Digital Motion dot net

Mayangs Free Texture Library

Just stumbled across this site. Some pretty decent stuff, some not so great. Texture Library is a bit off though, not a lot that would work for 3D, but a lot of stuff that is generally well done and useful for many kinds of projects. The thing that I liked was their license model:

License

These
textures are
Copyright © Mayang Murni Adnin, 2001-2006. They have all been
taken by our own cameras or created by ourselves.

Use:

They are free to use for all
uses, whether commercial or non-commercial you may incorporate
them into your derived work with no requirement to pay us any licensing fee
etc. Your derived work must involve significant modification to the textures. It would be nice if you could credit us.

Sell:

You may not sell any of these textures in an unmodified form, or any derived works where the product you are selling is still a texture and is likely to compete with this website.

Redistribute:

You
may redistribute
give/send to somebody else/display on a web site up to 30 of these
textures together, but no more. You must credit this website as the
original source tell them about us.

So, Daniel Gross in Slate read the same article that I did in the NYTimes and came away with a very different conclusion.

He thinks that the CD (and the album) are alive and well, it is just the music business model that is bad. He points to several (of my favorite) small chain music stores that cater to more of a musical niche and says that since their business is booming, the CD must be doing just fine.

This argument makes no sense. It is like saying that because dance music companies and some independent record labels still produce and sell vinyl that the record is still alive and well.

The folks that shop at Rasputin’s, Wall of Sound, Other Music, and other are fanatics. How do I know? I’m one of them and I recognize the glint in the eye of my fellow shoppers when they come across that obscure Radboud Mens disc in the rack. We will continue to buy CDs (and vinyl) for a long time to come. Long after the rest of mainstream America has switched to digital downloads completely and the stores that cater to us will continue to thrive.

That said, this ballgame is nearly over. The fat lady has sung. Even the independents are moving to downloads. Shipping shiny discs around the world makes even less sense when you sell fewer of them and are completely dependent on your livelihood on the customer paying the store, the store paying the distributor, and the distributor paying you and then you recouping all the costs of manufacturing those shiny discs.

The business model for downloads is SOOO much more compelling than the business model for selling physical product. The only reason the majors haven’t switched is because they have so much invested in the infrastructure and can’t understand where things are going well enough to get in front of it. (Suing their customers isn’t helping too much either).

Lets bury this thing already, but first, please buy as many Unit Circle CDs as you can. I don’t want to store these things forever…

[my previous article]

The Album, a Commodity in Disfavor – New York Times

Last year, digital singles outsold plastic CD’s for the first time. So far this year, sales of digital songs have risen 54 percent, to roughly 189 million units, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. Digital album sales are rising at a slightly faster pace, but buyers of digital music are purchasing singles over albums by a margin of 19 to 1.

(I’d written this originally for my other blog, but I figured that it would make sense here too, so I cross-posted it)

On the one hand this is to be expected. The wheat/chaff ratio of tracks on pop music CDs is one of the chief reasons for the decline in CD sales and the rise of piracy according to polls done over the last 10 years. Also, it is a natural consequence of radio promotion which promotes the heck out of one song of an album, and then the next song, and so on. So ‘natch, you give people the option to buy just the songs they like or know and what do they do?

On the other hand, this really is more than that. The album has been the primary format of music delivery for a long time. For an artist, you spend x number of years working on an album, you put it out, you promote it, you tour on it, and then repeat. For a label, your promotions people are focused on the current release, working the radio stations, and magazines, etc… For press, you focus so many column inches to music reviews, you can’t focus 1/10 of the space for a song as you would a record, so you can review less. The only part of the business that would probably be ok with this is radio, which has always been singles oriented.

Addressing this shift in the business will be game changing for the labels, I think. The major acts will do fine with their CDs for a little while, but this is really the chance for one to jump out ahead with some well timed and well played moves.

[via dvorak]

Create Digital Motion does a review of the AV02 video mixer from Numark. Their opinion: not so bad, but the lack of Midi is a concern.

Read the full review here

SonicBirth

Yesterday, Sonicbirth version 1.2 was released, and it was announced that it is now freeware and open source. SonicBirth is a tool that helps you build your own AU plug-ins reaktor or MAX-stylie.

Create Digital Music » OS X 10.4.9 Breaks Some Audio Unit Plug-ins?

I’ve been hearing a number of reports that the Mac OS X 10.4.9 update causes significant issues with some Audio Unit plug-ins, including those from popular developers Audio Damage and Ohmforce. (See Analog Industries blog for a comment thread and reports on Audio Damage; there’s also discussion on the Core Audio developer list which I hope will yield some revelations. Update: Note that Audio Damage is having only development issues; their plug-ins will work just fine if you’re a user.) This update apparently installs yet another version of the AU validator, which could be one clue. Apple has also made significant changes to QuickTime in recent releases, which can also cause issues with audio software in some cases.

Free vector web page elements [part 1, part 2, part 3]

Scale Nine: Articles, Samples and How-Tos

Designing Flex2 Skins

Ted on Flex: Component Resources

by way of Music Thing

Come to Dark Roasted Blend for the weird music scores, but stay for the equally weird pictures of strange tanks and a lot more fun and interesting imagery. Not really a resource for imags themselves, but definitely a resource for creative inspiration. I often poke over there when I’m trying to find new ideas. Just looking at their collections of pictures recharges my batteries and gives me ideas.

MK12

I just watched the DVD for “Stranger Than Fiction.” Good movie, but I really like the title sequence and the nice use of motion graphics as part of the story telling, integrated into the video. Bummer is that they don’t have any of it in the most recent reel on their site, but you can check out their other work which is also quite nice.

[Added 3/14/07]

from avclub, I found a link to one of the sequences MK12 did in the film.

Branding the music artist
The long tail of Music
Music Marketing 2.0
The Future of Music
All of these are related to the article: Way Behind The Music