Video Games Live!

Today (the 12th) was my birthday! Yay!

As part of the celebrations, my brother (with some help from my girlfriend) brought me to Video Games Live:  Bonus Round, here in Pittsburgh. This is their second show here with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

This show has been touring since 2005, and plenty has already been said about it. Suffice to say: it's a really fun evening, and I'm really happy to see video game music, and game music composers, getting this kind of wider recognition. I wasn't able to make it the first time they had a show here, so I can only comment on this performance. A few highlights...

• The performances were generally excellent. The orchestra was great, the conductor was really into it, and the host really knew how to engage the crowd. (The only real letdown was the violin soloist for the Bioshock segment. The introduction to Rapture is a pretty unforgiving theme, and it didn't really seem to be his night)
• It being Valentine's Day on sunday, they opened with a poem: "Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF.  All of my base are belong to you." Not the most original spin on that old meme, but it still got a nice laugh from the crowd.
• They had two audience members come up and play Frogger. (I'm pretty sure it was the Atari 2600 version.) Time limit was 2 minutes, 30 seconds. Neither one got past the first level.  Come oooon...  haha
• Flute Link!  I had somehow missed it when she first appeared at Otakon a couple years ago, but Laura Intravia is a very talented flutist, and also a cosplayer. Combining the two, she became Internet-famous, and is now touring with VGL! Score! (The video below is from the Sãu Paulo show last October)
  
  
  
  
• Anthony Daniels (better known as the guy who plays C-3PO) was there! He's an adjunct professor at CMU's Entertainment Technology Center, and came to the show. When the host learned of this, he wasted no time in directing everyone's attention to it. Cue thunderous applause and spontaneous standing O. That alone made the night.
• The host made a sideways jab at the Tony Hawk series for making too many sequels. "But it's ok.  I can say it - I wrote the music for the first one.  But I stopped after that..."
• They had a Guitar Hero contest before the show, where whoever did the best would be invited up on-stage to play it live later in the show. The same guy won who did it at last year's show!  And he doesn't even live in Pittsburgh! To be fair, he was damn good at Guitar Hero...

All in all, it was definitely a great experience, and I hope to go again!

Media and Technology: An Interests Showdown for Obama

Last tuesday, like most people at Syracuse, I watched elatedly as Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.  It was a historic moment any way you slice it, and all eyes are on Obama now as he attempts to live up to the hope over 66 million of us placed in him last November.

There's been no shortage of news speculation as to how he will handle one pressing issue or another.  However, being me, I've been wondering about another angle.  Perhaps not the most important or pressing, but one which greatly interests me.

Aside from the pomp of the ceremony itself, two things about President Obama's inauguration day struck me. First:  the new website at WhiteHouse.gov, which went live before he had even finished taking the Oath of Office.  Second:  The star-studded "Neighborhood Ball," hosted by ABC, which kicked off the string of events he and Michelle danced at.  These two events stood out to me because they highlight two "interest groups" among which Obama has strong support;  the wired world of the internet, and the glitz and glamor of Hollywood and the entertainment industry.

Barack Obama ran what is widely hailed as the most technology-savvy campaign in history.  With the small but passionate exception of Ron Paul supporters, the "internets" as a whole loved him for it, and looked forward to a presidency that understands and embraces new technology.  So far, signs that Change has come to the members of the executive branch are good.  The new White House website is every bit as fancy as the Obama team's previous online works, and having a weekly video podcast of sorts sounds like a great way to engage the populace.  Later in the week, we heard about the complaints staffers have been voicing over the archaic I.T. infrastructure in the White House - a lament all to familiar to any geek who has found themselves thrust into the bureaucratic technology morass that typifies most established institutions (50 meg mailbox quota for Syracuse students' e-mail, anyone?).  Heck, even the fact that the president fought to keep his Blackberry shows that he's a new breed of president - one who "gets" technology.  Let the Tubes rejoice!

However, the "Neighborhood Ball" I saw tuesday night on ABC demonstrates Obama's clout with another group: the entertainment industry.  During the campaign, one of the first widely-talked-about attack ads from McCain was directed at Obamas "celebrity" appeal.  His life up to this point reads like an Oscar-winning screenplay, and like most Democratic candidates, he had his fair share of supporters among the Hollywood elite.  That ABC would get together with chart-topping recording artists to throw the first of his presidential balls further proves Obama's appeal among the entertainment industry,

Clearly, both groups are looking forward to a plethora of wonderful changes our new President will bring.

One problem though:  These two groups are currently at war.

Media piracy is one of, if not the biggest issue facing the content creators in the film, television, and music businesses.  It is also at the forefront of the freedom-loving culture of the Internet.  Media companies view tech-savvy consumers as criminal scum, and brilliant programmers worldwide take pride in cracking every new protection scheme the entertainment industry can come up with, either out of belief, necessity, or (I suspect most of the time now) out of sheer spite.

