Setting up XBMC
I decided to go with XBMC (release 10, Dharma), the dominant player for homebrew HTPC setups – and for good reason. It’s got a slick interface that it pads with data and images retrieved from fan-curated databases of movies and TV shows. While you can use a live installation to run it without an operating system, I opted to install it on Windows 7 so I could easily transfer files to the computer over my network. While you can access a full-featured administrator account on the computer, I set up the computer to automatically boot into a special XBMC account that has XBMC replacing the normal Explorer shell. The visual part of Windows doesn’t load at all unless explorer.exe is explicitly run, and I don’t even have to use additional software – just the Group Policy Editor in Windows (the link has step-by-step instructions for doing this yourself).

Customization
I decided to use the popular Aeon65 skin instead of the default Confluence, largely because of the gorgeous horizontal menu configurations. I have a wireless keyboard functioning as an advanced remote (and for working with the computer when necessary), but my phone is quickly becoming my primary remote, with the official XBMC remote app controlling my setup over WiFi from anywhere in the house. The official instructions for setting this up were a bit out of date; this tutorial has updated steps and screenshots using newer versions of everything. I also made sure I set up Zoe to get a static IP address from the router so my phone would always know where to look for her.

XBMC in action
I went through and took a few screenshots of my setup in action. Thus far XBMC has been superb at picking out the correct information and images for my TV shows and movies, with a bit less robust results for music. I’m able to do a slick visual browse through my various media types, with icons in the bottom for the format, studio, and resolution. I can also get detailed info on the film or show, including cast members (you can also search your media by actor or studio). Fanart and posters help make everything look visually pleasing and well put-together, and the best part is that it does all this automatically – none of the time-consuming curation I’ve grown accustomed to with my iTunes music library. There are a few outstanding issues: I’m like to get movies in a series with unique names (i.e. Harry Potter) to appear sequentially instead of alphabetically, I want to see it correctly remove musical artists only featured in compilation albums from the browsing list, and I want to see if there’s a way to get all the album art I’ve painstakingly added to my iTunes library into the XBMC database (or find a database with more artwork than Last.fm). All in all I’ve been quite impressed with how this has worked out, and while it took a bit of learning, it’s made viewing media at my house much cooler and easier to use. Now I just need a surround sound system, and maybe a bigger screen…

Classes and my lab rotation are now in progress, forcibly applying structure to my time.  In lieu of more interesting developments, I saw this post on Techdirt. A band (that I happen to enjoy) denied permission to use their songs in television commercials, so the company created “sound alike” songs to use instead. Far better than crying to copyright or imaginary property, their response is more like what I talked about a few weeks ago.

Ultimately, what somebody says in the comments is correct – people liking the music in the commercials are going to find their way to Sigur Ros – even more so now that they’ve said something.

Amidst an industry segment in its death throes, Pink Floyd just took the cake for futility. While the rest of the recording industry dinosaurs beg and plead people to pay money for free digital files, they are trying to ensure that people who do want to spend are as inconvenienced as possible. It’s as though they don’t realize that people have been getting whatever tracks they wanted, however they wanted for the past decade.

This has nothing to do with “artistic vision,” it’s a simple moneygrab to try and overlay a long-outdated scarcity model on an environment of abundance. Instead of giving potential new fans the opportunity to impulse-buy a track and potentially return to buy the album as a whole piece, they’ve made it an “all or nothing choice” and further reduced the utility of a product with plummeting market value.

Instead of attempting to reach out and connect with new fans (or enjoying their fortune), Pink Floyd spends its time in court fighting over how they can continue squeezing money out of work they did more than thirty years ago. Despite incredible talent and musical artistry, artists behaving like this is reprehensible.

To that end, I sent the picture, a note and a return envelope to the venue two dates ahead in Flyleaf’s tour schedule. The other day, I received the envelope and grinned.

“Both during store hours and after the store closes each night, they’ll be recording their next album dubbed “Made In Nevada” using all the gear the store has on sale.” via techdirt.com

With such a small space, the bassist came dangerously close to hitting his instrument on the ceiling, but somehow got away with only near-misses. Sameer was wearing an excellent glow-in-the-dark skeleton hoodie. The bones were accurate representations so when the lights were down, the effect worked. Lacey, of course, was all kinds of stunning. Kyle and I waited around for several hours after the show and as a result, got some stuff signed. The Sharpie isn’t going to stay on the iPod forever though, so I took the picture as soon as possible. Perhaps I could get it laser-engraved. There is also the picture we almost didn’t get thanks to a dead camera battery, but it came back to life just in time. Yes, Lacey makes me look like a polypheme. I can live with that.

