Author: DhammaSeeker

Music industry attacks Sunday newspaper’s free Prince CD

Katie Allen, media business correspondent
Friday June 29, 2007
The Guardian

The eagerly awaited new album by Prince is being launched as a free CD with a national Sunday newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread criticism from music retailers.

The Mail on Sunday revealed yesterday that the 10-track Planet Earth CD will be available with an “imminent” edition, making it the first place in the world to get the album. Planet Earth will go on sale on July 24.

“It’s all about giving music for the masses and he believes in spreading the music he produces to as many people as possible,” said Mail on Sunday managing director Stephen Miron. “This is the biggest innovation in newspaper promotions in recent times.”

The paper, which sells more than 2m copies a week, will be ramping up its print run in anticipation of a huge spike in circulation but would not reveal how much the deal with Prince would cost.

One music store executive described the plan as “madness” while others said it was a huge insult to an industry battling fierce competition from supermarkets and online stores. Prince’s label has cut its ties with the album in the UK to try to appease music stores.

The Entertainment Retailers Association said the giveaway “beggars belief”. “It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career,” ERA co-chairman Paul Quirk told a music conference. “It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music.

“The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday.”

High street music giant HMV was similarly scathing about the plans. Speaking before rumours of a giveaway were confirmed, HMV chief executive Simon Fox said: “I think it would be absolutely nuts. I can’t believe the music industry would do it to itself. I simply can’t believe it would happen; it would be absolute madness.”

Prince, whose Purple Rain sold more than 11m copies, also plans to give away a free copy of his latest album with tickets for his forthcoming concerts in London. The singer had signed a global deal for the promotion and distribution of Planet Earth in partnership with Columbia Records, a division of music company Sony BMG. A spokesman for the group said last night that the UK arm of Sony BMG had withdrawn from Prince’s global deal and would not distribute the album to UK stores.

business.guardian.co.uk

Huzzah to Prince! I was a beneficiary of his CD with concert ticket deal on the Musicology tour, and this is just one more step further. Prince makes music. He doesn’t make CDs. Record companies make CDs and that’s where they make most of their profit. Artists reap the most profit form concert revenues and other avenues – not shiny discs of optical storage media.

The Entertainment Retailers Association can cry me a river. Prince does not make music for their benefit. When will trade groups like you and the ‘music industry’ that’s been crying that the sky is falling for the past 5-7 years wake up to the fact that the old business model is obsolete. I’m all for musicians making a living from their art and for the ‘music industry’ to continue to thrive, but there’s a dinosaur in the room inconveniently ignoring the fact that all of its food disappeared long ago and now it’s but a ghost of what it used to be.

WWJD? He would have inhaled. Definitely.

June 25, 2007
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court tightened limits on student speech today, ruling against a high school student and his 14-foot-long “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner.

Schools may prohibit student expression that can be interpreted as advocating drug use, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

Joseph Frederick unfurled his homemade sign on a winter morning in 2002, as the Olympic torch made its way through Juneau, Alaska, en route to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Frederick said the banner was a nonsensical message that he first saw on a snowboard. He intended the banner to proclaim his right to say anything at all.

His principal, Deborah Morse, said the phrase was a pro-drug message that had no place at a school-sanctioned event. Frederick denied that he was advocating drug use.

“The message on Frederick’s banner is cryptic,” Roberts said.

“But Principal Morse thought the banner would be interpreted by those viewing it as promoting illegal drug use, and that interpretation is plainly a reasonable one.”

www.rockymountainnews.com

My allergies are worse in England than anywhere else in the world! I remember I was signing autographs and as the kids were coming down the line my face was bright red and I was sneezing all over the autographs. I was just miserable!
AMY LEE IS ALLERGIC TO ENGLAND

Note to rock stars: Don’t refer to your fans as ‘kids’. It alienates a significant portion of the fan base who might just turn their attention elsewhere. Oh wait….

Literally.

Turds found in Capitol, but no ‘blossoms’ in sight
RAW STORY
Published: Friday June 15, 2007

According to a Capitol Hill newspaper, police are unable to solve the mystery of the “caca caper.”

