heute:pop:blog.  

This post was originally published on our OpenMusicMedia blog but I re-posted it here for you guys to read as well. Would be great to see you there:

We wanted to do something slightly different for this next meetup, we wanted to discuss ‘Music As Culture’. Leading the conversation will be New Music Strategies’ Andrew Dubber and Jez Collins. This conversation actually started at Unconvention Salford but we felt it was one worth continuing down in London for OpenMusicMedia. But what exactly does ‘Music As Culture’ entail? We’ll leave it to Dubber to explain below…

Music As Culture

It’s no surprise to anyone that the music industries are struggling in the digital age. Faced with a filesharing populace, an incredible array of media choices, a tough economic climate, and plenty of other things for people to spend money on, it can be pretty tight for a lot of people in the industries.

Recent research demonstrates a link from openness and inclusion to massive untapped potential for all kinds of businesses. Consumers have a bigger say in the fate of the industries than ever before – and while they recognise the commercial aspects of music business, they do not accept that old systems of control are relevant to them anymore.

By empowering consumers, opening access to archives and for scholarship, enriching the public domain, according popular music the same cultural status as classical and folk musics, and treating audiences as part of the music process (rather than as merely passive consumers), the society we live in is a much richer and vibrant one.

It’s good for culture, it’s good for the economy, it invigorates local scenes, it’s a lifeline for artists – and it’s great for business. In fact, it might just be what saves the music industries.

As always this will be an open discussion and you will set the agenda for the night. We’ll be starting the discussion at around 7pm but feel free to be there by 6pm and have a drink with us. You can find all the details below, if you have any questions, leave a comment or contact us via twitter.

The event is free to open to everyone but if you can please RSVP at our new Facebook group.

William IV

There are points in live where you have to challenge yourself and get out of your comfort zone in order to achieve personal growth. I’m planning to do all that and as part of that I will stop my radio show for a while.

My last show (in it’s current form) will be broadcast on the 2nd September 2009. Tide 96.0 might broadcast repeats until the end of the year but I won’t post anything new on here. Strange feeling, I’ve done this for over five years.

I will keep you posted on my plans, all exciting stuff.

You can listen to my latest show here.

1. Deastro ‘Tone Adventure #3′
2. Azeda Booth ‘Big Fists’
3. The Big Pink ‘A Brief History of Love’
4. Florence And The Machine ‘Howl’
5. Fredo Viola ‘The Turn (A Pagan Lament)’
6. Tom Waits ‘Alice’
7. Willy Mason ‘We Can Be Strong’
8. Phosphorescent ‘It’s Not Supposed To Be That Way’
9. The Slow Club ‘When I Go’
10. Kings of Convenience ‘Mrs. Cold’
11. Imogen Heap ‘Canvas’
12. Like A Stuntman ‘On Repetition We Are’
13. Friendly Fires ‘I’m Good I’m Gone’
14. Modeselektor ‘The White Flash’ (feat. Thom Yorke)

If you want to find out more about the Last.fm radio show at the Big Chill festival I was talking about in this weeks show you can check out this post.

Also, heute:pop:morgen as it exists at the moment will come to an end soon. More on that next week…

You can listen to my latest show here.

1. My Latest Novel ‘I Declare A Ceasefire’
2. Kings of Convenience ‘Mrs. Cold’
3. Noah And The Whale ‘The First Days Of Spring’
4. Brand New ‘Oh Comely’
5. The Big Pink ‘A Brief History of Love’
6. Atlas Sound ‘Walkabout’ (w/ Panda Bear)
7. Florence And The Machine ‘Howl’
8. Ladyhawke ‘Paris Is Burning’ (Peaches Remix)
9. The Death Set ‘Negative Thinking’
10. Uffie ‘Hot Chick’ (Mr. Oizo Unreleased Rework)
11. Metronomy ‘My Heart Rate Rapid’
12. Kleerup ‘Until We Bleed’ (With Lykke Li)

Stefan, Rupert and I have been invited to host a Last.fm radio show at the Big Chill Festival this year. They always have a local FM license for their site and they encourage people to bring radios so you can extend the Big Chill experience for when you are not in front of the stages. I think you might also be able to listen to the Big Chill radio station online.

