Defective by design have just sent out a call to not buy the new iPhone. Lets pull it to bits:

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DefectiveByDesign.org DefectiveByDesign.org
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The 5 real reasons to avoid iPhone 3G

* iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can’t be on everyone’s phones.

The iPhone OS has been reverse engineered, by people who are not defeatists. There are literally millions of Jailbroken iPhones in circulation, all of them making and receiving phone calls and running free software, the source for which is available under the GPL. Instead of complaining about this brilliant hardware platform, perhaps Defective By Design should spend time developing or promoting the development of software for the iPhone so that they can realize their goals. Certainly, asking people not to buy an iPhone is not going to work in any meaningful way.

* iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.

Once again, this is solved by writing software, not by complaining.

* iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge.

ALL cellular telephones do this. If this is the level of expertise that these people have then their movement is doomed.

* iPhone won’t play patent and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.

Then write a player for it. Even better; why don’t you port Videolan to iPhone and distribute it via Installer.APP? You would have access to millions of users in a very short amount of time, and you would not be exposing yourself to legal attack from Apple, because someone else is actively developing Installer.APP and its ecosystem; you would be interfacing with the iPhone community by that means and not directly. It could not be easier for you. The development tools are out there, the source for robust players to decode the formats you love is available, all it takes is the will to do it or to pay someone else to do it if it is that important.

There are alot of things that the iPhone cannot do, and you can solve any of them that you like, by writing some software.

* iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don’t spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software — like the FreeRunner (http://www.openmoko.com).

A phone in the hand is better than two on the horizon. Especially if you want to make phone calls. And I would love to see how those ‘on the horizon’ phones connect to the GSM network without knowing where you and your phone are.

We can trade our freedom and our money to get something flashy on the surface, or we can spend a little more money, keep our freedom, and support a better kind of business. If we want businesses to be ethical, we have to reward the ones that are. By not enriching companies that want to take away our freedom and by rewarding those that respect us, we will be helping to bring about a better future.

OR we can use our imagination and expertise to fix the problems in products like the iPhone so that they work in the way that they want, give us the shiny phone we want, AND preserve our freedom. We can have our cake and eat it. This has been very successfully done by the people who have created the Jailbroken iPhone community. Really, you should understand this.

In solidarity,

John, Josh, Matt, and Peter

Calling for solidarity, demonstrations, boycotts are all fine, but in the end, it is the people who have an imagination that make a difference in the world. The Jailbreaking of the iPhone is a perfect example of how active people with skill and imagination can force change to happen. The only reason why Apple is allowing developers to write native software for the iPhone is the explosive and unprecedented success of Jailbreaking and Installer.APP. Everyone knows that 25% of all iPhones in circulation have been jailbroken. Because of their work, there are more telephones running free software than ever before, and this will continue with the new iPhone. Because of their work, the iPhone is now open to developers through the closed system, whereas before Apple wanted everyone to develop web apps that ran in Safari. Because of their work we now have a platform that will ensure that the iPhone is always open to developers of free software going forward.

At the end of the day, all the complaining in the world will not stop DRM. Only the writing of software will defeat it.

What we have to ask is this; what are you actually offering? You are not offering any solutions, you are not offering any new philosophy or any sort of strategy that will produce results, and you are completely ignoring the heroic work of the Jailbreakers and the millions of phones they have liberated as if it has not happened at all.

That is odd, to say the least.

On Tuesday night we saw Debashish Bhattacharya play at the National Centre For Early Music.

He, and his brother on tabla, were wonderful, humble people so deeply in love with the music they were playing that it was all but tangible. The recital began with a raga played on Debashish’s largest guitar, which he designed himself at the age of 16. He is now 45, I think. It was a wonderful piece, spreading a mood evoking peaceful satisfaction with the day that has just been, a vivid and even violent, yet controlled, celebration and thanks for such a beautiful evening, for just being there.

The second raga, played on a guitar dreamed of for many years and only born in 1999, was in the equivalent of a minor harmonic scale. The effect of the music was to induce feelings of disturbing melancholy, a mood of longing, of something missing, almost anxious beauty.

Finally, a short piece on his baby guitar, Anandi, born in 2002 and named after the Sanskrit for ‘the sound of joy’. A 4-string ukelele played like a lap steel and sounding like the strangest sitar.

