(This was written up in a recent edition of the Las Vegas Mercury.)

Here’s the scenario: a young woman meets a guy in a library. Their eyes meet, conversation ensues, leading up to a date that goes quite well. The next day, they — without planning it — run into each other at the library and make plans for another date. She’s full of anticipation.

So far, so good.

She decides, just for a lark, to enter his name into Google and finds his weblog. Thinking it might give her a better idea of what this guy she just met is like, she reads:

Thursday, 3:45pm: Met a sexy girl at the library. She sat across from me. The whole time, all I could think about was taking her in the stacks, just getting crazy dog-style sexy all up in that. All tantric and kama sutra up in the periodicals! Oh man. But I’m pretty inadequate sexually. Only been with five girls. Anyway, I ended up asking her out and we’re going out tonight.

Friday, 2:15am: Library girl and I went out and had a great time. I was hoping she’d give me a hand job, but she didn’t. I don’t think she’s a very good kisser, her tongue seemed really long to me. Not many women usually find me attractive so I’m kind of bummed about this tongue thing. I’d like to go to her house again and see if she’ll give me a hand job. Sorry to be obsessing over hand jobs, but I just tried mushrooms for the first time…I’m 25 and just starting to take drugs! Yipee!

Friday, 4:27pm: Saw library girl at the library. We’re going out tonight, though I’m gonna call her in about 10 minutes and suggest I just come over with a movie. I want to be a screenwriter and she wants to be a writer so maybe she’ll find this really romantic and she’ll give me a hand job.

Needless to say, that second date never took place.

However, the guy seeking a hand job probably got one later that weekend — it turns out that a woman he’d met through her online journal was flying in town for a weekend romp with him. This was documented in the guy’s weblog, of course.

The lesson here is so obvious that I won’t even bother stating it.

If you haven’t yet read part one, it’s here.

So what is happening to Internet radio, anyway?

I’ll let Doc Searls say it, because he’s already done it so eloquently:

Even if you don’t listen to Internet radio, chances are you’ve noticed that radio of the old-fashioned sort has been homogenized to death. If you haven’t stopped listening, you’ve probably stopped caring.

But in fact, Internet radio flat-out rocks. It’s what old-fashioned free-form FM was at its seminal best back inthe ’60s and ’70s, cubed. What’s more, it’s able to list and archive exactly what’s playing, which means it’s in a perfect position to cause sales of those tunes, and to share revenues with artists in a real market environment.

Which means Internet radio is in a perfect position to threaten the vast entertainment production and distribution system that considers its products “content” and its customers “consumers.” These producers haven’t just been trying to use Congress as an instrument for turning the Net into yet another set of pipes in their world wide plumbing system. They’ve been succeeding. The DMCA was just one step. How long before we have to pay to put up a link or a quote? Don’t laugh. That’s pretty much what the DMCA does to Internet radio.

What’s the DMCA?

The “DMCA” that Doc’s referring to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It’s a U.S. law that came into effect in October 2000 that is meant to update copyright law to address new technologies (hance the name “Digital Millennium”). I haven’t got the time to go over the DMCA in detail right now; please check out this layperson-friendly summary, or if you’ve got some kind of a legal background, you might want to read the DMCA in its full legalese glory.

As far as Internet radio is concerned, the problem with the DMCA is that it gives copyright holders — in most cases, these are record companies — the right to collect a perfromance royalty when the songs they own were played via digital media. This royalty are meant to help compensate for the risk to CD sales that the they are taking by broadcasting digital and therefore easily reproduced copies.

(Remember, in most cases, recording artists for major labels don’t own the rights to their own songs. The record companies do. I covered that topic in this posting.)

Paying the record companies for Internet broadcast is quite different from the way radio-play royalties work: whenever an AM or FM radio station plays a song, they pay the composer through fees handed to organziations like ASCAP or BMI (here in Canada, we have SOCAN). In broadcast radio, you don’t pay the artist or the record company; the reasoning is that the exposure gained through airplay is of commensurate value. On broadcast radio, Bob Dylan gets paid every time All Along the Watchtower is played, whether it’s his version, or Jimi Hendrix’s version. On Internet radio, Dylan would get paid for his version (Dylan actually owns the rights to his own song — very rare theses days) while Dwarf Music (the publisher for the Hendrix version) would collect every time Jimi’s version was played.

