Strangeparty » Music

Time is short. (Or why piracy is not the problem)

Anton Piatek — Tue, 10 May 2011 19:46:41 +0000

We are constantly being bombarded by claims that the music and film industries are being destroyed by rampant piracy eating away at their profits. This whole argument really annoys me, and partly because of the following really well illustrated point.

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I pay for a DVD and then waste loads of time being told not to pirate DVDs. If I had pirated the DVD, I wouldn’t have had to put up with all that.

So how does that fit with a title of “Time is short”? Well… You may have noticed that I did not write a single blog post last month – I haven’t had the time. I also haven’t had the time to go to the cinema, the last film I saw was the penultimate Harry Potter and it not only cost an arm and a leg, but a drink and some nibbles nearly cost me the other arm.

I also have not bought much music in a while – I haven’t heard much I particularly like on the radio, and haven’t really had time to go out looking for anything new, so just stuck with my iPod. If I did buy music, it would probably be a digital download for only a few pounds per album.

You might have guessed that I haven’t bought a DVD in a while – My lovefilm subscription gives me two DVDs a month to watch, and that keeps me busy enough with a little trashy tv.

I have bought a few X-Box games, and am likely to buy some more – Quite shocking really, as they are about £40 or £45 each. So that is eating up a lot of my time as I work my way through Crysis 2 (which is a truly awesome game) and try to resist handing over my wallet Portal 2.

I am also hacking away at Arduinos, rebuiling my media PC and hanging out on twitter and facebook. I wish I could say I even read some of my friends blog’s, but sadly the only items in my reader feed being read are lolcats, failblog, dilbert and xkcd.

As I have already said my blog barely gets updated as it is.

I bought a kindle a few months ago, and so have been reading a lot of books, which really is fantastic and of course consumes huge amounts of my time.

And next month (or possibly sooner) I will be a father, so that will take away all the free time I had for all the above activities!

So where am I supposed to find the time to watch all these films and DVDs that the industry says are being pirated? Piracy is not the problem – Crap films, high prices and, yes, time. They are what is causing me to spend less money on films and music. Instead I am spending more on games, books, gadgets, toys, and soon children.

Not X-Factor for Xmas No 1…

Anton Piatek — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:50:13 +0000

So, some of you may have heard of the campaign for getting Rage Against the Machine to no1 in the UK charts for Christmas.

If you want to take part, have a look at the Facebook page for where you can buy a digital download of the track “Killing In The Name Of”

Now, part of me thinks this is great, lets get a real band to christmas number one (I don’t think I can remember what the last *real* band to do so was once you ignore all the Xfactor winners, tellytubbies and bob-the-builders). Another part of me thinks that perhaps this is just a publicity stunt for Rage Against the Machine. It is a real shame the band did not decide to give all money they got this week to charity!

Another part of me wonders if this is a bit of a social experiment, to see if the internet is more popular and influential than Simon Cowell and XFactor…

*Edit 17th Dec*

Interview on Radio 5:

Apparently Rage Against of the Machine are giving “the windfall” of proceeds from Killing in the name of to shelter

Amazon UK online music store opens

Anton Piatek — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:04:59 +0000

Amazon UK recently launched their online music store, which seemed top open much quieter than I would have expected. It did make national radio (Radio 1) on my way home from work, however they were more interested in the fact that albums are £3 each (I think this is promotional price) than the fact it is DRM free.

My biggest problem with iTunes (apart from the fact the iTunes software doesn’t run on linux) is that the files are DRM protected. This means I cannot play them on linux, and cannot play them on any portable player other than my iPod. Amazon’s music is mp3, DRM-free and will play on nearly all devices, all operating systems and I can even burn a mp3 (or normal audio cd) of songs to play elsewhere.

I seem to remember Apple trying to go DRM-free but the music companies objected (mind you, the music companies also wanted Apple to increase prices) but that doesn’t seem to have affected Amazon.

The radio news I was listening to suggested a price war resulting from this, however I am more interested in getting music I can actually play how and where I want.