In between, some gracious words and explanations of his philosophy of music, the importance of listening, of the development of Indian classical music.  What generosity we were shown.

And it wasn’t even sold out.

Having just seen 180,000 people willing to pay through the nose and live in filth for a line-up described by a devoted ‘indie-music’ journalist as being mostly “Landfill Indie”, why were there not queues around the block to witness two musicians who have devoted their lives to producing something extraordinary?

Debashish Bhattacharya plays the Barbican tomorrow night (4th July).  Its on the FreeStage! Free! All you have to do is listen.

“Are you man enough to take it?”

Gæoudjiparl Van Den Dobbelsteen goes to war:

01. On Monday the 5th of May 2008 Gæoudjiparl van den Dobbelsteen opened up this temporary Myspace profile in order to declare war on the Scandinavian education system and to bring a new radical education program for modern computer music into being.

02. Later on Monday the 5th of May 2008 a manual for Goodiepal’s autonomous radical computer music education program, now called Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra Extra, was set into production.

The new school book can be ordered online from Smallfish in London..

www.smallfish.co.uk

and a full manual for the magnum work plus a strategy guide will soon be available for FREE download via.

www.brainwashed.com/vvm/micro/parl

03. On Wednesday the 7th of May 2008, 44 pictures of visual Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra Extra scores, unscannnable by computers and done by young students at Krabbesholm, were uploaded to the Krabbesholm website

www.krabbesholm.dk/courses/art/08goodiepal.html

04. On the 10th and 11th of May 2008 Gaeoudjiparl van den Dobbelsteen completed a two day course of radical computer music at Engelsholm Castle in Jutland, Denmark. Another 40 students agreed to complete grafic scores.

05. On Tuesday the 13th of May all Goodiepal’s bachelor students scored excellent points at their composition examines with examiners Jens Hørsving and Ejnar Kanding.

www.hoersving.dk

www.kanding.com

06. On Wednesday the 14th of May a huge sign was placed in the window of Route 66, the record shop closest to the Royal Academy of Music. The sign reads, “The music school book, which was too much for the Royal Academy of Music, can now be ordered here” – so all students, who cannot receive education in the fields of radical computer music, have a place to go.

07. When Saturday the 17th of May dawned the first part of the audio walk through, or manual, was uploaded to this Myspace profile as promised. The next parts will be uploaded when finished.

www.myspace.com/gaeoudjiparlvandendobbelsteen

08 On Sunday the 18th of May photo documentation for the Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra was uploaded to this temporary Myspace profile as Snappidagg’s. Just look under pictures.

09. When Wednesday the 21th of May dawned the second part of the audio walk through, or manual, was uploaded to this Myspace profile.

www.myspace.com/gaeoudjiparlvandendobbelsteen

10. On Thursday the 22nd and Friday the 23th of May Uglemads, Goodiepal and Tordis did put the final touch to all the Under Byen In The Flip Flop Mix 12-inches and send 140 copies off to the band. The rest is to be shipped next week, if you fancy any of the vinyls contact the band at:

www.underbyen.dk

11. On Sunday the 25th of May new snappidagg’s were uploaded, sorry for the delay.

12. Later on Sunday the 25th of May Sara Black tried to sell some Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra Extra education books on Ebay but flopped completely.

13. At the end of Sunday the 25th a one-off auction of the complete Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra box limited to 45 copies was made for sale at Ebay, this was done to raise some money for the war on the Royal Academy of Music.

www.ebay.com

14. On the 27th of May new snappidagg’s were uploaded to the picture section of this temporary Myspace profile. And the second part of the Under Byen IN THE FLIP FLOP MIX was put into production in the Blue House by Tordis, Uglemads and Goodiepal.

[…]

http://www.myspace.com/gaeoudjiparlvandendobbelsteen

At last, someone who actually HAS a pair.

