase first should serve many purposes until you can acquire more microphones in your arsenal.

FX
Once you have these basic elements in place it’s time to think about effects for your computer system. I highly recommend going the route of hardware based DSP systems. This is actually what allows you to continue using that aging computer system and still have great results. PCI cards such as the UAD series are an outstanding value and take the load off of your computer to process virtual instruments and the like. A pair of UAD cards ($1500) and you will have an arsenal of effects at your disposal that can be expanded by purchasing and authorizing more effects as you can afford them. Yep, you may have to grow your effects as well. There are many hardware options these days, just pick the one that seems most appropriate to your needs.

On a final note, what is truly vital in any recording chain is a quality musical instrument. In my experience, every instrument has its own unique sound and you really get what you pay for here. There are certainly times when a less expensive instrument will work fine and gets the sound that you are looking for, again it depends on your tastes and what styles of music you are recording.

Every studio should have some good Virtual instruments as well. Again this depends solely on your taste and the types of instruments you’d like to have in an emulated environment. Synths, Electric and Grand Pianos, there are many outstanding sounding applications out there that you can add and install as you can.

All in all, putting together a recording studio system is an adventure that takes time, money and patience. Every new piece of equipment must be mastered before you can appreciate it’s place in the chain. It truly should be a passion that you are willing to sacrifice some things for. In total I’ve recommended about $7000 worth of gear here and that’s not counting the musical instruments but if you pace your purchases, spend the money on the essentials, in time it will start to come together. It took years for my studio to become what it is today. Actually it took decades but I kept refining it and kept learning. The technology will keep progressing so to continue learning is critical. Now days it only takes a few years for things to change and you’ll quickly find yourself behind the curve if you stop absorbing. Staying on top of things also helps when you start thinking about the upgrade process and that’s probably a whole other blog in itself.

May your gear proliferate and may you manage to stay out of the pawn shops! Unless you are buying the gear of course! - John

Composers and lyricists make pitch to join TeamstersSeeing demand for movie and TV music growing and take-home pay shrinking, about half of a group of 400 sign up to band together with an unlikely ally.

Alan Elliott, from left, James DiPasquale and Bruce Broughton, shown in Broughton’s home studio, are among those working to organize TV and film composers and lyricists. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times / November 10, 2009)

David Carbonara has a gig many of his peers would covet: He writes music for the critically acclaimed AMC show “Mad Men.”

A former jazz trombonist, Carbonara loves his job and is grateful for the work. Yet even after he labors on 13 episodes for a full year, he says he won’t earn enough to support his family. A one-hour basic cable TV show like “Mad Men” pays $7,000 to $13,000 an episode, but at least half of that goes toward hiring musicians, paying for studio time, copying music and other costs that composers like Carbonara increasingly absorb as studios look to lower their expenses.

“You have to work 26 shows in a year to earn a living,” said Carbonara, a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston who recently began work on an ABC drama without any idea as to when, or how much, he would be paid. “People don’t understand what we go through.”

Unlike most other workers in Hollywood, Carbonara can’t complain to a union about his pay rate or working conditions. That’s because he doesn’t have one.

In a heavily unionized industry, composers and lyricists are an anomaly in Hollywood. Along with production assistants, theirs are among the few remaining crafts not covered by a union contract.

Although conductors and orchestra musicians are covered by the American Federation of Musicians, composers and lyricists for television and movies are not represented by the AFM or anyone else. A group of them is determined to change that and is hooking up with an unlikely ally: the Teamsters.

About 400 composers and lyricists met in Burbank this week for an “information meeting” about joining Local 399. Artsy composers and lyricists would seem to have little in common with the brawny Teamsters, better known for representing studio drivers, location managers and, most recently, casting directors.

The tunesmiths had tried to join the Writers Guild of America a few years ago, but the union was then preoccupied with organizing workers in the animation and reality-TV sectors, and it suggested to its writing cousins that they approach the Teamsters, who are regarded as having more bargaining clout than the AFM.

“We are here to take advantage of a once-in-a-generation chance to rebuild our community and to redress the long-term health of our individual selves, our community and the craft of music for television and motion pictures,” Alan Elliott, a veteran composer and one of the key organizers of the union push, told his peers Monday night.

