Musicians abandoning the “music industry” in favor of–ringtones?
Super Smart have turned their backs on vinyl and CDs and instead have decided to just release their album as ringtones.
The album, Panda Babies, is published by a German company that focuses on digital music for mobile phones.
‘Music has to be re-thought,’ said Antonio Vince Staybl, founder of the Go Fresh Mobile Music label.
By default, our environment, including public media, may not be offering a soundtrack to our liking. Researcher Dr. Michael Bull is looking at how we alter our world by choosing its soundtrack.
We live in a visually dominated culture and suffer constant bombardment by visible messages.
Adverts, shop fascias, street signs, the clothes of fellow pedestrians, newspaper headlines, magazine front covers, car designs create a visual cacophony.
Inner space
But, says Dr. Bull, it is because of this deafening visual chorus that exercising choice over what we listen to is so important.
Through interviews with Walkman owners and now iPod buyers, he found that listening to music acts as a shield, aura or cocoon.
Using headphones helps to keep the world at bay and reclaim some space.
“They construct their moods, they re-make the time of their day,” says Dr Bull. “It’s a much more active process even though it’s dependent on the machinery.”
Choice is the key factor, he says. By choosing the music, you reclaim some of the world – it’s no longer dominated by messages pointed at you.
Here’s one from the “it doesn’t really say” department:
George Hotelling wants to know. In a move that could spark a novel legal test of Internet music resale rights, the Web developer in Ann Arbor, Mich., on Tuesday night put a digital song he purchased online at Apple Computer’s iTunes Music Store up for auction on eBay.
Hotelling said he isn’t all that concerned about getting his money back for the Devin Vasquez remake of Frankie Smith’s song ‘Double Dutch Bus,’ which cost him 99 cents. Instead, he said he’s using the attempted sale to probe some thorny consumer issues stemming from commercial online music services, in particular, technology known as digital rights management that’s used to prevent unauthorized copying. In that spirit, he’s promised to donate anything above his purchase price to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an activist Internet legal group.”
The effort has apparently resonated with online music aficionados, many of whom have expressed anger at copyright controls used by licensed Internet music services, including iTunes. With the auction set to end Sept. 9, the price on the song had gone up to $15,099 as of Wednesday evening.
Now the question is, how long will it take Apple (et al.) before they add a paragraph prohibiting resale?