music, macs and mets ... mostly.
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It’s been a while, so here’s a special entry … Yesterday NAC New Media had a hand in helping produce this year’s edition of Music Monday, a great national initiative spearheaded by the Coalition for Music Education.
One of the highlights of the hour-long show was a cameo performance by Ron Sexsmith. Here’s a QuickTime stream of Ron’s tune, “Former Glory” recorded live at the NAC’s Fourth Stage.
Christopher Millard, host of the NACOcast, is this week’s guest diarist in the National Post and today’s entry is on orchestras using new media, with a nice plug for the NACOcast.
Musicians are thinking about how to reach audiences with new technologies. As orchestras bring archival recordings to their web sites, the choices for music lovers will explode. Serving listeners good content at their convenience is central to the concept. But listener- controlled programming should not be a duplication of content available elsewhere. We need to offer performances that touch people more intimately. For example, my podcast this week (www.nac.ca/nacocast) features a chat with violinist James Ehnes about his Stradivarius.
‘Cheque’s in the mail, Chris.
link: full article
TVShows is a Mac OS X app that allows you to subscribe to torrent streams of your favourite TV shows. The application runs in the background. Whenever a new episode of one of your “subscriptions” appears, TVShow starts a download in your default BitTorrent application.
Pretty cool and it’s dead simple to use.
link: TVShows
Warning: the legality of downloading TV shows is sketchy at best
Caution: Shameless NAC New Media plug …
We’re producing the last in our series of four broadband videoconference jazz masterclasses tomorrow at Noon at the NAC’s Fourth Stage. Famed jazz pianist Kenny Barron will be at Manhattan School of Music in New York City and four talented piano students (from Humber College, the University of Toronto, Carleton University and McGill University) will be here in Ottawa.
The session will explore advanced jazz piano technique with one of the truly great jazz pianists and educators of our time. The connected session should be of interest to seasoned jazz enthusiasts, music students as well music lovers in general.
This final edition of the 2006/2007 Manhattan on the Rideau series will employ the very latest in broadband video conference technology to connect Mr Barron with the students at the NAC. The connection will be made using next-generation Internet: Internet2 in the US and CA*net4 in Canada.
If you’ve got some free time tomorrow over the lunch hour, swing by the NAC’s Fourth Stage to hear this giant of jazz piano mentor up-and-coming talents from across Ontario and Quebec.
Sound Opinions this week looks at the recent ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board in the US that would dramatically increased royalty rates for streaming music on the web, a decision which may in fact put many internet radio stations out of business. Hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot explore the issue with John Simson, the Executive Director of SoundExchange, artist Jonatha Brooke, and owner/operator of Radio Paradise, Bill Goldsmith.
I stumbled across IFC’s Henry Rollins Show a few months ago. I can’t recall exactly how. Henry’s already got a 20 episode season under his belt with a new season beginning in April. The shows are 30 minutes long and each episode features a couple of patented Rollins rants, an interview, and some awesome musical guests. Last season included live in-studio performances by Frank Black, Ben Folds, John Doe, Dinosaur Jr., Thom Yorke, New York Dolls, Ani DiFranco and Rollins Band, natch. Most of the music segments are viewable online, including bonus sessions not aired on the TV show. The Rollins Show first season is available on DVD.
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Jason Fry outlined last week’s ruling by the US Copyright Royalty Board which proposed new performance royalty rates for online radio stations.
An online radio station would pay .08 cent per song per listener for 2006 (the rates are retroactive), .11 cent in 2007, .14 in 2008, .18 cents in 2009 and .19 cents in 2010. Seems like little enough, but it adds up — and this small change is a big change for small Webcasters. Under a deal brokered in 2002, small Webcasters had met their royalty obligations by paying artists and record labels 12% of revenue, but the new rules would do away with that exemption.
These rates would in effect kill Internet radio. For services like Pandora and “indie” stations like Radio Paradise, fees would surpass revenues. The ruling would also affect terrestrial radio stations that simulcast on the net as well as XM/Sirius satellite radio. Podcasters now operating under the ASCAP/BMI podcast licenses would also have new fees heaped on. The issue can be traced back to … The Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, natch.
This is not a done deal and Internet stations and listeners are preparing to fight the ruling.
I’m huge fan of Ira Glass. I could listen to This American Life for days on end, no problem. And now that TAL is available as a podcast, I’m planning to do just that this summer [rss]
Here are four short videos of Ira Glass on storytelling courtesy of Your Daily Awesome, awesome in its own right.
Adam Pash points Lifehacker readers to LibriVox, (the) “acoustical liberation of books in the public domain”. And rightfully so. Congratulations, Hugh.
Download free audiobooks at LibriVox
Here’s hoping the LibriVox servers can handle the deluge of traffic.
[One last work-related entry, then I'll give this day job stuff the heave-ho for a while]
The National Arts Centre recently launched the Quebec Scene, a cultural extravaganza featuring 700 Quebec artists from all disciplines who will perform in Ottawa/Gatineau between April 20 to May 5, 2007.
We’ve built sites for both of the Quebec Scene’s predecessors — The Atlantic Scene and the Alberta Scene — and with each we’ve tried to up the ante in terms of the web features and content available. We’ve used “scene” sites to introduce customizable calendars, Flash interfaces, RSS feeds. In March 2005, we launched the NAC’s first ever podcast series, Alberta Scene Radio.
With the Quebec Scene we want to try something new. The Quebec Scene’s podcast feed will feature “user”-generated content — Artists, audience members and NAC staff will contribute audio, video and text to be included in a single RSS feed called “Echos de la Scène / Echoes from the Scene” [RSS]. The entries will hopefully capture the spirit and energy of the event in a multitude of voices. The audio, video and text blog entries will be recorded on all forms of portable devices; mobile phones, PDAs, and MP3 recorders.
To submit a blog entry during the Quebec Scene, simply email it to EchoesFromTheScene [at] gmail [dot] com.
This is of course new for us. We’ve had student bloggers submit content for certain initiatives like NAC Orchestra tour sites, but never have we solicited and made available independently produced audio and video on an NAC website. (Legal department, what legal department?)
What do you think? Would you contribute if you had the opportunity? Leave a comment here on the blog, or email EchoesFromTheScene [at] gmail [dot] com.
To whet your whistle for all the great shows to come in April and May, here’s a short video montage from the launch event with performance clips from Thomas Hellman and Boogat (video by Randy Bowler). It may take a minute or two to load.