accountability with a DRM-free iTunes?

give me accountability or give me Amazon.

i speak as a very loyal iTunes user/purchaser. i rack up bills in the iTunes store like you would not believe. that 4-day mix tape i made over holiday? that cost me a pretty penny there, like $40, give or take, for one day of downloads. of DRM material. [if you aren't aware, DRM--digital rights management--is an encoding on music that limits distribution, including what players it can be played on].

Amazon has had DRM-free music for some time. but i am lazy. i use iTunes to play my music, so i use iTunes to buy my music. a committed .99 per song made it painlessly easy. what's one more song? it's only a buck, right? [to the point where paying 1.99 for Rock Band 2 song downloads seemed like 'too much,' which is illogical.] so DRM-free music on iTunes should be wicked awesome for me, queen of mix tapes, right?

...right.

and it is. but i'm very skeptical of this tiered music iTunes now offers. i want to see a PLAN. in order to give up a little rights management control, the labels want kick-back. so we get DRM-free, while per-song-pricing changes. Yanni can go for .69, while the new Beyonce can go for 1.29. it's said that more songs will be .99 and .69 than 1.29, but let's look at the theoretical math.

[i say theoretical cos it's not really math. i suck at math.]

obviously the combined amount of (nearly) ancient stuff that (nearly) no one listens to, combined with slightly dated material going for .99 would account for more catalogue space than the 1.29 songs. DUH. so you're not selling me on that promise. i am concerned. labels want kick-back because not everyone is as brave as Nettwerk.

so how long before any song i actually give a shit about is 1.29?

i get they want money. in a weird way, i MAY be persuaded out of laziness to spend 1.29 on a song because, as i said, iTunes just flat out 'does it for me.' but i want something that is going to say to me that in 6 months, or 3 months, or some short TIME ALLOTMENT that this 1.29 song is going to become .99. if any of you can find me this, i will be happy. i haven't yet.

i want to see a plan, a promise, something, that says we're not still getting it up the ass from the labels. you give me DRM-free, but pardon me if i look a gift horse in the mouth. pps. it's too much to ask, but i want to trade in my 100+ purchased songs for DRM-free ones. otherwise i just feel penalized/gypped for supporting before.

Lovefool: 2: Pandora

i am going to be having a music-based theme this week. i am looking to consider and address different aspects of how digitalization, technological distribution, and social media have affected our consumption and understanding of music.

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this is the second official post of project Lovefool, wherein i promised i would:
"post about how much i love your brand. why i love your brand. and how much i'm willing to talk about how much i love your brand."

this is actually proving harder than i'd thought. i definitely hardcore love less brands than i'd previously thought. sure, i like a lot. but we all know how fickle i can be with brands. heh. anyway...

target #2: Pandora

why you should care:
if you're into music, this is the thing you want to be paying attention to. yes, stereogum, pitchfork, and obscure are awesome too, but to my knowledge they just hook me up with new tunes and don't yet create entire radio stations for me. Pandora will make radio stations just for you with music you WILL like. they're the best site to date to accomplish this. to boot, you can follow Pandora on twitter and get to know the folks behind it. Lucia at @pandora_radio is a favourite of mine, but there's also @pandora_kevin, too.

why i love them:
i have finely tuned at least 3 of my stations to the point where not one song i dislike comes on. i love that. rather than submit a band or a song i like and have an entire station based off of that, Pandora lets me add multiple bands or songs and configures the station to my exact tastes, rather than "artists similar to X." this combined with the thumb up/down function to better instruct the station makes this net radio amazing. i can listen to other members' stations as well as add an already existing station as my own to finesse, as i did with @spdracerx, whose riot grrrl station had a few years on my own, on the recommendation of Lucia.

i know this sounds simple, but for example, take Last.fm. sure, they can track what i'm listening to, which i grant is cool. but my "neighbours" never listen to what i like, and their stations are so vague that i hate almost everything that comes up. i put in Panic! at the Disco as a band i like, and i'm stuck listening to Simple Plan. GAG ME WITH A SPOON. i hate Simple Plan. i hate Good Charlotte. i hate most anything they toss up. so i stopped listening. no amount of scrobblizing or whatever is going to bring me back when i can't even stomach the music--or, for that matter, the fluctuating levels. constantly adjusting my volume DNE fun.