The DMCA stated that the U.S. Copyright office would be given the task of figuring out what an appropriate royalty for playing a song on Internet radio would be. The royalty fees would be retroactive back to the day the DMCA was passed, some time back in October 1998. The Copyright Office first let the record companies (represented by the RIAA — the Recording Industry Association of America) and Internet broadcasters (represented by a few groups, including DiMA — the Digital Media Association) try and come to an agreement on what that royalty should be.

The short story is that the negotiations failed because the RIAA and the record companies they represent are greedy soulless devil-spawn. The slightly more detailed story follows.

Payback for playback

In coming up for what they thought was an appropriate royalty for Internet playback, the webcasters decided to base it on an analogous, well-established industry: broadcast radio. They did the math, and it looked something like this:

• U.S. radio stations pay over US$300 million per year to composers of the music that they play.
• Using industry data on radio listenership, they figured that this translates into 0.22¢ for each “music radio listener hour”. This would be the starting point for the royalty rate. (A music radio listener hour is what you get when one person listens to the radio for an hour; 100 people listening to the same radio show for an hour translates into 100 music radio listener hours.)
• They also figured that the copyright holders — most often the record companies — already derive promotional benefit from having their songs played on the radio. Simply put, airplay is free advertising for albums. That’s why broadcast radio pays composers (who don’t necessarily get promoted when their songs are played — after all, you know Britney sings Baby One More Time, but do you know who composed it?) and not copyright holders. The end result is that they decided that the copyright holders shouldn’t get royalties equal to those paid to composers, but a discounted portion. They calculated that a 30% discount was appropriate, resulting in a royalty of 0.15¢ for each music radio listener hour.
• In coming up with this discounted figure, the webcasters kept in mind that Internet radio has some promotional advantages over broadcast radio:
  • Internet radio software can display the name, artist and album name of the currently playing radio track.
  • Many Internet radio programs display web pages, which can be used to promote the currently playing track and display a “buy this album” button

In response, the RIAA did what it usually does in the face of a fair proposal and overwhelming logic: it ignored it and came up with its own, fear-and-greed based proposal. They wanted .4¢ for every song played for every listener. The justify this exorbitant rate — approximately 30 times the webcasters’ proposed rate, and still way more than composers get paid by broadcast radio — by claiming that it’s based on prior contracts with webcasters and music listeners.

Since the two groups could not come to an agreement, the Copyright office created CARP — the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel — to make the decision. From July to September last year, CARP listened to the testimony of witnesses representing both webcasters and the RIAA sleazebags and their comrades-in-carbetbagging, the record companies. The compromise they came up with is as follows:

• An Internet-only broadcaster would have to pay a royalty of 0.14¢ for every song played for every listener.
• A commercial broadcast radio station that was also simulcasting on the Internet would have to pay a royalty of 0.07¢ for every song played for every Internet broadcast listener.
• A non-commercial broadcast radio station that was also simulcasting on the Internet would have to pay a royalty of 0.02¢ for every song played for every Internet broadcast listener.

Under this arrangement, Internet-only broadcasters get screwed royally. Most Internet broadcasters don’t make any money; they’re simply people with a lot of bandwidth, sharing the music they love. Not only does the CARP-proposed royalty make it unaffordable for them to continue broadcasting; it’s retroactive, so any broadcasting they’ve done for the past three years will have already cost them! SaveInternetRadio.org calculates that an Internet radio station that’s been broadcasting for the past three years to an average listenership of 1000 people would owe over half a million dollars in royalties.

These royalty fees will kill Internet radio, or make it so that only major players with multi-million-dollar bank accounts will be able to broadcast over the Internet. Consider these two key differences between broadcast and Internet radio:

• Commerical broadcast radio is supported by advertising. In many cases, it’s supported by the nationwide marketing and advertising department of a large media conglomerate like Clear Channel. Internet radio is often a couple of people in a basement with a decent outgoing Internet connection. Its costs are covered by listener donations or paid for out-of-pocket by the webcaster. Few of them run ads.
• In broadcast radio, once you’ve paid for a transmitter, your costs are the same if you have one listener or one million listeners. In Internet radio, every byte of music you pump out costs you money. More listeners means more bytes sent, which means more money spent.

Killing Internet radio is probably what the RIAA and their fellow swine, the record companies, want. With only the major broadcasters providing Internet webcasts, they can treat Internet radio exactly like broadcast radio, which they control through influence and payola. They would also be free to offer subscription-based radio services, where you’d pay to listen to their broadcasts, where you’d hear the music they’d like you to buy. You wouldn’t have anywhere else to go because all the smaller players would’ve been royalty-feed out of existence.

