But it is about music.

One thing that technology has done to music is the decline of shared musical spaces. Years ago, it was habit for me to bring a boom box and a pile of tapes or CDs to the office & play music every day. Music was a shared experience — coworkers would bring in and trade CDs, vote some stuff on or off the playlist, even make office mix tapes. It wasn’t a paradise — especially when your co-workers had very different musical tastes — but it was more social.

Now, each of us sits at our desks plugged into our own private music streams. Nobody has to argue about whether or not [Band X] is good work music, or negotiate a preferred volume level — but also we’re more isolated from each other.

On the whole I’m not sure it’s a step in the right direction.

Blogging has been scarce around here lately. I’ve been busy, but it’s not just that — I’ve lost the habit of remembering to blog. I do have a shiny new iPod Nano that I’ve just loaded with a batch of music, so in honor of that, I might as well dig out an old meme: the Friday Random 10.

Superman — Five for Fighting
Time of Your Song — Matisyahu
Silent Legacy — Melissa Etheridge
Following — The Bangles
In Your Eyes (Live) — Peter Gabriel
Born To Run — Bruce Springsteen
Find A Way To My Heart — Phil Collins
Starry Eyed Surprise — Paul Oakenfold
Tikvah — Subliminal & the Shadow
No Woman No Cry (Live) — Bob Marley & The Wailers

The rules are simple: Randomize your iTunes and write down the first 10 songs in the playlist. Feel free to add your own 10 in the comments.

Audio historians have found a set of French “phonautogram” recordings from 1860 that predate Thomas Edison’s recordings by more than 10 years.

On a digital copy of the recording provided to The New York Times, the anonymous vocalist, probably female, can be heard against a hissing, crackling background din. The voice, muffled but audible, sings, “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit” in a lilting 11-note melody — a ghostly tune, drifting out of the sonic murk.

What’s even cooler, you can download the clip yourself and listen to it. The quality’s not great, but it’s clearly a woman singing. Very neat.

Wow, this sounds like it’s going to be fantastic … unfortunately I’m on the wrong side of the country to really enjoy it:

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony have been asked to open a major celebration of the life and career of Leonard Bernstein next fall.

The festival, sponsored by the New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall, will open on Sept. 24 with Thomas conducting the San Francisco Symphony in an all-Bernstein concert at Carnegie Hall. The concert not only launches “Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds” but also kicks off Carnegie Hall’s 2008 season.

The gala concert will feature cellist Yo-Yo Ma and singers Dawn Upshaw and Thomas Hampson. The program will include the “Fancy Free” Suite, Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story,” as well as selections from “Mass,” “Songfest,” “A Quiet Place,” “Wonderful Town,” “On the Town” and “Candide.”

The two New York organizations are teaming up to honor Bernstein to commemorate the 90th anniversary of his birth and the 50th anniversary of his appointment as music director of the New York Philharmonic.

*sigh*

If you haven’t heard the news, the Big Daddy of exercise podcasts, DJ Steve Boyett, has gotten a new sponsor. That’s great, but the downside is that his old, un-sponsored mixes are going offline.

So get over to his site or to the iTunes podcast directory before November 1 and download anything you haven’t already downloaded.

Another week, another random mix.

1) Lohengrin Prelude – Wagner
2) Shape of My Heart – Backstreet Boys
3) Beat Box – Matisyahu
4) Blood Of Eden – Peter Gabriel
5) My Hometown – Bruce Springsteen
6) It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) – REM
7) Not A Day Goes By – Mandy Patinkin Say It Isn’t So – Hall & Oates
9) Still Take You Home – Arctic Monkeys
10) my funny valentine – Sting

#2 is a little embarrassing. At least it’s the only song of theirs in my collection.

So around lunchtime yesterday, Scott IMed me with some Big News: a co-worker of his was looking to unload two tickets to The Police concert at Oakland Coliseum. Did we want to go?

HELL YES!

The Police broke up before I started going to concerts, so I always assumed I’d never have the chance to see them live. Then, when they announced their “30th Anniversary tour” I figured there’d be no way I’d manage to snag tickets. Instead, the tickets came to us. Nice how that worked out.

I didn’t have time to do much planning, and cameras weren’t allowed anyway, so this is the best I could do for a photo:

I’d never been to a stadium concert before, and the sheer size of the venue was definitely a drawback. But other than that — and the absolutely horribly bad opening act — we had a fantastic time. Wikipedia has a full set list, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

Despite Stewart Copeland’s grousing, the band sounded very tight and polished to me. There were one or two moments when I thought I caught a bobble as the band transitioned into the next song, but other than that, they played extremely well for just short of two hours, including encores. Sting had to work fairly hard to get the audience energy up (I think this is where the stadium size was an issue) but the last 40 minutes or so was a big rock-out.

In short, if you get a chance to catch the tour, do so. It’s worth it.

Haven’t done one of these in a while:

I Want To Come Over – Melissa Etheridge
Tenth Avenue Freeze Out – Bruce Springsteen
Indestructible – Matisyahu
Desperado – Eagles
Everybody Wants To Rule The World – Tears For Fears
Mercy Street – Peter Gabriel
A Bit of Earth – The Secret Garden (Original Broadway Cast)
I Feel Fine – The Beatles
Church Of The Poison Mind – Culture Club
Complicated (The Matrix Mix) – Avril Lavigne

As a reminder, The Rules: Open iTunes or your iPod. Load up your entire library. Put it in “random” mode. Write down the first ten tracks that come up–and no fair putting in ones you think will make you look cool, or omitting ones that make you look like a total dork.

If you like listening to music streamed via internet radio, or from websites like Pandora, you might want to click through and read the FAQ at Save Our Internet Radio.

On March 1, 2007 the US Copyright Office stunned the Internet radio industry by releasing a ruling on performance royalty fees that are based exclusively on the number of people tuned into an Internet radio station, rather than on a portion of the station’s revenue. They discarded all evidence presented by webcasters about the potentially crippling effect on the industry of such a rate structure, and rubber-stamped the rates requested by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

Under this royalty structure, an Internet radio station with an average listenership of 1000 people would owe $134,000 in royalties during 2007 – plus $98,000 in back payments for 2006. In 2008 they would owe $171,000, and $220,000 in 2009.

There is no way for a station with 1000 listeners to make that kind of money. That’s over $11 per listener in 2007. No Internet radio station currently operating comes even close to that kind of income. Also keep in mind that 1000 listeners is not a large number. Popular stations like Radio Paradise, SOMA, Digitally Imported, radioio, etc have many times that many listeners.

In other words, if they are allowed to stand these rates are a death sentence for independent Internet radio stations. The only stations that would survive would be those who can afford to operate at that kind of loss, such as AOL (who would owe over $20,000,000 in 2006, far in excess of their income from radio).

Unless the Feds change their current ruling, it’s looking like RIAA has been able to strike a death blow against all but the biggest and best-funded companies that stream music online.

Hat tip: Craig.

Although I’ve owned an iPod for quite some time now, and have bought at least 50 individual iTunes, today was the first time I actually bought an entire album from iTunes. It’s one I’ve been meaning to buy for a while but never got around to it, and decided I’d rather not wait for it to be shipped.

Rock out to Matisyahu, all y’all!

And now I need to remember to burn a copy to CD.