I read a great article the other day on evolvor.com that was mentioned on one of the various TWiT network podcasts that I enjoy at work.  Anyway, this article had very special relevance to Digital Media Majors.  It is very accurately named “How the Record Label Business Model Died and Why it’s Changing Music Today.” I highly recommend that you check it out here: http://bit.ly/1VWQyA.   There is an infographic in the article that will show you just how bad the music industry is hurting as sales of physical media continue to plummet year over year.

Hey there DMC!  As the semester gets rolling in just a week (Aaack!) Our film c0-chair David has submitted a short film to a contest.  The film is great, BUT he needs our help!  The contest is powered by votes, so if you’re so inclined to spare just a few minutes of your time, head on over to his entry here: http://bit.ly/HOJ7B.  You will have to register, which I know is a pain, but it only takes a few minutes and every vote counts.  If you don’t have the inclination to register, at least check it out.

Good work David, let’s hope you win!

Hey everybody!

We have now entered the month that school starts…scary!   Anyway, this short update is just to let everyone know we have our t-shirt order submitted and is being printed in the coming days.  This has been made possible by some amazing teamwork between the School of Management and Business, our awesome adviser Gregg Perry, and most importantly the anonymous donor who made a grant donation to help get this initiative off the ground.

Be sure to check back soon for an update with photos of some of these amazing pieces of fabric expression.  Very exciting!

According to a recent article on the popular torrent/piracy blog Torrent Freak, the RIAA has said that DRM (digital rights management) is dead in the music industry.  The article can be found here http://bit.ly/D87Dc.  While not an official deceleration of official policy on the part of all labels it is still a very real fact that DRM is on its way out in the music world.

So what does this mean exactly?  For one, it is a victory for legitimate customers and piracy advocates the world over.  Customers will no longer have to worry about DRM getting in the way of how they can listen or enjoy their music.  No burn limits, no player restrictions, no “dial home” software required. For pirates out there who have claimed for years that the reason they refuse to buy music is because of DRM restrictions have one less leg to stand on.  The idea is that removing these barriers for legitimate customers they will buy more music and pirates will have one less excuse to pirate and may actually turn into paying customers.

The change in sales as DRM is phased out by the major labels will be a major indicator as to just how much DRM has affected, if at all, music sales over the past decade.  I have a feeling that sales will increase steadily as I doubt people have been waiting for this announcement to purchase music that was once DRM restricted and they found other ways to acquire it.

I know that personally DRM has played a fairly major role in my decision not to purchase music from iTunes and in CD form.  My first real experience with DRM was long ago when I had a brand new God Smack CD that I wanted to play on my computer, which is where most of my listening happened because I didn’t have a car at the time.  The CD loaded up, but when I tried to play it in Winamp I couldn’t rip or import the CD.  Needless to say that CD got far less listening because I couldn’t play it where I wanted to!

The more telling tale of DRM restrictions hindering purchases was beyond my juvenile frustrations over my rock CD not working.  I had purchased quite a bit of music my freshman year at St. Edward’s.  I bought it because it was music I liked and knew I wanted.  I used iTunes because I had a Mac and an iPod, so it was a no brainer.  This wasn’t a problem until I got a new desktop PC that I wanted to transfer my library to.  As you can tell, I like listening to music on my computer as I’m sure many do.  I used, or shall I say tried to use, my wireless network to transfer my music over to my PC.  This was a long process as I had several gigabytes worth of music.  However, the transfer process would always get stuck on seemingly random folders which would mean I had to stop the transfer and start again, skipping the folder it got stuck on.  I figured at the time it was just the wireless network sneezing because someone turned a microwave on or something.  Later, I figured out that none of my iTunes purchases were present, because DRM kept me from just copying and transferring my music to a different computer.  It was a huge pain and after I figured that out I never bought another song from iTunes.  I did get a few songs from the Amazon MP3 store which has DRM free music but their store and purchase interface is much more difficult to manage and navigate that the iTunes store in my opinion.  Also, I don’t usually browse for music I usually follow recommendations from friends and from things I discover from the internet radio service Pandora.  Even then, my trips to the Amazon store were few and far between.

iTunes made all their music DRM free a while ago and with more and more major labels going off DRM I expect sales for both physical media and downloads to begin to slowly climb again.  I may again venture back into the world of paying for music but I feel like another change has to happen before I’m truly happy with my purchases.  Why is music still so expensive?  Blockbuster movies take hundreds of millions of dollars to create and promote, yet I can walk into Best Buy and get a DVD for $15.  If I want a CD that has less content (only audio and shorter duration) and probably only cost a million dollars to make why is it still $15?