What you can do

Well, you always have the option of doing nothing. Of course, that’ll ensure that the RIAA get their own selfish way, and the music universe would be the worse for it.

Try doing these:

• Write to the Copyright Office. Tell them that the proposed royalty rate is unfair and that copyright holders would still get tremendous benefits from Internet playback of their music, even at the webcaster-proposed rates. The e-mail address is copyinfo@loc.gov.
• If you are a U.S. citizen, write to your member of Congress. You can find their e-mail addresses here.
• Write letters to the editor of your local paper.
• Tell your friends about what’s happening to Internet radio, and then tell them to write the people listed above.
• Keep abreast of what’s going on. Some good sites to check:
  • SaveInternetRadio.org
  • RAIN (Radio And Internet Newsletter)
  • S-O-S: Save Our Streams
  • The Future of Music Coalition
  • Save-The-Music.org

The Jerk Chicken Guys

Just twenty minutes ago — it’s 2:40 a.m. as I write this — I left a club called The Apothecary, where the weekly “Chicks Dig It” all-female DJ night is held. About a half-block away from the club, I started to smell something really delicious. I got closer and recognized it — the Jerk Chicken Guys have returned!

“‘ccordion mon, from the Philippine is-land. ‘ave some jerk chicken an’ rice an’ pe-as.”

The Jerk Chicken Guys are street vendors who set up shop sporadically, usually close by a club that’s having a reggae or dub night. As you’ve probably guessed, they serve jerk chicken, “jerk” being a peppery spice marinade rubbed onto chicken that is then barbecued over a smoky wood-and-charcoal fire. It’s served with “rice and peas” (which is actually rice and beans). The Jerk Chicken guys also serve pepperpot soup, salt fish and ackee (a mild fruit with huge black seeds native to Jamaica), and on precious few occasions, fried plaintains.

The Jerk Chicken Guys break every biz school rule in the book. They don’t keep any kind of regular schedule, nor do they have any particular location where they set up shop. They don’t observe strict quantity control; ask them really nicely (or play Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds on the accordion) and they’ll give you a little extra rice and peas (or in my case, throw in a free fried plantain). A time-and-motion expert would have a conniption watching them work — they go with the flow of the moment, rather than following a procedure that has been determined to increase their efficiency throughput. These guys operate on Island Time (or “Filipino Time“, as I call it). It takes a while to prepare proper Jamaican food — when you consider the ratio of money taken in to preparation time, jerk chicken with all the fixin’s has got to be way behind a Big Mac and fries. It’s the kind of operation that would never make it past “due diligence“. Considering the kinds of companies that have made it, that’s saying something.

You know what? Screw due diligence, screw market research and screw maximizing return on investment. When the Jerk Chicken Guys open up shop, the McDonald’s down the street takes a hit. That’s because all of us late-nighters know how much better spent five dollars is on a fresh-off-the-barbecue Jamaican food is than on a greasy Big Mac and a straight-from-the-heat-lamp paper bag of pre-molded fries. McDonald’s may have wider appeal, but its popularity comes from its food’s inoffensiveness; like hit radio, it’s paid for its popularity at the expense of any character. Rather than go with the universally accepted but bland McFood, all of us who’d just left the club were smacking our lips at char-broiled chicken legs in fiery jerk sauce matched with the mild flavour and rich texture of rice and peas. Same goes for the sea bass on rice in Chinatown, or the chicken-and-pesto pizza at Amato’s down the street.

The little guys do customer service better too. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they’re not victims of Taylor’s “scientific management” like the McDrones are. The roboticization of the employees — a side effect of the “less thinking, more doing” ethos of Taylorism — means that even though I’ve been a neighbourhood regular for eight years, they still have no idea who the hell I am. However, the Jerk Chicken Guys know me even though I’ve only bought food from them half a dozen times. The guys at the 24-hour hot dog stand — another idea that would never have passed muster with a business analyst — also know me and know that my favourite soft drink is Diet Coke. I don’t even have to place an order when I sit down at Excellent chinese restaurant; the waiters there look at me and say “Yeung Chow fried rice and Diet Coke, right?” with a smile. The guys at the Italian coffee shop, Lettieri, know that I prefer hot chocolate and mochaccinos to lattes. Walter, the manager of Amato pizza, walks among the club goers gathered outside his store, asking them if they liked their pizza, and if there’s anything he can do to make it better. And I like that the waitress at the new diner down the street, Shanghai Cowgirl, struck up a conversation with me about how The Hives and The White Stripes are going to save rock and roll. The most communication I’ve ever had from McDonald’s while at my table is a little sign that says my stay is limited to a maximum of twenty minutes.

