The Next Format: Memory Card Music?

Companies Push For Memory Card Music
By Rachel Metz, AP Technology Writer
Manufacturing.Net - September 22, 2008

NEW YORK (AP) -- Just as vinyl once gave way to compact discs as the main physical medium for music, could CDs be replaced now by a fingernail-sized memory card? Perhaps not entirely, but SanDisk Corp., four major record labels and retailers Best Buy Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are hoping that albums sold on microSD memory cards will at least provide an additional stream of sales. The companies were expected to unveil plans Monday to sell memory cards loaded with music in the MP3 format, free of copy protections.

Called "slotMusic," the new format is meant to address two intertwined trends. Most albums are still sold in a physical format -- 449 million were sold on CDs in 2007, while 50 million were sold digitally, according to Nielsen SoundScan -- yet CDs are decreasingly popular. Albums sold on CD dropped almost 19 percent last year.

Given this, the record labels -- Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group Corp. and EMI Group PLC -- are hoping slotMusic can be another physical revenue source -- and one that is more versatile than CDs, given the kinds of gadgets people carry around these days.

Frank Sinatra's Tips on Popular Singing

This is cool! It's a short book from 1941 entitled Frank Sinatra's Tips on Popular Singing that someone has gone to the trouble of scanning in its entirety online. The vocal exercises are interesting -- not exactly what I've learned from my many teachers, although not groundbreaking either. They focus on breath and melisma a bit more than what I've done.

Intellectual and Soulful Jazz

"'Jazz is best when it satisfies its peers on an intellectual level, and relates to non-musicians on a soulful level' is a phrase my former mentor, David Bloom, used all the time. Non-musicians respond to story telling, tension-and-release, and group interaction aspects of music, rather than theory. We can still be true to ourselves and yet reach more than the three percent that typically listen to jazz. Wouldn't that be great?"

--Russ Nolan, "Teaching Jazz As A Language," JAZZed, September 2008

California Cans Carcinogens

I'm really tempted to work with Team in Training again this winter, though I'm scared that with this economy -- and my own personal economy -- I won't be able to raise the necessary funds for the charity. But after all the blood cancer information we received, I began to pay close attention to the types of chemicals we bring into our house. Even though there aren't clear links between leukemia and lymphoma and known carcinogens, it only takes learning about so many afflicted children and young adults to think twice about exposure.

In fact, my veterinarian made reference to California's strict laws the other day, when I was dealing with an unexpected flea allergy on my cat and she said that there is no insecticide sold here that would kill flea eggs anymore. Which is good, of course. So here is some more good news, reported in the Los Angeles Times:

California today launched the most comprehensive program of any state to evaluate, label and, in some cases, ban industrial chemicals that are linked to cancer, hormone disruption and other deadly effects on human health.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed new legislation to shift the state away from a scattershot approach in which bills targeting hazardous chemicals in products such as jewelry, baby bottles, toys, mattresses, computers and cosmetics have passed or failed depending on the intensity of the lobbying and media attention.

Instead of a product-by-product approach, two new laws are designed to encompass 80,000 chemicals now in circulation, focus on the most dangerous, widespread substances first and control them at the manufacturing stage, before they leach into the air, water or human skin.

Inexplicable

There are things I will never understand. Great mysteries in life that no religion or philosophy can explain. Such as why on Earth in the face of many other looming maintenance tasks my husband would begin demolishing an enormous garden wall and digging up the driveway four days before we are going to have an outdoor party.

Derek Sivers: 6 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started at Berklee

This speech by Derek Sivers is really good, if you're a musician. Or probably if you do anything that requires years of preparation to enter a low-paying (or non-paying), highly competitive marketplace.

Just so I remember them, I'm going to write them down (but they don't make much sense if you don't read/listen to the whole thing):

#1 : Focus. Disconnect. Do not be distracted.
#2 : Do not accept their speed limit.
#3 : Nobody will teach you anything. You have to teach yourself.
#4 : Learn from your heroes, not only theirs.
#5 : Don’t get stuck in the past.
#6 : When done, be valuable.

Tina Fey Does Sarah Palin to Perfection!