“Usually, if a turd gets into the Senate, it’s because he or she was elected,” Emily Heil reports for Roll Call. “But on Wednesday, several large piles of actual, nonmetaphorical ‘No. 2’ found their way into the Capitol, and the source isn’t yet clear.”

Heil continues, “On Wednesday afternoon, Capitol Police cordoned off a section of the hallway on the third floor of the Senate side of the Capitol, where at least three piles of the stuff were causing a stench — and a stir. At first, the word circulating among the staff was that a visiting child had fallen ill while in the gallery. But then the prevailing theory was that the foul stuff had come from an adult or group of adults making a yet-to-be-determined political statement.”

According to the paper, “Reports also circulated that the yucky stuff had been smeared on seats in the gallery overlooking the chamber floor, and the gallery remained closed hours after the incident was first noted.”

Excerpts from article:

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Sources familiar with Capitol maintenance speculated it was “an unfortunate incident involving a child,” although they have no culprit and very little detail about how it transpired. The section of hallway was still closed as of late Wednesday and officials will engage in an “intense cleaning” of the section following Senate business Wednesday night, the sources said.

Witnesses said they couldn’t believe that a single culprit could have produced the volume of poo present or that a person could have, well, deposited it the normal way without attracting attention. Several witnesses speculated it had been brought in from elsewhere.

“There was so much of it, there was just no way it came from a little kid or even that one person had done it,” said one staffer who witnessed the stinky scene.

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ROLL CALL SUBSCRIBERS CAN READ FULL ARTICLE AT THIS LINK

rawstory.com

Don Herbert was known to his fans as Mr. Wizard, star of the Watch Mr. Wizard show. Long before Mythbusters, Herbert made common household items seem magical every Saturday at noon on NBC, from 1951 to 1964.

Herbert died on Tuesday [12 JUN 2007] after a long struggle with multiple myeloma, the Los Angeles Times reported. His legacy is the thousands of children he inspired to get involved in science. Many of them […] are practicing scientists today.

An Air Force veteran and former actor, Herbert revived the show once in 1971, and again on Nickelodeon from 1983 to 1990. By then he had created a bank of shows that he released on DVD in 2004.

The Mr. Wizard show made a long-term cultural impact, engendering parodies including “Ask Mr. Lizard!” on the TV cartoon Dinosaurs, “Ask Mr. Stupid” on the ’90s cartoon The Ren and Stimpy Show”, and “Ask Dr. Science!” on the public radio comedy Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater.

www.wired.com

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita forced many musicians to flee New Orleans. Jazz, blues, and other genres that are the city’s musical score, cannot return until the musicians return, and many have lost their homes. Habitat for Humanity International and New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, working with Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis, honorary chairs of Operation Home Delivery, seek to change this. Plans were announced Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005 for a “Musicians’ Village.”

The Musicians’ Village, conceived by Connick and Marsalis, will consist of 70 single-family, Habitat-constructed homes for displaced New Orleans musicians and other qualifying Habitat partner families. Its centerpiece will be the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, dedicated to the education and development of homeowners and others who will live nearby. On January 9, 2006 NOAHH acquired eight acres of land in the Upper 9th Ward where the core area of the Musicians’ Village will be located. In addition to the homes in this tract, plans call for building at least 150 other homes in the surrounding Upper 9th Ward neighborhood. Construction began in March 2006 and the first ten homeowners moved into their new homes in August 2006.

To read more and DONATE to the cause, visit www.habitat-nola.org

The web is a great tool for sharing ideas and freedom of expression. However, efforts to try and control the Internet are growing. Internet repression is reported in countries like China, Vietnam, Tunisia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. People are persecuted and imprisoned simply for criticising their government, calling for democracy and greater press freedom, or exposing human rights abuses, online.

But Internet repression is not just about governments. IT companies have helped build the systems that enable surveillance and censorship to take place. Yahoo! have supplied email users’ private data to the Chinese authorities, helping to facilitate cases of wrongful imprisonment. Microsoft and Google have both complied with government demands to actively censor Chinese users of their services.

Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. It is one of the most precious of all rights. We should fight to protect it.