As a side story, a friend recently had to get a new computer as their old one died. They got the music they had (windows WMA files, which were DRM protected) from the old disk, but had a hard time playing it. The new computer wasn’t allowed to play it! It took a lot of effort to get it working.

This is my biggest objection to DRM – It actually make things worse for the consumer, including making it harder to play and harder to backup.

Change Your Name and Avoid the TSA Watchlist

Anton Piatek — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:23:05 +0000

It seems so obvious – how is a list of names going to stop terrorists? Surely after being told they cannot fly they will just change their name.

Schneier on Security: Change Your Name and Avoid the TSA Watchlist

Or the might just use a forged passport…

iPod Classic with Amarok on Linux

Anton Piatek — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:02:48 +0000

When I first bought my iPod classic, Amarok hadn’t yet got support for the new SHA1 hashing that was being done in the song db. Then it was only in cvs, and while I remember compiling from source I don’t think I ever got round to running that code.

Of course I found out the hard way that Amarok didn’t have support for my iPod, and nearly bricked the thing. Thankfully a windows box and iTunes could reset it.

I now have it working, however it took a little fiddling. If you are trying to get it working, you absolutely must read http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Media_Device:IPod before starting, especially #My_iPod_does_not_show_any_music, as this explains how to set up the magic ID number. Unfortunately earlier pages didn’t say whether to add the 0x in from of the ID, and I remember having lots of difficulty just with libgpod and gtkpod. While I am mentioning it, the versions you need for an iPod Classic are: Amarok 1.4.8 and libgpod 0.6.0

So you have them installed, and you want to get Amarok managing your iPod – Well, I plugged it in, amarok detected it popped up a window asking if it should mount it as an iPod. I said yes, copied some songs, ejected it and BANG! – My iPod wouldnt show any songs.

It seems that the data uploaded by iTunes isn’t the same as by Amarok, and the iPod doesnt like that. Deleting the contents of the iPod_Control folder from the iPod seemed to make Amarok and the iPod happy. Of course Amarok needed to recreate some folder structure, but it asked nicely. Also, if you do this, don’t forget you have to recreate your SysInfo file again before Amarok uploads any songs.

Anyway, I now have an iPod that I can upload to with Linux (which is a hell of a lot faster than iTunes – iTunes took about 30 hours to copy ~30G of music, Amarok took about 3 hours), podcasts work and even some cover art has been copied.

If you have any problems, you can reboot the iPod by holding the Menu and select button down together for a few seconds. If the songs list comes up blank, then you have something wrong and Amarok didnt write the hash correctlty – check the SysInfo file, delete all music from the iPod in Amarok, and copy a few test tracks, disconnect and check if you have it right.

You can also use the Smart Playlists to sync to the iPod – Favourite tracks, Newest tracks and All Collection are good ones to use. Of course you can create your own custom smart playlists too.

Best of all, Amarok is properly multi-threaded so I can copy my entire music collection to my iPod, while playing music and Amarok and writing blog posts – on windows syncing an iPod used to make the system struggle, and iTunes became rather unresponsive…

Online music sharing

Anton Piatek — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:06:23 +0000

tech,blorge.com have an article on Trent Reznor releaseing his new NIN album free online. Following RadioHead’s success with their online alblum, you can download the first 9 tracks for free, and have the rest as mp3′s for $5 – I have just downloaded the free tracks, if I like them then $5 is very cheap for 36 songs. I will probably buy the $10 CD version, as $5 would make me feel cheap. I wonder who else will follow the trend…

How long will your iPod last?

Anton Piatek — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:07:04 +0000

According to The iPod Death Clock – iPodMechanic.com, my brand new iPod has another 2 years left. Doubtful as my old one lasted about 5 years before the disk failed, and it would still run for around 8 hours before the battery failed. Given that I bought my new iPod with a 10% discount for recycling my old one, and a 6% IBM discount, so it only cost my £133 i think that is pretty good value for being able to take all my music with me and still have enough disk space on it to fit all my photos in raw format if I wanted to.

The new iPod Classic is also smaller than my old 3rd Gen iPod not to mention boasts some 40 hours of battery life when new too!

