RE RE: New Work take 2 on the evil of iTunes and dialog audability (and file size)

I got a chance to read some what you where all saying about the evil of
iTunes and wanted to comment:  

From a video podcasting perspective iTunes is just a place where you can find
and show casts.. So I don't know that there evil comes into play when used
that way.

I suppose I take a different stance then the critics at those sites..  As an
artist what I'm trying to do is find a new way to relating to the market place
in order to make a more avant guard type art form commercially viable.  To do
this I'm going to use guerrilla business strategy and tactics empowered by
new media tools..  

In many cases I see the major labels as more of an evil then iTunes.. it's
the majors that are taking such a big chunk out of the recording income pie.. If
I deal directly with iTunes, cutting out the label..  I get a bigger piece of
the pie..  So I feel empowered by iTunes.  I think it's entirely possible to
make real art, find a way of distributing it, find an audience to sell it to /
etc.. without dealing with the Major labels.. and i think the more artists
find more ways of doing this.. the more things will change to the way we would
probably all like things to be.

It's certainly true that if you buy music from iTunes you get compressed
music..  So I have never downloaded any music from the iTunes store..  Because I
care about that sort of thing..  But the iPod is not about high def audio, it's
about convenience and simplicity.. and that's what people are saying when
they buy them and use them..

What I see as sort of evil about Apple has to do with branding strategy where
we see, more and more, people building there identities via brand loyalty.. 
When you become an iPod user you become a part of a kind of tribe...  On some
level this is just the sort of postmodern issue..  Were we largely build our
identities out of the raw material of popular culture..  sort of doing a Warhol
like, or Jeff Koons like.. appropriation of it..  I think of Reservoir Dogs
and the conversation about Madonna's "Like a Virgin."  Or for that matter
Slackers conversation about the Madonna pap-smear...

Other evils I see inside of Apple has to do with Apple using the power of
there market position.. Instead of innovating.. An example of this can be seen in
the platform wars where we now see the labels putting piracy protection on
there CDs, because they want to be able to charge more for there music through
iTunes..  and so they are trying to leverage there position.. but the fans cry
fowl.. and blah blah blah...  Anyway I think the degree to which we see this
happen.. is the degree to which we might see Apple (and others) going down
hill..  I say this because everything I see inside of the information revolution
tells me that it's all about power defusion..  which will, over time..
fundamentally change the way the market operates.. 

So I guess I'll leave that at that..

On the issue of the Audibility in my podcast..  I think there are a few
things going on..

#1.  I'm trying to do a kind of Godardian thing.. In rethinking film and
video syntax..  Traditionally if you where scoring a film.. you'd want the score
to never be self conscious...  Or to compete with other elements. In an early
sequence in my video podcast I'm talking about something.. While the music
starts to build beneath..  not yet in any way masking what I'm saying.. but it
does, clearly.. start to compete for your attention..  In my sound work there is
often more then one path you can follow through a composition..  This making
it a little... well Picasso or maybe Xenokis like..  But what I think is sort
of interesting about the video podcast is you feel like you're supposed to be
paying attention to what I'm saying.. but maybe you'd rather listen to the
music.. 

I want the cast to have a consumption pattern where you would listen to it
multiple times.. In order to "get everything" and inside of that context.. The
game of diverting your attention, it seems to me..  means that there will be
more reasons to come back to it for repeat viewing / listening.

#2.  There are quite a few times where the music masks the dialog..  My hope,
at least, is that most of the time this happens with "unessential dialog"
that is.. that you can still get the desired impact of the podcast without
hearing everything.. It's a little bit like listening to some song where it might
take you many listens to hear exactly what is going on in it.. What is being
said..  So at least some of the masking is intentional...  and may not be
problematic..  From this perspective it's more a question of if the "key parts" are
not masked.. 

#3.  The video iPod is really the target platform for this podcast... 
Meaning that there is an expectation that the target audience is listening in
stereo.. with ear buds on..  And viewing it on that small screen..  This way.. I
don't have to worry about making it "sound as good as possible on a many
different systems as possible" as much.. because I say "I know what system they are
viewing this in..."  From what testing I have done...  It seems to be much
easier to make out what's going on an iPod then when you look at / listen to it in
other scenarios.

The reason this makes sense to me is..  That the video podcast is a bit like
an add for music to eventually be sold inside of iTunes..  

Now that said.. I am thinking that I'd like to make it viewable on PDA's,
Cell Phones.. and other such devices.. And I don't, in the long term, plan to
only target "the pod people."  So this maybe an important issue to work out.

yeah.. it is surely a huge file.. 94 MB.  I've been trying to get it down
smaller via MPEG compression.. to use that instead of the iPod proprietary
format..  But I have a slow computer.. and it takes a long time compress things down
just to find out that it's too compressed or not compressed enough.. (I've
already waisted more then a full day on just this.) so I'll be working on this..
and hopefully I can get something a little smaller..  But I'm afraid I tend
to get easily married to the higher production value..  But on a more positive
note.. the podcast does go on for about 16 minutes..  So it maybe wroth it.. 
 I'm planning on making future casts smaller in length.. in part because I'm
worried about the 94 MB being prohibitively large for some people.. Or at the
very least it probably makes it.. not worth checking out.. for some..
especially if you expect it to be nothing worth looking at in the first place.. Or you
know.. that it's a gamble...  The second reason why I want to make them
smaller being that they will then take less time and effort to produce..  And from
what information I've gotten.. It seems that frequency of posting new episodes
is one of the biggest determining fact for audience size.

Anyways..  I want to thank you for the feed back and stuff.. (love the links)

matt

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

>I deal directly with iTunes, cutting out the label.. I get a bigger
>piece of the pie.. So I feel empowered by iTunes. I think it's
>entirely possible to make real art, find a way of distributing it,
>find an audience to sell it to / etc.. without dealing with the Major
>labels..

This is true for old media like CDs, too. Bands like Clap Your
Hands Say Yeah came out of nowhere but got covered by the indie
blog scene.

And you don't need iTunes. You can make a website with downloads
and:

() Sell ads there. Google makes it easy.
() Take donations. Amazon makes it easy.
() Sell the downloads. Your code generates a random filename
for each payment (PayPal makes it easy).
() If you want to be a dick, you can even add your own
DRM.

This way, you'd keep 100% of the dough.

I'm not saying you shouldn't use iTunes too. But to make your
work only available through iTunes is to make it unavailable to
people like me.

Also, you might be interested in Weed (aren't we all?)...
http://weedshare.com/
...here, your fans help popularize your music, and get a kickback
in the process.

And, are you doing video? You can use sites like revver and
youtube to make a buck.

>#3. The video iPod is really the target platform for this podcast...

You can also use vimeo, which lets you keep your files in
m4v format (or whatever godforsaken format the iPod plays).

-Carl