The Society of Composers and Lyricists, a nonprofit trade group that represents 1,200 composers and lyricists in the industry but does not have the authority to negotiate contracts, has not taken a position on the union drive.

Some composers and lyricists acknowledge that the proposed marriage with the Teamsters might appear odd. “We thought of the Teamsters like Jimmy Hoffa and crooked noses,” said James DiPasquale, a former president of the Society of Composers and Lyricists and a longtime TV music composer.

“We’re artists. Why do we want to be with that? We realized this is not your father’s Teamsters anymore.”

Although some at Monday’s meeting questioned the timing of the effort and whether it would succeed, half of those in attendance signed cards to join the Teamsters, the beginning of a process that could take at least a year. Two-thirds of working composers must agree to join the union before the Teamsters will take up their case. If employers dispute the claim, the matter could ultimately go to the National Labor Relations Board.

The board had previously determined, in 1984, that composers were “independent contractors,” blocking efforts to revive the former Composers and Lyricists Guild of America, which negotiated contracts in the 1950s and 1960s but dissolved after a disastrous strike in 1971 and a protracted and costly lawsuit by composers seeking greater control over their music.

“This is not going to be easy, but these people make such an important contribution to the making of motion pictures and television shows, and what are they asking for?” said Steve Dayan, business agent for Teamsters Local 399. “What everyone else gets on the set: health and welfare benefits and some sort of minimum pay standard and some basic working conditions.”

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates labor contracts on behalf of the Hollywood studios, declined to comment.

Although demand for music has actually grown in the last three decades, since synthesizers and later computer technology have made it much easier to score music, composers and lyricists are taking home less money as a consequence of shrinking music budgets and a change in how they are paid.

The average amount of music in a one-hour prime-time TV show has doubled from 15 to 30 minutes per episode over the last three decades. But the total music budget per episode has been cut by more than 50% to $14,000 from $35,000, Elliott said.

Compounding matters has been the rise of so-called packages that became more pervasive in the 1980s and 1990s, in which studios began to ask composers to cover costs they previously absorbed, dramatically shrinking their take-home pay.

That has made it tougher for composers to earn a living in the business, says Alf Clausen, composer and songwriter for “The Simpsons,” who says the show is one of “the few remaining TV shows that picks up all of my costs and that treats composers with that old-time dignity. . . . I’m more worried about my son and all the young composers out there.”

Source: LA Times

Music: Too Expensive to Be Free, Too Free to Be Expensive

Alt-rock for the under-10sMilkshake, the Sippy Cups and other artists are creating cool music that connects with kids — and their parents too.

POURING IT ON: The Baltimore-based band Milkshake performs at the Grammy Museum. (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

When Karen O was trying to compose music for the rumpus scene in the feature film adaptation of the beloved children’s book “ Where the Wild Things Are,” she would think about writing for kids — and run into a wall. “The first few versions kept falling prey to being upbeat and happy,” said O, the lead singer for the rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “As soon as we’d start doing that, I felt specious, like I was writing for a Muppets movie.”

So the 30-year-old songwriter, who is not a parent and had never written anything specifically aimed at children before, stopped thinking about the audience. Instead, she focused on what she and the team of A-list indie-rock musicians she assembled did best. The approach worked. Singing in her reverb-free tomboy yelp, Karen O and the Kids’ playful songsprovide the expressive heart of director Spike Jonze’s emotional movie.

In the same way as Jonze’s movie and Maurice Sendak’s original book do, O’s soundtrack stretches our idea of what children’s media can be. “Kids respond to music that’s pure of heart,” O said. “They’re emotionally complex little human beings.”

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FOR THE RECORD:
‘Kindie rock’: In today’s Arts & Books, which was printed in advance, an article on rock music for children says the club Air Conditioned is in Santa Monica. It is in Venice. —

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Like O, a slew of musicians from the worlds of rock, folk, alternative, reggae, country and hip-hop are expanding the edges of what family music can and should sound like. Dan Zanes, Ziggy Marley, Laurie Berkner, Ralph’s World, the Sippy Cups, Justin Roberts, Elizabeth Mitchell and many more are creating for the under-10 set — and their parents — the sort of listening alternatives that grown-ups have enjoyed for years. As Dan Perloff, founder of the new Venice-based label Minivan, said: “There’s a lot out there that’s not Disney.”