As the Jerk Chicken Guys would say “Dere’s some t’ings still best done by de li’l guys, seen?”

McRadio

Back in the 80’s and early ’90’s, the Toronto radio station now known as Egde 102 used to go by its actual call latters, CFNY. Back then, the range of music they played was considerably wider: from Camper van Beethoven to Classical to Captain Beefheart to Kate Bush to Cabaret Voltaire to Christian Rock to KMFDM. I remember waking up to the radio to hear Neneh Cherry’s Buffalo Stance bookended by Public Image Limited’s Disappointed and Pop Will Eat Itself’s Wise Up Sucker and being quite pleased. They had a policy of not playing the same song twice between 9 and 5, and would never play a song more than twice a day, no matter how big a “hit” it was. They played stuff no one else would play: Public Enemy’s 911 is a Joke (considered “too controversial” by other stations), Laurie Anderson’s Language is a Virus, stuff by Game Theory’s terribly underrated Lolita Nation and in 1991, they tracks off an obscure little album called Gish by a then-unknown group called Smashing Pumpkins.

Today, in its pursuit of the larger demographic known as “mainstream alternative” — which consists largely of means poor rip-offs of hip-hop-meets-metal that Public Enemy and Anthrax did together with style and skill over a decade ago — Edge 102 is a mere shadow of its former self. They still have a few bright spots — namely the New Music Show, where they actually played The Hives’ Hate To Say I Told You So, and Martin Streek’s entertaining and informative History of New Music show. However, I’m getting tired of all the repetition. I don’t want to hear Creed, never mind the same damned Creed song every time I turn on the radio, and I’m this close to offering a cash reward to whoever can bring me the head of Dave Matthews.

The problem is that a lot of radio stations, especially those abominations owned by broadcasting networks like Clear Channel, think every day is Sadie Hawkins Day, where everything is topsy-turvy. Like Satanists who invert the cross and use urine for holy water, they treat the commercials as the main event and the music as the filler.

To them, the music is just the cheese in the trap. Since music is one of those idiosyncratic things, it’s better for them to play the musical equivalent of a McDonald’s hamburger — nothing terribly special, but inoffensive enough to appeal to a large number of palates. Both McDonald’s and radio know that if they can train you, Pavlov-style, to like and even crave their product, especially if you’re young, they’ll have have coming back. Radio stations are simply doing the math. Market research has shown that the average amount of time that someone actively listens to FM radio is about 15 minutes. In order to keep your attention long enough to expose you to a commercial, they have to increase the likeliness that you’ll hear a popular song or hit during that sliver of time. The only way to do that is to saturate the schedule with a handful of songs played in high rotation. If you’re getting bored by the repetition, it’s because you’re listening to more than your allotted share.

(And that’s the above-the-board stuff. Another reason you’re hearing the same stuff over and over again: payola.)

Another McTrick is to guarantee that you can get the exact same food at every branch; a Big Mac tastes the same whether you buy it in Toledo, Toronto or Tokyo. Broadcasting companies like Clear Channel use the same trick. Clear Channel classic rock station’s playlist will be the same no matter what city you’re in; in some cases, they use the same syndicated DJs during peak listening periods (although they make sure to record city-specific comments to give a little “local colour”).

Slag the McRadio formula all you want; it works. Clear Channel’s fourth quarter 2001 results show a 49% increase in revenue, meaning that they raked in 8 billion dollars.

Jerk chicken radio

Internet radio isn’t driven by business plans, but by the music. They’re not jockeying for market share; they’re just filling a hard drive with their favourite music and letting broadcasting software like Shoutcast or Icecast randomly select songs for playback. It’s a wonderful thing when you’re suddenly exposed to music chosen because someone liked it rather than because it’s just enough bait to make you listen to a commercial. A world of new and not-necessarily-radio-friendly music — Stereolab, Le Tigre, the Appalaichian strains from the Oh Brother Where Art Thou? album, to name a few — opens up. Like any little-guy operation, each Internet radio station is simply producing what they lovem and there’s a station for every taste, no matter how offbeat. Even better, I can immediately find out what I’m listening to simply by looking at the display — the song’s name appears right there on iTunes’ or WinAmp’s display. If it’s something new, I can switch to my browser and Google the artist’s name to find out more. In the three years I’ve been listening to it, I’ve discovered new music (and rediscovered some old stuff) and bought what I really liked. You’d think that the music industry would like this development.

Not a chance.

