Detroit Industrial Underground
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20.Jun.2003
Venereal Injection is playing tonight at the I-Rock. Details here.
17.Jun.2003
From the Washington Post, Hatch takes aim at illegal downloading. He also shows just how far his head is up the RIAA's ass.
From Wired, Mary Bono's Raring to Run RIAA.
5.Jun.2003
Site news: the band links page has been updated with a couple dozen new bands. Also, there's a new section on the links page called "Regional Industrial Groups" and the Detroit section has beeen expanded.
4.Jun.2003
Upcoming events:
Sun, 8.Jun, 7 pm EST - Audiotech Live. Go here to listen.
Wed, 11.Jun, 8 pm EST - Esion WSGs Kill Hannah and Even the Odd @ Small's
Sat, 14.Jun, 10 pm EST - Cruciform Injection, Filament 38 and Delien @ the Labyrinth. Details here.
23.May.2003
The Movement Festival (formerly DEMF) is this weekend. If you make it there, be sure to check out the Industrial/Experimental tent, which has several Detoit bands heard heard here on DIU, including Delien, Ceoxime, Backspace, Di:Sect and more.
9.May.2003
Continuing this weeks tour of Detroit's internet radio scene, I'll be spinning on IPM Radio tonight. Tune in at 8:30 PM EST.
6.May.2003
I'll be a guest on Modern Primitive Radio tonight. The show starts at 10:30 PM EST.
4.May.2003
Audiotech Live is on tonight at 7 pm EST. DIU is now longer relaying the show, but I'll still be participating in it. Audiotech's page is here.
24.Mar.2003
The next DEC Audiotech Live has been rescheduled to Sunday, 13 April so we can see the Delien/Boole/Kompressor show in Cleveland.
16.Mar.2003
The DIU 4th Anniversary/March Audiotech show is up. We had a couple technical glitches, but the show went well. The archived show and pics is at the Audiotech page. The second half of the show was lost due to a recording glitch and was pieced together from copies made by listeners. You'll need windows media for this one, as winamp can't play it properly. We should have a different recording system in place for the next show, on April 6.
14.Feb.2003
5.Feb.2003
Sunday's Audiotech show is archived here. Here's the winamp link.
29.Jan.2003
DEC Audiotech Live returns to its usual schedule on the first Sunday of the month on Feb 2. The new showtime is 7 pm EST. Delien will be doing a live set, along with the guest DJ's.
24.Jan.2003
I'll be playing a set of covers tonight at the Lab, along with DJ CS68 and the IPM gang. It runs from 22:00-03:00.
14.Jan.2003
Sunday's DEC Audiotech Live show is archived. City Club DJs Chris Rohn and The Riccer, and DJ S@iN+ from Backspace, DJ CS68 and I played sets. Tracy Peters premiered the new Mutual Hate Society track. The archived show (WMA format), along with pics and playlist is here. Winamp link is here.
We'd hoped to broacast on the new modem stream, but technical problems on both ends raised their ugly heads. These will be resolved before the next show, which is will be on Feb 2.
I also announced that DIU is now playing all independent music. This will mean the absense of some old favorites, but the current legal situation in internet radio puts me in a situation where I refuse to pay a fortune in fees (none of which the artists will ever receive) to promote a lablel's music. The current playlist is shorter than usual, but I'll be adding more tracks today and over the next few days.
12.Jan.2003
Audiotech Live blasts into the new year with special guest DJs and the best new music, along with some old favorites. Tune in at 8 PM EST.
Check out the new modem stream too.
14.Dec.2002
Yesterday the RIAA denied every single negotiating point that the Webcaster Alliance proposed. You can read the WA proposal here. We'll be posting more info on the WA site later this weekend. The Voice of Webcasters announced a deal with the RIAA, which is expected to be essentially the same deal as proposed in HR 5469 version 2. The next issue of VOW's mouthpiece, RAIN, will print the details.
13.Dec.2002
MP3.com has changed their policies for the worse, and wants $19.95/month per band. Read DJ Doc Raymond's take on this, before they pull the page down. I removed the link to them, and added other links to the "Music download" section on the links page.
As the owner of my own personal money pit, I can't blame MP3.com for needing to bring in revenue, but they're charging way too much for their services.
From The End of Free, Coping with a web that's no longer free.
29.Nov.2002
Sunday, Dec. 1st starting at 6 PM EST - Audiotech Live - a one year anniversary special. Tune in and join us for fun filled evening with many special guests.
