Get Involved! or
How a Project Studio Owner/Operator With A Computer May Influence The
Standardization Of Audio On The Internet
[ No. 10 - August 1997 ]
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Things That Are New
Progressive Networks (RealAudio)
is focusing technological and
marketing resources on video. Audioactive has redone their
website
Liquid Audio
is aiming for an
end of summer 2.0 release of their entire suite of tools
(incorporating the ability to sell and track your music). Xing
Streamworks
3.0 (optimized for MMX chips) should be out of beta
now and into the market (it uses the MPEG - Layer I audio
codec, the server supports PC, UNIX, LINUX, Solaris and
Windows/NT while the player works with all of the preceeding
plus the Mac. The whole suite is backwards compatible with
their 2.0 version.)
Related URLs:
RealMedia -
<www.real.com>
Audioactive -
<www.audioactive.com>
LiquidAudio -
<www.liquidaudio.com>
Xing -
<www.xingtech.com>
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You are a creative person. You can focus, for hours at a time, on
your music, in your studio, to the exclusion of all else. The
creative process is better than football, better than parties and
better, almost, than sex. Even deeply focused people must come up
for air, though, and find out what's influencing the artistic
atmosphere in which they breathe.
In this month's column we touch on the organized players who have a
stake in the way music is made, stored, transmitted, marketed and
commercialized on the Internet. And how you can add your voice to
a community that actually welcomes input.
The Web is a loose, hybrid structure of interrelated elements.
Often, however, it appears that the system works only when the
stars are aligned. Upon this celebrated, hypothetical, celestial
convergence the angelic choirs sing and millions of dollars get
deposited in your name into a bank account on the island of Grand
Cayman. Is that why you stay up so late, agonizing over the
placement of a quarter note? Get out of the music business now!
Go do something where you are guaranteed a huge profit or a quick
end to suffering, like arms dealing.
Using the Internet for getting your music heard involves becoming
active and involved in a fresh and constantly morphing playground.
Meet some of your playmates.
These high-profile groups can be arranged on a loose framework of
tech companies and their trade groups, the "record" labels and
their trade groups, the transmission group (telcos and satellite
companies), the collection societies (SESAC, BMI, ASCAP, etc...),
and you, the artist (or, in the jargon of this baby industry:
"content creator".) We place you, dear artist, last in this list
to most bluntly show you how the music industry thinks of you when
they are deciding how best to position themselves to get what they
want.
The FezGuys know that you, the artist, are the reason they exist.
We encourage you to take responsibility for that. So here's who
they are, their apparent public position and the beginning of a
dialogue that asks the musical question: "Where, oh where, can my
little dog be...oh where, oh where can it be?" Sing along with
us.
A Meeting Of Some Minds
(FezGuys AES Report)
At 85 miles-per-hour and 2000 feet above sea level, the city of
Seattle, on a sunny day, is a burst of geometrical shapes like
quartz crystals resting in the palm of your hand. Bemused and
awed, the FezGuys were flown (on a Friday the 13th) for thirty
dreamlike minutes in a perfectly restored, 1927, Travel-Aire,
open-cockpit biplane. We were attending the 14th international
AES
conference called:
"internetaudio.aes.org".
Clever, no? During
the course of many meetings and discussion groups (of which some of
the material presented above was gathered) the FezGuys took note of
the core level of interest and excitement generated by most of the
attendees. It seems that the audio community is being knocked on
it's proverbial ear by the explosion of new technologies. Everyone
wants to play and it is interesting to observe that the
contribution of the artist is made conspicuous by its' absence in
these proceedings. Still, much information was exchanged and much
support sought and received. Among the "experience bites" of the
three day event were: an eighth-grade level explanation (with pie
charts) of how ASCAP does business, presented by a man in a black
buttondown shirt and very expensive shoes; the consistent hardware
and software problems with every observed demonstration using a
laptop (of any variety); lost keys; beautiful weather; charming
German MPEG scientists ("one percent packet loss is UNACCEPTABLE")
carefully explaining the often incomprehensible physics of
psychoacoustics ("it sounds like someone scraping glass under
water"); inappropriate and time-monopolizing (but impassioned)
corporate plugs for Web Radio stations during technical meetings;
rampant networking; lattice filters; Bessler membranes; vectors of
frequency co-efficients and, accepting the award for most unclear
on the concept: the flow chart showing a state-of-the-art
multimedia production studio that used a Mac Classic icon to
represent the workstation itself. Second prize goes to the
representative of Microsoft who began his demonstration of NetShow
in front of a roomful of audio engineers by stating (in a
remarkable display of hubris): "this is where Microsoft is taking
broadcast technology." When asked, by your correspondents, to make
a comment on the conference, an audio engineer (employed by Dolby
Laboratories) was heard to state boldly: "I think everyone here is
very happy."
