Category: music

The silence of the jams

dayofsilence_white.gifToday is a day of silence for Internet radio broadcasters in protest of a recent rate hike of 0.012 cents per song, per listener, from the current rate of 0.007 cents. Organized by SaveNetRadio, most of the big online radio stations are joining in solidarity. One popular webcaster, Pandora, explains on its website: “We are doing this to bring to your attention a disastrous turn of events that threatens the existence of Pandora and all of internet radio. We need your help.”

Ignoring all rationality and responding only to the lobbying of the RIAA, an arbitration committee in Washington DC has drastically increased the licensing fees Internet radio sites must pay to stream songs. Pandora’s fees will triple, and are retroactive for eighteen months! Left unchanged by Congress, every day will be like today as internet radio sites start shutting down and the music dies.

The Geek, meanwhile, takes a different approach, allowing visitors to click the “listen live” button, only to give them 3 1/2 minutes of silence, the amount of time a pop tune might have played. (Actually, the loop of silence is interrupted a few times by a brief “station ID.”)

While many big-name websites are joining the SaveNetRadio effort, at least one biggie is not playing along. Last.fm, recently acquired by CBS, is not participating

It’s getting better all the time

sgt-peppers.jpgInspired by all the news buzz surrounding yesterday’s the 40th anniversary of arguably the most influential concept album of all time, I’ve decided to crank up my digitized version of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as I skim the news, blogs and email. I haven’t listened to the entire album in ages. How amazing that it still holds up after all these years. While Sgt. Pepper’s seems to be the consensus pick greatest rock album of all time, it doesn’t quite fit that bill for me. (The Clash’s London Calling holds that spot.) Nor is it even my favorite Beatles album. (Abbey Road holds that distinction.) It’s been in my top 10 for as long as I’ve been making and remaking that list, though, and I have to admit — as the hypnotic, sitar-soaked sounds of “Within You Without You” ooze from my computer — that this album might be getting better all the time.

Since this is a blog about higher ed, I suppose I should link to this story about how the album has become a serious subject of academic study. Experts will gather at the University of Leeds later this month to discuss the album’s impact on popular culture. But the pop critics of the mediasphere is already telling us everything we need to know about that, isn’t it?

Forty years later, music lovers are still gushing about it. For example:

  • “Every concept album that came afterward, from Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ to Green Day’s ‘American Idiot,’ never surpassed ‘Sgt. Pepper’s.’ We decided that The Beatles were not only brilliant, they were first” (via).
  • “It was, by any estimation, a revolutionary moment, one that marked the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another that is still being written to this day. Just about everything – not just music, but popular culture in its entirety – seemed different after the Beatles released their masterpiece on June 1, 1967” (via, which also lists 10 other great albums from 1967).
  • “This album is as fresh and unusual and groundbreaking today as it was on June 1, 1967. And I haven’t even dropped any acid” (via).
  • 40 reasons to still love Sgt. Pepper’s.
  • One I overlooked previously: Design of Experience, the Sgt. Pepper kind, from Valeria Maltoni’s Conversation Agent