Happy Buy Nothing Day.
26.Nov.2002
From The Register:
RIAA orders US Navy to surrender.
'I demand the story be taken down immediately' - RIAA.
22.Nov.2002
The Day of Solidarity broadcast is on now. If you're having DNS problems like I am, you can find the broadcast here. Real Player required.
21.Nov.2002
UK art/tech/webcasting site stage4 announced a Day of Solidarity with US Webcasters. This broadcast starts at 9pm GMT this Saturday, 23.Nov on PirateTV.net.
From The Register, RIAA engineered the webcast split - former exec.
From The Register, Helms explains webcasting deal. This also covers the Day of Solidarity.
19.Nov.2002
New Radio Star interviewed Webcaster Alliance president Ann Gabriel yesterday. Ann gave a good summary on the current state of internet radio, and the politics that got us into this mess. Click here to listen.
18.Nov.2002
I posted an essay on the latest revision of HR 5469, its impact on hobbyist webcasters, and a comparision between the Voice of Webcasters and the Webcaster Alliance. It's here.
1.Nov.2002
I'm involved in the launching of the Webcaster Alliance. The Register covered the story here.
Today's NY Times' Eminem review describes Detroit as, "America's closest approximation of hell." We locals think of it as more "Post Urban."
25.Oct.2002
My response to yesterday's RAIN article is here.
24.Oct.2002
Today's RAIN has an opinion piece which mischaracterizes a quote I made to the LA Times. I'll respond in more detail later. If you're new to this site from RAIN, take a look below starting on 14 Oct for some links you won't see in RAIN.
23.Oct.2002
The LA Times interviewed me yesterday. The resutling article is here (free registration required).
I posted an open letter to the press, What's wrong with HR 5469.
20.Oct.2002
From Slashdot, Raising Barriers to Entry into the Music Business. This one links to DIU.
From MP3 Newswire, Raising the Barriers to Entry.
From Reuters, Helms Blocks Web Radio Royalty Deal in Senate
19.Oct.2002
From the Sun-Sentinel, Webcasters must face the music, pay up for plays.
18.Oct.2002 From the Register, Civil disobedience promised after net radio royalty bill falls. 17.Oct.2002 Looks like RAIN has taken a break from creating the news, and has decided to report it for a change. See today's novelty issue for a table on the PROs and CON's of HR 5469. I wonder if letters like this had anything to do with Hanson's change of heart. 16.Oct.2002 I posted a public reply to Rusty Hodge's comments that were attached to yesterdays Slashdot post. 15.Oct.2002 I'm quoted in, 'RIAA-written' Net radio bill served to Senate from The Register. Also check out my slashdot post, Latest Salvos in the Ongoing Battle Of Webcasting. From Radio Crow, NAB and NRB block independent Internet radio bill. 14.Oct.2002 From The Register, '96 pc of Net Radio' to close after backroom deal screws grassroots 'casters, a detailed story about how H.R. 5469 got turned from a six month delay in the CARP rates, to an attempt on the part of some commercial webcasters and the RIAA to screw over the rest of the internet radio community. I'm quoted in it. Along the same line, the Inquirer printed the resignation letter of Ann Gabriel, who was on the International Webcasting Association (IWA) Legislative Committee. 30.Sep.2002 On late Thurday afternoon, the Save Internet Radio Act was introduced. It delays the CARP rates taking effect by 6 months, to give us more time to work out the various legal appeals to this mess. This is up for a vote tomorrow, Oct 1, so we need people to call and fax congresss today. See Save Internet Radio and RAIN. Directions for faxing are here. 30.Jul.2002 12:17 pm EST DEC Audiotech Live returns this Sunday at 8pm EST. The show will feature Cybertrybe, Data Regeration Project (who played a great live noise set here last Friday) and 4FR and more. 26.Jul.2002 LIVE SHOW TONIGHT 22.Jul.2002 12:17 pm EST I'm in the middle of a power failure, so I'm shutting the server down before the UPS runs out. 20.Jul.2002 From ZDNET, Labels turn sights on Web radio. 18.Jul.2002 From CNET, Tough talk on Web radio copying and Tech activists protest anti-copying. Here's a quote from a Department of Commerce official regarding inviting software developers to their meetings, "I'm not going to be dictated to." He left out, "...except by my masters at the RIAA, MPAA, and Disney." 16.Jul.2002 From Billboard, Skinny Puppy Reforming. This is a couple months old, but I'd missed it. 11.Jul.2002 From Newsweek, Labels to Net Radio: Die Now. 10.Jul.2002 Last Sunday's DEC Audiotech Live is posted. The show was lots of fun, and is available here. This is in Windows Media format, but the full version of Winamp can play it too. 7.Jul.2002 Those who tried to tune in to DEC Audiotech Live probably noticed that it wasn't live. There were some network problems at the studio that kept us from broadcasting live, but the archived show will be up soon. Sorry for the inconvenience. I'll post the link when its ready. 6.Jul.2002 DEC Audiotech Live returns tomorrow. The show will feature members of Silvercord and Hypodermic. Macross from IPM radio and I will be ranting about the latest legal issues of internet radio. Turn in here at 8pm EST (GMT -5) tomorrow. 29.Jun.2002 On Monday 6/24, Mark Cuban (who owned Broadcast.com before it was sold to