Trent Reznor says “Steal my CD”

Anton Piatek — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:58:31 +0000

Trent Reznor told fans in Australia to “steal his CD” after he noticed the high prices of CD’s there. The video is on YouTube

I remember The Offspring trying to give away their album online and their record label not liking it either (several years ago, I think it was the album Americana). Are we . . . → Read More: Trent Reznor says “Steal my CD”

Gig Photos – Rivers of Sound in The Joiners

Anton Piatek — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 08:51:00 +0000

On Wednesday I took some more photos of The Rivers of Sound, who were playing in The Joiners in Southampton.

I decided to try a lot of these photos in various black and white styles, let me know what you think of them.

Check out the rest of the photos on Flickr

Ten “inconvenient truths” about file-swapping

Anton Piatek — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 14:03:34 +0000

I saw the following article about the “10 inconvenient truths about file-swapping” that was released by the EU’s IFPI (music industry group) and had to make my own comments…

IFPI: Ten “inconvenient truths” about file-swapping

Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment “free music” rhetoric.
It probably does, but it has yet to be found to be illegal or breaking any laws in its own country
AllOfMP3.com, the well-known Russian web site, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.
Again, AFAIK it has not broken any laws in Russia as it pays royalties to the “Russian RIAA”
Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.
When was the last time you bougt (rather than downloaded for free) a counterfeit cd or dvd?
Illegal file-sharers don’t care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.
No, but only the big name labels charge ridiculous prices – see audiolunchbox.com or magnatunes.com
Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on “underground” artists and more inclination to invest in “bankers” like American Idol stars.
So why has all alternative music I have ever heard had to start off on a small label until they are making mega-bucks? The big labels don’t take the risks anyway.
ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.
I have never seen this, nor would it appeal unless it was decent quality online radio streaming (128k+ bbc radio) or drm free downloads
The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth–it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.
Does suing people left right and center help anyones life?
Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle- or higher-income earners.
Because the poor people don’t have access to computers as easily, and most of the piracy I know of goes on via the internet
Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won’t stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.
Because the are not willing to pay the price demanded for the latest CD or DVD
P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently.
Exactly – popular music people are not willing to pay that much for, and all the new music is either free on myspace or cheap on alternative sites (see #4 above)

Nine Inch Nails

Anton Piatek — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 13:16:42 +0000

On Wednesday night I went to see Nine Inch Nails as a christmas present from my little brother. We got to Brixton Academy shortly after 7pm, having paid over £30 for the train, when the gig tickets cost only £25! The first band was not on until eight, and I should have gone into the pub just outside that had advertised NIN starting at nine as the first band was rubbish.

Nine Inch Nails played an awesome hour and a half set, with lots of new and old songs. The theatrics of the performance were the best I have seen. An incredible amount of lighting, including more strobes than I have ever seen and enough smoke to completely hide the band at times made it quite a spectacle to watch. They also had several hanging lights, just over the heads of the band and they swung these around so that the lights flashed on and off while moving, making the whole performance quite different and dark.

This gig was most definitely one of the best I have ever been to! One of the best received songs was probably Hurt, which started with just Trent Reznor singing and playing piano, and the rest of the band only joined in right at the end. If you have not heard the Johnny Cash cover of this song, it is definitely worth a listen too!

Taking gig photos

Anton Piatek — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 16:43:30 +0000

I promised I would write up a bit about my experiences taking photos at gigs, so here it is.
Before I get too far in, I have not taken photos at many gigs, so this is a beginners perspective to gig photography

The importance of lighting

Probably the earliest gig I took photos of was at a Imperial Colelge Rocksock night. The lighting was very basic, so capturing the light was very important. There is no point taking a photo of a band member if they are standing out of the light – it won’t work. As the lighting was simple I used high ISO’s and large apertures.

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The photos below had very directional lighting, so standing in the right place can be quite important. These photos were really me just getting lucky, as the lighting was not very bright and the band had to be still enough to prevent blur. A tripod could be a good idea, though I just went with a stabilising lens, getting as close as posisble and trying to hold the camera steady.