Kids stages have sprung up at major festivals such as Stagecoach and Lollapalooza. Moodsters the Shins and hip-hop band the Roots have contributed songs to the new album “Yo Gabba Gabba! Music Is Awesome!,” based on the popular Nick Jr. TV show. Ozomatli, Los Lobos and the Decemberists are all putting on family shows. There’s even a groaner name for some of this music: kindie rock.

Kindie rock is subject to many of the same charges of eliteness and boutique trendiness as its “parent” genre, indie rock. But at their best, the new makers of music for kids offer live and recorded cultural experiences that parents can share with their offspring without suffering the aural equivalent of having pigged out on cotton candy. They also provide kids a way to understand music that’s not as distancing as taking in a big show.

“If kids just wanted to go to a spectacle, they would go to the Ice Capades,” said Mikel Gehl of the Baltimore band Milkshake. “You have to realize what makes this different.”

Zanes, widely considered the daddy of this scene, doesn’t call what he does kindie rock or even kids music; he calls it all-ages or family music. And he says it’s not new but timeless. A dozen years ago, when his daughter was 3, he began looking for “the music I grew up with: Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie. They drew from a variety of traditions and made records that sounded like they were recorded in the kitchen. I thought I would find an update of that, or I would never have made an album.”

Before recording the first of nine CDs of family music (his newest, “76 Trombones,” will be released Tuesday), Zanes led the rock band the Del Fuegos. He admits that when he started making family music, “a lot of people felt sorry for me, like it was a big step down.”

“But actually, it was a huge step up,” he adds. “I feel like I’m working at a much higher creative level than I ever have.”

Many other leading kid rockers have previous or double lives as adult musicians. Peter Himmelman already was an acclaimed singer-songwriter when he made the kids record “My Best Friend Is a Salamander” in ‘97. They Might Be Giants make youth-themed albums for Disney and grown-up alt-rock too. Members of Milkshake played the Lilith Fair as Love Riot, and members of the Moldy Peaches, the Mekons and Medeski, Martin & Wood have all dabbled with family music, generally because they have become parents.

“Established musicians really taking the plunge doesn’t hold any stigma anymore,” said Berkner, who’s throwing a pajama party at downtown’s Orpheum Theatre on Nov. 28 and at Long Beach’s Terrace Theatre on Nov. 29. “There’s such an air of agreement that it’s really important to bring your kids up on music.”

Paul Godwin of the San Francisco band the Sippy Cups calls the explosion of family music part of the growth of “conscious parenting. We’re grateful to be parents and want to share every wonderful cultural experience with our kids.”

Milkshake and the Sippy Cups both incorporate clowning elements — goofy props, colorful costumes — into their shows. A Cups concert is like “Romper Room” meets a rave. Their music is bright, riffy psychedelic rock; along with such original tunes as “Use Your Words,” they cover the Ramones and theRolling Stones. At the band’s recent show at the House of Blues, the entertainers wore crazy glam outfits, and kids and parents sat on the floor, playing with giant beach balls and confetti or dancing, hippie style.

Himmelman, a former Minnesotan who has lived in L.A. for years, represents the other end of the kid-rock spectrum: He’s a straight-man troubadour who talks to his young listeners like they’re grown-ups. He sings about trampolines, candy and baseball but rarely cracks a smile.

“Somebody had an idea you’re going to make a kids record and dumb it down,” he said. “Kids aren’t dumb. You’re never as intelligent as when you’re a kid. I try to be careful not to adopt this oversized adult posture. I’m writing exactly the same way as I write for adults, except I’m careful to write about subjects that children will have a context for.”

Regional bands

There’s a considerable difference between the Sippy Cups and Himmelman, but that divide might reflect the cultural split between San Francisco and Los Angeles, given how regional family music can be: Zanes reps multicultural New York, while Milkshake are alt-rockers from Baltimore. It’s difficult for most acts to gain national attention, though, unless they are lucky enough to get face time on Nick Jr. or Playhouse Disney (like Zanes, Berkner and Milkshake have). Touring doesn’t quite work the same way it does for most adult-oriented acts; after all, who’s going to take their children to a show on a school night?

