Association of Independent Music
A busy week, lots of travel, some good music events, a bunch of talking and writing – but rather than bog you down in details, I thought I’d just do a quick bullet point round-up to keep you in the loop…
· Students are back for the new academic year. Monday was what we like to call ‘Day of the Locusts’. Took 2 hours to get to work by bus. That’s what you get from living in a three-university town on first day back…
· Sam Coley (ex-TRN Creative Director) joined us at UCE Birmingham this week as our new Radio Degree Leader. What a relief – and exactly the right person for the job. He’s looking round for a place to live and will be off our couch in due course.
Jake meets drummer Joe Farnsworth· Pharaoh Sanders at the CBSO Centre last night. Exactly the same band we saw at Sky City in Auckland a year or two back. Good gig – though I remember it as having been better in NZ. I was chatting to drummer Joe Farnsworth at half time (pictured above with Jake, who has been assigned Art Blakey and Max Roach listening homework by Mr Farnsworth). Pharaoh flies back business class to NY today… the rest of the band waits till tomorrow so they can get the cheapest fares around. Ah, the life of a jazz sideman. They even had to buy their own drinks.
· Bobbie’s done something to her back. Disc or muscle or some sort of twisting or something. She’s not having a lot of fun with it. Worst pain of any kind she’s ever had – so on the whole, not good.
London’s pushy and shovey rush-hour· Taught a class at University of Westminster on Tuesday (Introduction to Broadcasting), filling in for David Hendy who is away writing another book. Hellish rush hour (under-represented above), but I found a good bunch of students once I got there. 85 of them. They had me for 4 hours (3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of seminar) – and suffer the same fate next Tuesday as well. If they come back.
Lineup of presentations· Came back from London late Tuesday night, only to head straight back down there early Wednesday morning with the guys from eMusu.com (long car journey made tolerable by the ‘A-Z of bands we hate’ game). We attended the Association of Independent Music‘s Online Distribution Day. Back to back 15 minute presentations from 10am till 5.30pm from the likes of Napster, iTunes, Digital Rights Network, Virgin Digital, OD2, Sony Connect, Snocap… and many, many more. Interesting day – and far too much to report in one go here – but no decent free stuff to speak of. Just watch out for Mashboxx at the end of the year though – that’ll be interesting.
· Wrote my PhD proposal on the train back from London. Essentially it’s about (surprise, surprise) online strategies for small-medium music business. We’ll see how much tweaking that’ll take before it goes through.
· Trying to find a way to get to an international Media History conference in Toronto mid next year at the moment. I’ve got the paper for it – a McLuhanist ‘Media Ecology’ take on the history of Radio in New Zealand that could be knocked into shape with a minimum of effort (my favourite kind). Unfortunately, the usual funding sources for conference travel are running low, and I’m having to scrape around for other options. There’ll be something somewhere – but I just need to locate it.
· Jake started drawing and painting classes at the Midland Arts Centre today. First day, portraiture – next week, cubism. Talk about your whirlwind tour through Western Art History…
· Went into town and bought a bunch of new clothes for our nearly teenager this afternoon. He’s already twice the size of most of the kids in his class, but he refuses to stop growing. I’m going to have to hide the vegetables. On Tuesday, he’s heading to Frankfurt for a week with a bunch of kids from his German class (and a teacher or two, naturally). Clothes that fit and a raincoat that keeps water out were on the list of things we’re meant to provide.
· I’m entirely immersing myself in This American Life at the moment. I still want to be Ira Glass when I grow up. It is quite simply the best radio programme on the planet.
· I’m also recording the E=mc2 lectures from the Radio New Zealand website and I intend to listen to them at my leisure on my iPod. It took a third party bit of software to make it go (Replay Radio – remember I mentioned it?), and a fair bit of hunting through the site to find anything at all with archived programmes – but you look hard enough, you find something to be pleased about. I’ve also set the recorder to catch Mediawatch as it goes to air off the live stream – and I’m toying with The Times They Are A Changing, but I figure as a BBC production, I’ll probably find it elsewhere.
· I had quite a few very encouraging responses to the fix RNZ post – and they were much appreciated, but we didn’t reach critical mass to go off and start our own RNZ website. It was worth a shot – and there are still a million things I’d change about it given half a chance – but we’re just going to have to put up with whatever we’re given, I’m afraid.
· I missed the 2-part Scorsese documentary on Bob Dylan this week, which was apparently the greatest thing on telly… and the person I asked to record it suffered PVR failure – so it’s off to the bittorrent sites for me. Don’t tell anyone, will you?
· Six more sleeps till Serenity…!
Theatre vs. RadioAnd if you’re going to The Final Smackdown in Chicago this weekend, I hate you. If you’re going to the Third Coast Audio Festival, I hate you even more.
Fine. Fair enough excuse for no buscast.
Maybe this would help re: Toronto ’06. My v. thrifty London friend likes it quite well when here.
Pass on a get well to Bobbie, though it doesn’t help much with the back. Terrible.
