Roger McGuinn

I went to a concert last night. Not my usual low-budget bar-crawl, but a real show in a real concert hall – Rockwell Hall at Buffalo State College.

I saw Roger McGuinn, best known as a founder of The Byrds, although that seems so inadequate a way of describing his talent and influence on modern music. (Even though my wife didn’t know who he was…) I have been wanting to see him for a while now. He played the same venue a year or so ago, but I couldn’t get clear to go. Continue Reading…

We’ll give you a free phone (‘cuz you bet we’ll nickle and dime you to death for the rest of your contract.)

I have a cell phone. Actually, I’ve had several cell phones. It’s a love-hate relationship.

First of all, it’s something I only marginally need. I got along fine without one for probably 45 years. I still go out and forget to carry it with me, even though it’s not even the size of a pack of cigarettes. I go forever without getting a call on mine and when I do it’s 50-50% that it’s a wrong number. Continue Reading…

Site upgrade

I upgraded the software on this site today. Both WordPress and Podpress are now up-to-date. I recently did the same to my podcast site.

Okay, so the blog software is updated, but why Podpress? Why podcast support in a blog the rarely has audio content? Continue Reading…

Internet Radio is about to be squeezed out of existence

Recently, the Copyright Royalty Board set new rates for internet radio to pay to play music. Acting in a way that greatly benefits the Recording Industry, who must be rubbing their hands together in glee right now counting their profits, they set them so high it will make streaming radio on the internet prohibitively expensive for even the largest entities. Even large new media outlets like NPR, AOL Radio and Live 365 are threatened by this.

Here’s what one blog, Linux Journal had to say:

In a move that recalls the Vogons’ decision to destroy Earth to clear the way for a highway bypass through space (a thankfully fictional premise of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy), the judges comprising the Copyright Royalty Board have decided to destroy the Internet radio industry so the Recording Industry won’t be inconvenienced by something it doesn’t know, like or understand.

Read more about this and how you can take action against it:

Save Our Internet Radio
Save The Streams

At this point the only possibility is to persuade our government to change this action. Contact your Senator and Representatives and tell them you don’t want internet radio to be priced out of existence.

How this affects podcasts isn’t clear, but you can bet they will either try to apply this to it, or come up with something just as bad soon.

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