Nonetheless, an industry is sprouting up around the explosion of family-friendly acts. “People are very savvy in terms of the creativity that comes out of it, how they connect to their fan base,” said Minivan’s Perloff, who’s also launching a live family series at the Santa Monica club Air Conditioned with a concert today by the Hollow Trees.

Karen Rappaport, who has worked in children’s entertainment for years, founded Muddy Girl Productions, which books the kids stage at Stagecoach and many other L.A. shows. She says the biggest issues for the genre are CD distribution and finding places to play. CD Baby and NewSound are favorite online outlets for kids albums; many artists also sell CDs at toy stores and other children’s retailers.

“It’s shaking the trees of the music industry to get them to pay attention,” Rappaport said.

There are striking similarities between the current rise of what could be called alternative kid rock and the rise of alt-rock in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Both have grass-roots bases in local scenes and DIY aesthetics. Both see themselves as oppositional to a more corporate entity.

Himmelman, who has an online kids show, “Curious World” (at www.peterhimmelman.com orwww.landofnod.com), says music like his is the last stop before the prepubescent pop that’s the Disney Channel’s stock in trade, which he describes as “the disappearance of innocence and wonder.”

For Zanes, family music is about parents sharing a love of listening to and making music with their children. While he bemoans the lack of cultural diversity in the new wave of kids rock, he’s happy that it’s developing the thematic and aesthetic complexity already seen in books and movies.

“Of all people, young people deserve to have options,” he said. “There should be a lot of choices. Music can be such an integral part of being a human being and learning [about] the world around you. That’s really where we can learn about life and death and the natural world and feelings and friendships.”

 

 

Source: LA Times

Would Anyone Pay for MySpace Music?By Paul Bonanos | Saturday, November 14, 2009 | 9:00 AM PT | 
Speculation arose this past week that News Corp.-owned MySpace Music is considering moving to a paid model, as the cost of free streaming is making its current model unsustainable. News Corp. digital chief Jon Miller expressed some interest in such a move in an onstage interview conducted by paidContent’s Rafat Ali in Monaco on Thursday, noting that he believes in the “freemium” music model conceptually, even if a practical and sustainable version hasn’t appeared yet. (The audio and video are out of sync, but the segment concerning MySpace begins around the 7:15-minute mark, with deeper discussion of MySpace Music after 12 minutes.)

But even if the freemium model does work for music — and I’m far from convinced that it does — MySpace is so far behind in terms of user interface and experience that it’s hard to imagine the company launching a compelling paid product. A primary reason Spotify has garnered attention is its user interface, and the emerging battle for the music subscription marketplace will likely hinge on a compelling user experience. Consumers already know plenty of places to find free music, and historically they’re only liable to open their wallets for a superior experience. MySpace, however, isn’t seen as a premium provider of anything — and MySpace Music is viewed as a place where clutter and advertising are tolerated in order to get something for free.

What could MySpace deliver that people would pay for? Neither charging to hear music that used to be free nor crippling the free service by taking away music from people’s playlists are very good options, and violate the 10 commandments of freemium. Building a premium ad-free desktop, browser-based or mobile service would merely put MySpace in more direct competition with Spotify — which is having its own troubles satisfying content owners — and other music subscription services that are still seeing more experimentation than customer traction. And for a company that’s already admitted it’s long stopped innovating, MySpace would have to overtake more nimble competitors to draw users to a paid music service while overcoming the perception that it’s a messy-but-free one.

Asked if MySpace Music is nearing profitability, Miller told Ali, “On an operating basis, it’s getting there, but no, because of the payments to the music companies,” adding that he considers a paid model “something to look at.” Fourteen months after MySpace Music’s launch, with the four major labels on board as equity partners, time appears to be running out for its free ad-supported model. It’s worth revisiting Om’s remarks from back then:

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

Source: Gigaom

CDs are fine things for listening to and archiving, but they’re bulky. Think of all the shelf space you could free up if that digital music resided on one little hard drive rather than hundreds of boxed-up plastic discs. It’s a commitment, but putting all your music on a computer has advantages besides space savings.

