Digital Music

Digital Music Sales tops Physical Music Sales

by David Lee King on January 12, 2012

acoustic guitarDid you catch this article last week on CNN? Digital Music tops Physical Music Sales. Here’s a couple of quotes from the article:

“According to a Nielsen and Billboard report, digital music purchases accounted for 50.3% of music sales in 2011. Digital sales were up 8.4% from the previous year, while physical album sales declined 5%.”

“While services like Napster blazed the trail for online music consumption, offerings like Apple’s 99-cents-a-song iTunes catalog as well as those from a host of startups have broken down traditional music-purchasing barriers. Most customers now prefer shopping online to buying in a store.”

For that matter, you don’t even have to buy music to enjoy it anymore. We finally took down our Christmas decorations last weekend. While doing that, we listened to some classic jazz via Pandora. Obviously, a radio would work here too … but not for the type of music I was listening to!

So … libraries and music. My public library has a pretty large CD collection. We also subscribe to Freegal (a library-oriented service that basically gives patrons 3 free music downloads a week). We have also seen a demo for the library version of Rdio (not impressed yet).

In five year’s time, what will we be doing? How will we be collecting music? Will music still be listed for checkout in our library catalogs? Or will we point patrons to Spotify/Pandora/Rdio/etc?

I’m not sure … what do you think?

guitar pic by Bigstock

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Editing Myself – a new song from me

by David Lee King on December 31, 2011

As long-time readers of my blog know, I like to write and share music every once in a blue moon. I don’t know when the next blue moon might be, but it’s the end of the year, so here’s a song!

I’ve been working on a book for much of 2011, and will be doing more writing in 2012 … and I’ve been editing myself a lot … so I thought I’d write a song about editing myself.

Feel free to take a listen (song is embedded above)! I’m playing with Bandcamp too – here’s my Bandcamp page. If you REALLY enjoy the song, feel free to buy it for a whopping $.99 (plus tax, I think). Bandcamp is cool!

OK – the song…

Editing Myself (by David Lee King)

Drinkin lots of coffee, got my writer’s hat on
inkin lines on my laptop, typin into dawn
if it doesn’t measure up, if my copy don’t fly
I’m gonna click and drag it right into my trashcan pile

I am editing myself
I am editing myself
pullin my thesaurus off the shelf
cause I am editing myself

I don’t always scribble everything exactly right
all my words don’t rhyme and my letters seem to fight
I can highlight copy paste to my heart’s content
rewrite what i don’t like until my brain is spent

now i got a rhyming dictionary and I’m lookin up a word
I need three syllables that rhyme with bird
not sure how it’ll fit, it is probably absurd
but if you’ve listened this far, well, you might have overheard

Enjoy, and here’s for a wonderful 2012!

 

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Content Creation, Media Labs, and Hackerspaces

by David Lee King on December 15, 2011

Skokie Public Library's Digital Media Lab

I’ve been thinking about content creation and libraries lately. Right now, we collect content – hence our shelves of stuff. Yes, we do many other things too. But if you look at our buildings, they have been, by and large, designed for collections of stuff – for collecting content.

Some libraries are changing that focus (or at least adding on to it) by enabling customers to create their own content in a variety of ways … and it’s pretty interesting stuff!

I’ll lump what I’m seeing into three loose categories:

  • Digital Media Labs
  • Hackerspaces
  • Coworking spaces

Digital Media Labs: These spaces have content creation tools that allow customers to create and share video, music, photography, and design projects. Customers have access to computers with editing software, cameras, camcorders, microphones, and musical keyboards.

The best examples I’ve seen of this so far are Skokie Public Library’s Digital Media Lab and Chicago Public Library’s YouMedia project. Skokie’s lab has a greenscreen wall for video projects; Youmedia includes a small recording studio space.

Hackerspaces: ”A hackerspace … is a location where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, science, or digital or electronic art (but also in many other realms) can meet, socialise and/or collaborate … hackers can come together to share resources and knowledge to build and make things” (from Wikipedia).

Basically, hackerspaces tend to be public spaces with tools – 3D printers, drill presses, etc. And people make stuff there. Who’s doing this? Well, Allen County Public Library and Fayetteville Free Library are, for starters.

Coworking Spaces: Coworking is a pretty simple concept. Independent workers, freelancers, small business owners, etc. gather in a shared space to share ideas, team up on projects, and get some work done in a more social setting. It’s an alternative to meeting at home or a local coffee shop.

Libraries have unofficially done this for years (how many of you have heard of a patron who runs his/her business from the library? I’ll bet some of you have). But some libraries are going a step or two further by embedding librarians in these spaces, or even offering coworking spaces as part of their services. Meg Knodl, a librarian at Hennepin County Library, is doing this – here’s an article on what Meg is doing. Helsinki City Library has created some coworking spaces – read more about it here.

For more info, check out these articles:

Question – is your library doing something like this? If so, let me know in the comments!

