The Upper Kirby District has renovated the Levy Park to include the planting of new trees. As part of this renovation, Houston Intown Magazine and the Upper Kirby District will dedicate a tree in the memory of Tim McGlashen and his contribution to the Houston music scene. It is a small gesture to the memory of a great man. The event will be come as you wish Saturday, September 30 from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. The park is behind the Upper Kirby District office, located at 3015 Richmond Avenue at Kirby Drive.

The Los Angeles station is one of eight FM stations across the U.S. bearing the Jack moniker, according to this Chicago Tribune article. In Chicago, for example, the station formerly known as WKQK has bumped its playlist up by approximately 1,000 songs. Its Web site features a MP3 player device and the new slogan �Now on shuffle.�

And just in case those allusions to the iPod seem too veiled, consider what Mike Stern, vice president of programming for Emmis Radio Chicago, told the Tribune when explaining the rationale behind the format change.

�With an iPod in their hands, people are getting used to a huge variety.�

Boy the way Joe Linbeck plays,
Songs released on cassette tapes.
Guys in skirts, we had it made
Those were the days

1. It�s feared and maligned by people who aren�t part of the same disenfranchised culture.
2. It�s been absorbed and tweaked by other cultures with similar disenfranchisement.
3. It�s been co-opted and watered down by the corporations to sell products and control the youth population.

Polka is exactly like hip-hop, only Polish.

Whether you feel the legal assault on file sharers is warranted or not, its foundation and efficacy now appear very shaky. How could such a mistake have been made?

I can think of a number of ways this could happen, some accidental and some malicious. It’s easy to transpose a digit. It’s easy to get the time-stamp wrong on a request, or foul up the time-zone differences. It’s not out of the question that someone at the ISP knew this wasn’t valid, but complied out of spite and the letter of the law. And it’s also possible that Johnny Thugnextdoor is stealing Grandma Macuser’s internet connection because she didn’t put a password on her Airport WiFi base station. What we’re seeing here is that the DMCA has some serious flaws and that the RIAA will exploit them. It’s probably short-sighted on their part, since the lawsuits against 12 year old honor students and Mac-using grandmas will cause a backlash, but isn’t one of the long term industry problems the takeover by short-sighted beancounters who can’t look past the revenue forecasts?

The RIAA said Sarah Ward was sharing 2,000 songs through the KaZaA P2P network exposing her, at $150,000 per offense, to $300,000,000 in penalties. But not only had she never downloaded a song, but as a Macintosh user, she couldn’t even run the KaZaA software, which only runs on Windows.

So the recording project is pretty much done. Liz came over and we burned 24 CDs. I keep listening to the one I made for me and I keep wanting to tweak it.

I want to go into School House Rock and re-normalize each section of the medley. I want to get the voices up on the speaking parts without getting the electrical hum. I want to fix the gap in Helplessly Hoping. I want the effen’ tape not to have that clipping on it.

If you’re providing free entertainment, which is obviously what the music business is doing, then you have to figure out some way to sell advertising to the people who are paying attention to your free music. But nobody seems to have any idea how that might be done. Or you can provide stuff that’s free, and use the free stuff to promote something else of more value thatpeople, you hope, will buy — now called the “legitimate alternative.” (Putting video on the CD is one of those ideas — though, of course, you can file-share video too.) Or sell the CD at a level that makes it cheap enough to compete with free (free, after all, has its own costs for the consumer). It’s a spreadsheet solution. There will continue to be a market for selling music, however diminished — but it will have to be cheaper music. Margins will shrink even more. Accordingly, costs will have to shrink. Spending a few million to launch an act will shortly be a thing of the past. (The formal catalyst of the beginning of the end of big development costs may be the Wall Street Journal’s story a few months ago that precisely accounted for the $2.2 million launch costs of a singer named Carly Hennessy, who went onto sell 378 CDs.) A&R guys making half a million are also history (in the future, they’ll start at $40,000 and max out at $150,000). And no more parties.

