How technology killed (and then saved) music

by Cody Kitaura

Years from now, people may look back and say that technology both ruined music and saved it.

Over time, there have been many controversial developments in technology that have drastically changed music, and not everyone has been happy about them. Now, there have been major technological advancements that may forever change hip-hop, rock and classical music for the better.

Hip-hop
The house of hip-hop was built on a foundation of sampling, and it’s why some people have a fundamental problem with the genre. It’s debatable, but some might argue that rapping over a lick from a Motown hit takes less creativity than writing the initial song did.

Now, increasing costs mean more and more artists are abandoning sampling – or at least cutting back. Spin magazine reports that the average cost to clear a sample from its original owner is about $10,000.

"In the old days, samples were $2,500 or $1,500," the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA told Spin.

And artists hoping to sneak a sample from a lesser-known musician without paying now have the Internet to consider.

“You'd be surprised who's out there Googling themselves," Eothen Alapatt, general manager of Stones Throw Records, told Spin.

Because of these high costs, hip-hop of the future may sound very different than the sample-based albums of the past. According to Spin, Kayne West’s latest album, 808s and Heartbreaks, features no prominent samples – his last, Graduation, used samples on 10 of its 13 tracks.

So if this trend threatens to change the fundamental basis of hip-hop, how can it be good? Because hip-hop was never supposed to be about the hook. It was supposed to be about one thing: the lyrics. Somewhere along the line, record companies took over and hip-hop became about pumping out mindless club hits. If this trend takes hold, maybe it will draw attention to what really matters: the lyrics (even if it does mean enduring some meager electronic production).

Rock
Today, it’s hard to tell who’s really playing the music heard on the radio. Advancements in recording studio technology have made it easy to stretch an off-beat drum fill, clean up a sloppy guitar riff or straighten out an off-pitch singer.

Now, the Internet is helping musicians find more ways to focus on the most pure form of music: live music.

eJamming’s AUDiiO software is a peer-to-peer network that allows musicians to use Web connections to jam online with other musicians – no matter where they are. The company emphasizes the service is focused on allowing musicians to jam with each other no matter the distance between them, but its real strength may be the revival of the jam session.

In a live jam, there is (usually) no studio trickery available to hide missteps. In the CES demo of eJamming, Smash Mouth’s Steve Harwell sings a few wrong notes as he jams online with his band mates. But that matters a lot less in a live jam, where the energy and spirit are the focus.

If eJamming takes hold, perhaps musicians and listeners will stop focusing so much on artificial studio perfection and rediscover live music.

Classical
Classical music has been confined to conservatories and stuffy concert halls, and YouTube is hoping to change that with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. The project allows musicians to download sheet music for an original composition by Chinese composer Tan Dun, practice, and upload their video auditions.

Once musicians upload videos of their tries at the piece, judges will select semi-finalists, with the final musicians (who will perform the piece in Carnegie Hall in April 2009) to be chosen by YouTube viewers.

The LA Times’ Meghan Daum thinks letting the average YouTube viewer is too ignorant to be trusted with the final choice.

“How, after all, can an audience raised on Auto-Tune vocal enhancement and digital sampling be expected to tell one violinist's pizzicato technique from another's?” she wrote.

Daum is missing the point. If Dun wanted his piece to be performed only by the best of the best, he would have left it at the demo video recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra. In fact, he doesn’t seem too concerned about perfection. He encourages musicians to enter videos using “any instrument . . . or without any instrument,” like kitchen utensils, rocks or paper.

“Anything could be the way – could be your language to talk to the people,” he said in an interview posted to the site. “But all this sound is the language of your heart – nothing related to the technique. That’s the future of the expression of music.”

If enough people enter videos and become involved with the selection process, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra could be a revival of classical music – not in terms of technique or virtuosity, but in terms of the way people appreciate it.