Photo by Skokie Public Library

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Library 101 – New Video, Song, and Resource has Launched!

by David Lee King on October 29, 2009

Library 101 has launched! There are a few things you should know about the project:

But even better than watching the video, listening to the song, or reading an essay is this – please participate by commenting! Let us know what YOU think is a “Library 101″ for your library – what do you think librarians need to know to succeed? Tell us in the comments attached to each essay!

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New Song/Video Announcement and Call for Participation!

by David Lee King on July 17, 2009

Read all about it here! Or just read this … remember that song/video Michael Porter and I created last year? Well… we’re at it again – with Library 101!

Here’s what Michael says:

“Getting into this video is actually really easy. Simply take and share a picture of YOU posing with a 0 and a 1! (Tagging it with library101 on flickr will be really helpful). We even have the flickr group linked above [ok, I linked it here] where you can put your 101 pictures. So c’mon! Do it and get just a little bit famous! Your family and friends will love finding you pop up in the video (and maybe even your coworkers?)! Put your kids in it! How about the family dog!? And you know grandma loves the library too, riiight? :) The most interesting your submission the more it will be featured, so get creative!

Look for the song and video in October of 2009 (debuting at a special “Connecting Through “Lights, Cameras & Action” session at the Internet Librarian Conference in Monterrey, California).”

Now all Michael and I have to do is this:

  • write words for the song
  • Create and record the music
  • Somehow fly Michael to Kansas to record the song and shoot some video
  • Get Michael back to Seattle so he can video edit like a madman
  • collaborate on a multimedia presentation for Internet Librarian like you’ve never seen before…

Whew! I’m already getting psyched!

Pic courtesy of Libraryman

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The Beginning of the New Normal

by David Lee King on March 9, 2009

change agentTwo posts caught my eye over the past couple of days, and they’re still rumbling around inside my head … let’s see if I can pull a couple thoughts out of the cacophony.

Both posts discuss how lots of industries are at the beginnings of huge restructuring/remaking themselves or are disappearing entirely, and how much of our lives will seem like upheaval until the “new normal” is reached. No one’s exactly sure what “normal” will look like (after the recession and remaking is over) – but everyone’s sure it will be completely different from now.

Here’s the first article, and the main one setting off thoughts for me: The Great Restructuring, by Jeff Jarvis. Jeff talks about our recession – first quoting Umair Haque calling it a great “compression … as an economy built on perceived value reconciles with actual value.”

Jeff also mentions this article from the New York Times and ends up calling our current recession a “great restructuring.” Then, he lists thoughts about quite a few industries and their future. Here’s a partial list of them:

  • America may well not be in the auto industry soon.
  • Financial services will have to be completely remade
  • Newspapers will vanish
  • Magazines are in worse shape than I would have guessed and many will go
  • Books’ channels of manufacturing, distribution, and sales will go through upheaval
  • Broadcast media will become meaningless, replaced by digital delivery
  • Large-scale retail will shrink and consolidate and then be transformed by a search-and-buy economy
  • The blockbuster economy in entertainment will become harder to support as more attention and money shifts to the tail.
  • We should be so lucky that elementary and secondary education will also face such pressure.

And that’s just a few (go read the article for the whole list and some great thoughts).

Here’s the second article raising a ruckus in my head: Big Music Will Surrender, But Not Until At Least 2011 from TechCrunch. This article mainly gives a music executive’s perspective of coming changes for his industry, and how they currently plan to figure it out. So it’s one industry’s perspective on how change will ultimately play out for them. Interesting take.

My question to you – are you ready?

Look at that list from the first article: books, magazines, newspapers, media. All going through huge changes, all going to be remade. And all stuff that’s near and dear to our librarian hearts!

Some of these changes are already starting, you know:

  • Newspapers and Magazines have already started going digital. It’s just a matter of time before more/most decide to stop printing that paper thing and go completely digital.
  • Books… {David quickly ducks} DON’T freak out! Of course I think people will still read books. That’s a given. But have you looked around lately and seen the Amazon Kindle? Or the iPhone ebook reader that millions of people are now carrying around? I have a book on mine to read right now. Those 300-page paper things will eventually turn digital – because it’s simply a container for the content – not the content itself.
  • Music and movies – think LPs/8-Tracks, Cassettes, CDs or super 8, 16 ml, vcr, DVD … and compare that to iTunes or Netflix emerging subscription models. Also going digital!

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg for libraries – most of our huge buildings exist to primarily hold physical stuff. What will we do when there’s no physical stuff to hold? Will you still be able to justify that large building? That staff? (My answer to that is yes, you can … if you are planning for change now).

How are you starting to re-think your services and libraries? My library is in the middle of strategic planning, and we’re going to tackle that whole “re-think everything” approach. Looks like Darien Library has been doing that, too. How about you?

Closing thought – I live in lucky times – I get to see … basically … my whole life change before my eyes. And I get to help it change.

