Back in the day, there would often be three guys who wrote a broadway musical: the composer, the lyricist and ‘the book’. So for example, with Fiddler On The Roof you’ve got music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein.

OK, so to laypeople (like me for example) the music and lyrics are pretty obvious but ‘the book’ may not be. The book is essentially all the bits that occur between the musical numbers. As followers know by now, I’m always looking for analogs between opera and Broadway and I think a good way to think of this is that the music/lyrics are the arias and the book contains all the recitatives. As with opera, the music/lyrics describe the characters feelings and the book drives the story. Or to put it in the context of Hollywood, the music/lyrics are the action and […]

…with apologies to Aristophanes.

As I previously stated, I’m pretty sure that piracy will soon be a thing of the past. And that’s because the concept of ‘ownership’ will soon be a thing of the past. People will no longer need to steal music because they will get it all from ‘the cloud’. They will give up ownership in order to pay for convenience.

The question for me is how will artists get paid when this happens, because it sure as shit ain’t part of the business model now. There is also this whole fantasy world which is finally being questioned that states that artists will be able to derive all manner of revenue from this magical new cloud-based entertainment world. Every wannabee musician I know is amazed at the number of ‘options’ available to them for getting ‘streaming revenue’ for their work. That’s the cuckoo part of this whole cloud deal.

Here’s a quick bit of statistics courtesy of Billboard Magazine:

Here’s a quick overview: To generate revenue equal to the $1,160 […]

I have wondered aloud about the futility of fighting software piracy. Certainly, I’ve given up on any personal relief (ie. within the next 5-10 years.) But the recent ‘3 Strikes’ ruling by the Irish High Court, has given me a possible new way to think about the issue that does offer some glimmer of hope.

I call it…

The Anti-Smoking Campaign

People don’t smoke nearly as much anymore—well, at least in ‘the west’. Like our use of fossil fuels we’ve pretty much had our fun and realised that there’s a price to pay. So most people don’t smoke anymore; or if they do? They wish they didn’t because of the obvious issues (death being one, expense another.) Only the nuttiest of libertarians still proffer ‘equal rights’ to smokers.

I’m pretty sure that framing piracy like smoking is the way to go;#8212;not only as personally damaging but also injurious to the society as a whole. Seen from that POV, it’s possible to envision a marketing campaign that could change hearts and minds over the […]

…You know what I mean?

This is an update on my paltry marketing efforts.

Click Throughs

1. The adverts have changed a bit as you may have noticed. I am continuing to expend a certain amount of energy generating various ‘click-throughs’ to get a penny or two whenever y’all go to and fro over the vast InterWeb using my site links as your gateway. One way to think of these is like those product placements one sees now in every TV show and movie. But unlike those, it is very important to me that these be innocuous. The best response I could get to this news is “what are you talking about?” If you aren’t noticing anything different, then, in the immortal words of Emily Litella?

Never mind.

(BTW: For an example, if you just watched that clip, I just made me a whole 0.5¢ He shoots. He scores!)

Adverts

2. I’ve re-jiggered the adverts on the blog. There’s now no way to avoid ’em. Sorry. I need the dough. Until the ratio of downloads […]