[completely irrelevant photo courtesy flickr user Orange_Beard]

Five reasons Cyber Monday should replace Black Friday

by Cody Kitaura

Someone should tell all those people who on Friday wrapped themselves in fleece and shivered outside Best Buy about this thing called the Internet. It’s pretty fantastic, really. Not only does it make waiting in line outside a brick-and-mortar store before opening a thing of the past, it can even compete with the wild deals offered as part of Black Friday.

Today is Cyber Monday, the Internet’s answer to the wild sales offered as part of Black Friday. There are deep discounts, free shipping and plenty of big, bright ads. It was coined in 2005 when the National Retail Federation noticed a spike in traffic the Monday after Black Friday. Now its influence is growing; with any luck, it might some day even replace Black Friday. Here are a few ways we'd all benefit from such a switch.

1. Give power to the people

One of the main reasons Black Friday is so frantic is obvious. By scheduling the best sales to only last for a few hours, retailers trick shoppers into a frantic race to buy before someone else does. They tightly control the supply of discounted items, and whip shoppers into a frenzied mob obsessed with saving a few bucks.

It’s much harder to create a rabid mob of shoppers when they can’t see each other, so shoppers on Cyber Monday are much more likely to stay level-headed when hunting for deals. Without the added pressure that another shopping might beat you to the HDTV section, it’s much easier to stay calm and do some research before buying.

But online retailers are fighting to find a way to drum up some Cyber Monday chaos – eBay is running a series of “holiday doorbusters,” secret "Buy it Now" items like a Nintendo Wii or a new Corvette listed occasionally on the site for only $1. This is a clever attempt to carry over some of the frantic emotion from Black Friday, but someone should tell eBay two things:

1. A website has no door.

2. The $1 items are apparently being snatched up seconds after they are listed by scripted “bots” programmed to hunt the site faster than any human possibly could. Where’s the fun in that?

2. Stay safe

It’s a sad reflection of our society when a guide to shopping has to include an entry on personal safety, but facing off against the wild, deal-crazed mob created by Black Friday can be legitimately dangerous. There have been at least two instances of Black Friday tragedy this year:

In Long Island, N.Y., a temporary Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death as a flood of shoppers broke through the store’s front doors just minutes before its 5 a.m. opening. The family of Jdimytai Damour will have to spend the holidays without the 34-year-old fan of movies, Anime and politics. Hopefully the hundreds of people who “had to step over or around him or unfortunately on him to get into the Wal-Mart store” will enjoy the fruits of their shopping trip.

A Southern California Toys R Us was the scene of another Black Friday tragedy, as two men shot each other to death in the middle of the store’s crowded aisles about 11:30 a.m. Toys R Us officials were quick to try to dissociate the incident from Black Friday.

“Our understanding is that this act seems to have been the result of a personal dispute between the individuals involved,” the company said in a statement. “Therefore, it would be inaccurate to associate the events of today with Black Friday.”

Frenzied mob or not, the average shopper does not bring a loaded weapon to Toys R Us. But it’s still too early to know for sure whether this dispute was related to past tension or a fight over a toy.

3. Sleep in

Some people look better in their pajamas than others. It’s as simple as that. And even if you are a “morning person,” odds are you aren’t a “get frostbite in line at Best Buy person.”

4. Take your time

Miss today's deals? Don't worry, there's always next week's Cyber Monday. Although today's is the most prominent, each Monday between Thanksgiving and Christmas is considered a Cyber Monday. A few years ago, retailers noticed a spike in online shopping on each of these Mondays, and decided to capitalize on it with sales and promotions.

5. Don’t end up on YouTube

There’s just something about Wal-Mart that attracts the strangest group of shoppers, so it’s no surprise that the added mob mentality of Black Friday affects them more so than the clientele of other stores. It’s not like viewers of this video will commend the shoppers piling on each other for the last Xbox 360 for their shopping prowess. A more likely reaction is pity for and disappointment in our society.



[note] Want to find Cyber Monday deals? Deal aggregators abound, including the sites listed in this article, dealhack.com, as well as tech blogs like Gizmodo and Engadget.