(More later, gotta get back to work…)

Indie Incubation: The Complete Page

I finished getting all the photos and writing smart-ass captions for the Indie Incubator photo essay.

Check it out or I’ll send the scary girl in the pink dress and leg warmers after you. Although you might like that, you sicko.

So wrong it’s right

Good taste, Harley Parker (he designed Marshall McLuhan’s book, Counterblast, after which the NYU journal is named) once said, is the refuge of the witless. There’s wit aplenty in an online comic that has the following line:

“I’ll give you a buck if you promise to ask Daddy why Mommy’s goodnight kisses are so salty.”

Any comic with a line like that has got to be worth reading. And Something Positive is.

Twice the yolky goodness

Today’s breakfast is a croque madame, which is just a snooty french way of saying “ham and cheese sandwich with an over-easy egg on top of it”.

The eggs we have in the fridge at the moment are the preternaturally large. They look as if they’d been laid by turkeys, not chickens. Better still, these are “Super Bon-ee” doubles — there’s a guarantee that at least half the eggs in the carton will have double yolks. My housemate Paul and I are keeping a tally to see if it’s true. So far, we’re at three double-yolks, one single.

Here’s a question for any egg farmers out there: how do they ensure such a high percentage of double-yolk eggs? Sorting by optical means (I remember reading something about houw you could see a chick embryo inside an egg using only a candle)? Selective hen breeding? Something they put in the chicken feed? Radiation?

I may end up mutated eating this stuff, but I’m going to have some killer Eggs Benedict on the way there.

A real-life Niles Crane in the making

My sister went to visit her friends Tanya and Ian yesterday. Tanya and Ian are lawyers who live in Forest Hill, a very tony part of town, a neighbourhood so WASPy that they step out of the shower to pee.

While serving snacks, Tanya was asked by her four-year-old son: “Mom, may I have some Perrier in a sippy cup?”

This kid’s going to go places. Or get beaten up a lot. Possibly both.

Amato Pizza, late Saturday night

(Not my usual branch of Amato — Queen Street West — but the uptown one at St. Clair West. I was there with my friend Anne and Gil, a visitor from Israel. I had my accordion with me — natch — and was spotted by a table of white high school kids in sports-cum-hip-hop clothing.)

Guy #1: I bet he’ll play accordion for us.

Girl #1: Could you please play something for us?

Girl #2: I know what the keyboard does, what do the buttons do?

(I play the first verse of Sloan’s Underwhelmed and a little Jungle Brothers, collect my applause, answer some questions about the accordion – “I taught myself, the buttons play chords,” etc., etc.)

Guy #2: Damn, you must be the biggest pimp at all the clubs!

Girl #1, to Anne, pointing at me: Do you go out with him? He’s so cool!

Anne: I used to think he was, when I was 19.

(Anne gets some money for pizza from me, and walks to the counter. I bemoan the fact that high school girls of my era didn’t hold me in the same esteem as today’s do.)

Me: She’s one of the “Exes of Evil”.

(I shrug.)

Girl #1, surprised: Whoa. Sometimes a girl doesn’t know when she’s got it good.

Guy #2, making “Westside!” hand sign: Straight up, yo!

True dat.

An early look at Indie Incubation

Indie Incubation was the showcase of indie bands where we played Friday. Check out this still-under-construction Web page featuring shots of the band, our friends and our friend Tina’s new band, Fresh Meat.

Here’s one of many entertaining and artistic shots you’ll see if you check it out:

Enticing, no? Click here for more.

The Steam Whistle Brewery Gig: A Quick Update

It’s too nice a day to stay indoors, so this posting’s going to be really quick.

Last night’s gig at the Steam Whistle Brewery went really well. We won over a crowd that was ready to see nothing but emo (for instance, the first band’s songs were all of the “nobody loves me” variety) with waltzes like Sweet Jezebel and Kate-Bush-meets-Billy-Corgan epics like Many Moons. Lindi and the band were in fine form; I really loved the backbeats that our new drummer Devin was playing. The crowd sat up and took notice during the set, after which there was a rush to buy Lindi’s CDs. I got a lot of compliments on the accordion playing and a couple of people came up to me and said “I just want to run out and buy myself an accordion right now!”

It’s a great feeling, finally being a key part of a band’s sound and catching the love from the audience. Thanks, Lindi, for taking a chance on a goofy accordion player.

I’ll post a full set of photos from the gig, including some great shots of Fresh Meat, our friend Tina’s band, soon.

Now I’m going to run outside and get some fresh air.