Yahoo) sent a letter to the Radio and Internet Newsletter where he admitted that Yahoo deliberately negotiated artificially high rates in order to drive small webcasters out of business. The letter is here. It's nice to know that both sides had the same goal of driving us smaller webcasters off the internet. 22.Jun.2002 From Slashdot, Copyright Office Publishes Final Webcasting Rates. I posted a reply here. In this post, I exchanged several comments with someone who was fixated on the cost of bandwidth in relation to licensing, and the compulsory license part of the DMCA. He didn't let his lack of knowledge of the music business, internet broadcasting, or the particulars of CARP stop him from posting at length. I wouldn't ordinarily bother linking to this, but he's the chairman of the board of the EFF. Very disappointing. Finally, I'm quoted in the Inquirer article, Copyright body halves Web music rate. For the rest of this weekend, I'm taking a break from being a media whore/lobbyist and doing something involving music for a change. Local bands Haf/Life, Esion, and CEOXiME are playing here tonight at 10 pm. I've got a huge stack of new music to listen to, and I hope to get a playlist update done in a couple days. 21.Jun.2002 A couple of weeks ago, I got a "Dear Valued Customer" letter from SESAC, which strongly encouraged me to purchase a blanket license for their material. My response to them is here. SESAC is a licensing company like ASCAP and BMI. This has nothing to do with the RIAA. 20.Jun.2002 The Librarian of Congress published the post-CARP webcasting rates. He cut the internet broacaster rate in half to $0.0007 per listener per song, matching broadcast radio's internet rate. The only example of a willing buyer/willing seller transaction he considered was the RIAA/Yahoo deal, negotiated at the height of the dot com boom. There is also an ephemeral recording (i.e. mp3) surcharge of 8.8% of top of this, with a minium annual fee of $500. Retroactive to 1998, of course. It is not clear that not playing RIAA material would exempt a station from these charges. At current listener numbers, this works out to about $1200/year for DIU. 19.Jun.2002 Tomorrow is the big day. According to RAIN, the Librarian of Congress will reveal the final determination of webcasting royalties at 5pm EST. 16.Jun.2002 From Slashdot, Another Class Action Over Crippled Music Disks and Record Industry Wants Royalties for Used CD Sales. From the kiss-your-civil-liberties-goodbye department, Blair, Blunkett turn Britain into techno-totalitarian police state. 7.Jun.2002 Rant Radio is leading the fight against SOCAN's Tariff 22, which is Canada's version of CARP. Read the details here. 31.May.2002 The server has been crashing since last night. I replaced the server's memory and tried a couple more things, so hopefully its fixed now. 21.May.2002 17.May.2002 DIU will be broadcasting a live party tonight with Re:pro, Di-sect, Toybreaker and Delien playing sets. Ed Altounian from Crash Site Studios will be DJing too. We'll start around 10:00 pm EST. 16.May.2002 From RAIN, Senate Judiciary Committee hears all sides of webcasting battle. More press coverage is in today's issue. 14.May.2002 CD Copy Protection links: 9.May.2002 This has nothing to do with music, but if you're looking for an image browser, check out
PhotoMesa, from the U of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab. It has some great organization and zoom features. 7.May.2002
From Wired News, Another DMCA Attack Looms. 2.May.2002 UPDATE: The Inquirer ran a story about CARP, and quoted me. It's here. There is a huge list of press coverage at the Radio and Internet Newsletter site. Radio Crow also ran a good editorial comparing internet radio to the early days of FM. The Save Internet Radio Marathon was a great success! According to host Steve Wolf, 120,000 unique listeners tuned in, and that doesn't include all the stations like DIU that relayed the broadcast. Thanks to you listeners who heard the broadcast, and faxed congress. If you don't know what this is about, there's a short summary here. Please read this, and take the time to make a difference. If you do send a fax to your congressmen, be sure to include your physical adddress, so they know you're a constituent. Winamp 2.80 is available. Download it here. It fixes the problem, MP3 Files can Cause Code Execution under Winamp. It also supports Ogg Vorbis, an open source mp3 replacement. 1.May.2002 DIU is joining the "Save Internet Radio Marathon", which is being simulcast by stations around the US. More info can be found at Save Internet Radio.org. I'll be relaying the broadcast until 9pm EST. 19.Apr.2002 I updated the links page. The home page hit counter passed 50,000 yesterday. Wow.
