A Japanese internet service provider last week announced that it would voluntarily block its customers from accessing a number of piracy websites. This came after the country’s government urged such action while it considers how to formally instigate web-blocking as an anti-piracy measure. However, now said ISP is being sued over allegations that those very web-blocks breach Japanese privacy laws.
Web-blocking, of course, has become an anti-piracy tactic of choice for the entertainment industry in many countries, with ISPs being ordered to block access to sites deemed to undertake or facilitate copyright infringement. In some countries specific web-blocking systems have been put in place, whereas in other jurisdictions – like the UK – the courts just started issuing web-block injunctions under existing copyright rules.
Earlier this month the Japanese government said it also favoured web-blocking as an anti-piracy measure. While ministers work out what legal framework might enable such a thing, internet firms were encouraged to act voluntarily against certain piracy sites, in particular platforms that facilitate the illegal sharing of manga and anime.
Responding to that, ISP NTT last week announced “short-term emergency measures until legal systems on site-blocking are implemented”. Those measures have seen sites highlighted by the government blocked.
When the Japanese government announced its web-blocking plans earlier in the month, some questioned whether blockades of that kind might breach privacy and free speech rights contained in the country’s constitution.
Now lawyer Yuichi Nakazawa, also an NTT customer, has gone legal accusing the net firm’s measures of being in breach of privacy law. In legal papers filed with the Tokyo District Court, Nakazawa says that the blockades in essence require the net firm to spy on their customers’ internet activity, which is not allowed under privacy rules.
The lawyer is quoted by Torrentfreak as saying: “NTT’s decision was made arbitrarily… without any legal basis. No matter how legitimate the objective of [stopping] copyright infringement is, it is very dangerous”. He adds that the “freedom” being threatened is “an important value of the internet”, and therefore legal action was appropriate to protect it.
In addition to potentially breaching constitutional rights and the country’s telecommunication laws, Nakazawa reckons the web-blocks may also put the ISP in breach of his contract with the company.
The lawyer goes on: “There is an internet connection agreement between me and NTT. There is no provision in the contract between me and NTT to allow arbitrary interruption of communications”.
It remains to be seen how NTT responds to the litigation, but it will surely put other ISPs off the idea of acting voluntarily on this, while piling pressure onto lawmakers to provide a clear legal framework regarding web-blocking in the country. Though they too will have to find a way of making such measures compliant with the constitution.
Billboard has confirmed details of its impending chart policy revamp. The trade mag and its best buds over at stats firm Nielsen are changing how they count streams when compiling the various American music charts.
Basically paid-for streams are going to be worth more than free streams when it comes to said charts because – well – mainly because Jimmy Iovine had a moan, I think. I mean, imagine a free Spotify stream having as much weight in the charts as a paid-for Apple stream!
The shift to streaming has created all sorts of challenges for chart compilers. First, how to mix streams in with CD and download sales. And then secondly, how to combine data from the different kinds of streaming platforms, including free, paid-for, on-demand, personalised radio and user-upload sites.
Chart overseers in different countries have gone with different approaches, none of which are entirely satisfactory. Though, at the end of the day, the music charts are just a marketing platform really (and/or a means for point scoring within the industry), so no one should really lose too much sleep over the quirks and limitations in any one chart’s methodology.
Billboard confirmed last year that it was planning a rejig to make premium streams more influential in its musical lists. More details have now been revealed. Billboard’s main singles chart, the Hot 100, which was already confusing because it has long included radio airplay data alongside sales figures, will continue to count streams on most platforms, but from July there’ll be a points system depending on how the stream was accessed.
Explains Billboard: “[The chart] will have multiple weighted tiers of streaming plays for the Hot 100, which take into account paid subscription streams (representing a full point value per play), ad-supported streams (representing a 2/3-point value per play) and programmed streams (representing a 1/2-point value per play). Those values are then applied to the chart’s formula alongside all-genre radio airplay and digital song sales data”.
On the main albums chart, the Hot 200, you have the additional challenge of equating track streams with album sales. In that countdown, Billboard says: “[This chart] will now include two tiers of on-demand audio streams. Tier 1: paid subscription audio streams (equating 1,250 streams to 1 album unit) and Tier 2: ad-supported audio streams (equating 3,750 streams to 1 album unit)”.
A further review of all this musical counting will be conducted later this year, with plans already in the pipeline to add a further distinction – between fully-on-demand and partially on-demand premium streams – in 2019. Yay maths!