I’d never had the willpower to stand around for ages after a show ended before, but this was quite the rewarding experience. It’s kind of a mental battle, as the band waits for most of the crowd to give up and leave, and you try to be one of the twenty or so people who stick it out. I’m inclined to try doing this again after other shows at more intimate venues, maybe a little better prepared. In the meantime, I’m still coming down from the fan-gasm. Connect with fans? Yes, please.

Posted via email from Michael’s posterous

If they just stopped sharing…

The first common reaction finds an excellent example in the words of Geoff Taylor from BPI (Britain’s RIAA), where he says, “…these new figures show how the market could explode if the government acts to tackle illegal peer-to-peer filesharing.” In other words, “if only these people would stop sharing music for free, our physical/digital sales would go through the roof.” Or even better, “if we could just go back to the time when we were making tons of money from recorded music, we’d be making tons of money from recorded music.”

The other option is taken by many who feel they are being progressive. They focus on the sharers who “try before they buy” and the people just looking for the right convenient digital store to make their music purchases, completely ignoring free sharers. In their mind, unauthorized sharing is good only when it converts to sales, and would ideally be replaced with a nice store or streaming service where people could hear songs and then buy.

Misunderstanding the mindset

Both of these attitudes misunderstand the mindset of many, if not most filesharers. Rather than trying to get something for free instead of buying it, they are sharing an infinite resource with interested peers that has marginal replication cost. Regardless of how one may feel about the cost of making the recording or supporting the artist, it is a fact that digital files are a freely replicable infinite resource. It’s also fact that many sharers will indeed buy the same material as physical discs, or even as digital files. But what about the people who will never buy another CD or fork over cash for an mp3 file?

Instead of ignoring these people, it is critical to understand that they are just as willing to part with their money as anybody else, provided you are selling them something they want. They love music, and while they do not place monetary value on recordings, their position is just as valid as those who still do. Selling recording music still works so long as somebody still values physical media, like LPs or CDs, or enjoys the convenience of a digital store like Amazon or iTunes, but it’s a shrinking market. While promoting these avenues, however “progressively,” may work in the short-term, it’s a stopgap measure at best.

Moving forward

The true way to build a successful business model in a sharing-centric culture is to market unique, non-replicable things to fans.  To move forward in the long-term is to stop marginalizing sharers based on what they won’t buy and start thinking about what they will buy. In this scenario, it becomes irrelevant how much recorded music sharers go on to buy – or anybody else, for that matter. While only a subset of sharers have the potential to be converted into “record sales,” selling the unique can reach sharers and nonsharers alike. Developing this as a model for the 21st century isn’t radical – it’s simply good business.

Two competing ideas

As I’ve followed the copyfight in its various incarnations across the web, I repeatedly see two seemingly oppositional statements. First, that filesharers are simply people who “just want to get everything for free,” and second, that filesharers want to pay for music and are simply looking for the right place to do it. The latter idea has been the driving force behind systems like the iTunes music store and RealNetworks’ Rhapsody, where people pay for access to digital files. Many people currently believe that if all of the restrictions on these stores were lifted so they were selling lossless, no-strings-attached files, music fans would readily hand over their cash. Schemes like Voluntary Collective Licensing involve users paying a monthly fee for unlimited access to the entire catalog of recorded music: an “all you can eat” music buffet. While I don’t doubt that if a truly open system was set up, many people would happily sign up, this school of thought sees the rest of the sharers who don’t go for such a plan as being lost. As the thinking goes, these people “just want things for free” and wouldn’t pay for anything. This idea is correct – if you restrict your discussion to selling digital files, copies, of recorded music.

The world’s largest record store

In fact, if the music industry had jumped on this idea back in 1999, setting up their own subscription-style version of Oink.me.uk, it might have caught on for a while. But inevitably, people would begin to realize what the ever-growing community of filesharers is realizing now: digital files are an infinite resource. A distribution nirvana, every copy of a digital file is indistinguishable from the original and can be traded literally around the world for next to zero cost. When anybody with a computer and an internet connection can both distribute and receive digital music, and copying only increases the “amount” available for everyone, the monetary value of those files drops to zero. Although there will almost always be people out there who would prefer to obtain files directly from a store, a rapidly increasing number of individuals are realizing that they have instant access to the world’s largest record store simply by signing online. This leads to a conclusion that is difficult for many people to accept: in the long-term, there is little to no money to be made in selling digital files. Does this mean there is no money to be made in music? Not at all.

