Sharon Chadha: More good news: Tuareg rebels in Niger and Mali are NOT branches of Al Qaeda

Sharon Chadha: More good news: Tuareg rebels in Niger and Mali are NOT branches of Al Qaeda

Great post by Sharon here. I too have been troubled by both the attempts at outside Islamic groups to try and gain a foothold and radicalize Mali, as well as the attempts by the USA and others to try and put soldiers into Mali to resist this radicalization. Neither a fundamentalist Mali nor a militarized Mali is in the interests of the Malian people. This is the new cold war it seems. Someone puts money in to a country to try and play god ("make the country in their image" so to speak). Meanwhile, the people still suffer. I remember my first trip to Mali in 2001, I was so glad I was American, and not French, as people were more open to me not being a colonizer. However, on subsequent trips, it has not been as advantageous to be American, due to invasion of Afghanistan/Iraq backlash, general Bush (p)Resident idiocy, and the increased presence of US troops throughout Mali and the lower Saharan desert region. I'm not sure when our politicians are going to realize that putting troops in various countries actually lowers local tolerance for political efforts . . .

p.s. - in the general universal energy pick-up amazing-ness, the track 'Ahimana' by Tinariwen came up in my random playlist as I was typing this post . . .

Calabash Widget from Widgetbox

Just found this on Widgetbox. Thanks Bluemen!

NYTimes "Gets It"

The NYTimes gets it! It is about making content available to people to use, and they will use it! As the google example has shown (for better or worse), advertising is enabling content owners to trade eyeballs for content. I had long been a reader of the Times online, reading all sorts of stuff. But when they launched their TimesSelect section, I no longer could read the key articles, so basically stopped visiting the site (except when Google News took me there). Now, I think I'll be back. Op-eds for free! Great. Old articles for free. Even better.
This isn't much of a big brain idea either really. Consider the Rick Rubin article I talked about in a previous post. This was being passed around in emails as full text of the article and posted all over the web. But if you went to the NYTimes.com site, you couldn't read the article unless you paid. So the result of that was the people were reading the article, but not on NYTimes.com, and the Times was losing valuable CPM eyeballs.
So good on ya, NYT for realizing what is happening. (Read the news on the news below).

NY Times to End TimesSelect, Open Free Archives
Submitted by Mark Hefflinger on September 17, 2007 - 3:14pm.

New York - The New York Times announced on Monday that it will shutter its TimesSelect subscription service, which had kept older articles and its roster of op-ed writers in a pay-to-view area of its website, opting instead to open its archives to potential advertising revenue.

The TimesSelect service cost users $7.95 per month or $49.95 per year, and was free to print subscribers and some students.

As of Wednesday, the Times' entire archives between 1851 and 1922, and from 1987 to the present will be available for free, along with some select content from 1923-1986.

The company said that TimesSelect, which was launched in September 2005, had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers out of a total of 787,000 overall, and generated about $10 million a year in revenue.

The first sponsor of the opened areas on NYTimes.com will be American Express, the company said.

RIAA, File-Sharing, Lawsuits, and more

Just finished listening to a quick report on NPR Marketplace on filesharing lawsuits being pursued by the RIAA. As someone working in the music industry, and potentially looking at working for a major label, I can't think of a more inane tactic than the lawsuits being pursued by the RIAA. And, more specifically, the tactics and methods used in pursuing these lawsuits.
I mean, really, if you are going to sue people, why go after small timers? Do cops go after small time drug users? Or the big time dealers?
And are lawsuits the right strategy? How much money are these guys spending on lawyers? And how much have the recouped? Why not spend that money on figuring out ways to monetize music? Figure out ways to make money off of existing customer behavior? You can't legislate behavior, nor can you sue behavior out of existence. What you can do is learn what the customer wants, get them that product, and figure out a way to do that where you provide a service that customer is willing to pay for.
Other labels like Nettwerk (and pretty much only them) have spoken out against these suits, with Nettwerk going so far as to get involved on the customer side of RIAA lawsuits. Don't believe me? Read it.
A small slice:
"The current actions of the RIAA are not in my artists' best interests," said Nettwerk chief executive Terry McBride in a statement.

"Litigation is not 'artist development'. Litigation is a deterrent to creativity and passion and it is hurting the business I love."

The woman featured in the Marketplace story has sued the RIAA (article on suit here), which is great news. From the suit:
"For years, the RIAA and its member companies have been using flawed and illegal private investigation information as part of their coordinated scheme and common enterprise to threaten, intimidate and coerce payment from private citizens across the United States. As such they have clogged and abused the federal courts for many years with factually baseless and fraudulent lawsuits."

Zola Video

I've been meaning to put up this video for a LOOONG time. Anyway, I shot this with my little canon a90 digital camera, so the video ain't great, and the sound is worse. But, Brightcove and their new little consumer tool Aftermix came along and made it really easy. I just grabbed an mp3 of Zola's Umdlwembe (available at http://tsotsi.calabashmusic.com/ if you wanna buy the song, and you can get more of Zola here as well - http://zola.calabashmusic.com/) and the video from my camera, and mixed em up on their little program.
Nifty, eh?
Back to the topic - needless to say, this was an intense show. ControlArms is a project of Oxfam and Amnesty International and their mission is to reduce gun violence and availability around the world. Their launch in South Africa was a show, a party, with some serious message from the artists performing, plus victims of gun violence. For Zola's performance, Hempza and I were sitting on the floor, and Zola was dancing literally 1 foot from my face at points. For as bad as the video is, I think you can still get a sense of the skill of his dancers.