Back to editing Description 06 about the CBC Lockout. All the best. Peace.
“…but we’re just going to have to put up with whatever we’re given, I’m afraid.”
I thought you had a contact you could ask about this? I might email the webmaster address on their contact page myself and post the results here if anyone is interested?
Dave
I did have a contact I could ask about this. I suspect they tired of me. No word on this for quite some time. I do get the impression these days it’s just easier to ignore me until I go away.
I emailed the webmaster address already. No response.
I prefer not to take it personally – but you never know… you might get a response if you try.
I emailed the Webmaster and got a response back with half an hour.
I mentioned about your email (I said a bunch of people were waiting on the response on your blog). The Webmaster said he’d sent a response and would resend it.
In my haste I forgot to ask for any info myself :-( , so I’ll wait until you post something.
Dave.
He’s clearly a man of his word. This is the response I just got through:
===================
Dear Andrew,
Thanks for your email and comments regarding the live streams.
At this point we are in the final stages of testing – there are a
couple of technical issues that have been holding us up and we expect
our suppliers to have them sorted soon.
Once these are resolved we will be completing an e-govenrment audit (to
ensure compliance with the NZ E-gov guidlines), and then it is on to the
final release.
As far as content goes here is an overview:
* programme schedules (today’s always showing for easy reference)
* upcomming highlights (with the next to-be-broadcast highlight
showing)
* On-demand audio from: Morning Report, Nine To Noon, Afternoons with Jim Mora, Checkpoint, Saturday with Kim Hill, This Way Up with Simon Morton, Sunday with Chris Laidlaw and The Arts on Sunday with Lynn Freeman.
Daily programmes will be archived for a week, weekly programmes for a
month.
Audio will be Windows Media and streaming MP3.
* Live Audio from National Radio, Concert FM and Radio NZ International.
This will be only in Windows Media Audio.
* News headlines, Sport and Weather.
* Full searching of recipes and other popular content
Once the site is launched we’ll be looking at adding audio from other
programmes.
Sorry I can’t oblige with a screen shot at the moment…
regards,
Richard Hulse
===================
In summary – a ‘what’s on’ guide, some recipes and headlines, and some audio.
I’m a little skeptical about the mp3 streaming. They’ve had mp3 links on the page before, but every one of them has been a Windows media file.
I expected the live streaming to be Windows Media – that’ll be a condition of the RIANZ agreement, no doubt – a bit of robust(ish) DRM.
Other than that, let’s see what we get – and how long it takes. It really has been an awfully long time, but what say we check back in another couple of weeks?
Meanwhile, I’m taking bets on the incorporation of podcasting, creative commons licensed material, supplementary content such as extended and raw footage interviews, presenter bios, feature stories about upcoming dramas or special programming, show notes, playlists, rss feeds, subsites (say… for Mediawatch), the little things such as any photographic images – stuff like that…
Not entirely sure why he couldn’t oblige with a screenshot, but then he wasn’t specific about that. Perhaps the new design is a big surprise, and PR wisdom dictates you don’t reveal before the big unveiling.
However, as much as I approve of the e-government guidelines (not to mention the astonishing and laudable fact that they even exist), I’m betting regulated accessibility triumphs over both usability and aesthetics.
Memo to self: stop being so negative. I’m sure it’ll be great.
I have supported your stance up till now but your continual pessimism is wearing a little thin.
I’m sure that RNZ is doing their level best.
You suggest the site will look awful and be unuseable. This is pure conjecture.
Your previous predictions about live streaming and high bandwidth content were incorrect.
Your suggestion that RIANZ were holding RNZ to ransom also seem to have been unfounded.
Not a great track record would you not agree? :-)
SO…I agree that we SHOULD wait AND not be too critical about what may or may not be on the site.
cheers,
Dave
Dave,
This is all stuff I’m delighted to be wrong about. I’m never happier than when my negative predictions are subverted. But then, an optimist can never really be pleasantly surprised, can he?
I think I should say I remain somewhat unconvinced about the high bandwidth stuff you mention: I don’t recall seeing anything over 64k yet. That may have happened with Enzology, but we still can’t listen to that here in the UK…
Then there was that whole RIANZ personnel shakeup that completely changed the playing field (RNZ were being held to ransom, but certain individuals moved on to be replaced by far more forward-thinking types). And wasn’t that a great day?
Campbell and Mark Roach were the best things that could have happened to RIANZ – and the prospects for the RNZ website.
But even so, your points are well taken. I predict poorly – and everytime I’m proved wrong, I rejoice.
I look forward to the new RNZ website – and I’m quite excited at the prospect of being wrong about everything else too.
Cheers,
Dubber
Andrew, I heard a bit of that Einstein Theory of Relativity lecture on my car radio recently. It was really fascinating even for a non-scientific person like me. All about bullets in fast moving trains and going to distant planets and coming back younger than your grandson. Unfortunately I reached my destination before I heard the end, but I did tell your mother and sister about it, but they fell asleep.
Dad