First and foremost, building a media server gives you access to all of your tunes from anywhere in your house. You’ll be able to search for songs and play them back whether you’re in your kitchen, living room or your home office, regardless of where in your home your media server sits. If you’re extra savvy, you can also set up your server to be accessible over the internet.

Wherever you access your music, it can all be indexed and sorted, shuffled and mixed, shared, streamed and more.

This page is a wiki. Got extra advice on methods, tools or hardware? Log in to add your own text and images.

What You’ll Need

A computer with lots of hard drive space

A local area network, preferrably wireless

A Squeezebox or similar music player, like a Roku or Apple’s Airport Express (optional)

How to Proceed

1. Allocate space

The first step is to set aside a big chunk of storage space for your music files. You may want to dedicate an entire hard drive to this purpose. If it’s an external hard drive, it can travel with you; but with the right server software, that’s unnecessary. Because the file formats we’ll be using are standard, you can make decisions about the software later.

Tip: Go big. Set up a system you can keep filling for years to come. Dedicate 500GB or more. Or, if you want to spend a little more, get a storage system that’s easy to use and to upgrade like a Drobo.

2. Choose an encoding format

MP3 is the most famous format for encoding music, and as such its advantage is that it can be played on pretty much every player in the universe. But it’s neither the best-sounding nor the most compact. FLAC files are losslessly compressed, meaning they sound exactly as good as the CDs they come from (and indeed CDs can be reconstructed exactly from FLAC files), but they take up much more storage space than MP3s do.

Which you choose depends on your needs. If you choose MP3 (or Ogg, or another lossy encoding format) you also need to decide on a bitrate. The bitrate determines the amount of music information that gets captured when you rip your music to a digital file (in the next step). The higher the bitrate, the better the sound, but the bigger the file. Make these important decisions before you commit your entire music library to a format you don’t like.

Tip: Again, think as big as possible. Better to rip at a higher bitrate now while sacrificing some hard drive space than be stuck with lower-quality music files down the road.

3. Rip the music

Exact Audio Copy on Windows

This is the time-consuming part. The most convenient tools are the hands-off ones that allow you to just put in a CD, wait for it to be ripped, encoded, and tagged, then just take it out and put in another.

On Linux, abcde is very good. On Windows, Exact Audio Copy is highly recommended. On Macs, you can use iTunes if you fine-tune its encoding preferences, but xACTis much better.

Each CD takes several minutes to rip. Afterward, you may need to correct the tags with a tool like Picard. The easiest approach may be to pay a neighborhood teenager to feed the discs into your computer one by one.

4. Serve it

Armed with a ton of digital music on your hard drive, serve that music on up.

Install the free SqueezeCenter software on your music server and stream away. You can stream to any computer on your network either through the browser or using software like iTunes or Winamp.

For serving music elsewhere in your home, a Squeezebox is a great tool — it hooks up to any stereo, where it’s controllable by a computer or by a remote. It’s a financial investment, but the sound is great, and it can do lots of very cool things, from smart analysis and mixing, to on-the-fly correction for the acoustic quirks of your listening room.

Apple’s Airport Express has an audio jack to plug your stereo in. Once connected, you can play music from any computer running iTunes on your local network.

You can also serve your music around your network using iTunes. The application, a free download from Apple, has local library sharing built in. Just set up iTunes on your server and enable sharing in the application’s Preferences. Your library will show up wherever else iTunes is running on your LAN — look under the “Shared” menu in your sources list.

Another alternative to iTunes is FireFly Media Server. You can download the source and compile for your *NIX based system. It has a slick web interface that allows you to customize to your heart’s content. The added bonus is that it will show up in your iTunes source list as a shared library which takes the extra step out of running iTunes on a Mac or PC if you choose to run your media services on *NIX system.

One of Jinzora’s many available skins

Serving your music over the internet is a bit more complicated, since it will require you to tweak your broadband router a little bit. There are many ways to do it, none of them too difficult. You can serve music over the web if your computer is set up to run as a web server. If it’s not, install Apache and PHP (all-in-one installers exist for Windows and Mac OS X) then download and installJinzora, a free application that indexes all your music and makes it available through a web browser. 