House Approves New Property Seizure Law

The criminals in the federal government are now trying to legalize the seizure of computers and other property under the guise of strengthening intellectual property laws. HR 4279 or the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 which was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, will give the government draconian powers to do just this. This legislation gives the government the power to seize property that facilitates the violation of intellectual property laws. The legislation also mandates the formation of a formal Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the office of the Deputy Attorney General to enforce this madness. In addition, a new office called the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative is created within the Executive Office of the President. If you boil it down to brass tax, this legislation allows the U.S. government to lawfully seize your computer if it has one unauthorized mp3 file on its hard drive. It also provides the authorization for the creation of offices within the executive branch to enforce a law that is impossible to enforce.

Below is taken from section 202 of HR 4279 that gives the federal government the authorization to seize property that may have been used to facilitate an intellectual property violation. The language in this section indicates that a violation would include downloading a single unauthorized mp3 file on to a computer.

d) Unauthorized Recording of Motion Pictures- Section 2319B(b) of title 18, United States Code, is amended to read as follows:

`(b) Forfeiture and Destruction; Restitution-

`(1) CIVIL FORFEITURE PROCEEDINGS- (A) The following property is subject to forfeiture to the United States:

`(i) Any copies of a motion picture or other audiovisual work protected under title 17 that are made without the authorization of the copyright owner.

`(ii) Any property constituting or derived from any proceeds obtained directly or indirectly as a result of a violation of subsection (a).

`(iii) Any property used, or intended to be used, to commit or facilitate the commission of a violation of subsection (a) that is owned or predominantly controlled by the violator or by a person conspiring with or aiding and abetting the violator in committing the violation, except that property is subject to forfeiture under this clause only if the Government establishes that there was a substantial connection between the property and the violation of subsection (a).

This is the 1980s equivalent of the government being given the legal authority to seize cassette recorders if they were used in recording a song off of the radio. Under this legislation, downloading even a single mp3 file unauthorized by the copyright owner will give the federal government the power to take your computer. There is no way that the federal government can enforce this. In fact, it is insane that the U.S. House of Representatives is more concerned about keeping the record and movie industry happy by passing this legislation than they are with real issues. Incredibly, this bill was passed by a vote of 410-11. Two of the dissenting voters included Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

John Conyers a fascist and anti-Constitutionalist member of the U.S. House of Representatives who originally introduced this bill made the following statements describing the purpose of the legislation. His statements were republished in a Billboard Magazine report.

(1) prioritize intellectual property protection to the highest level of our government;

(2) make changes to IP law to enhance the ability of IP owners to effectively enforce their rights;

(3) make it easier to criminally prosecute repeat offenders;

(4) increase penalties for IP violations that endanger public health and safety.

Basically speaking, Conyers believes that downloading illegal mp3 and movie files endanger public health and safety. Conyers is either an insane individual that belongs in a mental institution for making such a ridiculous statement or he and everybody else who voted for this bill is in the back pockets of the RIAA, the MPAA and the rest of the music and movie industry. Common sense would dictate that such a law is unenforceable and should have not been seriously entertained. This is just another sign that this country is run by a bunch of fascists who are trying to find as many ways to undermine civil liberties under the guise of enforcing the law. What is really ridiculous about this, is the fact that the Constitution which is the supreme law of the land is violated by these fascist tyrants in Congress every single day of the week. If they were actually serious about enforcing the law, why are they not following the Constitution? Why do they reject it?

Maybe if the movie and music industry stopped putting out horrible content, their sales would be a little better. It seems as if they are trying to blame people who download unauthorized mp3 and movie files for their shortcomings in business. Perhaps they should do what smaller independent music and film production companies have done and embrace the technological revolution instead of stifling it by trying to push this anti-American legislation down our throats.

It is understandable to go after people who are illegally profiting off of selling material that isn’t their own but there really isn’t a need for government involvement. The record industry should sue those people if they believe that there are groups or individuals who are unfairly profiting off of their work. A court can decide if the claims they present are valid. However, to give powers to an already corrupt government to seize private property from people who are violating copyright laws by merely having downloaded mp3 files or movie files on their computer is unenforceable and beyond the scope of government. Section 301 of the bill establishes the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative and section 501 of the bill establishes the Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the Department of Justice under the office of the Deputy Attorney General. These particular offices will be established to serve as the enforcement arm for this legislation.