Main Entry: dic�tio�nar�a�o�ke Pronunciation: ‘dik-sh&-“ner-A-O-ke Definition: Audio clips from online dictionaries sing the hits of yesterday and today. The fun of karaoke meets the word power of the dictionary.

1. As a consumer, I find myself increasingly leery of RIAA member products which might appear to be CDs, but which use an intentionally corrupted format that can damage my Macintosh computer. This risk is an increasing consideration in my decision to buy or pass on a major label CD and I have begun to avoid major label products to protect my computer, which is, after all, much more important to me than any one CD. What is the RIAA position on members who intentionally release products in corrupted formats?
2. It seems to be an article of faith in the RIAA and major label circles that sales are off due to Internet piracy. Critics counter that you are not offering products that consumers want, or not offering them in the way they want, or charging too much, or that you are ignoring the business cycle, consumer confidence, competition from other markets, or that your prospective customers are being turned off because you tell them that you assume they’re thieves. What makes you sure that the cause of your misfortunes is the illegal activities of others?
3. The Canadian Private Copying Collective (an industry group in Canada) has proposed a $21 (Canadian) per Gigabyte Blank Media Levy on hard drive based MP3 players, which would add approximately $420cn to the cost of a (currently $800cn) 20 GB Apple iPod. The RIAA supports similar Blank Media Levies in the United States. Does the RIAA have a position on the Canadian Blank Media Levy and would the RIAA support a 50% increase in the cost of an MP3 player as part of a similar levy in the US?
4. The technical parallel the RIAA tries to make between licensing software and licensing music is an interesting one. As a software developer, I am expected to provide my customers with replacement media if they damage or lose their originals, providing they can prove they did purchase the license (at a reasonable cost, since what they have purchased is just a license, after all). I have several damaged or lost CDs. Do RIAA member labels intend to offer similar replacement media?
5. Similarly, software licenses almost universally allow for the creation of a backup copy in case something happens to my original. Does the RIAA acknowledge my right to create a backup?
6. If the RIAA license stops allowing the two rights listed above, do members labels plan to lower the cost of the license (and thus the CDs) to reflect the lessened value in the license?
7. RIAA supports proposals on Digital Rights Management requirements for software operating systems. The vision of computer/OS level control of DRM seems to willfully ignore the Open Source software model. It would either make it illegal to use open source OSes, or provide them with a competitive advantage over DRM-enabled OS. How does the RIAA propose that developers resolve the DRM proposal’s incompatibility with truly open software?
8. RIAA has supported Howard Berman’s proposed legislation allowing copyright owners to search for and disable access to networks that are illegally distributing or sharing their works without the risk of arrest on charges of illegal hacking. As a copyright owner of many written works, would this mean the RIAA would support my hacking into any system that I believed might contain an illegal copy of my copyrighted works? Could I use use otherwise illegal means to remove sites that I believed hosted my works on the Internet? Is the harm done by these sites more important than all existing anti-hacking laws?
9. Hillary Rosen has criticized Gateway for providing “misleading” information in order to sell more CD burners. How does Gateway’s expression of support for digitalconsumer.org and opposition to DRM on philosophical grounds constitute “misleading” information? Does the RIAA have an official position on Gateway’s statement that I have the right to copy CDs I own to my computer and my MP3 player?
10. Hillary Rosen has previously stated (in response to Cannon/Boucher) that “The bill substitutes government regulation for the marketplace. This is not only wrong, it is also inconsistent with the strongly held views of experts and the private sector that government regulation of the Internet would be a disastrous mistake. ” Has the RIAA position on regulating the Internet changed?
11. In 1983, Jack Valenti of the MPAA said “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” Why should anyone believe media industry associations this time?
12. What is the RIAA position on the lawsuit alleging that Sam Moore and many other artists were not provided contractually mandated pension and health benefits for over 30 years?
13. How does the RIAA respond to allegations on foxnews and elsewhere that their member labels must be using deceptive accounting practices when they claim that records that sell 2 million copies have not ever broken even or turned a profit?
14. How does the RIAA respond to the suggestion that by suppressing Internet Radio and fair use by computer consumers they are not protecting the rights of artists but are interested in preserving their oligopoly on music distribution from the technologies that have made it obsolete?