Bonus reading:

  • An interesting article on remaking education
  • This post is where I found the title of for my article … good post, too – focuses on economic stuff

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New Song & Video: Hi-fi Sci-fi Library

by David Lee King on August 24, 2008

You HAVE to watch the amazing cool music video Michael Porter and I made!!! Here it is:

And go to Michael’s blip.tv account for a larger version of the video. Want the MP3? Find it here and at last.fm

Go read Michael’s post for the nitty-gritty details (and this post for the lyrics and credits). Here are some song details…

This was a really fun song to write and record. I honestly wasn’t sure Michael’s idea would work when he first suggested it to me, but then I’m game for just about anything, so thought “let’s try it and see what happens!” And Michael’s a great friend and writing partner (we write the Public Libraries Magazine column “Internet Spotlight” together), so if everything else went down the tubes, I knew we would at least have a fun time of it. But as we started writing the lyrics, rhythms and melody lines started bouncing around in my head… and I realized this would be easy to pull off.

Other details:

  • The music is a mix of GarageBand instruments, my own guitar playing, and three samples of theremins and other whistle-like sounds.
  • And Michael Porter and I sang/rapped the thing
  • recorded and mixed in Garageband, in my basement

Samples used:

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I’m No Antidigitalist: a song about GormanGate

by David Lee King on June 18, 2007


Click To Play


Last week, as I was reading and responding to everyone’s responses to Michael Gorman’s blog posts, I re-read a couple of the posts myself… and this phrase from his earlier “blog people” article started running through my head … and wouldn’t leave.So I did what any self-respecting closet musician would do on his day off – I wrote a song!

A little more explanation – I wrote the music (with a little help from GarageBand here and there). For each line of the lyrics, I pulled random Gorman quotes from these three articles.

This is probably some odd self-fulfilling prophecy, since I am a blogger, since Gorman said “entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs” … and that’s pretty much what I did to construct this song!

Now, on to the song! And here’s a game for you while listening: try to find each quote while you’re listening to the song!

I’m No Antidigitalist
Music by David Lee King, lyrics pulled from Gorman quotes

an associated flight from expertise
believers in Biblical inerrancy
authoritative printed sources
an extreme example of technophiliac rambling

human beings learn, essentially, in only two ways
verifiable credentials and demonstrable expertise
derision of the professorial authority figure
hyperventilating not blasphemy

I’m no Antidigitalist

there are obstacles to such a benign outcome
antihuman and intellectually debasing
the endemic confusion of means
the triumph of hope and boosterism over reality

I’m no Antidigitalist

read what they want to read … random facts
read what they want to read … paragraphs

an associated flight from expertise
believers in Biblical inerrancy
human beings learn, essentially, in only two ways
hyperventilating not blasphemy

I’m no Antidigitalist

The structures of scholarship and learning are based on respect for individuality and the authentic expression of individual personalities.

Enjoy!

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Free Online Music “Store” coming in December…

by David Lee King on August 29, 2006

Just saw this… a start-up named SpiralFrog is planning to launch a (drumroll please) new-fangled music service that will be based on advertising revenue rather than on .99 cent downloads. Yes, you read that right – as in FREE music. Universal Music is backing them (that’s big). Look for them in December.

Libraries, dust off your CD-burning and USB-downloading skills…

silly update: I actually beat TechCrunch (who has much more info than my post, of course)!

Update #2: Never mind – from TechCrunch (who had a Skype conversation with the PR dude from SpiralFrog):

“Spiral Frog will offer a desktop downloader for Windows Media Files (no iPods!) that can be listened to on one PC and two portable devices.”

And…

“you must log in to the Spiral Frog service at least once per month, and see their ads, or your files will stop playing!”

Two VERY stupid ideas, one digital music company that’s sure to fail.

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Music 2.0 and DRM

by David Lee King on February 28, 2006

Interesting post on the Social Software blog: Yahoo music exec says maybe DRM should be ditched.

I’m all agreed that DRM doesn’t work in libraries – if it disappeared, then iPods would work with services like Overdrive and netLibrary. But look at some of the thoughts the author has about how to assign value (if the thing being purchased isn’t the music itself):

  • Linking music downloads to concert promotion/tickets
  • Liner notes
  • other branded multi-media beyond the music file itself
  • superior quality to files found in the wild

Some of these ideas are leaving traditional types (that’d be libraries and record stores) in the dust. Example – Linking music downloads to tickets – where does that leave the library’s music collection, or future music purchases? Also – other branded multi-media… hmm… at least with this added value item, patrons could still come to the library to access the value-added thing via the web.

Most likely there would still be a way to purchase music that would make sense for libraries (ie., subscription-based services). Still…

Also – the article mentions that there was recently a conference called “Music 2.0″ – wow. Again, it’s not just libraries and Library 2.0 – many different industries are dealing with the same notions.

Library 2.0, Web 2.0, Music 2.0

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