How many more powers is this corrupt legislature going to give to a renegade executive branch that is already engaging in perpetual war, setting up a police state, authorizing torture, destroying national sovereignty and other horrors? The federal government is full of petty bureaucrats and tyrants that can’t do anything right to begin with, and the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to expand government again through this legislation. With 410 of these tyrants voting for this legislation, it is doubtful that we will be successful in defeating this bill in the U.S Senate or if it goes to the dictator in chief.

[…]

Lee Rogers at Rogue Government

Pure unadulterated evil.

Let the ‘War on Piracy‘ begin!

Take part in a social music sharing event with a difference – in CD-Recycled 45rpm Aleks Kolkowski uses his vintage record cutter to ‘overwrite’ existing data and cut grooves on CDs/DVDs so they can be played on a turntable. Bring unwanted CDs/DVDs and a sound file and receive a recycled disc in return.

Nice.

I have often been put off downloading FLAC files as the format is not supported via iTunes, converting FLAC to mp3 is a bind to say the least, and I don’t usually listen via VLC. Poor excuses I know. So the FLAC files just sit there doing nothing on my hard drive.

Somewhat belatedly I have tried Burrrn, to copy FLAC files to audio CD. From there to mp3 is a cinch, with the bonus of having a full-quality CD to listen to ‘properly’. It is a blessing. So simple, so functional and intuitive.  Another door opens.

Thank you, Matjus Vojtek.

I’ve just listened to Faultline’s ‘Colder Closer’ side 2. Forgotten how much I like it.

Reminds me of buying a Pole LP and listening to it for months at 33, loving it…. Then one day a ‘friend’ tells me ‘shouldn’t it be on 45?’ Never the same, I tells ya.

And then seeing Pan Sonic at Highbury Garage, supporting Suicide. I knew nothing about them, stood enjoying my pint, waiting. My jaw dropped. The man next to me fell over. What great noises. We have had some fun.

From there, the memories are too numerous to share, but I share them. I am a lucky man.

Anyway, it means Ilpo Vaisenenenenenen… whatever… Liima versions over 2 10″s are next up.

I just had an eerie experience.

Whilst surfing around, I went to the Paul Smith site, which has a section called ‘music’.

In there, is a link to Tom Ravenscroft.

Tom Ravenscroft is the son of John Peel. He does a show for Channel 4 Radio.

I clicked on the latest show to hear what it is like. When his voice came down the internets, I felt a tingle run down my spine.

Any of you who used to listen to John Peel will know exactly what I am talking about.

What a life!

Tonight’s vinyl listening was Pauline Oliveros, a piece from 1968, released a few years ago on Table of the Elements; and Head Slash Bausch, by Antje Greie Fuchs. Highly recommended in both cases.

… ’Cause if you don’t, the world will come to an end
And it won’t take long

Ivor Cutler

Christopher Anderson has an exhibition at Magnum called ‘Silicon Forest’. Magnum contacted us with the idea of illustrating his works with sound from The Conet Project, and we agreed.

The photographs are of the town, Akademgorodok (??????????????, part of the Russian city Novosibirsk, Siberia), created in Soviet era Russia as a place where scientists were grouped together to do research.

When the USSR ceased to exist in 1991, the upheaval did not leave the scientists working there unscathed, and they have had to turn their significant prowess around and re-invent themselves as soldiers fighting corporate warfare.

Having looked at the exhibition site today, I have to say that the photographs and the sound are a perfect match, brilliantly edited together.

Many people have used The Conet Project in their works; some succeed in doing something really worthwhile, and this is certainly one example of a very fine piece of work.

The utterly unique Gæoudjiparl Van Den Dobbelsteen has a lecture on Google Video that you need to take a look at.

I’ll assume you’re well on your public Danish television voyage by now. You’re witnessing a televised lecture presented by Goodiepal, a Danish electronic musician that enjoys some airplay on WFMU and is probably most widely know for blowing minds with his mechanical bird invention, and composing tones and melodies for consumer electronics companies.

You’ll see him keep his studio audience stupefied with a near hour-long discourse on: The Eurobot (as demonstrated by cardboard scenery cutouts and handmade balls of yarn), the assertion that Europeans don’t understand time, the idea of mirror points in music, the future of electronic music, and how to keep music scores hidden from artificial intelligence.