My most recent purchase was off the Amazon MP3 store for the new album by Tom Morello’s new band, Street Sweeper Social Club.  I got the whole album for $3.99.  I jumped on that purchase without a second thought.  There are about 10 songs on the album so maybe the sweet spot for music is 20 cents a song.  I don’t know but .99 or 1.29 a song just doesn’t quite do it for me if I’m not a huge fan.  Cheaper music might dramatically increase sales, who knows?

As major bands like Cold Play, Nine Inch Nails, and Radiohead pioneer the free and pay your own price models I hope that more bands adopt this model as they will likely make more in the long run if they can avoid the bulk payoff of record labels.  Music is an art, I believe that people deserve to be supported as artists if they have talent and fans that will pay for their work.  Record labels aren’t interested in art, they only care about how many units they can move.  As the anemic record labels lose relevancy I hope to see a surge in new artists, genres, and styles begin to pervade the music sphere. Support your local artists and musicians who still do what they love without the paycheck, they are the future of music.

I hope we at the DMC can support our artists and provide the resources and opportunities to help them succeed in a changing music business landscape!

I just got an e-mail from Time Westergren the founder of Pandora.  While not a personal e-mail sent directly to me it was more targeted than previous e-mails from Pandora’s Chief Evangelist.  There were two important details which I’ll quote here for your enjoyment and education.

So that is the good news.  The slightly less good news was this…

So what does that mean?  Well for myself and the roughly 10% of Pandora users who use the service constantly we have two options.  One is to pay a .99 cent fee when we pass the 40hr monthly mark for unlimited listening for the rest of that month.  The other is to subscribe to Pandora One, which is their premium service that includes a desktop client and more importantly is the quality streaming at 192kbs which is almost %75 better quality than what standard Pandora users get.  The cost for Pandora One is a yearly cost of $36 which is $3 a month, duh.

So I will likely opt to pay the little fee considering how much use I get out of the service, as long as the payment process isn’t too intrusive.  I do mostly mobile streaming from my iPhone so not having to try and wade through a mobile browser will save my life.  I don’t know if any of you are in this same echelon of Pandora user that I apparently am but I wonder how this will go over with the effected parties.

I’m personally thrilled that Pandora is still able to exist so that’s good.  Paying for something that was once free can be a bitter pill to swallow sometimes but it’s only .99 cents a month at the most so not a huge deal for me.  I don’t know though, I might be tempted to just go all out and get Pandora One and take full advantage of the desktop player and the higher quality streaming.  This should server to make an interesting case study for future students to learn from.

I think Pandora has followed an impressive path by rallying their fans to lobby on their behalf to lobby congress to keep legislation from passing that would have effectively killed internet radio as we know it.  Tim Westergren has been communicative and grateful to his fans and customers and they, I, am loyal to Pandora.  I hope Pandora continues to succeed and hope that the next time Tim is in Austin has the time and inclination to visit the DMC!

Wow!  We had a great turn out and a lot of really enthusiastic incomming freshman simply swarm our simple, and totally decked out, table.  22 in all sign up to at the very least delete my e-mails and hopefully join in and help make this DMC great!

Not too much has changed in a week but I did learn a heck of a lot about how Student Life does T-Shirts and hopefully we will have some slick threads to sport come this fall.  Very exciting indeed.  So welcome newest members, please look around a bit and feel free to drop me or any of the officers a line with questions or ideas!

Actually this is a very administrative post!  I just wanted to update you loyal readers (I look at the stats, I know I’m the only one who checks this…for now) that I have begun work on a DMC Officer handbook.  Hopefully it will catalogue standard procedure and clarify areas of the club that might be difficult to understand or grasp for a new member.  Hopefully it will help provide logevity to the DMC and give a guiding light to future DMC officers as they carry the torch that we helped to light!

Also, I want to put my name on more stuff.

Alrighty!  So our Gaming chair and I totally rocked the first orientation session with the coolest booth of them all.  We had Geometry Wars, we had Keynote, we had Mac laptops, Electronic sign up, candy, everything really.  And it was a success!  We signed up 11 incoming freshman to be members of the DMC!  Woohoo.  Very exciting, we stand to nearly double in size if we can keep up these registrations and half these fine folks follow through with us!

Also, exciting news…

I talked to Faith who works with UPB and it looks like it might be very possible we can wok with them to have a parking garage rave/dance party.  They had tried to do one last semester but didn’t have the time to bring it together.  With our help and the fact they already know the channells to make it happen it stands to be a very busy and awesome semester.

So welcome new people and we will see you this Fall!