What Marcos Breton missed: The tech tips you'll need to get a job as a journalist

by Cody Kitaura

Marcos Bretón means well, but he probably isn't the best person to ask for job-hunting help. The Sacramento Bee columnist spoke to our column writing class last week, and answered many questions from the hungry and apprehensive journalism majors the same way: with stories from his tooth-and-nail climb up the newsroom hierarchy and his “bullish” view on newspapers.

He had a lot of good stories, but he didn't seem to have much in the way of job-hunting tips. He clearly understands that journalism is changing, but his advice was more philosophical than concrete.

As many journalism students near graduation, they may face a more uncertain future than ever before. But there are a few things they can do to better prepare themselves for jobs in the real world:

1. Don't fear the reaper

Nothing is certain in the future of news. The Christian Science Monitor's 90-year history didn't guarantee its safety, and in April the newspaper will cease daily printing and focus on its website and a new weekend edition. Its editor called it “a leap that most newspapers will have to make in the next five years.”

The theme here is not the death of newspapers. It is the evolution of newspapers into new forms – many of which probably have not yet been developed. It's important for journalists to be flexible and to not be afraid of change.

2. Video, video, video

When readers hear about an event that has a great visual aspect (a protest, a fire, exotic locales, etc), they expect to see video. It might end up being part of the average journalist's job to carry a video camera and, when necessary, abandon a traditional story in favor of a video.

In order to be competitive in today's job market, it's more important than ever for journalists to become jacks-of-all-trade – and that includes video. Learning the basics of video doesn't take much specific training, but it does take time and practice.

One of the most important things for journalists to remember is that video is just another tool. A video won't add to every kind of story, so it's just as important to develop a sense for when to shoot video (example: A video of an elevator's grand opening = boring. A video of a skateboarder = visually interesting.).

3. Learn the tools, but don't focus on them

News organizations around the country are scrambling to form accounts with the micro-blogging service Twitter – a website many organizations use to post links and connect with readers. In the process, it's easy to get so caught up in the excitement of learning about shiny new web tools that you forget what you're going to use them for. Jeremiah Owyang, a web analyst, has a perfect analogy:

“Instead of honing in on the specific technology, you should approach developing your web strategy as you would building a house. Focus on who you’re inviting to come over to your property (websites) and what is it that they want (needs). Start there.”

The moral here is that new tools like Twitter, Facebook, blogs and RSS feeds are useful, but they are the means, not the end. Journalists should familiarize themselves with these tools, but focus more on how they can be used (NYU's Jay Rosen agrees).

4. Pay attention in journalism school

None of this matters if a journalist can't piece together a decent sentence. A tech-savvy journalist with no writing skills won't be much better off than a great writer with a 19th-century tech sensibility.

Out in the real world, journalists will be competing with crowds of bloggers and citizen journalists. Journalism school teaches a vital skill many of them lack – the ability to analyze.

As multitudes of smaller outlets compete for readers, it's possible that the role of newspapers will change to focus on more long-term, team-based stories that probe deeply into government policies or environmental issues.

In order to stand out, it's important for journalists to have a strong foundation in these skills.



These are just a few basic tips to help prepare journalists for the real world, but the most important thing to remember is that no one has all the answers. No one can predict what news organizations will look like in five or 10 years – but that doesn't mean we can't all be a little more prepared for that future.

[photo courtesy Flickr user from a second story.]

[disclaimer: I am not in the business of hiring journalists. These are just my personal opinions on what employers will probably be looking for in the near future. I don't have all the answers. If I did, I'd write a book and get rich.]

Obama's YouTube address misses the entire point of YouTube

by Cody Kitaura

The next Presidency has a face, but it isn't listening to you.

On Saturday, President-elect Barack Obama delivered the first of what will become weekly addresses – on YouTube. His first 3 ½ minute address touched on the grim future of the economy and urged Congress to take quick action to kickstart it.

Using YouTube to deliver weekly addresses like this is a great step forward. More people are likely to watch these addresses if they're sitting on the front page of YouTube – a site they likely already visit – rather than on that dusty, boring other site: WhiteHouse.gov.

