Kontor Records Tries New Vinyl Promotion

Via http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/watch-vinyl-promo/



"...but how could anybody play it?" How about the same way people have been playing vinyl records for over a century? Prototype Victrolas probably sounded better than the speakers on your iPhone to boot.

David Lowery tries to talk sense to the Internet.

Without a way for artists to make money, soon we may be bereft of a musical middle class, that is, musicians who don't have day jobs but spend their time perfecting their craft, recording it, and then sharing it with the rest of us. For a few generations, being creative and working hard at this has afforded a significant number of musicians a lower-middle to middle class lifestyle. Sadly, the suppression of income, or elimination, for recorded works has all but eradicated this as a legitimate goal and threatens to take with it the benefits of professionally recorded music with it. For the last few weeks, David Lowery (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker) has decided to tackle the complex issues at play here for working musicians. If you are a musician, work with them, love one, or just love music, David's writing clear and level-headed analysis of the current landscape. You may end up disagreeing with all or part of it, but I doubt you'll regret your time spent reading it.

A good place to start: Meet The New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss? taken from his talk at the SF Music Tech Summit.

I was like all of you.  I believed in the promise of the Internet to liberate, empower and even enrich artists.  I still do but I’m less sure of it than I once was.  I come here because I want to start a dialogue.  I feel that what we artists were promised has not really panned out.  Yes in many ways we have more freedom.  Artistically this is certainly true.  But the music business never transformed into the vibrant marketplace where small stakeholders could compete with multinational conglomerates on an even playing field.

In the last few years it’s become apparent the music business, which was once dominated by six large and powerful music conglomerates, MTV, Clear Channel and a handful of other companies, is now dominated by a smaller set of larger even more powerful tech conglomerates.  And their hold on the business seems to be getting stronger.

I encourage you to grab a cup of tea, get comfy, and keep reading (on your lunch hour, of course.)

Thank you, David, for taking the time to get this all in one place at one time!

Son Lux Podcast Episode!

In this episode, our hosts explore the benefits and pitfalls of technology in art. We even hear what Ryan Lott (a.k.a. Son Lux) has to say about it.

Mr. Lux stopped by saki a while back for an Epitonic saki Session and we had the nice fortune of listening to him answer a few questions.

Check out more Son Lux on Epitonic.com

Subscribe on iTunes!

Get set for invisible war machines

 While the boy in me thinks the technology is fascinating, these sorts of steps could be wildly destabilizing.  From the MSNBC Cosmic Blog.

John Roach writes:Within a few years the Brits may deploy invisible armored tanks onto the battlefield, a breakthrough in stealth technology that Harry Potter would certainly applaud.

And not just tank, submarines as well.

When the invisible tanks start rolling on the battlefield, the Navy, too, may be deploying submarines outfitted with technology that makes them invisible to sonar, according to researchers at the University of Illinois. In the journal Physical Review Letters, they reported the successful testing of a prototype acoustic cloak.  

 Yikes and double yikes.

Perhaps Bob Dey would be interested in this for live performances? Might get him over his stage fright.