15.Apr.2002 The Bank Link page is up. About 1/3 of the links have been replaced due to link rot. Check it out here. Before I forget (again) DIU hit its third year online on Feb 27. I never was good at remembering anniversaries. This year will feature live programming like DEC Audiotech, live concerts, more signed and unsigned bands, a new stream for modem users, and maybe even a page redesign. 10.Apr.2002 The all new playlist is up. Instead of doing a playlist online, I'll be working on a band link page. 5.Apr.2002 DIU is teaming up with DEC Audiotech Live to bring you latest in Detroit electronic music and scene news. We'll be carrying a live feed from Crash Site studios of the DEC Audiotech broadcast this Sunday, April 7. Tune in at 8pm EST (GMT -5). 3.Mar.2002 I will be a guest on DEC Audiotech Live at 8pm EST tonight. It will probably be simulcast in DIU as well, depending on the whims of the computer gods. 23.Feb.2002 The new DSL isn't working out well. If they can't fix the bandwidth problem, I'll be switching back to Comcast, despite their latest privacy violations, until I find another provider. While I was writing this entry, the server's power supply died. It's back up now. Hopefully the recent crashes will be fixed too. 9.Feb.2002 The station is down during the switch over to the new DSL line. It should be up tomorrow. 1.Feb.2002 The new playlist is up. This one is done by guest DJ IA_Lanky from IA Clan. He came up with a great mix of familiar and not-so-familiar tracks, check it out here. His email is lanky@iaclan.com. 22.Jan.2002 The station was down last night for a mp3 backup. Also, the problem with the What's Playing? page sometimes not updating is fixed. 8.Jan.2002 From BBSpot, RIAA Cracks Down After Taliban Outsted. 6.Jan.2002 Good news and bad news... 8.Dec.2001 The Live365 relay is up again. 5.Dec.2001 Playlist 9.0 is up. This one features Cybertrybe, Full Frequency, Esion, The Synthetic Dream Foundation, Din Fiv, Boshetunmay, Apraxia, CEOXiME, and Hypodermic. Band links are on the Playlist and What's Playing? pages. The server was down most of today, due to my server's IP address changing, and Streamguys relay server also changing IPs. In an unrelated problem, Live365 is also down. It looks like they didn't pay their bandwidth bill. Bleh. 27.Aug.2001 The playlist update is up. 16.Aug.2001 The Defcon 9 Report is finished. Ok, so it took a month instead of few days. 31.Jul.2001 Today's About.com Alternative Guide Newsletter described DIU as, "An excellent online Industrial radio station broadcasting high quality streaming MP3...Highly Recommended!" The newsletter is here. Moving beyond the shameless self-promotion, the newsletter also has a good article about Negativeland. Check out the links at their Industrial Guide.