With a new album and TV show on the horizon, the charity-minded entertainer is focusing on the bigger picture
Kellie Pickler appears at CMA Music Festival in June. The singer says she’s focusing on a future of charity work. Rick Diamond/GettyImages
“I don’t care about what you’re wearing or what I’m wearing. I don’t give a shit about clothes,” Kellie Pickler tells Rolling Stone Country, seated backstage at the CMT Music Awards earlier this month with her husband Kyle Jacobs. In a dress of turquoise sparkles and jeweled heels, she can certainly turn on the designer glitter when the occasion demands, but she’d much rather talk about the men and women in army fatigues whom she’s met during eight USO tours than whoever made her (very shiny) clutch purse.
“It’s imperative that we get back to the basics,” she says. “Get back to what matters and what’s really important. Not our shoes, not our hair, not our makeup. Can’t take it with ya. I do my job as a vehicle to get me in the door so I can be a part of people’s lives and make a difference.”
For Pickler — who is gearing up to launch her CMT reality show with Jacobs, tentatively titled I Love Kellie Picker, in the fall, as well as beginning work on her next LP — the music is a handy way to gain the visibility she needs to pursue more charitable endeavors. Namely, her work with the military, but Jacobs mentions thinking bigger: starting some orphanages, traveling the globe. “The goal is to get to a place where we can cash out and help the world,” Pickler says.
It’s not bloated talk. Way more than just engaging in a staged celebrity photo op, Pickler’s traveled to Afghanistan and Iraq, andreceived the first-annual Operation Troop Aid Chris Kyle Patriot Award at LP Field during CMA Fest from the parents of theAmerican Sniper author himself, recognizing her service.
Her newest single, “Feeling Tonight,” however, shows the duality of the onetime American Idol hopeful — it’s pure summertime breeze, as serious as silly jokes about the correct way to pronounce “salmon.” Though she’s singing about the early butterflies of young love, the song actually marks the first time she’s enlisted her husband as producer, who will also have a hand in the entire new LP.
“We met and then we started writing the very next day together,” Pickler says. “So we have been writing together for years. But we’ve never been in the studio together [before ‘Feeling Tonight’]. If we’re not happy with a lyric or a melody, we just change it. Make it right.”
Adds Jacobs, “Our marriage is first, one hundred percent. But we are also creative people.”
It’s an ethos that applies to their reality show as well. I Love Kellie Pickler will explore the more lighthearted moments of the couple’s Nashville life, though Pickler and Jacobs both hope that if it does well enough, there will eventually be a budget to allow for international travel and an integration of their philanthropic work. “We would love for the show to create an empire so we can go all around the world and make a difference,” Pickler says.
She’s also not eager to engage in the “Tomatogate” debate, opting to put things in perspective instead. “There are bigger issues going on in the world than being called a tomato,” she explains. “I’ve been called worse! If our biggest thing is fighting to get on the radio, then that’s a good problem to have, considering what other women are dealing with around the world, who would do anything to trade problems with women in country music.”
Despite her very serious side, Pickler’s still plenty goofy. Case in point: a certain photo bomb of the Terminator/Governator during the CMT Awards broadcast. “I was walking, going to my seat, and I saw the back of two people’s heads,” laughs Pickler, who copped a goofy face in the background. “But guess who it was? Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m mortified. I couldn’t see his face, all I saw was the back of his head — and then I thought, ‘Oh crap!’”
Some things never change.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/kellie-pickler-the-goal-is-to-cash-out-and-help-the-world-20150626#ixzz3eBu67n2T
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By now most of us are aware of various crowdsourcing campaigns being used to generate ideas, funds, or support for a brand or cause. Pepsi’s Refresh Project,Mystarbucksidea.com, and Dell’s Social Innovation Competition are three well-known examples. We are now witnessing a second generation of crowdsourcing efforts in which social entrepreneurs are reinventing their industries filling the voids left by traditional businesses.
Kickstarter, for instance, is a new way for artists to fund and follow creative projects whether they are film, music, theater, events, or gaming while still retaining 100% of the ownership. YouBloom is focused on emerging music cutting studios, agents, and traditional marketing out of the equation to enable people to fund the music and bands they want to hear. Spot.us takes a similar approach to journalism enabling readers to fund the stories they want to hear rather than accept what mainstream media is selling them. Ushahidi is an open source software platform that crowdsources information and visualizes it to enable individual to share their personal stories more easily.
These examples are part of a rising tide of crowdsourcing platforms that represent a serious challenge to top-down, traditional businesses. While these broadcast-focused businesses resist digital and social media, young, nimble companies are pouncing on marketplace opportunities the void. We have seen this changing of the guard time and again in the music, publishing, newspaper, and now marketing industries.
A fear of new technology is only part of the problem for these pre-digital and social companies. Implicit in their sluggish response is the self-delusion that they still retain full control over their brands and marketplace dynamics. Yet consumers now want to partner with companies that include them in the creative and marketing process by offering them a share of voice and stewardship of their favorite brands.
