Feb 21
Duh moment
Ira Glass, music, NPR, Philip Glass, PRI, radio, This American Life Comments Off
Until he mentioned it in an interview, it had never occurred to me that Ira Glass might be related to Philip Glass.
Jan 22
Crank radio for cranks
cellular telephone, gifts, pharmaceuticals, radio, survivalism, technology Comments Off
I’m by no means a survivalist crackpot–I’m entirely too reliant on modern pharmaceuticals–but the Eton FR1000 is really cool. It’s an FM, AM and GMRS radio (walkie-talkie) with vox activation. It’s an LED flashlight and emergency siren. It’ll charge your cell phone. And it can be powered by AA batteries, rechargeable NiMH, AC adaptor, or hand crank! All it’s missing is shortwave.
Oct 05
Random acts of kindness #1
Chris DeBurgh, copyright, Georg Kajanus, licensing, music, Orb, radio, royalties, satellite, satellite radio, Sirius, SoundExchange, Stephan Remmler, webcasting, XM Comments Off
A few weeks ago I read on bOING bOING about a music industry royalties collection agency responsible for webcasting and satellite radio. After much reluctance they had finally put up a list of artists they owed money to, but said they had found it impossible to track down.
I decided to take a look at the list. Sure enough, there were a bunch of artists I’m a fan of. Of those, there were several I knew it would be trivial to track down on the web. People like Scanner, The Orb, μ-Ziq, Stephan Remmler, Westbam, Komputer, Georg Kajanus and a bunch of Warp Records artists. Oh, and RuPaul!
Although my normal policy is not to risk dialog with famous artists whose work I like, I felt that if some big corporate agency is claiming the right to collectpayments on artists’ behalf, it is important to make sure the artists actually see the money. So I wrote the various artists (or their agents or official webmasters) some brief e-mails pointing them at the web site of the collections agency, so they would at least know about it, and could make contact with said organization if they liked. I figured the worst case was that some folks would get a dozen fan e-mails telling them, which was better than no e-mail at all.
I can now reveal that in spite of my fears I got an almost complete lack of response. Except from Thrash (formerly of The Orb), who says they’re owed $50.
Meanwhile, the music industry execs are probably snorting lines of coke off of hookers and wondering if anyone’s heard of some guy named Chris DeBurgh who they owe money to.