Scott has a thoughtful entry up wondering if Creative Commons licenses interfere with performing rights organizations like BMI and ASCAP. Here is my Creative Commons rant as I haven't had one in a while. As I've talked about before here, I just "don't get" the Creative Commons. They seem like good people with a noble purpose. I get asked occasionally why, being allegedly a web nerd and down with the online music, I don't have CC licenses on all my stuff.

I don't really have a good answer other than that licenses, even very gentle ones like the Creative Commons, just don't seem very progressive and/or rock and roll to me. "Here is my free music... AND NOW HERE ARE THE RULES FOR MY FREE MUSIC." What's the point?

It all just seems like artists are worrying about one potential disaster scenario: someone makes money off of their work and they don't get any. But at the end of the day, most of the people using Creative Commons licenses are so far away from this ever happening that it seems ridiculous to me to even be the least bit concerned about it. What if Madonna rips off one of my songs? First of all: what makes you think Madonna wants your songs? And as an unknown artist, what do you really have to lose if that were to happen?

Being worried you're going to lose out on the possible royalty winfall feels like lottery mentality to me. The odds are so so so SO small that you will ever win anything worthwhile or be ripped off by anyone powerful. I likes worryin' just as much as the next guy, but even I can't get worked up about something as improbable as that.

If there's money to be made in churning out crappy tracks in a home studio and putting them online, it seems infinitely more likely to me that the money will come from delivering good music and building a fan base that's willing to support you to make more. That should probably be the thing that artists need to spend a lot of time thinking about, not whether they bought a Super 7 ticket today.

I'm not against the Creative Commons by any means, I just don't understand what I as an artist have to gain by using their licenses. I'd happily put one on my music the moment I could see some sort of practical benefit to it, but right now I just don't see the use.

This blog's usually about music, but the good fellas at Penny Arcade are doing a charity drive called Child's Play wherein you buy things off of this wish list and sick kids at the Seattle Children's Hospital get the toys and games. I think it's a really cool and worthwhile idea. Good on Tycho and Gabe for using their awesome gaming power for good rather than the more obvious choice of evil.

Catching up on some Zeropaid this morning, two articles caught my eye. Bands 'urged to cut album tracks' about record labels asking their artists to slim down their albums:

"The final choice will always be the artist's, but I feel - and consumer research bears it out - that the public thinks albums have too much filler," Mr Ienner told the paper.

Unfortunately they don't name any artists except Outkast (for having a lot of songs on their new album) and Bruce Springsteen (for having only 8 on Born To Run). I don't think Outkast's doing too badly.

That article is also really funny if you read it as a call to action to reduce album content when you contrast it with the article Indie-Structable Rock Scene Smashes Major Labels:

"Bands are looking to make a good, solid album that you want to buy rather than an album with two singles and the rest is filler," said Andrew Katchen, a music writer for the Boston Globe. "There's less of an expectation and money funneled into an indie record, as opposed to say a Nelly album that has to sell millions of copies just to recoup marketing costs."

Ie. If you reduce the cost of an album and marketing and so on, it becomes much MUCH easier to make a profit.

I mentioned Vocaloid way back in July and now it's popped up in this New York Times article. It does a good version of hyping the possibilities of voice emulation, here's a fun quote from Michael Stipe:

Michael Stipe of R.E.M. heard a Vocaloid version of "Amazing Grace" online, and he said he was impressed. (The Yamaha Corporation includes samples with a recent press.) But he wasn't prepared to rush out and have a font created. "I would hate to think that 250 years from now Altria would use the Michael Stipe voice to sell organic soy to a Mars landing," he said. "It's intriguing in 2003. I'm not sure about 2303."

I think I've heard two different recordings from this thing. The Japanese one sounded really good and the English Amazing Grace one sounded pretty fake to me. I'm assuming this will go in the digital actors bin of "you can produce an OK lifeless facsimile of the appearance or sound of an actor or musician, but you can't make them do anything worthwhile without a ton of work and possibly the original artist".

The article also talks about cloning Elvis's voice for use in commercials but doesn't mention that there's a whole industry of Elvis impersonators already out there. I'm not sure making a program really makes an Elvis jingle much more attainable for advertisers.

You're Not Going AnywhereGenre: Rock ballad Length: 3:35 Date: 11/21/03

Here's a plodding sad-ish song to break up my streak of fairly up-tempo stuff. I think the mix may be messed up but I have fluid in my ear.

I got bumped off the Atlanta radio interview this morning because it ran long. I can only assume it was because of all the Michael Jackson jokes that needed to be said, which I can understand. Apparently the producer's gonna reschedule with me.

The fine fellas at Songfight pointed this article out to me, which talks about a lot of the lack of music filters on the net that I was complaining about the other day. But unlike me who just whined, this article actually pointed out a few neat things, like this iRATE software:

One promising though unpolished piece of software for finding new music is called iRATE Radio, created by a New Zealand computer programmer named Anthony Jones. It serves up a steady flow of legal MP3s from sites like IUMA, which are then rated by the user.

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I think it's great that people are working on this sort of stuff, seeing the potential in the net indie scene, etc, etc, blah blah.

Gonna be on "The Regular Guys" show on WKLS in Atlanta, Georgia at 9 EST tomorrow morning.