More Links:
ControlArms - http://www.controlarms.org/
Ghetto Ruff (Zola's label)

perspectives on the music industry

because i'm in the music industry, and specifically, working on the future of music, about 15 people forwarded me this article in the nytimes about rick rubin. if you don't subscribe to the times, you can probably find it excerpted on the web somewhere.

however, no one forwarded me this blog post by the craziest man in the music blog biz, bob lefsetz.
i say crazy in the sense of that lefsetz really is crazy, but in this new game, that isn't always a bad thing. for a first rate example, read lefsetz's full post. his money line is this:
"The youth come up with Facebook. Columbia comes up with Rick Rubin. Where would YOU put your money?"

basically, his point is this - when the going gets tough, you have to ask tough questions, and actually answer those questions. you can't just do things a different way without examining why. especially when different just means a different way of doing the same old thing.

this IS future of music

This seems to me to be the future of music. DRM-free, easy plug into other sites, very viral distribution, sharing revenues with fans, creating long term relationships between fans/artists, simultaneous releases across all platforms and territories. The revenue sharing piece is especially important to make sure that DRM-Free is profitable for artists. This is also worth a quick caveat, that caveat being that sales of actual tracks will no longer be the most profitable piece of an artist's body of work.


"As part of Universal's growing DRM-free experiment, Musicane has created a will.i.am widget to coincide with the Interscope release of the Black Eyed Pea founder's solo single "I Got It from My Mama" on August 28th. The Musicane widget acts as a media player on websites, blogs and social networks selling both digital and physical product and can be added with a single line of code.

"Interscope In a somewhat revolutionary move from a major artist, will.i.am is sharing the monies earned from Musicane product sales with fans that embed the store onto their blogs and social network profiles. Fans who pre-order the album will get a free download of the new single, as well as exclusive remixes. All of the downloads will be DRM-free mp3's.

"Universal will.i.am will also be one of the first releases on The Universal Music Group roster to be simultaneously released digitally without DRM to all digital business partners worldwide within the same album cycle as its physical release."

bye bye drm. . .

what did i say? way back . . . and not just me, but everyone else. DRM is doomed. Universal is actually doing some real work on sorting out what the future will be, and doing so outside of iTunes, since real experimentation is impossible there. . .

Universal to Test Sale of DRM-Free Tracks Everywhere but iTunes
Submitted by Mark Hefflinger on August 10, 2007 - 10:59am.

New York - Universal Music Group announced on Friday that it plans to experiment with selling a portion of its catalog free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions from a number of online retailers, including Amazon.com, RealNetworks' Rhapsody, Best Buy and Walmart -- with the notable exception of Apple's iTunes Store.

The songs will be available in 256K MP3 format for the same price as DRM-wrapped tunes -- 99 cents per song -- and be available from later this month through at least January.

Universal Music told the Los Angeles Times the test is being conducted partly to see how sales and piracy rates will be affected if songs are offered without DRM, adding that Apple was excluded so "iTunes could serve as a 'control group' to make sales comparisons easier."

Analysts said the exclusion of Apple by Universal was also aimed at curtailing Steve Jobs' growing influence on its business.

Universal will help drive traffic to the DRM-free downloads using Google ads that link directly to digital retailer gBox; the songs will also be offered from some artist and label websites.

The only other major label to experiment with DRM-free songs thus far has been EMI, which sells high-quality MP3s at a premium price of $1.29 each at iTunes and other retailers.

the power of music, part 2

and now from my own country -

According to the band's web site, Pearl Jam's Lollapalooza webcast was censored by sponsor/webcaster AT&T:

When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.

During the performance of "Daughter" the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" but were cut from the webcast:

• "George Bush, leave this world alone." (the second time it was sung); and
• "George Bush find yourself another home."

so who let anyone at at&t decide what was good for any of us to hear? and mind you - this is in a webcast!!, not just traditional TV broadcasting, where i'd assume to have everything censored.

the power of music

the title of the linked article says it all:

"Music is too subversive for the new South Africa, says apartheid hero"

the article continues:

"One of South Africa’s greatest musicians — a hero of the struggle against apartheid — believes that he is no longer welcome as a performer in his own country.

The virtuoso trumpeter Hugh Masekela claims that many of the talented musicians whose voices became symbols of protest against white domination are finding it hard to get bookings in South Africa because the ruling ANC is “terrified” of music as an agent of change."

and is worth reading the entire thing. hugh is a visionary, and continues to really be involved in social change as well as music. some of the guys i hung with in soweto who are doing hip-hop have told me about hugh meeting with them, passing them music, and giving them free rein to remix, sample, cut it up and more. i think hugh's comments are probably too true for much of the world. certainly us politicians don't love political music, and as you may have seen in our documentary "African Underground: Democracy in Dakar", the politicians in Senegal are actively involved in oppressing musicians that don't tow the line.