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This is the non-biz outpost for Matter the systems humanization company. It's for points of interest, notable links, open conversation, and other curiosities. -
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More Radiohead Than Radiohead
June 6, 2008 – 7:09 pm
Big Ideas (Don’t get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.
Click the “Big Ideas” link there to get the story.
Bonus three-degrees-from-ATL feature: the apparent winner (under suspicion) of the radiohead remixed contest, young mix artist SPOR is remixer/pals/label-mates on UKs Lifted with aggro drum-n-bass trio Evol Intent… from A-town!
1983 All Over Again
February 21, 2008 – 1:36 pm
Ah, 1983, I remember it well. I was selling 45 rpm, 7-inch singles for CBS Records (Michael Jackson’s Thriller had just been released) and the folks from headquarters brought in a new fangled thing called a Compact Disc, with a just-off-the-boat Japanese Sony CD player with a voltage converter. I think the CD they played was Billy Joel’s The Stranger, as the Nippon Columbia plant was making the CDs well ahead of their manufacture in the States. I knew my days selling vinyl were limited and I left the business and started a masters degree in digital media at the end of 1984. These days, the two biggest media plays in my household are #1) legal downloads, #2) rips from CDs, and #3) vinyl records. Looks like #2 is going away fast.
Cambridge, MA (February 21, 2008)–A new forecast by Forrester Research, Inc. paints a gloomy picture for the recorded music industry. Cheerfully entitled “The End Of The Music Industry As We Know It,” the report predicts that digital music sales will skyrocket over the next few years, yet will still not offset plunging CD sales.
Half of all music sold in the US will be digital in 2011 and sales of digitally downloaded music will surpass physical CD sales in 2012, according to the new report. Digital music sales will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23 percent over the next five years, reaching $4.8 billion in revenue by 2012, but will fail to make up for the continuing steady decline in CD sales. In 2012, CD sales will be reduced to just $3.8 billion.
Read the entire press release here
A Little Place Of My Own
February 19, 2008 – 9:29 am
I was recently advised that hoteliers treat New York City much like a separate country within the United States. NYC has its own gravity and way of working. As major (and minor) hotel companies strive to find a little bit of differentiation within an increasingly monolithic industry, the New York Times profiles an architect who is literally creating the bedrock experience from which these hotel brands are competing. And he’s doing it for most of the main competitors, simultaneously.
In his SoHo office, the architect Gene Kaufman is presenting drawings of his latest buildings.
“This one is for Marriott in Chelsea,” he said, pointing to a rendering of a slender, gray tower. “This is a Sheraton on Canal Street. This one’s a Doubletree in the financial district …”
Mr. Kaufman is just getting warmed up.
Many architects would be happy to design a single hotel in Manhattan; his firm, Gene Kaufman Architect, is designing 36 of them. Nearly all are for national brands that are trying to establish beachheads in the city.
Read the entire article here
The Kids Are (Mostly) Alright
February 5, 2008 – 1:47 pm
Pro Sound News has published an article about the latest statistics for digital music downloading by “tweens”, those children between 9 and 14. While the slant in this article is decidedly negative (it is a trade publication after all), the stats show that most kids of this age group are using paid or legal downloading sites. The stats follow my casual observations of my 13-year-old daughter (an iTunes store downloader) and her classmates (some of whom use Limewire for illegal downloading).
The bigger implication of the article is that poor parenting/lack of supervision is primarily to blame for the kids illegal activities. I wonder if there is a Mac vs. PC thing in here? I also wonder why anyone this age is allowed to be on MySpace? What would happen if a similar study was done on porn downloads by tweens?
A new report by the NPD Group, “Kids & Digital Content,” reveals that 70 percent of tweens (ages 9 through 14) are downloading digital music in an average month. While most are using pay-to-download web stores to acquire music, NPD also notes high levels of illegal P2P file sharing.
Used by nearly half of tweens who download music, iTunes is the most popular digital music store (49 percent); however, the second most popular source for digital music among this age group is the Limewire file-sharing service, which was used by 26 percent of tweens to illegally share music. MySpace, used by 16 percent, was third most popular.
Read the whole article here
Grass Just As Broke On The Other Side Of The Fence
January 7, 2008 – 9:31 am
Natalie Merchant made headlines half a decade ago when she decided to leave the confines of a major label contract and go it alone, setting up her own independent label for her releases. Seen as a maverick move by the status quo, Merchant and her manager stated at the time that she would ultimately make more money from the venture than if she had stayed with a major. Today’s New York Times article brings us up to date on the venture and how Merchant’s business model has evolved.
“This is a new song,” Natalie Merchant announced onstage at the Hiro Ballroom on Friday night, at her first full New York City concert in four years. “Try to absorb it here, now, ’cause I don’t know when I’ll make a record.”
Ms. Merchant, who sold millions of albums in the 1990s, has an adoring audience and no record label behind her. She’s not alone. As contracts end, more and more well-known musicians are trying to reinvent their careers for the era of mass downloading and plunging album sales. At the Hiro Ballroom, when a voice in the crowd asked when Ms. Merchant would release a new album, she said with a smile that she was awaiting “a new paradigm for the recording industry.” Another fan called out, “Myth America,” the independent label Ms. Merchant formed in 2003 to release “The House Carpenter’s Daughter,” an album of rearranged folk songs. Ms. Merchant replied, “Myth America is bankrupt.”
Read the full article here
International Journal of Design
January 3, 2008 – 12:29 pm
Not to be confused with the International Design Journal or the Journal of International Design, the International Journal of Design has put out some interesting papers in its three issues. While there’s a fine line between ‘academically rigorous’ and ‘pedantic’ (not to mention sesquipedalian–thankyouverymuch, word-of-the-day screensaver =) ), there’s some stuff in here worth reading
Crying Wii Wii Wii All The Way Home
January 3, 2008 – 12:09 pm
The Wii seems to be inspiring lots of motion interactive uses beyond the games that play on the box. I can see a whole niche film industry spring up around this little hack. You could call it the Open Window movement.
DIY virtuoso Johnny Chung Lee has already more than proven himself with his Wiimote whiteboard and finger-tracking hacks (to say nothing of the famous $14 steadycam), but he now looks to have vaulted himself into a whole new league with his latest project, which uses a Wiimote for a full-on VR head-tracking system. As with his other recent hacks, the Wiimote and a sensor bar substitute swap their usual positions, with a pair of IR-equipped safety glasses stylishly getting the job done in this case. Toss in some custom-made software (available at the link below) and you’ve got a setup that’s sure to make anyone’s jaw drop. Whatever you do, be sure to hit up the video after the break (and watch ’till the end), as the image above certainly doesn’t do it justice.
See the really cool demo of this technology in action here