Serendipitously, during the flight back home, a conversation was
had with a lawyer responsible for negotiating international rights
surrounding Lockheed/Martin's placement of a network of five
satellites in geosynchronous orbit, operating in the K band, for
the purposes of data transmission (read: Internet). He predicts
that, in five years, one little antennae outside a window is all
you'll need for high-bandwidth connectivity. Asked if he could be
more vague he pointed to his kids who were playing with a handheld
Chinese Tamagotchi analog called a "GigaPet." The landing was
uneventful.
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Audioactive
Headspace
Liquid Audio
Microsoft NetShow
Progressive Networks
Shockwave
Xing
These are the some of the tool providers for the artist painting on
the canvas of the World Wide Web. All of these companies have
slightly different kinds of tools and each is scrambling to be the
technology standard for audio distribution on the Internet. Next
month we will closely examine the subtle differences between these
companies.
Supporting the tech community are several trade groups including
the AES (about which much has been said elsewhere in this magazine)
and the International Webcasters Association (IWA). By being
involved in these surprisingly democratic organizations the artist
opens up to a free exchange of useful information about his or her
community and the opportunity to participate in it's ongoing
creation. We're not just whistling "Dixie" here, this
Internet/audio industry is being born as you read this. Now is a
good time to make your feelings known.
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The Transmission Companies
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Delivery and Connectivity: we gotta drive to town (or take the
train) and somebody maintains the roads and tracks. The
transmission companies own (or lease) this info turnpike. Tolls
are charged and access is limited. Satellite and telephone
companies play for huge money stakes of which data transmission of
audio on the Internet is a small part, monetarily, but a big part
in showing up the limitations of the existing network. Streaming
media is causing traffic jams on systems designed to carry voice
transmission. Since most publicly held companies of this size are
interested in the quarterly statement (instead of long-term
common-sense); their profit motive drives policy. For example: in
America, PacBell and Bell Atlantic have gone to court to get
permission to charge local ISPs around the country to receive calls
from their subscribers (as with cell phones). It's interesting to
note that some of these telcos also have subsidiary companies who
are ISPs themselves, and you can imagine there's likely to be some
perks for them by playing both sides of the fence. Result: Baby
Bell ISPs can put other ISPs out of business by ensuring the lowest
fees. These telephone companies want to be your one and only ISP.
A monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly...
The name says it all. If you are under contract to one of these
self-described "collection societies" (BMI, ASCAP, SESAC and
others) they promise to aggresively extract payment from anyone
that plays your song in a profit-oriented environment and they will
make sure that you get some of that money. Their business model
and its methods are based on a distribution technology and an arts
culture that is half a century out of date. They need a new
approach if they are to survive and be useful in the medium of the
Internet. One that goes beyond merely protecting their special
interests. The collection society is where artistic expression
comes to a grinding halt. Think of the Girl Scouts paying a fee
for the right to sing their own theme song...
Traditionally the most visible element of the music business
community, the six major labels seem to be adopting a wait and see
approach to the commerce of music on the Internet. Maybe they
don't want to offend their traditional distribution arms. Hey, if
the system works, why change it? Have a beer... The label support
group, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), is
howling about Internet piracy and furiously waving the American
flag. Yes, piracy exists. It's not that big a problem, gang. If
one looks at the real-world figures one realizes that the statistic
of retail sales dollars lost to piracy is a fantasy number. There
is no way to measure and calculate such a figure. Are bootleg CDs
in your face like the latest album from U2? No. And they never
will be. Keeping our attention focused on such fabrications blurs
the urgency of actual reforms hinted at by the creative use of
Internet-related technologies. Lower costs, closer contact with an
artist, simpler promotion and the ability to choose between many
different musical voices instead of (mostly) profit-oriented
"product" are possible here. Time to stop covering your collective
asses, dear "record" labels, and take some artistic chances.
Things That Are Useful: Tagging & Watermarking
A fast explanation of some copyright protection terminology for
audio on the Internet, in this case: the difference between
tagging and watermaking. In a nutshell: tagging is including
copyright information (authorship, ownership, status of "right
to use") within the header of the encoded audio file.
Watermarking is placing this same information within the actual
audio waveform, (within the music) prior to encoding of that
music into a digital file.
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The major player in the micro-universe of audio on the Internet is
you, the artist. It is the music you make that tosses a pebble in
a pond making ripples that lap far shores. The above mentioned
organizations and groups want to help you get your wave to that
shore and they all have a different way of seeing themselves do
that. You, however, what do you want? You want to rule the world,
of course. Tell these people what you think. Mutate the pop model
and create more then just a great song. Create some new
community.
There is a bulletin board at
<http://www.fezguys.com/>
in which one and all are invited to participate. Share ideas,
information, support, comments, leads and opinions on how to
optimize your use of the Internet as a medium to get yourself
heard. Beyond the traditional one-way communication of print media
are lots of opportunities in a threaded discussion to educate
oneself and interact. Knowledge is power.
May the Fez be with you!
The FezGuys encourage participation in the Internet audio community.
Please stop by:
<http://www.fezguys.com/>