26.Jul.2001 The company that provides bandwidth for the main stream is getting cut off by their upstream provider. The stream should be back up by Sat, probably with a new IP address. I changed the Listen link to use Live365 in the meantime. 17.Jul.2001 I'm back from Defcon. The report should be up in a few days. There were some buffering problems with the main stream yesterday. The hosting company switched to a faster box and these should be fixed now. From The Register: Napster to ditch MP3 for proprietary format. 6.Jul.2001 This update features music from Detroit Electronica Coalition members which were picked by the bands themselves. The featured bands are: CEOXiME, Crash Site 68, Esion, Mutual Hate Society, Silvercord, Space Scape, and Trotski's Block. 11.Jun.2001 Every song on the playlist has been changed, except those from last week's update. This one has some requests, plus some groups that have been off the list for several months such as The Fair Sex, Meme:334, Laibach, Soft Cell, and the Newer Wave compilations. Thinking about upgrading to WinXP? Check out these links from The Register: 5.Jun.2001 Ok, so the playlist update didn't come soon after all. This one features Icon of Coil, Inertia, Lords of Acid, Mentallo and the Fixer, Project-X, Snog, VNV Nation, and the WaxTrax Black Box set, plus a few others. CMJ interviewed local artist Emileign Rohn from Chiam. You can read it here. My favorite question asked was, "Why is every artist from Detroit so bitter?" I always thought we were rather cheerful, considering what Detroit is like. Chiasm's "Bouncing Baby Clones" appears on the Detroit Electronica Coalition CD D[elEcTROnIc]T, and on this playlist. The DEC's second compilation has been mastered and is in production. 20.Apr.2001 I was one of the winners in The Inquirer's Duron competition. My entry is here, under "Bottle Openers". The playlist update is coming soon. 12.Apr.2001 Fixed some broken links and changed the Live365 listen link to the new IP address. Links are always welcome, but if you link to the stream, link to either listen.pls or live365.pls, and not directly by IP. These files always have the current IPs. To cut down on bandwidth use, I'm taking the main server (24.131.249.131) off the public Shoutcast directory soon and limiting the connection to relay servers only. If your player won't let you bookmark to a file use http://161.58.167.5:6010 or http://64.152.82.193:18372 Links: Check out The Organization. Jos switched his news/rant page over to a zine format. 12.Mar.2001 DIU hit its second anniversary online! Playlist 8.0 is up. This one features a few new bands, and a more laid back side of some familiar groups. 22.Feb.2001 Added a couple tracks from the "A Tribute To.." and Newer Wave compilations, "Finched" by Out Out, and "Backlash" by Nitzer Ebb. Links: Cubists Launch Unnavigable Web Site. 22.Jan.2001 Added music by Die Warzau, Lights of Euphoria, Out Out, Suicide Commandos and Blaq Lily. Blaq Lily's Celtic Goth style reminds me of Norwegian Folk. From the Madonna tribute Virgin Voices, FLA covers "Justify My Love" and Spahn Ranch does "Swim." Finally from the In Defense of Animals compilation, "Ode to Grovy" by Skinny Puppy. I've been listening to a lot of CDs lately. Here's the ones I think are worth picking up: 8.Jan.2001 I added some new songs to the playlist by Covenant, Elektric Music, Evil Mothers, Godhead, Good Courage and Kill Switch...Klick, plus the Diva X Machine 3 and Darkness and the Machine Volume II compilations. Now that the holidays are over, I'll be able to spend more time on the playlist. 10.Dec.2000 Updated the playlist. This update consists mainly of local and unsigned bands, see the Playlist for the details.
15.Nov.2000 More Site News: Downgraded the Winamp to version 2.64. Version 2.666 was reporting song lengths incorrectly for many tracks. The tracks are all in 320k VBR (variable bit rate) MP3 format, and the new version doesn't like certain VBR tracks. It was also using the IDv3 tags, which display songs in "artist - title" format, instead of filename "artist - cd - track# - song name" I prefer. I've already been through this once before, when I removed the IDv2 tags from every song by hand. Also changed the What's playing? page to show the last 15 tracks played and widened the table so the titles will fit on one line. 12.Nov.2000 Site News: Added a bunch of links to the Links page, and a new Contact page. Upgraded the server's Winamp to 2.666 and the Shoutcast server to 1.7.1.