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Unfortunately I cannot remember the bands, and didn’t write down their names (note to self: take a pen and paper next time!). Playing with the lens These photos of “the phly“, again playing at a Rocksoc night at Imperial Colelge, were a chance for me to play with the camera a bit more and learn better how to use it. I used an external flash for extra power, though your built in flash will probably work too.

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The odd effects were created by zooming the lens in or out on a long exposure (Tv 1 sec exposure, let the camera work out the aperture). As I was using a flash I could use a better ISO (400) so the quality is a bit nicer. The lighting and manual lens zooming during exposure created some nice effects, but the flash is really too bright – especially as the background is not black! Play with zooming your lens both in and out, and see which you like best. If you have a really nice flash, you can set it to fire at the beginning (front-curtain) or end (rear curtain) of the exposure, so you can zoom your preferred way. Of course, you cannot see through the camera while taking a photo, so get a feel for where you want to zoom to, and how fast to do it to fit your exposure Playing with the flash Again another uni gig night, except this time the lights were moving around randomly, and the light tech didn’t know how to control the new lighting board well enough to change that, so I tried to use it to my advantage. I set the camera to manual exposure, checking the camera’s exposure indicator to get the right exposure with the flash off. I then turned on the flash, and dialed down it’s power a few stops so that it wouldn’t completely dominate the photos.

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The moving lights created some really interesting effects on my 1sec exposure as they moved around, and any band movement caought the light. The flash (on a rear curtain I think) then brought out the subject crisply so that the movement became a coloured blur, but not whole scene.

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These were all taken handheld on a 1sec exposure, so keeping steady is very important (and a stabilising lens helps too). Because of the long exposure and flash I could use ISO 400 to keep the image-noise ratio good.

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Thanks to Gin Panic for being the subject of my photos, though it is a shame they didn’t give credit on their website for the photos I gave them… (not sure it is worth chasing them for it)

Ditch the flash If the lighting at the gig is good enough you can go without the flash at all. These photos (as posted recently) of The Rivers of Sound show that this can work. The lighting here was only good enough for shooting at ISO 800 and 1600, but the shutterspeeds were good enough to make that work.

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I currently shoot in JPG, and would have had a hard time with my current camera at this gig shooting RAW as even with JPG photos I still was waiting on the camera to empty its cache quite a lot.

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300 photos for a 30 minute set isn’t too bad going, however one photo every six seconds with an image stabilised lens is going to kill your battery – I changed batteries halfway through, so don’t forget to take your spare! (and a big memory card).

That is about all I can think of for the moment. If you are taking photos of a gig soon, please let me know how you got on (same if you have done it already), and when you get there be sure to ask where you are allowed to go. I had a full backstage photo pass for this gig, and even got up in the light desk at the back of the room to get the wide shots of the whole stage.

One final tip, bring earplugs – I didn’t and wished I had. Leaning agains a huge speaker stack with a camera in hand really takes it’s toll on your ears!

The Rivers of Sound

Anton Piatek — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 08:58:46 +0000

On Sunday night I was invited to take photos for a friends band – The Rivers of Sound, who were playing in the Wedgewood rooms.

It was quite a lot of fun, as I have never taken photos for a band at a proper gig venue, and the backstage access etc was quite cool. Anyway, they are a really good indie rock band, they have some songs on MySpace (link above) and if you live in Hampshire they are worth coming to their next gig in February for. Here are a couple of photos from Sunday night.

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Can you sell music online without DRM?

Anton Piatek — Sat, 27 May 2006 13:55:08 +0000

This article on eMusic is quite an interesting read… If you have ever wondered if many companies sell music online that you can play on all your mp3 players (no DRM/windows media/AAC rubbish) then check out the article.

It has some glaring ommisions of course, most notably audiolunchbox who have the first 3 offspring albums among other mainstream music. Audolunchbox also sell only high quality unrestricted mp3′s so you can do what you want with your music. The big difference is that eMusic is a subscription model whereas audioluncbox is a purchase per track/album model. As it is all mp3 without DRM you can keep it all no matter what, but I am not sure if you are allowed to keep eMusic’s songs after you cancel the subscription – you’d have to check the details on their site (not that they can stop you anyway)