From Defective by Design:
Join us today in calling on Warner Music to drop their opposition to DRM free digital sales and make their catalog available through online music stores free of Digital Restrictions.
If you’re interested in hearing a quick preview of what we’ve been up to for the last several months Jamie will be performing acoustic versions of a couple new Sinch songs as well as discussing the state of the band on an online radio station this Tuesday May 1st at 12:00pm EST on the B. Fox Rocks radio program. You can hear it for yourself at: www.mc3.edu/sa/wrfm
Feel free to stop back here and let us know what you think afterwards.
The future of Internet radio is in immediate danger. Royalty rates for webcasters have been drastically increased by a recent ruling and are due to go into effect on May 15 (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!). If the increased rates remain unchanged, the majority of webcasters will go bankrupt and silent on this date. Internet radio needs your help! H.R. 2060, The Internet Radio Equality Act was introduced by Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL ) to save the Internet radio industry. Please call your congressperson to ask them to co-sponsor H.R. 2060 by clicking (here).
Internet radio stations, like 525 Power Tracks, have been big Sinch supporters for a long time. They’ve turned countless new fans on to our music over the years. A lot of these stations are small operations, done simply for the love of sharing music with other people. Some of the bigger ones sell advertising and probably make a small profit, but these new licensing fees will put almost all of them out of business. They will simply be unable to afford the cost anymore and will have to shut down, once again leaving only the big corporations to control yet another media outlet.
According to the CEO of Gracenote, the people behind the CDDB, the music industry is “about to cave in the next six months” on the issue of DRM. With Apple and EMI taking the first step in this direction I think it’s only a matter of time before everyone follows suit.
I for one would definitely buy more music online if I knew I was getting high-quality, unprotected files. I’ve bought a few iTunes tracks over the years, but the DRM really turns me off. And I imagine Apple’s DRM is one of the least intrusive to the music buying experience. I can’t imagine how bad some of the other companies are.
A lot of people in the industry are afraid that no DRM will just lead to more piracy, but I really don’t think that’s the case. Almost every piece of music currently available on CD is available without DRM (with the exception of the few failed experiments with DRM on CDs). And some of the DRM formats are fairly easy to crack. Whatever piracy is supposedly gonna happen is already happening. And it’s not going to go away. But if you can make it easier for people to buy the music, I think a lot more people would be willing to pay, myself included.
I’d like to introduce you all to someone:
Say hello to Douche #1 in our new feature that’s fun for the whole family,
“File Under: DOUCHE”
If you’ve never seen him before, the photo alone probably isn’t enough to convince you, although that popped collar should be somewhat of a tip off.
Watch it a couple times if you have to. Let the douche wash over you.
What’s So Douchey?
This guy just oozes pure douche. His overall douchey attitude definitely scores big points and being “always on the go” is classic douche. But what put him over the top were all the super-distracting (to me at least) hand gestures that he no doubt learned from “The Seven Secrets of the Highly Successful Douche”, the go-to guide for all things douchey.
So far, I’ve only seen this guy in one commercial. There are other, more prolific douches that we’ll be featuring in future episodes. But my hand was forced by the sheer number of times I’ve been subjected to this full-on douche assault. He had to go down first.
![[photo: Life-sized Mouse Trap]](http://www.sinch.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/playamousetrap.jpg)
Some of you may be too young for this, but there used to be a board game called Mouse Trap where you essentially built a Rube Goldberg version of a mouse trap. If you’ve ever seen Back to the Future or Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, you’ve seen a Rube Goldberg machine.
I don’t remember ever playing the game (although I’m sure I did), I just loved setting it up and watching the chain reaction unfold.
Apparently, though, I didn’t love it as much as whoever built this life-sized version of the game that will be officially unveiled next month at Maker Faire.
This is some great advice from Dick Dale, the “King of Surf Guitar,” that I wish we would have taken 7 years ago.
Here is a short video clip of our time at Ardent Studios in Memphis Tenn. It was taken in December of 2000 while we were there recording a demo of our song “Pain.” While the version of “Pain” from this session was never used, we later rerecorded it and put the song on our self-titled album that was released by Roadrunner records in 2002. As you can image there’s lots of downtime in the studio. Hours if not an entire day can be spent setting up all the mics and other various technical things so the band if often left to wonder around and explore the studio. This video clip is a good example this. It shows Tony playing his Nord keyboard (r.i.p) and Jamie playing the studio piano.
If you’re interested in hearing the actual song we recorded during this studio session it can be found in the podcast section of the site.
OK, so we’re not technically in the studio yet, but for the sake of simplicity anything that has to do with writing, recording, mixing, etc., will be labeled as “Studio Journal”.
For the past couple months we’ve been getting together about 3 times a week and working on new material. We’re at the point now where we have 5-6 songs that are really far along. They’re not necessarily done, but pretty close. Then we have 4-5 other songs that range anywhere from just a few ideas tied together to a somewhat complete arrangement. Sometimes you find yourself up against a wall with a particular song and you just have to let it sit for a while.
A few of the songs came together very quickly. For me those always seem to be the best ones. Sometimes everything just clicks and the song almost seems to write itself. Then there are other times where we try 20 different arrangements and nothing ever seems right. It sucks because we have a lot of really good parts that just never found their way into a finished song. If we somehow could turn each one of those into a song right now, we’d easily have a double album ready to go tomorrow.