22.Oct.2000 VAC/HAUJOBB/DIN_FIV TOUR DATES 21.Oct.2000 The playlist updates are up, its got 3 1/2 hours of new music. I tried to keep it to a Halloween and U.S. election theme with songs like Policestate by Birmingham 6, State Rape, Business as Usual, and Somatime by Snog, and Happiness In Slavery by NIN. Ok, those are all political, but there aren't many good Halloween-themed industrial songs, with the exception of Bela Lugosi's Dead (yes I know its goth) and Ministry's Everyday is Halloween, which is also covered by TRS-80. 14.Oct.2000 Today I made my debut as an internet-published poet. Now I can die a happy man. You can read it here. Visit Salt for Slugs Magazine. I'm not going to try and describe it, just go there. As long as I'm doing plugs, Jos from The Organization, has a radio station up with a nice mix. If you play Quake 3, visit IA Clan. Their webmaster, IA Lanky, has been listening pretty much since day 1. Thanks to all you guys who have emailed and ICQ'd me. Its great talking to people who are into industrial and hearing what you think about DIU. 19.Sep.2000 The new cable modem is in, along with a new IP address. The web page and Shoutcast directories are updated. The server is at 24.30.90.208:8000 15.Sep.2000 The server was down most of today due to a cable modem problem. Mediaone missed the appointment to replace it, but its up now. The next appointment is for Tueday evening, so there will be some downtime then too, unless they blow me off again. 5.Sep.2000 The playlist update is up. More music coming soon. Links: What's the deal with these flesh-eating, lawn-mowing, and gun-toting robots? Don't the people who make these things ever watch old science fiction movies? Its just a matter of time until they try to take over. The robotic lawnmower can even download audio from the internet. And when it heads toward you while looping the "DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE" chorus from "So what?" just remember, its not a bug, its a feature. 21.Aug.2000 The Defcon Report is finally finished. Read it here. It took a while to write, which delayed the playlist update. You might as well read it while you wait... :-) 25.July.2000 I will be at Defcon in Las Vegas from July 27-30. If any of your will be there, and want to hang out email me. 15.July.2000 Apoptygma Berzerk/VNV Nation tour schedule is here. Somes dates are still TBD, but rumor has it they will be Detroit in September 16. 11.July.2000 I added some new bands to the playlist (ok, so that was last week, I'm behind on the news updates) including songs by Die Form, Laibach, funkervogt, and PTP (Programming the Psychodrill, a Ministry project). Also new to the list are local bands DeLEIN, Randolph's Grin, Rogue Angel Seven, Skinhorse, and Space Scape. 19.Jun.2000 The new domain, www.detroitindustrial.org is up. If you find any problems (links, slow loading, etc.), email me. 16.Jun.2000 Read what Courtney Love has to say about Napster and the music biz. 5.Jun.2000 Changed about 1/3 of the playlist. 2.Jun.2000 Check out Napster.com and the Death of the Music Industry by Grateful Dead lyricist and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, John Perry Barlow. If you're looking for something a bit lighter, try the Onion article, Kid Rock Starves to Death, MP3 Piracy blamed. 25.May.2000 Added music from Mentallo/Benestrophe, Snog, Unit:187, and VNV Nation to the playlist. If you are near Detroit, check out the Detroit Electronic Music Festival. It runs May 27-29 and features 70 bands, all performing for free. The artwork on their main page is way cool. 14.May.2000 The Live365.com relay is up and running. It connects to the main server as a listener and provides bandwidth for up to 365 listeners (in theory anyways). You can listen to it here. Another benefit of using Live365 is that the station will appear in the RadioSpy directory again. Shoutcast terminated RadioSpy's access to their directory in an attempt to keep the advertising revenue to themselves. Oh, Live365 does not pass through song title information so you'll have to open the What's Playing? page if you want that info. You might want to use the Winamp minibrowser for this. ALT-T opens the minibrowser. 9.May.2000 I added some music from CEOXiME, esion, Chiasm, and Crash Site 68. These are all local bands who belong to the Detroit Electronica Coalition. The DEC recently put on a great show featuring four of their member bands, and it was a pleasure to see local talent in an intimate setting. Other new stuff includes music by mdfmk, Velvet Acid Christ, and Darken My Fire - A Gothic Tribute To The Doors. Site News: Updated Links page and added Site Map to index page. Read the Press Release. 5.May.2000
From The Register: MP3 to destroy capitalism, bring about anarchy. 2.May.2000
ABBA turns down $1 Billion for reunion tour: Apocalypse narrowly averted.
16.Mar.2000
The new playlist is finally finished. This one is somewhat lighter than the previous playlists, as I needed to have some fun after dealing with recent events. Over the past couple of months, I've had to rip my entire cd collection, rebuild the server after a crash, and restore the mp3s (with some unpleasant personal stuff thrown in too). The mp3s were backed up onto burned cd-roms, but the ISO cd-rom standard only uses 64 character names, so I had to copy and paste the long names back in place or re-rip the cds, in addition to re-ripping everything I'd bought since the backup was made. And yes, that is at least as tedious as it sounds. I need to come up with a better backup strategy and start over again.
Besides the lighter mix, the biggest change is that I'm limiting each band to four songs. This will allow room for more bands and give me an incentive to expand my collection and update the playlist more frequently. The new list features 20 more bands, in about the same playing time as the last one.