But Obama's first address is missing out on the most important feature of YouTube: interaction. Comments and ratings are not allowed on the video, and video responses cannot be posted. By barring interaction with his addresses, Obama is using YouTube more like a buzzword rather than a new type of openness.

Members of his “transition team” have been treating policies like the weekly YouTube addresses as great leaps forward in transparency, under the assumption that when people hear earnest, frequent messages from the government, they will trust it more.

Well, it worked for FDR.

The last time a president made such a radical shift in the way he communicated with the public was during the first term of Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he began a series of informal evening radio addresses – the fireside chats.

Obama's promised weekly addresses have already drawn many comparisons to Roosevelt's, and with good reason. The first of Roosevelt's fireside chats started, “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking . . .”

That was 1933, and the country was buried in economic turmoil. Now, as the country again faces deep economic problems, Obama is hoping to use a similar approach to communicate with the public, but there's a problem – Obama is using a 1933 approach to a 2008 medium.

Roosevelt's fireside chats were over the radio. Radios only work one way. Obama's weekly addresses will be broadcast around the world via YouTube. YouTube is a social media website – it is at its best when videos are accompanied by thoughtful comments and intelligent response videos.

But wait – that's not the YouTube you or I know. The real-world YouTube is full of trolls, comments begging for viewers to take a peek at someone else's video, and responses luring viewers to unrelated videos with screenshots of plump, barely covered breasts.

Maybe there just aren't enough people in the “transition team” to filter out all the noise created by the more juvenile members of YouTube. Maybe Obama doesn't want his weekly addresses to be bombarded with video responses that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. That's only natural, right?

Well, there's only one way to find out – and so far, the team behind Change.gov seems willing to dip its toe into the waters of new media, but it's not ready for the full plunge into – (gasp!) – allowing comments.

Obama has always been a master of controlling his message and not allowing too much open conversation, according to Chris Parsons, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He told NPR that a perfect example of this was Obama's carefully prepared response to the fiery remarks of Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"Part of the power of it, I think, was that he hadn't spoken to that issue over and over again, every time a reporter showed up with a microphone," Parsons told NPR. "He saved it for a moment where he could craft it and tell it in his way, without being interrupted or filtered."

Obama is a powerful orator, and waiting for the right moment to speak allows his words to have maximum effect on all of us. But without embracing the true strengths of Web 2.0 technologies and encouraging open dialogue, Obama is simply continuing age-old strategies for delivering a message down a one-way pipeline.

Mr. President-elect, we need dialogue. It's 2008 – we don't need a 1933 message in HD. We need a message that will spur conversation and debate – the kinds of debate that should be shaping your policies to begin with.

Review: Servers hop frantically at Hoppy Brewing Co.

by Cody Kitaura

The Hoppy Brewing Co. in Sacramento faces a dilemma any microbrewery must face: Is it a bar, or is it a restaurant? The excellent food and bright interior suggest a restaurant, but the sports pages posted in the restroom and the tragically slow service scream crowded pub.

And that's exactly what the Hoppy Brewing Co. became on Tuesday night. The multitude of TV screens were tuned to election coverage, and the hordes of people in the main eating area let out a cheer every time a state turned their color.

Considering the crowd amassed in the dining area, our wait was relatively short – although one prudent member of our party had actually been on time (and had hence been waiting for the rest of us for a while).

Once we became the waiter's responsibility, we received considerably less attention – perhaps with good cause. Every time an employee wanted to reach one of the inner tables, he or she seemed to have to squeeze sideways and carefully maneuver between one packed table after another. They moved with purpose, and barely seemed to break stride when stopping to fill up waters or remove salad plates.

Browsing the menu, vegetarians or vegans used to having only one or two entrees to choose from will fare a little better here. There's a multitude of seafood options, and anyone with a more strict diet will have about one item from each category to choose from, including the impossibly hard-to-pronounce Capellini Pomodoro ($8.75; $2 more with chicken, $3 more with prawns or crab) – a mouthfull of Italian that seems out of place in a brewpub with a giant, yellow smiley face for a logo.