In the Future

For years we’ve been restricted to accessing music from our cassette players, CD players, and MP3 players. What’s next?

Soon your music library will go beyond the walls of your home. Music streaming software like Simplify Media allows you to play your music from anywhere there is an internet connection. your iPhone, your laptop. Even radio is changing. Sites like Last.fm and Pandora allow you to play music you own, and music similar to your interests for free.

There are many artists who feel that music is a gift to be shared. Because music is becoming easier to listen to using devices you already carry, perhaps that dream is closer to reality.

Source: Wired.com

4 Ways Live and Digital Music Are Teaming Up to Rock Your World

Music fans are increasingly watching live concerts without gassing up cars, driving to venues, or paying for expensive tickets and convenience fees. Music webcasting has shown promise for over a decade, but the stage is being set now for an online live-music renaissance.

YouTube webcast its first-ever live full-length concert last Sunday: U2 at the Pasadena Rose Bowl. It brought in 10 million viewers worldwide in addition to the 100,000 who attended in person. A spokesman said that makes it the biggest event in the site’s history.

Billboard followed suit with the launch of Billboard Live. Sony has big plans to beam shows to its movie theaters over satellite, and interactive features are bringing online viewers closer to the mix, and sometimes into the mix.

Live music and digital music are opposite sides of the same coin. People listen to digital music alone, while concerts are about physical proximity to musicians and the crowd. Developers are finding a new middle ground, although it took a little longer than some of us thought.

Live Concert Webcasting

The audience for live online music has grown substantially since the Tibetan Freedom Concert drew 36,000 viewers in 1996. Live-music webcasting director Marc Scarpa, who helped stream the Tibetan Freedom Festival and co-created of the MySpace Live series, says the internet will soon realize its live music potential.

“‘Live’ music is going to have a renaissance now — the technology is proven, there’s more broadband penetration, people are now realizing that, from an advertising perspective, it can be monetized,” said Scarpa. In addition, today’s users, accustomed to Twitter, Facebook, live blogs and the general quickening of our culture “want entertainment and information in a real-time environment.”

Don’t expect to be able to watch any show you please. Licensing issues delay rollout on the scale of the music video. There’s no standard deal for getting the rights to stream a live show. Each one-off production requires extensive negotiation involving just about everyone attached to the songs and the venue.

Billboard Live streamed this R. Kelly show to web browsers and iPhones.

“It would be incredible if there were a database out there to streamline the process, but unfortunately, there isn’t,” Scarpa said, adding that music publishers in particular tend to hold things up. The rules can sometimes be bent for live shows that only air once, but usually “it’s a manual process,” he said, “e-mail, phone calls, and in a lot of cases the artist has to personally approve things.”

Straight trades between rights-holders and producers have improved the situation somewhat. In return for allowing an outside company to webcast a show, rights-holders often receive the right to sell the resulting recording, and could restream it online as part of a video-on-demand offering.

A Google spokesman said YouTube, which also streamed short live performances from the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in late August, plans to webcast more full-length shows like the live U2 concert on a case-by-case basis. But Billboard launched an ongoing concert series, Billboard Live, with a live R. Kelly show from Dallas that let fans choose between four high-bandwidth Microsoft Silverlight streams using partner OWLive’s technology. IPhone users watched the show in near-real time through an app using iStreamPlanet’s first-ever bandwidth-adaptive HTTP stream of live music to a phone. Billboard plans to do the same for shows by David Archuleta, Daughtry, Alicia Keys, Usher and others.

“Having been to about a billion concerts in my life, I can’t imagine anything replacing that energy,” said Billboard publisher Howard Appelbaum. “That said, it’s pretty exciting — seeing it from different camera angles is great. It’s not going to replicate the sound in the venue, or that palpable energy level that goes on, but it bridges the gap.… It’s way better than looking at still shots on a website about what happened at a concert, or reading about it. I think it’s going to find its own sweet spot with the consumers.”

The first Billboard Live show, promoted only on MSN, was responsible for Billboard.com’s second-highest day of traffic to date. Appelbaum said he thinks the licensing negotiations will be easier the next time around, because everyone involved stands to benefit — even concert promoters (the theory being that online shows whet the audience’s appetite to see concerts in person).