At first blush it all seems very whimsical but discursively sound but at about the twenty minute mark when he’s still playing with his little robot set and whistling the Eurobot score to himself, one can’t help but wonder if he’s putting us on. And yeah, you’ve got the simul-soundtrack cranked, so you’re on media-fuckery watch anyway.

What’s going on here, you ask? Thankfully, a mysterious poster to a web forum has left a few clues.

A user going by the name of “Gæoudjiparl EDUCATION” brought this video to my attention in the V/Vm Test Records web forums. He seems to share our feeling about the video that:

“…something is not quite what it appears to be…

Several indications of a hidden agenda are evident when investigating the program
more closely although the question of who is actually behind remains disguised. The following is an attempt to cast light on some of the dubious occurrences.”

Apparently, Goodiepal has been spiked with a hallucinogenic drug, allowed to prattle on far beyond the time normally allotted by this television program (true: you’ll see him gesture to the producers throughout the video), and may be mixed up in a situation akin to a scenario presented by a 1967 science fiction novel by Fredrich Pohl (pictured left).

Alright, alright, cute, cute. We get it. Goodiepal isn’t about to appear on television under the “phony” terms posited by modern television production studios. Rather than use his invitation to speak his mind directly, he serves up a quasi-didactic mixture of truths, lies, and pure babble.

Much of what he says in this video likely represents the very opposite of his belief (such as the suggestion that we allow computers to start performing our vocal compositions for us).

But dude, “culture jamming” in these modern times strikes a blow against a weakened opponent: mass culture and mass media. Willful obfuscation of earnest dialectics is a very proper move as far as much of our contemporary countercultures are concerned. But it doesn’t do shit to communicate higher ideals to the “uninformed masses.”

I think this is a ripe case of “co-option” anxiety. Co-option theory suggests that mere exposure of a subculture’s defining aesthetic or idealistic touchpoints threatens to weaken the bonds of is participants. This plots the forces of cultural good (say, young skinny white unmarried people living urban areas and reading small circulation magazines) against the sold-out ethos of corporations who want to use their culture to sell things to them (gasp!) and demands that cool kids not blow their cover.

Once I transcoded this whole thing out using my handy Goodipal media ring I actually liked the ideas very much. But I am the choir, aren’t I? Personally, I’m not buying the (meta)story any longer. (Oh, also: Your technique just got co-opted. Pwned!)

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/01/goodiepal-and-t.html

!!!

I have to say, we need more people like Van Den Dobbelsteen…and have always need more.

An absurd piece of shortsighted nonsense from BBQ, bemoaning the fact that WBOOG(2) Radiohead’s fans didnt fall overthemselvs like Ron Paul supports to pour money into their account in exchange for their new set of recordings (formerly called an ‘Album’):

“Radiohead have been bankrolled by their former label for the last 15 years,” said Michael Laskow, chief executive of Taxi, a company that helps bands get signed to record labels.

“They’ve built a fanbase in the millions with their label, and now they’re able to cash in on that fan base with none of the income or profit going to the label this time around.”

“How will new artists be able to use this model if they haven’t built a fan base in the millions?” he added.

[…]

BBQ

Yes indeed.

I will tell you how they will use this model and make millions.

They will do it like this. Mia Rose has literally millions of fans all over the world, gained simply by posting her music on YouTube.

This is how artists will promote themselves in the future, and they will make more than a living out of it, by selling merchandise related to themselves and their music, and through licensing.

We are in the middle of a transition period between the Soviet era of music manufacture and distribution and ‘teh internets’ era; the era of dematerialized frictionless distribution, the era of music as a service, not a product.

Only the buggy whip selling computer illiterate, evil paternalist losers at the BBC whine about this new era.

But you know this!

2007 is turning out to be a terrible year for the music industry. Or rather, a terrible year for the the music labels.The DRM walls are crumbling. Music CD sales continue to plummet rather alarmingly. Artists like Prince and Nine Inch Nails are flouting their labels and either giving music away or telling their fans to steal it. Another blow earlier this week: Radiohead, which is no longer controlled by their label, Capitol Records, put their new digital album on sale on the Internet for whatever price people want to pay for it.

