Music going down the internet tubes?

Greed almost killed internet radio a while back. The authorities in the federal government who go by the name of Copyright Royalty Board imposed a new fee structure for stations that play music, making it prohibitively expensive for internet niche players (e.g. "all-baroque-all-the-time") to stay on the air. At present, only Congressional action (an oxymoron) can prevent this from happening.

The current situation is best understood if you look at this article.
So the old motivation of greed kills the simple pleasures. Where there's a buck to be made, you can be sure someone in this country will find it. Once again, Big Media takes over and deprives anyone who can't pay from listening or broadcasting.

Apparently corporations don't understand the story about killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

There's plenty of evidence that consumers are more likely to buy music if they have a chance to audition it. When I was twenty something, one of the biggest music stores in Toronto had a whole floor devoted to listening stations where you could (with the help of staff) put on headphones to listen to a potential purchase. Some people, of course, abused that, but most were serious purchasers. And this was years ago.

Now, the music distribution model has changed, and become much more convenient than the old listening station. And music of any type can be downloaded rapidly and wirelessly to your tiny listening device while you're doing something else. We are living in an era when it is no longer necessary to buy a load of claptrap on an album in order to obtain what you really want.

The notion that royalties must be set in such a way that only the corporations survive is so quintessentially stupid that it is astounding. Music does not survive when nobody can hear it. It is essential to the culture of any civilized country. Put a prohibitive price in place and you penalize the populace. And another goose gets killed.

An end will come. It may be that when we can no longer afford oil, sometime in the next two years at the current rate, we'll have no means of churning out the plastic for CDs and DVDs. But it seems to me that before that happens, the music business will have killed the affordability of its own product in any case. Way to go, you greedy idiots.

But until that happens, why not download and install a good internet radio player like Screamer Radio, or find a Mac equivalent, or just go to a website like Accuradio.com, select a genre of your choice, and listen to the amazing works of Bach or the Beatles, or Benny Goodman while you still can?

"The day the music died" may well be on its way unless saner heads prevail.

What is it about Florida?

What's so much about Florida anyway?

The climate? The beaches? The ocean? The people?

Well, three out of four ain't bad.

And it's not the people: it's the crush of people and traffic, all seeking only two things: a place to eat and a place on the beach. Preferably both at the same time.

For anyone who has been to the running of the bulls at Pamplona (and I haven't), the only thing lacking in the Florida beach scene is "thee bool". Along the roads of Clearwater that parallel the Gulf shore, any place that has public parking is, by definition, full. Every other place has a private property sign, rife with the numbers of local ordinances that condemn the violator to a life of perpetual payment and pariahhood. People circle the block or doublepark (with engines running and the A/C/ on of course, because it's hot in a car) while waiting for a parking space to become available.

By contrast, if you are fortunate enough, as we were, to drop your air mattresses into someone's spare bedroom, you can suddenly find yourself, as our host frequently remarked, "Livin' the Dream." Even if only for a couple of days.

The future of Florida is uncertain, as it is with any near-sea-level outcropping near the great oceans. If global warming doesn't slow down or reverse, all the beach-front public parking areas will be part of a huge involuntary marina.

The only other place I've been to where access to Paradise is comparably restricted is San Juan, PR, and that was a few decades ago. I don't know how much things have changed, but at the time, the island was full of junker cars. These old crates were imported by the shipload from the mainland because there was a prohibited import tax on anything that was less than a couple of years old. It was said that in PR, there was only room to park a third of the cars. Thus, two-thirds of the cars had to keep moving.

Of course, certain times of the year are more congested. We know this. Events, however, conspired to make us take the trip or not go at all. And to our host and hostess who saved us the cost of accommodation and let us be who we are, we can only say,"Thank you so much." With friends like these, who needs beach-fronts?