It might seems a bit counter intuitive to have a radio show hosted by Last.fm since the service is all about your personalized music experience and not about us three DJs deciding what will be played. But we came up with a slightly different idea:

The two hour set will be based on the Last.fm Hype Chart as well as the music taste of the people who are attending the festival. This way the Last.fm users have indirectly decided what will be played and we only act as a filter and make sure we don’t only play Michael Jackson. To give the show a bit of a ‘geek edge’ we will be talking about Last.fm, how it works and what we are doing at the festival.

I believe we are on air from midday to 2pm on the Sunday. I wonder how many people will actually be away at that point but that will not stop us from having some fun in the studio.

If you’re going to the Big Chill this year, make sure you mark your attendance here and we might play your favourite songs. We might even give you a shout out (your Last.fm user name of course).

This is where you can have a look at the results from the Music Hack Day I was mentioning this morning. Some really cool stuff in there.

Also, you will find me at the Lovebox Festival in London this weekend, give me a shout if you are around.

You can listen to my latest show here.

1. David Bowie ‘Life On Mars’
2. Florence And The Machine ‘Howl’
3. Noah And The Whale ‘The First Days Of Spring’
4. Oh No! Oh My! ‘I Love You All the Time’ (Acoustic)
5. Emmy The Great ‘MIA’
6. My Latest Novel ‘I Declare A Ceasefire’
7. The Low Anthem ‘Charlie Darwin’
8. Why? ‘Eskimo Snow’
9. Yo La Tengo ‘Love Chant’
10. King Cannibal ‘So… Embrace The Minimum’
11. Holy Ghost! ‘I Will Come Back’ (DJ Mehdi Remix)
12. Fuck Buttons ‘Bright Tomorrow’
13. Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head ‘Slow Motion Tag Team’

This morning I was talking about Chris Anderson’s new book ‘ FREE‘ which I can highly recommend. You can read some more in my previous post.

Also, the difference between classical and ‘popular’ music is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently  – related to that I played a track by Ólafur Arnalds who calls his music ‘neo-classical’. You can download his latest free album here.

You can listen to my latest show here.

1. Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons ‘Beggin’
2. My Latest Novel ‘I Declare A Ceasefire’
3. The Low Anthem ‘Charlie Darwin’
4. Sigur Ros ‘Hafsól’ (live)
5. Riceboy Sleeps ‘Happiness’
6. Ólafur Arnalds ‘Erla’s Waltz’
7. Hauschka ‘Morgenrot’
8. Florence And The Machine ‘Howl’
9. Cassettes Won’t Listen ‘Into The Hillside’
10. Fagget Fairys ‘Feed The Horse’
11. Moby ‘Pale Horses’ (Apparat Remix)
12. k-os ’4 3 2 1′

I went to the UK launch of Chris Anderson‘s new book ‘FREE‘ last night which unsurprisingly was a very busy event since he is a bit of a digital media pop star. With being a celebrity come the critics that have to proof that your ideas are in fact rubbish and that try to find examples where “The Long Tail” does not work and where “FREE” destroyed jobs.

I’m not one of those guys. However I had to think of something when Chris was talking about some of his ideas last night. They gave out free copies of the book (an abridged version, not the full one) so I can even quote him now. He is writing:

“What the Internet does is combine all three, compounding the price declines with a triple play of technology: processors, bandwidth, and storage. As a result, the net annual deflation rate of the online World is nearly 50 percent, which is to say that whatever it costs YouTube to stream a video today will cost half as much in a year.”

Although I agree that the above applies to any technology costs this does not work for any licensing expenses. The licensing fees for content is already the biggest expense for many services that stream or otherwise deliver content to consumers. Although there is certain evidence that the cost of content is going down (the PRS has recently lowered they per stream royalty for music streaming services) I don’t believe that this trend will keep on going at a rate of 50% per year.

Nevertheless, Chris Anderson’s book ‘FREE’ looks like another must read for anyone who is interested in how technology changes moder day economics.