I was planning on incorporating some music from the Detroit scene in this revision but that will have to wait for the point release (coming Real Soon Now).
By the way, the station hit its first year online on Feb 27. Well, enjoy the music and let me know how you like it at brian@detroitindustrial.org.
From RAIN, SWAA Dead in Senate.
Still no definitive word from the Senate on whether they're voting on HR 5469 today.
UPDATE: 23:15: According to reports, HR 5469 died around 19:00. Hopefully it will remain dead until Congress adjourns for the year.
More UK press coverage from the Guardian, And the bland played on...
UPDATE: 18:15: RAIN has finally decided to run an article on the controversy around HR 5469. Kurt Hanson is portraying this as a misunderstanding on the part of the Register's reporter of a disgrunted person. He makes no mention at all of the four people in the article (myself included) who spoke out against the bill. He also made no attempt to contact me. (I'm working on verifying this with the other three people now.) This is also the first reference he has made to Ann Gabriel resigning, despite me mailing him a copy of her resignation letter for publication on 10/10/02.
UPDATE: 18:55: According to RAIN, there is one Senator who is blocking the passage of HR 5469, and RAIN is making a frantic attempt at encouraging people to lobby this person.
I hope it doesn't pass. In its current form, it would be disastrous. If you're in Kansas, please lobby against this bill immediately.
UPDATE: 20:20: RAIN claims that HR 5469 is cleared for a vote. The Senate is no longer in session tonight. Tomorrow, please go to Congress.org and look up your Senators. Call their offices and ask to speak to the legislative assistant in charge of the internet. Tell them to send this bill to committee until the needs of small webcasters can be addressed. If they can't do that, tell them to kill it.
On a more cheery note, last Sundays DEC Audiotech Live program is up on the DEC page. Audiotech host Ed Altounian (from Crash Site 68), dj_moondancer from Murknet, and I talked about internet radio, DJing, and Synfest, drank a few beers, and played a bunch of new unsigned music. The WMA link is on the Audiotech page. Winamp link (requires full version) is here.
I'll be at Defcon this weekend. I hope to run into some of you there.
We'll be broadcasting live from Crash Site Studios tonight. I'll be spinning with Ed Altounian from Crash Site 68, Mac from IPM radio, and some City Club DJ's may drop in too. Data Regeneration Project will be doing a live set. Tune in from 8pm EST to ??
From CNET, Lawmakers: Keep your tunes to yourself.
There's a patch out for the latest Windows Media Player security holes. Before you install this, take a look at the EULA:
* Digital Rights Management (Security). You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital
rights management ("Secure Content"), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we
will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update.
WMP: Just say no.
From The Inquirer, 50¢ pen thwarts multi-million audio protection scheme. Mac users should read this.
From the Campaign for Digital Rights, Corrupt audio CDs. Includes lists of known copy protected CDs, and players which will play them.
From Business Week Online, Lawrence Lessig: The "Dinosaurs" Are Taking Over.
Here are some links on the webcasting royalties issue:
Radio and Internet Newsletter
Boycott RIAA
Here's a couple news items:
From the Inquirer, Windows Media Player logs your listening habits, mp3, CD and DVD collections, transmits them to MS.
From the Register, Napster judge denounces recording industry.
The Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) has issued their recommended rates for internet broadcasters. They are recommending $.0014 per listener per song. This works out to about $1500/year at DIU's current listener rates, and would be retroactive to 1998. The internet broadcasting community is busy panicking over this, to put it mildly. More of this later (when I'm done panicking), but here's a link to the Radio and Internet Newsletter site.
DIU needs more bandwidth! If you've got a spare T1 worth of bandwidth, and are interested in running a relay with 10 or more 96k listeners, 24/7, email me. Thanks.
From The Register, Congressman assails CD copy protection.
First the good news:
The broadcast bitrate has been upped to 96k. It sounds a lot clearer now. Let me know what you think, especially if you have any problems with it.
Now the bad news:
The server was down all last weekend (12/29-12/30). My cable service was down, so I decided to catch up on long-neglected server maintenance. I ran a full virus scan, defragged all the drives (once every three years, whether it needs it or not, heh). I also discovered that copying files to a defragged drive under NT will re-fragment it. Amazing. The higher bit rate boosted the cpu usage from 45% to 90%, so I upgraded the cpu from a K6-2 350 to a K6-2 500. Usage is back to 45% again. (I had bought the 500 mhz cpu for the server about a year and a half ago, but I decided the extra mhz would come in handy for Quake 3 instead.) I also oiled a sticking cpu fan that was causing overheats and reboots.