In the last decade, this issue has become the defining conflict for both sides, and both no doubt would like to look to Obama as their savior.  I'm very curious as to how he will navigate these waters, not least of which because I often find myself straddling the same fence.

Funny Song - "That Calls for a Wilhelm Scream"

Ah, movie geek in-jokes, how I love thee so.

If you don't know what the Wilhelm Scream is... go educate yourself. ;) It's pretty much one of the longest-running cinematic in-jokes out there, particularly among sound designers who like to sneak it in wherever they can.


Certainly a clever idea, and it's nice that within the lyrics of the song, they pretty much tell the whole story of how the Wilhelm Scream came to be the acoustic cliché it is today.

100th Post. Nothing Special, but My iPod is Filling Up

I seem to have lapsed in my blogging for awhile (not that anyone cares). I hate big catch-up posts explaining every little thing that happened while I was "gone," so I'm just going to post something trivial and pointless, as if something ever happened. What else is a blog for? (All hail New Media!)

Food For Thought

My iPod is almost full. When I got my Nano about a year and a half ago, I figured 4 Gig would be plenty for my meager library. Well, owning an iPod tends to make one listen to music a bit more, and I've been steadily expanding since then, so that I'm now 90% full (Tha't's after I set all the Christmas songs and Monty Python sketches to not sync over...)

While noticing this, I took the time to notice a couple statistics in my iTunes Library, just to add some fuel (and hard numbers) to the RIAA vs. the World fight. 5% of my music was purchased through the iTunes Store. (The rest being primarily MP3's of... varying origin.) However, purchased tracks make up 40% of my Top 25 Most Played songs. The number 1 spot is an MP3, though. I'm sure that says something about the iTunes business model, DRM, etc., but damned if I know what...

Music, DRM, and Mr. Jobs' Good Idea

Today an interesting item appeared from within the annals of Apple's website: post by non other than everyone's favorite CEO/Mogul/Salesman, Steve Jobs, entitled "Thoughts on Music". The page addresses recent calls for Apple to open the FairPlay DRM used in the iTunes Store, and points out how the current content-protection systems of the industry came to be in the first place.

However, the real interesting bit comes a little further down, where Steve outlines the three possible directions the online music industry can take from here. First, they could "stay the course" and keep up the fragmented, proprietary DRM systems that consumers love to hate today. Second, Apple could license FairPlay to other companies, but that would make meeting the music industry's security requirements monumentally more difficult. Finally, we could probably take the best course possible, and just do away with DRM entirely.

...What?

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none.

It's not a new request to hear, but it's certainly new to hear it from the guy in charge of the world's largest source of DRM'ed music! Unlikely though it may sound, if the music industry would ever do this, Steve Jobs is the man who could convice them.

Honestly, I think the reluctance to sell DRM-free music is mostly due to corporate nervousness, not any justifiable business position. Here's an example - take Fred, a fictional college student living with 3 other undergraduates in an on-campus 4-person suite. He's a mostly honest kid, but he's pirated his fair share of music in the past. Fred wants to get a new song he heard on the radio. He could use his university's Ruckus subscription, but that wouldn't play on his iPod because of incompatible DRM. He could buy it from the iTunes store - that would make sense, but he'd like to be able to share the song with his roommates, and FairPlay would only let the music play on Fred's iPod. So he resorts to Limewire, or BitTorrent, or any of a million other illegal sources that you, dear reader, are likely intimately familiar with.

Now, here's where the RIAA throws a fit. Fred resorted to stealing because he wanted to do something illegal! You can't just get a song and share it with your friends! That's wrong and we won't allow it!

Ah, but see, it's happening anyway. Thousands of times every day. Even people who still buy CD's are likely to let friends and family rip them. You can't stop that with anything short of Big Brother. I feel for the content creators, I really do. Heck, I'm going to school to become one of their ilk. But, illegal or not, this is simply the way the world works, and it will still happen no matter how much the RIAA screams about it. Fred is going to share his music. He has some morals of his own (independent of the law, I might add), so he won't post it on the internet, but he still wants to share it with his roommates, and that pulled him away from legitimate online music sources. From my own experience, I'd say "Fred" accounts for a very large portion of my generation. (Most of the rest won't settle for any price but "free," so there's little you can do about winning them over)

Now, let's pretend iTunes sold DRM-free music. What changes here? Well, Fred might decide that the song is worth a buck to him, and buy it. He's a nice enough guy after all, and the DRM was the only thing stopping him before. (He'd probably be even more likely to go legit it he could get it for free from Ruckus) He buys the song, then throws it over AIM to his roommates. They all listen, and a grand time is had by all. How did the record companies fare in these two scenarios?

Profit made from DRM'ed store: $0
Profit made from DRM-free store: $1

Now of course, in this situation the record companies would argue they're really entitled to $4, not $1, and probably that Fred has "stolen" $3 from them (if the lawyers got involved). But that's their fantasy world. In the real world, the choice isn't between $1 and $4, it's between $0 and $1.

So the real question is, who wants a dollar?