Saturday, August 3, 2002

The US music industry seems fairly broken these days. They haven't had a "product" in a few years and they seem decoupled with their addicts -- er, customers (they seem to treat them like addicts at least). They rail against the Internet and music theft, but there are many other structural problems that are more significant. This week's New York Times Magazine has a nice piece on the development of a new talent. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/magazine/04LATONA.html?8hpist A few things are striking. They get a basic package with some talent, looks and dancing ability and then attempt to create a marketable package. The concept of a passionate musician - especially the singer/songwriter - seems quite dead to these folks. A few years ago Courtney Love had a bit to say about the economics of the music industry. http://www.holemusic.com/speech/ In a previous existence I had some contact with indies as well as the major labels. In my mind Courtney has accurately described the RIAA and the majors, but she is being far too kind. 11:50:04 AM     But it was written all over his face! The current New Yorker (August 5) has a fine piece by Malcolm Gladwell on Paul Ekman and the system of facial coding that he has developed over the past few decades. I'm not a judge of the science here, but the claim is that one can study "actions" of the facial muscles (singly and in combination with others) and deduce voluntary and involuntary information from a person. There even appears to be a feedback mechanism where your mood and mental state can be influenced by facial expression, so keep that smile. A fascinating read and well worth the price of the magazine if you don't subscribe. A quick tour of the web brings up a few of the expressions in Ekman's FACS http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/face/www/facs.htm as well as information on his latest manual and software. http://dataface.nirc.com/Expression/FACS/New_Version/new_version.html I came to the conclusion that it would be fascinating to go through the manual and learn this, but I may not want to be like Diogenes (assuming it really works). Of course if you work for Pixar and do animation, this may be important stuff. Equally interesting was a piece on Bill Moyer's NOW last night focusing on political and environmental issues associated with "mountain topping" in Southern West Virginia. This is one of the nasty consequences of our dependency on coal for energy and the Republican Parties' dependency on coal for a critical political base and part of their general energy and environmental policy. http://www.pbs.org/now/science/coal.html Some good links to other resources on the web are listed as well as a transcript of the program if you can't watch it. I was listening to Stadtpfeiffer (Piffaro Ensemble, Dorian - #90292 ) on my pre-dawn walk today. This is wonderful wind music from the Germanh Renaissance (obscure composers) and I can't recommend it highly enough. I love my iPod. If you want to listen to a sample, check out Amazon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000056OE8/qid=1028366394/sr=2-3/ref=sr_2_3/002-8043928-8969649 4:55:09 AM

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