Archive for February, 2006
Touts’ entertainment
Another festival sells out in record time, and all the tickets end up on eBay; this time it’s the turn of Scots music festival T in the Park, which sold out in an hour. As I write this, one pair of tickets is going for £1,020.
I hate ticket touts for several reasons (and not because I wanted to go to T in the Park; it’s not my thing). Their actions don’t just make it considerably more difficult for people to get tickets - there are never enough tickets to go round, and I don’t fancy being the harassed parent of a kid who absolutely, positively has to go to a gig where the only remaining tickets are on eBay - but they also encourage promoters to put prices up.
By swamping ticket phone lines and helping gigs sell out even faster than normal they help create a market for scum such as the ticket agencies who advertise sold-out tickets they don’t actually have, and in the long term, their actions mean that tickets will become non-transferable, so if for whatever reason you’ve bought tickets to a gig and can’t go, tough luck. And of course, there are plenty of touts who don’t seem to have a moral problem with making insane profits from charity concerts either.
May HM Customs and Excise give them all the financial rubber-glove treatment.
Trojans: not just for the PC in your life
The “first” OS X Trojan has been discovered, although it’s more of a proof of concept than anything serious.
OS X is relatively impervious to viruses and trojans, largely because you need to give programs permission before they can get anywhere serious on your computer. However, this one uses good old-fashioned social engineering by pretending to be something users might want to see. If they aren’t suspicious and enter their system password, then the trojan gets to do its stuff.
I wouldn’t rush out and buy Mac OS X anti-virus software just yet, but this wee beastie does prove that Mac owners shouldn’t be smug. The weakest link in any security system is usually a human being, and Mac owners can be just as dumb as PC owners.
Fun and games with the RIAA
It’s time for our semi-regular series, “What Bloody Stupid Crap is the RIAA Trying To Pull Today?” Today’s update comes from the EFF, via the Inquirer:
As part of the on-going DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted a filing that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are talking about making copies of your own CDs:
“Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.”
For those who may not remember, here’s what Don Verrilli said to the Supreme Court last year:
“The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it’s been on their website for some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod.”
If I understand what the RIAA is saying, “perfectly lawful” means “lawful until we change our mind.” So your ability to continue to make copies of your own CDs on your own iPod is entirely a matter of their sufferance.
On the impossibility of finding Edge in my local newsagent
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a magazine junkie: the only reason I freelance is to finance my ever-growing magazine habit, which makes it impossible for me to walk past a newsagent without buying something to read. Since I moved out of Glasgow’s West End (which boasts Barratt’s, a superb newsagent that stocks *everything*), though, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to buy anything that’s actually worth reading.
(advance warning: this is a rant rather than a considered piece)
I live just North of Glasgow in a fairly typical suburb: a small high street with an independent newsagent and an RS McColl, a small co-op and two large supermarkets. You can get Heat, Now, Grazia et al in all of them, but the magazines I’m actually interested in - Edge, Car, The Week and so on - are like gold dust.
It’s particularly bizarre for me because I write for *loads* of magazines, but I rarely get to see them. Practical Web Design, Computer Upgrade and many of the other titles I write for don’t appear in my local supermarkets, which are doing their best to put the local newsagents out of business. The local newsagents are gutting the shelves of low-volume titles too: they only have so much room, so why stock - say - a high-end web design title when you can stock Grazia instead? Low circulation titles are supported by the high-volume sellers, but now that people buy their Heat, Now and Marie Claire from Tesco the newsagents are less able to afford that cross-subsidisation.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that more and more supermarket shelf space is devoted to the top sellers: for example, my local Tesco devotes not one but four rack sections to FHM, two to Maxim, two to Red and so on. Essentially that means FHM isn’t replacing one magazine on the shelves, but four. Ech.
(Incidentally, my local supermarkets are pretty good when you compare them to other, slightly less local ones. The next-nearest ASDA’s magazine section is appalling and always out of date, while the nearest Sainsbury’s stocks about three titles.)
What the supermarkets are doing to publishing isn’t dramatically different to what they’ve done to record shops: low prices, guaranteed sellers, if you want something more obscure then you’re out of luck. However, at least in music we have downloads; until electronic paper finally comes out at a sensible price there’s no iTunes for magazines. There are, however, still two options available to you: you can get your newsagent to order specific titles (pretty much anything that’s published in the UK), or you can subscribe (which saves you a packet). The shelves are already dominated by the magazine giants, but orders and subscriptions can keep lower-circulation titles alive.
Mark Mulligan on post-Brits backslapping: “It’s the price, stupid”
As ever, Mark Mulligan from Jupiter Research gets right to the point about UK record sales:
UK music sales picked up after a slump not just because of good artists, but because CD prices dropped. And they dropped significantly. It is no coincidence that UK music sales were at their weakest when album prices were at their highest…
by 2004 we had 9.99 and cheaper chart albums. Lo and behold sales went up.
But instead of recognizing that they had found the optimum price point / sales margin balance, the big retailers took the increased sales as a cue to hike up prices again. So now if you walk into HMV or Virgin you’ll pay 13.99 again for a chart album. Yet the cheaper alternatives remain cheaper, for example I paid 6.99 for the Editors in Tesco and it was 13.99 in Virgin.