The seismic shift that has already occurred in the marketplace needs to be duplicated in corporate boardrooms. Young companies are signposts for the future and guidelines for how industry mainstays must change. If they don’t, they will become casualties of the tireless creative destruction of capitalism and will have no one to blame but themselves.
Do you think enough companies have woken up to the reality of social business? Or are you happy to see these inert companies disappear?
We talked to the rock legend and his team just as Pono’s Kickstarter campaign hit the $2 million mark.
The mood in the hotel courtyard could hardly be more upbeat. For the mix of musicians and businessmen standing around in the Austin sun, a huge milestone just happened: $2 million raised on Kickstarter in just over 24 hours. It’s good news for Neil Young and the team behind his Pono digital music player. But their work is far from finished.
After three years of preparation, Young formally announced Pono during his keynote address at South By Southwest on Tuesday. The project aims to bring high-resolution digital music to the masses via an iTunes-like storefront and a triangular-shaped device for music storage and playback. Both products will ship in the fall.
Shortly after Young’s keynote, the fledgling company went live on Kickstarter and more than doubled its $800,000 funding goal in less than one day. Sitting on a sofa outside his hotel room, Young is at once both elated and exhausted.
Neil Young in his Austin, TX hotel during SXSW
Why Pono Exists?
“We’ve had some pretty intense days,” says Young. “The team has been working really hard on the website and making decisions for Kickstarter. We’re also hoping to get the technical areas absolutely buttoned up. But it’s been good. We’ve managed to reach the goals we wanted to reach.”
For the rock legend turned startup founder, this week’s announcement marks the culmination of years of planning and building–turning an impassioned gripe into an actual company with a business plan and a physical product.
“With MP3s, you have less than 5% of the data that could be in that song if it was recorded at a higher resolution,” says Young. “And it was probably recorded at a much higher resolution that what you got. You’ve now purchased the right to recognize the song. But that’s about it. What you’re missing is the music.”
This is a drum Young has been beating for quite some time. In hismuch-publicized view, the convenience of digital music has come at the expense of sound quality. This is certainly true, technically speaking. For an album to be easily transferred over broadband and cellular networks, it needs to be crunched down to a manageable file size, inevitably losing some detail. At 320kbps, the highest quality tracks available through Spotify are still only 22% of the resolution of a compact disc. The AAC compression standard, considered an improvement over MP3s, is still just that–a compressed audio file. While the sound quality status quo has come a long way since the days of Napster, Young and purists like him are far from satisfied.
Still, today’s popular formats are clearly sufficient enough for the millions of music fans who purchase songs from iTunes and stream from services like Spotify. For audiophiles, lossless high-quality formats have long scratched the itch MP3s couldn’t. What Young and his team hope to do is take high-res audio up a notch and then market it to a crowd beyond the audio codec nerds.
“Things ebb and flow between convenience and quality,” says Pono CEO John Hamm, wielding a yellow prototype of the $400 device. “The laws of physics that kept us from quality in the early 2000s–bandwidth, capacity, memory, storage–we’ve solved those problems in the last 15 years. This is just another point on the convenience curve.”
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Hamm and his colleagues are quick to point out that they’re not trying to start a format war. Nor are they getting into the streaming music subscription game. Instead, they want to offer consumers what Young repeatedly refers to as “freedom of choice.” That is, the option to purchase music in a format that sounds as warm and high-fidelity as 180-gram vinyl, but with the convenience music fans have come to expect since Steve Jobs first held up Apple’s little white gadget on stage in 2001.
To get superior sound, Hamm tells me that they “get the highest quality digital master possible” from the record labels. In many cases, that means they’re getting an album at a higher quality than the CD version. But not always. The range of quality is “all over the place” but generally always better than the MP3s and streaming services. Whatever the purest available master happens to be is what they’ll sell through the PonoMusic store.
The device itself is engineered to play back high-resolution audio, not unlike the bulkier home systems for which audio geeks pay top dollar. Built in conjunction with Ayre Acoustics, the player promises to recreate the original analog sound using state-of-the-art circuitry, and what the company says is the best digital audio converter (DAC) on the market.
Hamm declines to compare the hardware to the inner workings of Apple’s iPod (about which he says he knows very little), but says that the Pono Player is the first device to include audiophile-grade engineering in a portable form factor.
At launch, the PonoMusic store will focus on selling albums rather than individual tracks like iTunes. Prices will vary depending on record label preferences, but on average they are expected to range from $15 to $24 per album. Once purchased, an album will download in lossless, DRM-free FLAC files. The player will support other filetypes like MP3, WAV, AIFF, ALAC and AAC as well.
What Pono Sounds Like?