Sell music, not copies

Anybody who wants to continue making money in music needs to stop trying to defeat or even “monetize” filesharing. Instead, they must make filesharing work for them by shifting their model to something summarized by TechDirt’s Mike Masnick as “connect with fans and give them a reason to buy.” It requires only a small shift in thinking: if we accept the reality that digital files are free and sharable, we have a potential audience as large as the world. Each person who gets a file for free is a potential fan; the ingenuity lies in giving those new fans a reason to give their money to you. This involves selling what I like to call unique experiences, things that have a personal value to the fan and thus are worth their money. Ranging from t-shirts, concert tickets and signed albums to time spent playing an online game with a band member, these things have monetary value because they are scarce, unlike infinitely reproducible digital files. Most of all, the creation of new music has value to fans who want to hear more from their favorite artist – so sell the work itself. Many fans would willingly support the creation of new recordings in exchange for things as simple as a shoutout in the liner notes or the simple knowledge that there will be more music available to share and use in YouTube videos, on iPods, or in blog posts.

Taking what’s free, buying what’s valuable

The position of the people who “just want things for free” is better characterized as wanting worthless things for free. These same people are just as likely, if not more likely, to spend money on music itself. The copies in and of themselves are worthless. But as a promotional vehicle that can quickly spread across the entire world, connecting with thousands of people who five years ago would never have heard of it, those files are priceless. As the fanbase grows, constantly providing them with scarce, valuable things to spend their money on is a business model that remains robust moving forward. The musical artists who understand this now will continue making money from their creative efforts in the years to come, pleasing fans and contributing to our shared culture in the process.

We got there around eleven AM and waited in a line until about 1:20 to get seats inside the actual pavilion, which meant we had a great view of the stage and were out of the direct sunlight to boot. Unfortunately, whenever we left the pavilion and wanted to come back they made us wait in an ever-growing line filled with everybody else that was hoping to get a seat inside. This meant that if I left to go to the bathroom or buy something the only way to get back in a reasonable time was to “merge” with the mob clustered around the entrance gate and push myself along whenever they let a new group of people through. Each time I did this I felt a twinge of sadness for the poor suckers waiting at the back of the line hundreds of yards away, but it was quickly forgotten somewhere between the gate and my seat.

I was a little disappointed with my “lesser” bands. I was very excited to see Mates of State, The Bravery, and Franz Ferdinand, but Franz played on the West Stage during Blink-182 so there was no way I could make it out of the pavilion and over there in time; The Bravery ended their set halfway through their alloted time spot; and while I enjoyed them, all of the people I was with hated Mates of State. Bummer.

The rest of the bands on the main stage were entertaining, with Weezer putting on an excellent performance that definitely made the day for me. They had a trampoline on stage, for crying out loud, not to mention playing themselves offstage at the end of the set with Keyboard Cat. Blink-182 closed the night with an elaborate electronic backdrop and energetic performances of the hits we sung along to in high school. It makes me a laugh a bit, because all of their songs are about being a frustrated teenager and they’re now in their mid-thirties (they were formed in the same year my little brother was born). Like it or not, most of you were big fans when you were that age and they’re one of the dwindling number of multiplatinum music artists.

While many of the performers were not ones I would have paid to see individually, I had a wonderful time. I very much enjoy the whole “unique experience” of going to concerts, and this one was definitely worth the $10 ticket price (which actually went to charity) – even with the $7 lemonades.

Matt Shultz, lead singer of Cage the Elephant, climbed up the side of the stage into the second-floor balcony, literally right where we were standing (Rachel’s water got spilled all over the place in the brouhaha). He handed the mic off the Kyle when he ran out of cord, who held it over the crowd (cheers) before shouting “jump!” Matt ended up climbing back over the railing and leaping from the balcony back into the crowd. Manchester Orchestra was pretty interesting, and definitely loud. The guy on the keyboard/Macbook/half drumset was absolutely crazy. I listened to their albums today at work, and I really like them now. I wish I had done that before the show; I think I would have been able to appreciate them more.

Of course, Silversun Pickups were awesome. We got some waves from the band up in the balcony, and it really felt like they were having a good time. The show was sold out and it seemed like they were impressed with the crowd. I ran down during “Panic Switch” and went crowd-surfing, which I haven’t been able to do in a long time and is an exhilarating experience. When they came back for the encore they played at least three songs, including my favorite, “Catch and Release.”

I love going to concerts and this was definitely one of the best ones I’ve been to. Rams Head is a more intimate venue than places like Pier 6 and I think that helps to make the event more unique – especially when the performers take advantage of the opportunity to interact with the fans. Enjoying music with the artist and fellow fans is the core of the whole “music scene,” yet it is something that gets lost in the current debates and lawsuits over copyright. People may not pay for the music recordings, but will pay far more than the price of a CD for concert tickets, get their friends to go, and buy expensive tshirts while they’re there. It’s all part of the experience: something you can frantically twitter or write about as you recover a few days later. Artists who understand this are in a position to win big in the digital age, as other artistic dinosaurs standing with the RIAA in court and Congress simply fade away.