It came with the standard option of a soup or salad. The raucous crowd made it hard to hear the long list of soups our waiter quickly spat out, so I chose the first one that I could repeat: baked potato. It seemed like a good idea until, a few bites in, a thick slab of bacon floated to the creamy surface (it was my fault for not asking, but the waiter didn't seem to have time for questions).

“Maybe you can get them to give you something else,” a friend suggested. A couple moments later, the nearly full bowl had been whisked away without as much as a passing glance from the busboy.

Eventually, the main courses arrived and it was a moot point. The capellini noodles sat low in a bowl so large it made the portion look diminutive. Steam rose from the bowl of thin noodles, fresh tomatoes and a thin pool of white wine sauce.

The entire mixture of basil, garlic and tomatoes was tangy and bright, but also very light. After a few eager minutes with it, the portion seemed more generous than it did at first. The smooth taste, however, made the pasta disappear relatively quickly.

It might seem sacrilegious to visit a microbrewery and have just water to drink, but a beer didn't seem like a good pairing with a cold and a sore throat – even if they were free to people who voted. This decision too, almost seemed moot, considering the amount of time my glass spent empty.

But maybe it wasn't the waiter's fault. It seemed like he had control over almost half the dining area, which was packed. If it had been split between more waiters, perhaps it wouldn't have taken what seemed like an eternity to receive our separate bills (but then again, perhaps a long delay is to be expected with seven separate checks).

Still, the rushed demeanor of the employees left almost as much of an impression as the garlic, which lingered for hours after our visit.


View Larger Map

High-megapixel camera phones won't make you a better photographer

by Cody Kitaura

The megapixel war is on, but it's not where you might expect it – among high-end camera phones.

With the 8-megapixel phones slowly filtering onto the scene, cell phone manufacturers are trying to do for photography what the iPod did for music: take it everywhere, just in a slightly lower-quality package.

It's nothing consumers haven't done before. It used to be that if someone wanted to listen to music on the go, he or she had to lug around a pile of extra cassettes or CDs. Then came the iPod: Thousands of songs could be stored on a single device that would fit in your pocket. The quality wasn't great, but no one seemed to mind. In fact, compressed, so-so-quality mp3 files and tiny, white earbuds became the norm. Music didn't have to sound good anymore – it was convenient.

Music has become simply a backdrop for our daily lives, and a dropoff in sound quality has become an acceptable tradeoff for convenience.

Now cell phone manufacturers are trying to do the same thing: make consumers accept decent quality snapshots in exchange for great portability.

Phones with 8-megapixel cameras are already in the works from LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, and many have advanced features like Xenon flashes, manual ISO adjustment and face-detection – all of which would have been completely unheard-of in a phone just a year or two ago.

Last week, an ad campaign set to run in men's magazine FHM for the Sony Ericsson C905 phone was revealed. It's the standard “busty woman holding the phone being advertised” photo, but with a catch: The full-page photo was shot using the camera phone being displayed in the ad.

British website Marketing Week reports that Sony Ericsson is claiming this as the first-ever ad shot with a cell-phone camera, and writes, “It aims to show that the C905's camera is as good as an ordinary digital camera.”

The 8.1 megapixel camera crammed into the C905 is certainly a step in the right direction, but don't expect to replicate the photo in this ad with every shot. Marketing Week also explains, “Bauer Media, the publisher of FHM, says it developed the idea of . . . of testing the camera for a photography shoot, and bought in a fashion photographer to take the pictures.”

Just because a camera (or a camera phone, for that matter) has a lot of megapixels, it doesn't mean it will make you a better photographer. The photo in this ad was illuminated by studio lights that probably cost more than the phone itself, and it was shot by a professional photographer who likely spent hours retouching it in Photoshop afterward.