• Clandestine
  Powerful, beautiful songwriting backed by killer bagpipes and cool vocal harmonies
• The Flying Fish Sailors
  This revitalized local group smoothly moves from sea songs to love songs to songs of rednecks who abduct aliens. Don’t ask me, just go see them.
• Jiggernaut
  The up and comer in the lot, with survivors from several favorites melding together into a folk/celt/rock-pop fusion thing that delivers solid fun.
• The Rogues
  Houston’s unabashed Bad Boys with Bagpipes, the Rogues are fast, furious and fun.

Does News Hostage print stories about clumsy reporting errors in the Press? While I understand your desire to expand to new genres of music, I would suggest that before you do so, you should make sure you can adequately handle the categories you’ve got. I found your nominations in the Celtic music category bizarre and sloppy. Your first listed nominee was “Cecil’s Muse”, which you later corrected to “Ceili’s Muse”, a band that last performed in 1997. You neglected to nominate “Clandestine”, who have been a mainstay of the Houston Celtic music scene for years, and whose last studio album was produced by Gerry O’Beirne. Certainly they deserved a nod before a band that hasn’t been performing for five years. I am happy for my friends in the FFS that they have won;they are talented, versatile, and interesting. Their win would have been more meaningful if they had been competing against their peers. [email address not for publication, please]

• It can’t get worse that Gramm
• Cornyn has a better track record than most
• Ron Kirk also looks reasonable.

Michael - based on an analysis of the bill, I don’t think John Cornyn would support the measure. While the desire to protect intellectual property is important, this bill could strangle innovation and not improve the protection of intellectual property as intended. Matt Winslow John Cornyn for Senate

• Background and issues
• Fax your Congresscritters
• Declaration of Rights
• On-line articles
• Digital Consumer Mailing List

“If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own,” said Jobs.

Everyone I know who is right always agrees with me.— Rev. Lady Mal, in Principia Discordia

If you make something, you should have complete control over that thing, whether it’s art, music or prose.

• What they called ‘Producers’ before that was the word for it. (The Linguist in me smiles…)
• How Edison’s business dictation machine unintentionally created an industry
• Format Wars, part one: Edison Cylinders vs. 78s
• How technological innovation during WWI led to the “electric age” of microphones and amplifiers. (Shades of the RAND corporation and the Internet!)
• How Billie Holiday broke the (in-studio) color barrier by recording with Benny Goodman
• Format Wars, part two: 45s and LPs
• How technological innovation during WWII led to the “magnetic age” of recording tape. (Shades of the RAND corporation and the Internet, again!)
• The Creation of Nashville as a music center

• Licensing Music is like Licensing Software (Real Audio)—Note, I think Dwight should’ve included songwriters in the underpaid artist side of the equation; typically they get 6-10 cents per CD per song for their creative endeavors.
• Here’s the point that the music industry just can’t seem to comprehend: Consumers will not flock to any pay service that constrains what they do with the music they download.
• Consumers as well as artists who are concerned about the music labels’ stranglehold on rights have started complaining about the situation to lawmakers.
• While the music industry is a powerful lobby, a horde of angry voters is even more compelling in an election year.

The Internet says to the [music recording and publishing] industry that you folks are yesterday’s news, you’re following outdated models, your business strategies don’t work anymore, and your profit motive is showing rather vulgarly.—John Conyers, D-Mich (via Silverman)

“The economic way of thinking,” as the late Paul Heyne titled his popular introductory textbook, includes the analytical tools that economists take for granted among themselves and try to teach their students. Knowing these basic concepts could keep a lot of people from making economic mistakes.

Now that every computer and every apartment is a potential recording studio and every musician could be a do-it-yourself independent label, more than 20,000 albums are released each year, more than any single fan, radio station or critic could possibly assess fully. That means that richly deserving music can go unnoticed, drowned out by better-promoted albums or rendered inaccessible because it eludes the easy categorization that could make it marketable.

The market has found a great deal of fat around the waistlines of record company weasels and is squeezing it out.