All that will be achieved by higher prices in the high street is driving people away from buying music again.
I trust I can rely on your dopes
One of the things that really bugs me is when street teams fill the internet with promotional crap while pretending to be Just Another Punter. It’s something I was going to be talking about on Radio Scotland this morning, but unfortunately time constraints meant we didn’t get to the problem of vested interests editing Wikipedia entries. Never mind, I can blog about it instead.
Stealth Marketing: Penny Arcade has been covering how it works in the games industry, while over at Metafilter they’ve spotted this ad by Epic records:
Do you blog, have lots of friends at your MySpace page, and love music?
Epic Records is looking for skilled, motivated interns to promote artists on social networking sites like MySpace, purevolume, Facebook & others.
This isn’t a new thing: since the initial success of Christina Aguilera - arguably the first artist who owes her career to street teams - everyone from unsigned indie bands to stadium bands has an army of (usually unpaid) marketing shills. As I wrote last year in .net:
A typical street team will lobby radio stations to play the new single, vote in every conceivable internet poll, and spread the word in chat rooms, message boards and weblogs. It’s very successful, but it’s also very controversial. Speaking to The Guardian about record companies’ teenybopper teams, John Bangs of the National Union of Teachers fumed: “It exploits children for the benefit of the record company alone. There are many ways of marketing to children, but these methods are unacceptable.”
Xavier Adam agrees. The md of the Adam Media Consultancy (www.xavieradam.com) says: “Using children is not ethical… These tactics can and do backfire. They are seen as unethical by the public at large, despite what the industry may think.” He continues: “It’s a form of spam, although it is more targeted than general email spam.”
It’s not just record companies, though. One of the things I like about the net - one of its most important features - is its ability to let you see real opinions rather than corporate spin. Street teams put the spin back in, whether they’re fixing online polls, rewriting Wikis or reviewing books they haven’t read on Amazon.
On the subject of which, MetaFilter user NailsTheCat points to a very sensible suggestion for fixing Amazon’s reviews, which are prone to PR puffery and fanboy crap:
There is, in my opinion, only one solution to Amazon.com’s fraud-ridden book review system: Only customers who purchased the book from Amazon.com should be able to post a review on that book.
It all comes down to my favourite subject, the tragedy of the commons: whenever you’ve got something open to the public, a small minority will do their best to ruin things for everyone else.
Shills’ activities are self-defeating. For example, when I first used Amazon I used the reviews to help me find things I might be interested in; now, I assume every single one of them is written by an idiot or someone with a vested interest (unless it’s a review of a game or console that isn’t out for six months, in which case I *know* the review’s by an idiot). When I see an online vote for new bands, I assume the winner is the one who mobilised the most people, or who hit reload most often. And when I see a post praising some hitherto-unheard-of band, I assume it’s the singer’s girlfriend. I’m usually right.
There’s an irony here. Thanks to review sites, blogs, newsgroups and forums, I can get a wider range of opinion than ever before - but because corporate shills, fanboys and nut-jobs are doing a fine job of turning the wisdom of crowds into the mooing of herds, I rarely make buying decisions on the basis of strangers’ opinions. If anything, street teams and shills are turning back the clock for me: if I want to know about a game I’ll see what Edge and Eurogamer think, or ask my brother; if I want to know about gadgets, music, movies or TV I’ll again turn to reviewers and the people I know (both in real life and via this blog). While I do use the net, the sites I turn to are the ones that resemble traditional magazines: engadget, eurogamer and so on.
Put it this way: you’re considering a PlayStation 3. Here’s the verdict from “W from England” on Amazon.co.uk:
This beast of a console is nearly as powerful or as powerful as some computers. This shows the amount of effort that Sony have put into this Super console. From the disgin of the the look of the console to the smallist micro chip no expense has been spared and no short cuts have been taken. This Consle will more than likly blow away all the comption. The playstion 3 when speaking off the graphics and power is in a different league to microsofts X-box 360.
The games that i have seen are so life like that it will feel as thought you are in the game.
I can not what until the day the console comes out because ill be waiting at the door for the postman. Just order yours so you are no disappointed. You may have to book time off work or school that how important this console is!
I think I’ll wait for Edge’s verdict.
Quick product plug
If you’re on a Mac and hate spam, check out SpamSieve. I’m putting it through its paces for a possible review and after just a couple of days use, it’s catching 99% of spam with no false positives.
Seven deadly freelancing sins
Over at All Talk No Action, Paul has put together a sarky list of things freelancers get wrong. There’s a lot of truth in what he’s saying, but of course it’s begging a response from the freelance side of the fence. Unfortunately I’m busy missing deadlines, ignoring commission instructions and preparing to disappear the second I’ve submitted my cliched copy, so I’ll have to leave the rebuttal for a later post.
Baffling spam, again
It’s for penis pills. I’ve no idea what the following is supposed to mean.
Don t worry, it is not the last of pea-time… do not kill the clock!”
Spam and the law
Here’s a thing. It’s illegal for UK firms to spam UK email addresses, provided said addresses are personal - businesses can still be spammed silly. Anybody know how self-employed people are classified in terms of anti-spam law?