Lord Mandelson’s draconian anti-filesharing plans are designed to save the music business. But does it need saving?
Thanks to evil music pirates, sales of singles in 2009 are, er, higher than they’ve ever been. “This truly is the era of the digital single,” Martin Talbot of the Official Charts Company says.
“The UK Top 40 is now almost entirely comprised of digital singles,” the British Phonographic Industry says. So does the music business really need saving from technology – or is technology saving it from itself?
Category: Media
Journalism, radio and stuff like that
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Technology will save music
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Android 2: the rise of the robots
In many ways Android is a bit like Windows. The first version of Windows wasn’t up to much, but Microsoft refined it, refined it, refined it a bit more and then used it to take over the Earth.
Google’s doing the same.
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Digital Britain isn’t accessible enough
A new post on Techradar, based on one blogger’s unhappy experiences of accessibility – both online and in the real world:
“What will it take take for Deaf and Disabled people to be a real part of so called Digital Britain?” Smith says. “Why do we have to fight for our access needs so much? Where are there no live subtitles streaming online at conferences? Where’s the audio description? Why aren’t websites compatible with screen readers? Why can’t conferences get the access right?”
They’re good questions. Does anybody have the answers?
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Windows 7: can you trust the reviews?
It’s the best Windows yet, we’re told, but the reviewers said the same thing about Vista. Can we trust them? What’s different about Windows 7?
…unfair or not, people did criticise Microsoft – again and again and again and again, until the man on the street believed that Vista was as desirable as a six-month submarine trip with Fred “Farty” Finnegan and a kitchen stocked only with Guinness and sprouts.
So are the experts right this time? Will Windows 7 fare better? We think it will.
The “it’s just Vista done right” slur isn’t a slur to these eyes, because it’s largely true
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The UK broadband tax: it’ll end up financing another war with France
Income tax was introduced in 1798 to fund the war against Napoleon, and as you might have noticed he’s been dead for quite a while now.
Technically, income tax is still a temporary tax – the government has to renew it every year in a Finance Act – and we’ve got rid of it on numerous occasions, only to bring it back again when the government of the day runs out of money to pay for wars or wallpaper…
We’re already hearing the sound of goalposts moving: depending on what you read the tax is either to pay for 2012 (broadband for everyone), 2017 (“next generation” broadband for 90% of the population) or 2032 (another war against France, just for a laugh).
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Watchdog’s “expose” of the PlayStation 3 Yellow Light of Death
I’m gutted. A gadget that cost me over £300 has packed up, and it’s taunting me with a flickering LED. I called the manufacturer and they’ve told me that since it’s out of warranty, it’s going to cost me money for an engineer to look at it – and if I’m right and it is gubbed, it’ll cost a small fortune to repair it.
PS3? Nope. Dishwasher.
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Spotify on mobile is doomed to failure
Sorry I’ve been quiet: still ill. But not too ill to predict doom! DOOM!
in order to exist, Spotify has to pay the bills – and you can be confident that it’s paying rates that the BBC would laugh at. By all accounts the going royalty rate for streaming music is around 1p per stream, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you start getting lots of users.
One user listening to ten streams per day is 10p a day, or £3.00 per month – which means Spotify’s paying more than the BBC spends on its entire radio and online output.
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iTunes 9 is Quite Good
iTunes 9 is out. It does some interesting things. Still crashes a lot though. Here’s a review I’ve written.
iTunes 9 feels snappier, the column browser is a much-needed improvement and the Home Sharing feature works very well, although on our Mac at least iTunes 9 doesn’t seem any less crash-prone than its predecessor.
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Digital Tattoos: it’s not that the kids don’t know. It’s that they don’t care
Symantec has published a survey about kids’ use of social networks, suggesting that they don’t know or have forgotten that what they put online can hang around forever. I think Symantec is wrong.
They do know. They haven’t forgotten. They just don’t care.
Young people do lots of dumb things, but it’s not that they don’t know better. I knew that smoking was dumb and dangerous, but I still started smoking.
I knew drinking two bottles of Buckfast and surfing on top of a Ford Transit wasn’t very bright, but I still did it.
I knew that driving like a complete idiot wasn’t particularly sensible, but I did that, too. I knew that pouring petrol over myself and lighting it was a bit risky, but WHOOMPH. And so on.
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Snow Leopard and Windows 7; also, why does Opera bother?
Here’s a pair of pieces I’ve written for Techradar. First, Snow Leopard versus Windows 7. Which is better? It’s a bit more complicated than that:
So which is better? We think that’s the wrong question. Snow Leopard is better than Leopard, and Windows 7 is better than Windows Vista. If you aren’t planning to buy a new computer in the not too distant future, that’s all that matters: whichever platform you’re currently running, upgrading is well worth the money.
Secondly, why does Opera bother making a desktop browser?
Whenever we write about a new version of Opera, we feel like Top Gear‘s James May updating the audience on the Dacia Sandero.
Opera isn’t a bad browser by any means – quite the opposite – but like the Dacia, it’s something foreigners go for while we don’t.