The economics of recorded music are fairly simple. Marginal production costs are zero: Like software, it doesn’t cost anything to produce another digital copy that is just as good as the original as soon as the first copy exists, and anyone can create those copies (meaning there is perfect competition and zero barriers to entry). Unless effective legal (copyright), technical (DRM) or other artificial impediments to production can be created, simple economic theory dictates that the price of music, like its marginal cost, must also fall to zero as more “competitors” (in this case, listeners who copy) enter the market. The evidence is unmistakable already. In April 2007 the benchmark price for a DRM-free song was $1.29. Today it is $0.89, a drop of 31% in just six months.

P2P networks just exacerbate the problem (or opportunity) further, giving people a way to speed up the process of creating free copies almost to the point of being ridiculous. Today, a billion or so songs are downloaded monthly via BitTorrent, mostly illegally.

Eventually, unless governments are willing to take drastic measures to protect the industry (such as a mandatory music tax), economic theory will win out and the price of music will fall towards zero.

When the industry finally capitulates and realizes that they can no longer charge a meaningful amount of money for digital recorded music, a lot of good things can happen.

First, other revenue sources can and will be exploited, particularly live music, merchandise and limited edition physical copies of music. The signs are already there – the live music industry is booming this year, and Radiohead is releasing a special edition box set of their new album for £40.00 simultaneous to the release of their “free” digital album.

Second, artists and labels will stop thinking of digital music as a source of revenue and start thinking about it as a way to market their real products. Users will be encouraged (even paid, as radio stations are today) to download, listen to and share music. Passionate users who download music from the Internet and share it with others will become the most important customers, not targets for ridiculous lawsuits.

The price of music will likely not fall in the near term to absolutely zero. Charging any price at all requires the use of credit cards and their minimum fees of $0.20 or more per transaction, for example. And services like iTunes and Amazon can continue to charge something for quality of service. With P2P networks you don’t really know what you are getting until you download it. It could, for example, be a virus. Or a poor quality copy. Many users will be willing to pay to avoid those hassles. But as long as BitTorrent exists, or simple music search engines like Skreemr allow users to find and download virtually any song in seconds, they won’t be able to charge much.

http://www.techcrunch.com/

Of course, we wrote about this and released our entire catalogue under the FMP in 1999, before there was a Creative Commons, Bittorrent or any of the cool ways that people use to share music.

The Conet Project is a perfect example proving what we did was correct, and how it can work for other people. It has been downloaded over 200,000 times from the Internet Archive alone (it is mirrored at Hyperreal where they do not keep any stats) so I would guess that the number is at least double that taking all the mirrors past and present into account, and all the private sharing that we encourage.

We have sold many copies of TCP and demand is still strong for it; opening your archive allows you to reach more people than ever, and those that value what you do will buy other products from you and license your work.

It has taken eight years for people to finally start to wake up to this, and even today, there are still buggy whippers who trott out the same rubbish arguments against freeing music railing against Prince for example, for giving away his new CD.

The above article is very good, and there is a howler in there:

With P2P networks you don’t really know what you are getting until you download it. It could, for example, be a virus.

MP3s cannot contain viruses…heh.

but lets go further. The impact on music culture will be absolutely enormous. Everyone everywhere will be able to get any music they read about as they read about it or have it reccomended, and not only that, you can now get the entire catalogue of an artist in a single movement, so that you can study their body of work, become familiar with it and then use it to inform your own work.

This is a highly significant development. In the past, it was very difficult to do this both in terms of tracking down the physical sound carriers and then paying for them. This was especially true of classical music. People used to use cassettes to trade rare music, which once again, involved buying of cassettes, the manual copying of them and distributing them. All of these steps made the cassettes more valuable than the music on them, and because they were ‘bootlegs’ the psychology surrounding them bumped the price up because someone was taking a risk to bring this sound to you. I wont go into the generational loss of quality caused by making tape to tape copies.

Today however, none of this is a factor. Getting any music you like is a near frictionless process; the only barrier being the one time initial learning curve; understanding where the music lives and how to use the tools to get it. Once you have those in place, the only problems you encounter are that there is not enough time to listen to everything, finding people you can trust to introduce you to new music, and a place to store it all.

There are also some other effects that we have an interest in.

