Spandau Ballet on HMS Belfast

So funny to see Spandau Ballet launching their comeback tour on the HMS Belfast, and the papers not picking up the relevance. For it was here that they played what IIRC was their 6th official gig. The one where all the record companies turned up and it all went public.

If I recall correctly their previous gigs included the Hope and Anchor, Chris and Ollie's warehouse party, the Blitz, the Scala Cinema (the old one) a I'm sure another one that I didn't go to, all leading up to the HMS Belfast Gig.

Hey, and who remembers the food fight on the Belfast?

I've got my ticket somewhere still, offers anyone?

The trouble with DRM...

...is when the law of unintended consequences gets wind of it.

On a recent visit to Barack Obama, the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was presented with a lovely set of DVDs of Classic American films (or movies if you like).

What a wonderful, thoughtful gift.

Whe problem was of course that when Gordon Brown returned to the UK and stuck those nice Region 1 DVDs in his nice Region 4 DVD Player - they wouldn't work! So a waste all round. More at The Enquirer

Japanese Culture

Now, I have to admit a real affection for Japan, the Japanese and Japanese culture. My parents lived there in the early seventies and I spend all my school holidays there.

I wasn't obsessed by it then, but we spent a lot of time in what was then a really unknown country, when they first went we didn't know anyone who had even met anyone Japanese person, except during the war. So we got the full strangeness of Japan, 1st hand.

Anyway James enough of the remeniscences, what's the point of this post? Well I am watching a TV program where some fatuous presenter is trying to understand a Japanese concept (in this case Wabi Sabi) and failing to get it, in exactly the same way people did in the seventies.

Indeed the way we looked at it then was that every time you got to the point when you had the light bulb go on and you thought ha! I've got it, then something would happen to demonstrate that you hadn't got it at all. It was ever thus.

Doesn't stop me wanting to go back and live there again though.

PRS is not in the artists interest

Now that Youtube and PRS have broken off talks, and UK based Youtube viewers are now being denied access to music videos, the blanket of secrecy around how PRS works should come under closer scrutiny.

PRS are demanding fees for the webcasting of songs. Now, one can argue the rights and wrongs of that all day, is it promotion for the artist (see it on youtube, buy it on CD or download), or exploitation of the rights holder (they're stealing my stuff)? But the issues don't end there.

If, for arguments sake the rights holders should be paid for promotion of their product (sorry), how are they going to get paid? The beauty of the online world is measurability, you can count how many time an individual artists properties get accessed, not so much pay per click, more pay per play. And there is a good argument to say that that is exactly the kind of model I and others want - individuals getting paid for their creativity and efforts.

The PRS approach however is different, they "represent" artists and collect a song based fee irrespective of what that song is., and are not interested in what the song is. They say, stream a song, it's 4p each. Which is arguably fine, a friend on mine wrote a song that gets played occasionally on 80's nights and it is fair and proper that he gets recompensed (maybe). The problem is that PRS don't pay by number of plays!

Now, if you the artist or publisher provides evidence in the form of playlists or similar you can try and determine you rights, but unless you have access to all online services, radiom stations, pubs, clubs, etc. to get these playlists (if they exist) you are on a hiding to nothing. But PRS are still collecting the fees.

So where does the money go?

You could ask the PRS, short shrift there though, even members don't get a straight answer. But here's an interesting thing, who do you think are the biggest beneficiaries of this "unclaimed" money, why its the established artists. Think Phil Collins, Cliff Richard anyone who has had lots of number 1 hits, "they must be played most" goes the thinking. Hmm.

But regardless of the inequality of distribution, looking at the PRS published numbers for 2007 (the latest availabel on their website) online accounts for just 1.7% of their revenue, and they are prepared to block Youtube showing music videos in the UK.

Pathetic. If only they embraced this technology with a positive mindset there is a profitable future for thir members, at the moment they are working the very people they should be representing.

Gordon Brown and Housing

Gordon Brown was interviewed on the BBC this morning prior to addressing both houses of congress in the US.

The thorny question of blame came up as you would expect, especially given Chancellor Alistair Darlings comments about "collective responsibility" and "humility". What did we hear from our Prime Minister "the whole global financial system seized up" (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7922426.stm).

While this is true, it still avoids the underlying question of why the Global Financial System seized up, and that brings us back to the overheated housing market, in some senses a peculiarly British problem. It is like saying after a car accident that "there was a car accident" and avoiding the reasons why there was an accident, just blindly repeating that there was an accident.

I repeat, until we accept that the overheating housing market was a major cause of our current financial problems we are just waiting to restart the bubble.