i also love that when i find music i like with Pandora, i can click on the song and it links directly to iTunes to let me buy it. yes, i am one of those oddballs who's alright with paying .99 per song (i also still purchase CDs, but hey, that's me). my only sadness about this is on iTunes' part: they don't yet sell every song Pandora offers. for example, i couldn't purchase More Than I Can by Jane Jensen (though i could add it to my myspace profile!). it's just a little counterintuitive. another thing Pandora has on Last.fm: i buy CDs from Amazon, not .mp3s. iTunes pwns there. in short, Pandora has made it easier to locate new music i love online, taking the place of a net radio that died for me (i used to use Spinner in high school).

how much i'm willing to talk about how much i love them:
well, i already chat them up any time i'm listening or talking about music online; i reference them in this blog quite a bit; if they were on SocialVibe, Pandora would be my sponsor and help me support my favourite charity; if Pandora made buttons or tee shirts, i would wear them (but they don't). i do refer Pandora to my friends. where music in concerned, they are the top online tool that i talk about. they do what they do well, and that gets a huge kudos in my book.

how much i love them/aka/the backstory:
! Pandora is important to me because it filled a void.

! in high school, i was that girl who knew seventy bands you'd never heard of (but would in a few years); i knew the EPs, what would make great singles, where they came from, what their band name meant, and probably knew either their booker or their main contact. it's what made me originally want to go into music business.

! since going to college and realizing that music business didn't have a future as i knew it, and that entertainment law was bloody boring, etc etc, i threw myself into the english/writing/art aspect i'd also done in high school, forgoing my musical hobbies in favour of newfound passion and a sincere lack of time due to work and classes.

! since graduating, i miss indulging that part of myself. being into music was part of what defined me as a person. without that piece, i had felt somehow less myself. Pandora is helping me to get back to where i want to be.

...previous lovefool projects: To Write Love on Her Arms.

how the internets are boosting music integrity.

i was considering this the other day when Am&a (@reverieapparel) and i were talking about how apparently Mae performs poorly live... among other bands. it had come from a discussion about this post, among other things. so if you want to read about the effect of social media on music, read that. it's good. i'm not going to repeat.

regardless. as the internets go up, the physical record sales go down.

itunes is pwning, amazon has a piece of the pie. record labels floundering. surprise nowhere to be found. bands are being forced to do a lot for themselves, often by choice. moreover, most of the pretty money is coming in from "grass roots" places: ie, the merch, the concerts--the experience, rather than the disc.

i argue: this is a good thing.

ming you, i love buying CDs, the actual physical thing. but for music integrity, i think this is doing wonders.

placing emphasis on live shows to bring in cash monies also places emphasis on the talent and ability to perform live, as was previously more prevalent. this enables people to actually see the acts they want to see--likely (or hopefully, i should say) for less money, in ratio to the amount of shows that should be played.

moreover, even if this should not be the case, it heightens the quality of music insofar as its integrity. there would be far less episodes of lip syncing, and those bands who perform poorly will be less likely to make money on the road where the music has to stand for itself outside of the "fixing" of record labels and track rooms, which has cast a pallour across the music industry.

(the more amusing aspect is once everything finishes its shift to live-base again, there will likely be a postmodern backlash of bands which never play life and only released synth-esque music in order to make a statement. they will be elusive and their cult following will be elitist. all of this will be wonderful. heh.)

lines of intrigue. things to think about.

1] Facebook helps raise a revolt, inadvertently of course. "Egyptians are using the online social networking tool Facebook to defy the government's attempt to muzzle the media and hush recent incidents of police brutality during a strike by workers in a town in the Nile Delta." rock on. one more positive aspect, right up there with the kid who used Twitter to get out of a foreign jail by tweeting "arrested"--and, more personally, when a kid went missing at my alma mater last weekend and the cops wouldn't do anything about it for 72 hours, the kids organized search parties and raised awareness via Facebook.

2] in other news, New York doesn't need any more bloody taxes, give me a break. i hope the bill goes down in flames.

3] also, i can't decide, at all. what book would you save? if you could reinvent the canon, decide that for the future THESE were the books that would matter, what would your canon look like?

some of my choices:
- to kill a mockingbird
- fight club
- house of leaves
- written on the body
- the great gatsby
- lord of the flies
- brave new world
- alice's adventures in wonderland

will revisit this when i get home and look at my bookshelf. i am not including works of poetry, plays, or anthologies. because then it would be even longer, as i love poetry and drama. like copenhagen and arcadia.

4] i love this. i love it i love it i love it. i love it so much that i can't even readily articulate why exactly i love it so much. i'm sure i will analyze and get back to you. must sit and ponder and draw connections and relate and commiserate. yes.