If the quality of people who make music is low, we might never again see a flourishing of amazing groups. If the quality of music makers is high, then access to everything that has been recorded will be used as a blacklist ensuring that we get something really new and interesting. If word of mouse works efficiently however, it will bring us whatever small number of great artists who are out there and they will instantly rise to the top of who is being downloaded / listened to; that is the other payoff of this new era – ‘the death of the underground’. No one will be stuck in the absurd ghettoes of the past, where artists were ‘underground’ thanks to the inefficiencies of the market, meaning, money, distribution and journalists. Money doesn’t count anymore, distribution is now frictionless, and music journalists are almost completely irrelevant, since anyone with an MP3 blog and good taste is as powerful as any journalist.

The pyramidal structure of music culture has been dismantled and it is now in the shape of a two dimensional network of nodes, each listener being a transmitter and receiver of the music itself and information about the music. With LastFM, the very act of listening to music turns you into a node that recommends and promotes music.

All of this is a good thing. Combined with the astonishing tools that are now available to everyone for free, if the people who make music are up the challenge, they can make whatever they want and find people to listen to them. And not only find people to listen to them, find all the people in the world who are capable of understanding what they are doing. This is a very important and significant step forwards.

The old evils of the huge record companies will die with them, but this does not mean that the ecosystem that surrounds music will completely die. The lawyers will always have a role to play. Music still belongs to the people who create it, and those laws need to be enforced. Licensing and the revenues from music need to be controlled and monitored – in the short term, people will still make a fortune from radio airplay for example.

What has happened is that an inefficiency and an evil have been removed from the music distribution equation, but more importantly, human beings will have better, more enriched lives thanks to freed music. We will inevitably, I believe, get more variety and richness from new artists, and certainly there is for all intents and purposes an infinite amount of old music to charm and thrill us.

We are also at the very beginning of a greater understanding in the general public of just what it takes to produce music. Radiohead fans are showing that they are not irresponsible; they understand that the group need money to live and they are paying for the music they are downloading – even though they can get it for a price of zero. This is highly significant, and demonstrates that people are not actually stupid, and will pay to get more music if that is what they need to do. This means Radiohead get all the advantages of free music AND the advantages of running a central place to download from. I have no doubt that other groups will follow Radiohead, and that still more groups will devise their own tweaked systems to nickel and dime their fans to keep everything running.

Finally, what happens next is that the people who came up with these ideas in the first instance and those that saw it coming and who put their money where their mouths are will get the credit that is due to them. The people who thought and who still think that freed music is ‘no good’ (“I worked very hard to make my music, I don’t just want it out there for anyone to get for nothing”) will of course, not be heard or hear-able by anyone, and they will totally disappear from culture.

In 1997, the time of the first pressing of The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations, we really had no idea about how it would go down or how best to get it into the public view. We took every opportunity to try and get the word out about it, including the following.

Around the corner from THESE Records (who were distributing TCP) in Lambeth Road, is the Imperial War Museum, who were running an exhibition entitled The Secret War which is, “…the UK’s only permanent exhibition devoted to UK espionage”.

Naturally, we thought that the Imperial War Museum might like to stock some ‘SOR’ copies of TCP, as it dovetails nicely with the exhibition. All we would have to do is show it to them, and they should be sold on the idea.

‘SOR’ means ‘Sale Or Return’ – this is how it works. We deliver a box of seven or fourteen copies of TCP, they put them on display in the shop. If they sell, they pay us, if they do not sell, they return them to us. There is no money up front, no security deposit, no account needed; we trust them to pay us, and there is no risk to them whatsoever.

We delivered a sample copy to them with a letter about TCP. You can imagine how we laughed when we received this reply from The Imperial War Museum Shop.

Now, the paranoid would say that someone made a phone call and nixed TCP being stocked. The cynical would say, “they just didn’t get it”, and others will say, “It is just as stated”. Either way, it struck us as rather bizarre that something as germane to a comprehensive espionage exhibition as TCP is, an exhibition featuring amongst other things, ENIGMA machines, short wave radios, spy equipment of all sorts etc would be dismissed in this very odd way. One listen to TCP should have been enough to convince them to stock it. The idea of TCP seems very dry on the surface, but the fact of it is very different. Once you listen to it, it is instantly clear that TCP is the polar opposite of a remote and inaccessible, ‘specialised’ release.

Which of the above three reasons do you think stopped them from stocking TCP?