Next, I ran MP3 tag maintenance using MP3/Tag Studio. I removed all the ID3v2 tag info, so the song names would display in the file name format (artist - cd - track # - song name). I also used it to fix all the incorrect variable bit rate (VBR) headers created by Music Match Jukebox. These problems kept me stuck running old versions of Winamp. Once this was done, I upgraded the server to Winamp 2.71 and Shoutcast 1.83. The moral of this story: Never use VBR ripping.
All new music is ripped in 256k constant bit rate (CBR) format. One of these days, when I've got a week with nothing better to do and a spare 30 gig drive, I'll re-rip all the old music too.
Last and least, the Live365 relay has been shut down. It wasn't worth the bandwidth for the listener numbers it was generating.
More bad news:
My ISP, Comcast, sucks. They've increased prices three times recently, they don't answer emails, their tech support is incompetent (they couldn't even provide me with the new pop3 settings), and their update disks 1. don't work, and 2. installs spyware. They are also eliminating newsgroup access, banning VPN use, capping bandwidth, and web browsing has been slower then a 28.8 modem, when it works at all. I'm not alone here, go to DSL Reports and look under horror stories, or check Usenet.
So far the music steam has been unaffected, but that's just a matter of time. Needless to say, I'm looking for a new ISP. If you know of a good cable/DSL provider in the Detroit area, or one to avoid, email me. Thanks.
The new relay server is up. Either use the listen link or enter live.str3am.com:2200 in winamp.
MP3 gone from WinXP, and it's not coming back> and MS plans 'Secure PC' that won't copy pirated audio files
Here's a weird Bjork video from the Radio Crow newspage.
On a less pleasant note, read about how the EU is as much a pawn of the recording industry as the U.S. government is.
The Onion reports on Marilyn Manson.
I forgot to post the 22 Jan news, read on...
Lights of Euphoria - Voices
In Defense of Animals (compilation) - non industrial (except for the Skinny Puppy track)
Diva X Machina 3 (compilation) - several good tracks by female artists
Evil Mothers - The Incriminating Fruit
Godhead - Power Tool Stigmata
Kill Switch Click - Alt.
The voice mail is up, see the Contact page. The box is provided by www.ureach.com. They offer free voice mail and email, and you can even view faxes online. It can be set to inform you via email, pager, or AIM/ICQ if a message comes in. Way cool.
I made a playlist file which will try the main stream and then the Live365 relay if the main is busy, but my web hosting company hasn't configured their web server to support the pls MIME type yet. (They haven't even acknowledged receiving my email.) When its working it will save me a lot of effort emailing people to change their links when my ISP decides to play DHCP Roulette with my IP address. Maybe one day I can get back to the music end of this project. Ok, rant over. I feel much better now.
From the Register, Senator Hatch's Napster Epiphany.
STATE CITY DATE VENUE
FL Miami 25-Nov Manray
FL Tampa 26-Nov Masquerade
GA Atlanta 28-Nov Masquerade
DC Washington 30-Nov Cage @ Deep Six
CT Hartford 02-Dec Webster Theatre
PA Philadelphia 03-Dec Evolution
NY New York 05-Dec Limelight
ONT Toronto 06-Dec Lees Palace
ONT Ottawa 07-Dec Barrymore
OH Cleveland 08-Dec Phantasy
MI Detroit 09-Dec Majestic Thretre
IL Chicago 10-Dec Metro
CO Denver 12-Dec Gothic Theatre
UT Salt Lake 13-Dec Area 51
AZ Phoenix 15-Dec Nile Theatre
CA San Diego 16-Dec TBA
CA Los Angeles 17-Dec Palace
CA San Francisco 18-Dec Slims
And for those of you who think that Industrial has lost its capacity to shock and horrify, there's "We Will Follow - A Tribute to U2". This CD features Front Line Assembly with Tiffany (oh how it pains me to type that) covering New Years Day. Listening to Tiffy sing is like watching a train wreck; I couldn't bear to listen, yet I was unable to stop. Give it a listen, but remember, you were warned...
Links: Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Pirated MP3s, and The Organization, an eclectic news page.
I've been listening to "Empires" by VNV Nation a lot lately, this is definitely worth buying.
