Got a final mix done & sent in the Remora track from yesterday in for the comp. We’ll see if it makes the cut & if the comp comes out (you never know these days).
Today’s installment of Silber mini-comics is XO #4.
I meant to mention it earlier this week, but Thorn1: So Far As Fast is now available at most digital download shops (eMusic, iTunes, etc). Of course it’s half the price at better quality direct through us, but who I am to argue with the masses.
I was talking with a reviewer a bit today about things going on with digital promos for reviewers over physical ones. He was saying he doesn’t like the zip format I use & he’d prefer streaming songs because then he can listen on his phone. Which kinda messes with me. I mean, I’m aware that people don’t care as much about fidelity of music at certain points & hopefully he’s talking about doing it through headphones & not the speaker on the phone, but man. The world’s changing fast. I still listen to CDs & have never even seriously thought about making a digital library of the music I own. No wonder I don’t know how to market to modern music listeners. I’m still stuck in 1990.
Eric Shonborn reviewed the original Wolverine comic over at Nostalgia Equals Distortion.
Got a little work done towards reworking the website so the banner repairs will be easier. If I could just get myself to sit down for 8 hours straight it would be done. But it seems like that never happens.
I did a little research towards embedding some games in the blog, but I couldn’t quite find any that worked for me. I thought I found a nice little chess game, but it just shows a previously played game instead of having a game for you to play. Who wants that? But I’ve been thinking of doing something with starting to draw mazes again. Have one appear randomly in the right column every time a blog page is loaded. I guess I need to figure out how wide the column is. But I’d really thought it would be cool to have a chess game that fit right there. Who doesn’t want that? I did find an embeddable chess game, but it’s as wide as a whole screen. I might add it to the Silber start page when I rework that.
I’ve been thinking about writing to the state senate about implementing a tariff on blank media (CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, MP3 players, etc) to be used to fund a series of grants for film & music makers coming from local art councils. Because it seems like in most of the areas around here these arts are frowned on as far as getting grants & there’ve been a lot of grant slashes over the past couple of years & this would be self-sustaining. The irony is that while clearly the loss of revenue by all artists that the pennies on blank media would only issue a pittance to recoup anyway clearly doesn’t fit to go just towards NC artists. But it would help to make a state where being an artist has a greater degree of sustainability & therefore create a greater artistic community. Obviously it’s modeled after Canada. I suppose I should get off my but & do it. If an iPod cost an extra dollar, but you were told that dollar went to support local musicians & you bitch & moan about it, you have to kinda be an asshole. Because if you are buying downloads for your iPod it’s the cost of one song & if you’re filling it with free media then hey, you should have an extra dollar available after you got all that free stuff.
doesn’t that already exist:
THE AUDIO HOME RECORDING ACT OF 1992:
The AHRA provides that the importer, manufacturer, or distributor of any digital audio recording device or digital audio recording media must file quarterly statements and pay, with those filings, royalties on each recorder or piece of media distributed in the United States. The royalty is 2 percent of the manufacturer’s selling price for recorders and 3 percent of the manufacturer’s selling price for recordable media. The royalty minimum for recorders is one dollar and the maximum is eight dollars, although in 1998, interested parties (such as musicians and music publishers) may request an increase in the royalty maximum under certain conditions. There are no minimum or maximum royalties for recording media.
Two-thirds of the royalties go into the Sound Recording Fund and are distributed from that fund to the American Federation of Musicians (2-5Ú8 percent), the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (1-3Ú8 percent); 40 percent of the remaining royalties go to featured recording artists and 60 percent are distributed to music publishers.
The remaining third of the royalties are allocated to the Musical Works Fund and are distributed evenly between music publishers and songwriters. The percentages of distribution within each group of beneficiaries is determined by the groups themselves.
Here’s the thing with that (from Wiki):
Blank music CDs and recorders
17 U.S.C. § 1008 bars copyright infringement action and 17 U.S.C. § 1003 provides for a royalty of 3% of the initial transfer price. The royalty rate in 17 U.S.C. § 1004 was established by the Fairness in Music Licensing Act of 1998. This only applies to CDs which are labeled and sold for music use; they do not apply to blank computer CDs, even though they can be (and often are) used to record or “burn” music from the computer to CD. A similar royalty applies to stand-alone CD recorders, but not to CD burners used with computers.
Thanks to a precedent established in a 1998 lawsuit involving the Rio PMP300 player, MP3 players are deemed “computer peripherals” and are not subject to a royalty of this type in the U.S.