We’re all pretty happy with the progress so far, though. I’m just anxious to get to the point where the songs are done and we really start nailing everything down and getting ready to record. That’s always the most exciting part for me. I tend to be pretty spontaneous when we’re writing. I hardly ever play anything the same twice. So when you get to the recording stage, you kind of have to settle on something. It’s interesting to see where everything ends up and it’s just exciting to be able to hear it recorded properly. Drums just don’t ever sound quite as good as when they’re all miked up and recorded on separate tracks. Well, for me at least… the live sound is cool in its own way, but I just really love the way they sound on tape.
We’re also working on a live performance of some songs from the Subdivisions EP. We tried it for the first time on Monday and it actually went pretty well. I think it’s gonna be really cool when we get out and do these songs live. I think some of you who were a little surprised by how different they are might appreciate them more after seeing them performed live. They can tend to sound pretty mellow on the EP, but I think we’ll probably be bringing some more energy to them live.
So, you’re probably wondering where you’ll be able to see this live performance. Well, so are we at this point. We don’t have anything booked as I’m sure most of you are aware, and for the near future we’re probably only looking at doing some local shows. We need to raise some money to pay for this new album, so we’ll probably be doing a bunch of shows over the summer, but they’ll most likely all be in the PA area. And they’re probably gonna be geared more around our lighter stuff so we can get into some smaller places.
We love doing our big, loud show with the 12 foot screen or whatever, but there’s a lot of cool little places in our hometown here (Doylestown, PA) that we just can’t fit that kind of setup into. And besides, I think we’ve always wanted to try doing a more stripped down show. “Sinch Unplugged,” I guess you could call it, although we’ll still be using electric guitars and synths and stuff.
If the shows go well we’ll certainly be considering taking the acoustic show into some other areas, but for right now we’re starting at home. Hopefully some of you will be able to make it out to the shows and let us know what you think. We’ll try to get some decent video recordings as well for everyone that can’t make it.
We’ll have more info on specific dates and stuff over the next couple months.
From WIRED:
The album cover — once a crucial part of any band’s identity — has been dying a slow death for decades. For the most part, music fans put up with the shrinkage of album art from expansive vinyl records to hand-size plastic jewel cases. But with the music experience moving almost exclusively online, album art has suffered another compression — this time all the way down to thumbnail images. (Worse still — they’re missing from most of the music files we’ve all ripped and downloaded.)
But music label designers are working to raise the album cover back up to an art form. They’re experimenting with new tools and hatching plans to reinvent album art for the digital age, all while weathering the tectonic shifts that ultimately rule the music industry.
Ever since I bought my first mp3 player back in the beginning of 2002, I’ve wondered what the future holds for the idea of the album cover. As I ripped all of my CDs over the course of a few days and put the cases back on the shelf, I realized that I probably wouldn’t be looking them any more. At the time it didn’t seem like a big deal, since I had already read every last word in each set of liner notes. And if I ever wanted to take another look they would all still be there.
But then came the iTunes Music Store. And eMusic. And a bunch of other online stores that I’ve never used. Not to mention the illegal downloading. Pretty soon I had quite a few albums for which I only had a small thumbnail image of the album cover, if that. I have some albums that I don’t even know what the cover looks like because I’ve never seen it. After the way that I grew up analyzing every last inch of every record I ever owned, it’s a sad thing to realize it may never be the same.
Sure, I can still buy CDs if I want the full experience. But being in a band myself, the real sad part is knowing that most of the kids out there today aren’t having that same experience with the full package of an album. Should we even spend the time and money on cool packaging if the majority of the people who buy it are gonna look at it once (or not at all)?
For the last few years I’ve been trying to come up with an idea for the future of album art. Pretty soon, I would imagine that CDs will be completely dead. Everything will be digital files that you’ll be able to transfer wirelessly between your iPod, laptop, car stereo, PS4, TiVo Series 5, Refrigerator 2.0 and eventually even your toilet. You can’t beat that kind of convenience, but where does the album artwork fit in?
Well, it seems that more and more of these devices are bringing advances in listening options… but they’re also featuring bigger and brighter screens, and in the case of (most of) the next-gen consoles, HD-quality video. I think somewhere in there lies the future of the album cover.
Imagine that when you download the new Sinch album, that it also comes with not only an album cover, but an interactive video experience. Instead of a still image for the cover, you could have a 30 second (or longer) animation or video. Instead of squinting to read the lyrics in 6pt Helvetica, you follow along with big animated text/video sequences on your HDTV. With the rate that technology has been advancing, the possibilities will become endless.
The hard part for now is convincing the people running the media and electronics companies that this is where things are heading and that they need to get on board now. Come up with some standards that can work across all devices, whether you have a 2″ iPod screen or an 60″ plasma TV. If Apple releases a new iPod that shows not only album thumbnails, but allows you to provide Flash Lite content (which can contain videos, vector animations and interactivity) for a particular album, I’ll be the first one in line. Get some working hardware out there and let the artists and labels see what is possible.
There’s not gonna be a huge market for this kind of stuff right off the bat. But if artists can start getting some really compelling and even groundbreaking ideas out there, I think the idea will eventually sell itself.
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