A camera phone does not encourage this type of thoughtful approach to photos at all. It screams to hurry up and take the picture so you can get back to calling or texting your friends, surfing the web or checking your e-mail. With so many other features beckoning for your attention, it seems unlikely that anyone will bother to take the time to carefully frame each shot, consider shadows, or any of the other things professional photographers do each time they snap a photo.

So if the phones from LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson are any indication, more megapixels are the future of cell phones. Consumers seem to love the idea of “one device to rule them all,” as shown by the explosive popularity of the king of all-in-one, Apple's iPhone, but what they're really getting may be compromised versions of each device in exchange for convenience. If we don't want to lose our appreciation for quality in photography like we have with music, we can't let quick, decent-quality snapshots from camera phones replace the thoughtful process allowed by high-quality, dedicated cameras.

[camera phone picture courtesy Flickr user Travallai]

SanDisk's slotMusic is almost perfect for my mom

by Cody Kitaura

My mom has no idea how to use an iPod. She was overjoyed when I passed down my white iPod Shuffle to her a couple years ago when I upgraded, but she had no clue how it worked.

I painstakingly went over the process with her several times, showing her the nuances of Apple's iTunes software as she took careful notes.

A few days later, she asked me to explain it again. And again. And again.

What my mom needs is an mp3 player without the complicated software, downloads and playlist-syncing. Something she can just pick up, hit play, and take with her out into the garden.

Something like SanDisk's new slotMusic Player – a simple, no-frills mp3 player that plays high-quality mp3s from micro-SD cards.

There's only one problem: SanDisk isn't trying to sell slotMusic to my mom. It's trying to sell it to me.

The slotMusic system eliminates mp3 downloads and the need for physical CDs by selling music pre-loaded onto 1 GB micro-SD cards, like the ones already found in many cell phones. These cards are then loaded into SanDisk's own player, released earlier this month.

The player is a small, sleek brick about the size of a pack of gum with no LCD screen and only minimal controls. Just pop in the music and go. No confusion over which bitrate to choose when ripping mp3s from CDs. No wrangling with big-brother DRM technology found in downloads from iTunes and other online music stores.

As an added bonus, the cards are also playable by many cell phones, and can be read by any computer using the included USB adapter (or many SD card readers). The SanDisk slotMusic system has the benefit of enjoying a huge pre-existing infrastructure of compatible devices, but there are two problems: the price, and the music.

Simply put, no one under 30 years old will buy a SanDisk slotMusic player or card. Although the player is a reasonable $19.99 (and, of course, isn't needed if you're planning on listening with your cell phone), the cards retail for $14.99 each – $5 more than an album from most online sources, including mp3 goliath iTunes.

SanDisk would be quick to remind skeptics that extra $5 will also get them a 1 GB micro-SD card, which later could be packed with videos, pictures, documents, as well as much more than one album's worth of music.

But $5 more (currently $21.59 for SanDisk's version) will get a card with twice the capacity, which would make much more sense in a cell phone, especially considering most phones' memory cards are surprisingly difficult to swap.

But back to my mom. This all sounds like something that would be perfect for her, right?

Well, as long as she's into Usher, Young Jeezy or Nelly, sure.

The slotMusic library launched with about 30 different albums (11 were in stock recently at the Arden Way Best Buy), and while my mom might enjoy Elvis' “30 No. 1 Hits” (which I think my dad already owns on CD) or maybe even ABBA's “Gold” or Jimmy Buffet's “Songs You Know By Heart,” I doubt she'd be too interested in the latest offerings from the Pussycat Dolls, Rise Against or Rihanna.

Since it seems unlikely that young mp3-aficionados would suddenly flock to again buying music in a physical form, SanDisk's best chance at success will come from its older, less-tech-savvy customer base. The absence of albums these people would buy is a huge misstep, but it's still early in the life of slotMusic.

SanDisk's website brags, “The first slotMusic cards are here. Check back soon to order your favorites.”

Let's just hope they talk to somebody's mom before they finalize their next wave of releases.