Josh Engroff, vice president of digital for Billboard, expects smaller, long-tail bands in addition to stars like U2 to make this part of their strategy. “‘Utube’ pulled in 10 million viewers because they’re U2 and the technology is there,” said Engroff. “But more and more, bands that haven’t been discovered yet are touring more, and ‘live’ is more a part of what they’re doing. They’re not just making CDs, they have to go out and gig a lot. For artists like that it’s also interesting, because they can extend their presence beyond the venue they’re in.”

Live Concert Interaction

The next step is for fans viewing a concert remotely to interact with a show within the venue, putting messages on the stage or even sounds in the speakers.

Deep Rock Drive has been experimenting with letting bands play between massive monitors that show online fans’ reaction to the music in real time, and said it might let fans at home cheer between songs using their own microphones. The payoff for interacting with actual venues rather than that company’s cyberstage is potentially even bigger.

“Instant participatory engagement is becoming key to the consumption of online entertainment, and the only way to do that is to make sure it’s live,” said Scarpa. “The key is participation in live events. That’s something you can’t do with a television broadcast.”

Current implementations let online viewers vote on set lists, appear in the webcast if chosen to be a host, and send in videos of themselves watching the show. “If Linkin Park is your favorite band in the world, you send in a video [of yourself talking about the show and] after the performance is over we can have a couple of these real-time video comments included in the show.”

In addition to the six to 10 cameras that shoot webcast concerts, Scarpa has been experimenting with pulling live video from showgoers’ cellphones and incorporating that into the webcast, and he plans to let the remote audience collaborate musically with bands, contributing riffs or mixes that play over the venue’s sound system.

‘Live’ Music in Movie Theaters, Living Rooms

Sony Club Dates (website offline) strikes a happy medium between the solitary experience of watching a show on your computer screen and the experience of attending it in person, by piping live or prerecorded shows directly to movie-theater screens. Fans watch them together in a surround-sound environment that does the music a lot more justice than your desktop computer speakers do, and at a much higher bandwidth. Tickets cost $10 to $15.

At this point, Sony has experimented with one live and some taped concerts, but once this pilot program is complete, the company plans to beam live shows to theaters bysatellite, selling tickets and sponsorships.

“We’ve converted [theaters] to a digital platform, using digital projectors and a connected environment as we move into the world order that exists today,” said Mike Fidler, Sony senior vice president of digital cinema solutions and services. “Most of the theaters’ demographics are really aligned with music demographics — close to 70 percent of the people attending theaters are under 30 — and so what we thought we’d try to do is bring these events during the week … and do it with emerging or emerged bands.” He said 3D could be the next phase.

Sony’s first such event featured an Aug. 20 Third Eye Blind show viewers could watch in theaters Oct. 22. Up next is Creed, who will appear “live” in some of Sony’s 4,000 theaters nationwide Nov. 19.

Once the program is up and running, Fidler told us, Sony will deliver the shows in high-definition directly to its Bravia line connected televisions, the company’s Blu-Ray players and possibly the Sony PlayStation. He said the concerts are “exclusive to Sony from the theatrical release to this video-on-demand program on the Bravia network.”

Just-in-Time Live Recordings Sold at Shows and Online

Showgoers can buy professionally recorded concerts as they exit a venue on USB stick, CD, DVD or as a digital delivery. While by no means the first, EMI launched a major initiative in this area Wednesday: Abbey Road Live, which builds on the legacy of Live Here Now, which was launched by EMI’s Mute Records label in 2004, and forms the core of EMI’s nearly-real-time live music sales program.

“We’re offering fans the ultimate encore,” said Simon Miller, EMI senior vice president of new product development and the company’s live division. “Being able to take home high-quality recordings of a show they’ve just seen is something we’re seeing great demand for from music lovers, and it’s also a service that artists and labels are very interested in.”

Screenshot: Girl Talk performs in 2008’s All Points West virtual tour.

