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The Radiohead Aftermath...
Posted in Music, News on October 18th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
Last week Radiohead started distributing their latest album on DRM free MP3’s, but most importantly, they let users name their price. Almost 2 million downloads later, this week, the theme of the most interesting media & technology articles and blogposts still was Radiohead. Here’s the highlights and the best of them. (more…)
Mini-Trends: Happy Objects, Darkening the Edges & Surreal Hyperrealism...
Posted in Visual, Art, Design, Illustration, Photography on October 18th, 2007. By Ona Vinyamata.
[Detail of “Sleeping #1” by Josh Keyes]
Happy Objects: the Japanese brand Decole started the trend selling smiling teapots, glasses and pencils… Now we’ve seen it several times mainly in TV spots and music videos where objects or food (more…)
The Wabi-Sabi Aesthetic...
Posted in Visual, Animation, Art, Design, Illustration, Photography, Typography, Video on October 13th, 2007. By Ona Vinyamata.
[Detail of “my toaster” by (ku)nihito]
Wabi-sabi (in Kanji: 侘寂) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic that is sometimes described as one of Beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent and incomplete”. (more…)
Great News From The Music Industry...
Posted in Television, Music, News on October 13th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
Since the Internet became mainstream about 10 years ago the music industry has been unwillingly ahead of all other media. The situation today is clearly polarized: On one side we have the record labels, fighting to maintain the status quo they held 10 years ago. On the other side we have music consumers, mostly pirates (according to the labels & the RIAA’s around the world). They are listening to more music than ever before, but not in the way copyright law originally intended. This week’s major stories show this polarization but also reflect a trend pointing to the side that will probably win this battle and decide how media should be understood and consumed. (more…)
YouTube & Joost, One Year Later...
Posted in IPTV, Television, Internet, Advertising, News on October 4th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
A year ago, on October 2006, Google announced that it had reached a deal to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion. That very same month Skype founders revealed “The Venice Project” or what would later be known as Joost. What has, and what hasn’t changed since then? (more…)
Links of the Week...
Posted in IPTV, Music, News on October 4th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free
The economics of recorded music are fairly simple. Marginal production costs are zero: Like software, it doesn’t cost anything to produce another digital copy that is just as good as the original as soon as the first copy exists, and anyone can create those copies. Unless effective legal (copyright), technical (DRM) or other artificial impediments to production can be created, simple economic theory dictates that the price of music, like its marginal cost, must also fall to zero.
Illustrating the “Qi”...
Posted in Visual, Design, Illustration on October 4th, 2007. By Ona Vinyamata.
[Detail of a Neil Duerden work for Urban Organic]
Qi is, according to the traditional Chinese Culture, a kind of “life force” or “spiritual energy” believed to be part of every living thing that exists. It is frequently translated as “energy flow,” or literally as “air” or “breath”. (more…)