I forgot to mention that MP3.com is going tits up. I know a lot of people are going to be out of hosting and that sucks. The writing has been on the wall for the past few years, but it's still too bad. This all reminds me that I do deeply wish someone would get their act together and try to provide an MP3.com service that actually tries to point out the good independent stuff out there. There is a severe lack of filters on the net, which is great for artistic freedom but bad for people looking to listen to some good indie music.

I've been doing a lot of interviews for Outside the Inbox lately and the subject often turns to the home recorder/indie thing. I usually point them to Songfight or somesongs.com to check out the scene.

Both of those sites are cool, but Songfight isn't really ideal as an introduction for a casual music listener. Somesongs probably does a better job at pointing out good music than MP3.com ever did. The voting is a little zany though and I could see a more elitist editor/reviewer system possibly being more effective.

Seems to me there would be something in an MP3.com mixed with Pitchfork Media type service. I occasionally get the motivation to start one, but I'd probably have to give up making music to find the time.

Thanks to everyone who dropped a line to say happy birthday, I appreciate it in my heart! I had a nice weekend drinking, eating Chinese food and watching 24 on DVD. It was more fun than maybe it sounds.

Did an interview for The Rude Awakening Show on Laser101 in St. Maarten in the Caribbean just moments ago. Nice guys. Apparently they're going to plug Outside the Inbox and the Brad Sucks all week, which is super cool. I also did an email interview with ABC Science Online in Australia yesterday.

And now it is my birthday. I am 27.

Lightning blew up my modem last night. Awesome. Did the WLAN interview and now I have no more scheduled. For fifteen minutes of fame that sure took a long time. I'm wondering if I'm going to have an attention hangover next week, forcing my friends to talk to me in the form of an interview. "So Brad, what was the idea behind your day today?" "Well it's funny you should ask..."

The RED FM interview went okay except that my dumb Canadian mind had a hard time with the Irish accent of the host. He was very nice, I am just a tool. Still, I don't think it was too bad. My sass was not at optimum levels however. Tomorrow morning is the WLAN interview and then I gots nothing else lined up. Is this the end of the media thrill ride for Brad? Friday is my birthday! Glug glug. (drinking sounds)

If anyone got to hear the interview on the Charles Adler show, you got to hear me get peer pressured into making up a pretty awful dumb ukulele song on the spot. It was pretty weak and may be a subject to drink about this evening. The Shredd and Regan show went well, they seemed nice and very into the whole indie home recording thing.

I have an interview with RED FM in Ireland tonight at 6:45 EST.

Today I did interviews for CKCU FM in Ottawa, WMAY FM in Springfield Illinois (I think) and 610 CKTB radio in St. Catherines. The WMAY guys were pretty cool and fun to talk to. They seemed to be digging the actual music and were real nice and encouraging. If memory serves they played MC Frontalot's track before I went on, so that's pretty cool. Tomorrow I'm supposed to be on CJOB in Winnipeg at 12:05pm on the "Adler On Line" show for 5-10 minutes and then I'm doing an interview for the Shredd and Regan show on WEDG in Buffalo. I'm not sure if that's going to be live or not.

Then Thursday morning I'm being a trooper and getting up early to do an interview with Joe Thomas for the morning show on WLAN-FM in Lancaster, PA.

For people who want to catch the BBC interview, someone named Ben posted a comment to one of these entries saying this:

If you're quick (by tomorrow) then you can catch the Radio 5 Live interview at [link]

Click listen again. Don't recall if his interview would be in the 1-2 am slot or the 2-3 am one...

I haven't tried listening (I think I sound like a dink), but I'm pretty sure the interview was early into the 2-3am slot.

Thanks to everyone who's been writing in, ordering CDs and leaving comments. This has been a pretty crazy ride and I really appreciate all the awesome support.

I think the BBC Radio 5 interview went all right last night as well. It was pretty quick and there was quite the delay on the phone line so I kind of had to talk all kamikaze style and just barrel through rather than go back and forth with the DJ much. Hope it sounded OK, there were awkward silences and I couldn't tell if that was due to the delay or if the DJ was shocked and horrified by the things I was saying. The pre-interview guy said something about not saying "bradsucks dot net" on the air because that would be too racy for the BBC, but then the host asked me for the URL and I wound up spelling S-U-C-K-S out on the radio which was kinda fun.

Before I forget: on the CBC they played Add's "Do You Measure Up" and a clip of my song "Look and Feel Years Younger". On the BBC they played about 10-20 seconds of "Erik, Someone Wants To Date You".

If you have sent me email, I will reply to it, things are just a bit nuts right now.

The CBC interview went OK, I think. At least that's what my mom says. I managed to fit in plugs to Songfight and Jeff at Actdead.com (they played his song). I don't remember much of the interview but I don't remember actually choking at any point so it couldn't have been that bad. The girl I met in the green room was there for this NaNoWriMo novel-in-a-month thing which is like the writing version of Songfight. That's pretty cool. I wonder if they fight all the time and diss each other's novels when they come out. I'm going to be interviewed by Rhod Sharp on BBC Radio 5 at 9:20pm EST or something. It's interesting having all this stuff happen because there's no time to be neurotic about just one thing.

I'm being interviewed about Outside the Inbox on CBC Radio today at 4 EST on the show All In A Day by Alan Neal.

Apparently the Toronto Star article is on the front page of the arts section. Yikes!