Source: Wired.com

It’s November 2009 and we’re nearing the end of a decade. It’s been a tumultuous time of change for many industries, much of it driven by the Internet. With that in mind, over the coming weeks ReadWriteWeb will look back on the defining Web trends of the past 10 years. From the dot com boom, to the nuclear winter after, to the passion and enthusiasm of the pre-Web 2.0 innovations (such as RSS and podcasting), to the highs and hype of Web 2.0, to the current era of the real-time Web, to the near future of the Internet of Things. We’ll explore all of this and more.

We’re starting with online music. No industry, except arguably the newspaper one, has been rocked (pardon the pun) more by the Internet than the music industry.

Napster & Kazaa: Online File Sharing

The online music decade started with Napster, a music file sharing service created by Shawn Fanning that operated between June 1999 and July 2001. Napster enabled people to freely share MP3 files over the Internet; however it quickly ran into major legal trouble. Napster was the subject of lawsuits in 2000 by touchy metal band Metallica and others. It was eventually shut down by court order, after several major record labels went after the service.

After Napster’s demise, a P2P application called Kazaa became the most popular service for music file sharing. But it too eventually succumbed to record industry attacks.

Curiously, both Napster and Kazaa were recently reincarnated as law-abiding services. After years of re-launch attempts, Napster was acquired by Best Buy in September 2008 and was born again in May 2009. Meanwhile Kazaa turned into a legit music subscription service in July this year.

iTunes / iPod: Digital Music Goes Commercial

While Napster and Kazaa tried to skirt around the commercial imperatives of music, like paying artists, Apple took on the record industry in an entirely legal way. In January 2001, Apple launched a digital music player for music callediTunes. Then in April 2003, the iTunes Store was launched. It offered the ability to buy songs for 99 cents each, which had a major impact on the music industry.

Soon after Napster’s demise in 2001, Apple launched what was to become a revolutionary device in the music industry. The iPod was launched in October 2001 and it became the most popular portable music player since the Sony Walkman in the 1980s.

Fast forward to 2009 and iTunes continues to evolve. In January Apple announced that iTunes would go DRM-free. In September 2009 Apple launched version 9 of iTunes, which included a Genius-like recommendation feature for apps and ‘iTunes LPs’ - a feature that brings liner notes and artwork to digital albums.

MySpace: Music & Social Networking

MySpace was launched in August 2003 and soon became a popular hangout for local bands, especially indie rockers. MySpace provided a way for those bands to promote their music and reach a wide network through social networking.

As ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez wrote last month, it was a virtuous circle for MySpace. The bands’ presence on MySpace “began to attract a young, hip crowd of users who were interested in following pop culture, and, in particular, the up-and-coming artists they discovered while browsing through the network. Only eight months after its launch, MySpace began to experience exponential growth, as its users created profiles and friended others who would then, in turn, invite more users to join the social network. Thanks to the “network effect,” MySpace soon became the place to be online. Everyone was there.”

However by 2008, MySpace had ceded the social networking crown to Facebook. In 2009, MySpace is once again trying to reclaim its heritage as a music service. In October MySpace launched ”Artist Dashboards” and integrated its music video vault with recent acquisition iLike.

Pandora & last.fm: Online Music Discovery

Online music services have flourished in the ‘web 2.0′ era, when the ability to find new music and share it with others via the Web became increasingly sophisticated.

Two services in particular stand out. One is Pandora, a free online music discovery service. Pandora was founded in 2000 and continues to grow, despitevarious legal issues over the years. As ReadWriteWeb’s Frederic Lardinois noted earlier this year, Pandora derives its revenue from targeted audio advertising in its music streams and affiliate sales through Amazon’s MP3 store and iTunes.

Last.fm is another online music discovery service. It was founded in 2002 and was sold to CBS in 2007. It continues to innovate in 2009, for example in May this year last.fm announced combo stations, allowing a user to create a station with up to three artists or tags.

Conclusion

This post and series was inspired by one of my favorite blogs and podcasts, NPR’s All Songs Considered. They’re currently looking back at the decade in music and much of the discussion is about how the Internet helped define it.

And it’s true, when you think of music at the end of 2009 you think of iTunes, Pandora and last.fm - MySpace even. The record industry is still coming to terms with these and other changes.

Source: NY Times