Outside Young’s hotel room is a conglomeration of people who would rarely otherwise hang out. Members of the press, record executives, technologists, and budding rock stars mill about and make small talk. In the context of this private courtyard, Hamm and his colleagues are eager to let others give the Pono player a spin. The device, still in alpha, isn’t yet polished enough to let the public give it a whirl. But these guys, Hamm is confident, will “get it.” Especially the musicians.
Sure enough, after one of the young musicians puts on a pair of headphones, his face lights up.
“There it is!” Hamm shouts. “That’s what I call the Pono face,” referring to the expression made by most artists when they first hear the player. By now, dozens of other musicians have had a chance to listen to Pono–as evidenced by the star-studded promotional video posted to the project’s Kickstarter page–and their reactions tend to be similar.
When you first listen to Pono, it’s helpful to put on a familiar song. That way it’s easier to pick up on the details you may not have heard before. The rhythmic tap of a tambourine. The subtle resonance of an acoustic guitar string between chords. It’s these finer nuances that pop out, unencumbered by the digital compression. Even if they’re audible on the MP3 version of the song, they’re suddenly more noticeable. The details are crisp.
Picking these things out is also made easier by the fact that the mix of the song itself feels–at least in my brief testing–more spacious. Almost three-dimensional. Each instrument has more room to breathe. Some have commented that it sounds like you’re standing in the recording studio with the musicians. That’s a fair way to describe it.
For comparison’s sake, I press pause on the Pono player in the middle of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” and load up the same song on my iPhone, switching the headphones from jack to jack. Even at Spotify’s “extreme” offline quality of 320kbps, the song suddenly feels one-dimensional. Instead of the finely separated mix, the instrumentation and vocals feel packed into a more finite space.
Here’s the thing: The Spotify version doesn’t sound bad. It’s not like the early days of MP3s when the drums sounded warbly and certain tones would be notably absent from familiar songs. “Heart of Gold” on my iPhone sounds perfectly fine, as does the other music I download or stream at a high bit rate.
But Pono does sound different. It surfaces new things to the listener. As many have pointed out, the sound is “warm,” not unlike the analog sound of high-quality vinyl. The results will undoubtedly vary from album to album and speaker to speaker, but on the whole it does sound fuller and more pure than the audio files we’re used to.
“It’s hard to take your vinyl on a trip to London,” says Hamm. “So if you want the closest to the vinyl experience because you love something, it’s like taking your 30 favorite records with you. Those weren’t the ones you were listening to on Spotify.”
It’s worth noting that the majority of people who have heard Pono to date are musicians. It’s no accident. Young and Hamm have opted to market this an “artist-driven movement.” That’s a smart strategy, since people who spend their days in recording studios are going to appreciate the nuance of what’s different about Pono. It also helps to have rock stars enthusiastically praising the product you’re trying to launch. But there’s no money changing hands here. That perk is a natural by-product of who founded the company.
This also means that the product is virtually untested among non-musicians, so it’s hard to gauge how wide its appeal might be until units start shipping in October.
Will It Succeed?
Pono isn’t without its detractors. The people trying to get the project off the ground face a constant barrage of naysaying: High-bit rate MP3s are fine, thank you very much. Or as some have argued, the push for 24-bit, 192kHz audio north of CD quality is unnecessary because CDs are as good as it gets.
Whether or not there’s a big market for high-resolution digital audio among the general population remains to be seen. But the early crowdfunding results are a promising sign for those involved.
“Kickstarter is a phenomenal marketing tool,” says Young. “And it can be a great financing tool. With us, it’s turned out to be both.”
For these guys, taking the crowdfunding route allows them to drum up grassroots support among music fans–armed with celebrity endorsements–before ever asking a VC for money. It’s something Young admits would have been a challenge in these early days.
“No one was interested in rescuing an art form as far as something to invest in,” he says. “Whereas people are very interested in reducing an art form that makes daily life more fun for them.”
At the end of the day, this is a passion project. It’s something Young feels strongly about and he’s banking on the notion that others will feel the same way. It’s a much easier pitch to make to thousands of passionate music fans than it would be to a Silicon Valley VC firm. That can always come later, provided the launch goes as planned.
Like any fledgling company, Pono has had it challenges. Some early ideas about how to encode the audio had to be scrapped. Early design prototypes envisioned a device that would attach to your phone, a concept that was abandoned in favor of the three-sided device with its own touch screen.
And while they haven’t said anything about it publicly, there’s no such thing as a digital music startup for which licensing content is not an ongoing challenge. Those deals with labels will undoubtedly continue to be negotiated over the next few months as the engineers fine-tune the hardware and coders build out the storefront.
“The most challenging part has been keeping the company together while we have no money for months,” says Young. “But it’s a startup. People do that when they believe in something.”
