Posts by jon_knox
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It's good to know that pop ain't dead yet, despite what the youngsters are doing to it. (perhaps ironically I have to check to see if "ain't" remains a word in popular usage....causing me to wonder if I've become John Key....*shudder*)
You'd done so well to conceal your texting addiction. To better this year's effort you will have to text from stage while a band is playing next year.
As some real old guy might have said "Better to burnout, than to fade away"....obviously referring to something fast and chipped rather than his Mum's Hyundai.
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Marvel at the slick transition from the arts to politics.
Is there anyway that these segments can be linked up, so instead of getting just the one segements, you end up getting any previous content played until such time as the listener realises and decides to stop?....or is that likely to raise some bandwidth cost issues?
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http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/sno/sno-20090119-1032-Sam_Hunt-048.mp3
Noelle conducting a rather free flowing interview/word association session with Sam Hunt regarding what he's up to, including a collaboration with that rather scruffy looking Dunedin-ite, David Kilgour, a book and guest spotting for Leonard Cohen.
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when we make celebrities out of the fourth estate we weaken our democracy and the quality of our argument.
Nicely put.
Strikes me that the editor has to bear some responsibility for allowing, or perhaps encouraging any of their writers to concoct such a piece.
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Simon, can you elaborate on what he's not getting and what's your take on the changes Gray suggests?
From where I sit, Gray's definition of "excellence" seems to focus on profitability and therefore seems a bit binary. Does excellence lead or follow commercial success? Gray's ideas are perhaps pragmatic in attempting to simplify the funding process by replacing subjective assessment of quality with the objective fact of the market.
The lure of profits already exists for those artists who happen to fit, or mould themselves towards commercial success, but what impact would any changes have where profits are not immediately likely, such as in maintaining a link to our musical history. Am I right in thinking that striking a balance between supporting commercial & non-commercial acts is a fine art in itself?
Considering incentives.
Should we seek to provide additional incentive where there are existing commercial incentives and the output is perhaps of little other value?
Does funding only those musicians who are likely to be commercially successful, really only interfere with turf of the labels, effectively to subsidize labels in pick-up NZ musicians, that the labels should be doing effectively.
Or, should we demand the creation an incentive to ignore the logic of the market by providing public funding for people to do something well that a large majority of people have nothing but a disregard for....( a disregard which seems even to be the case for the commercially successful music) ...under some notion of "cultural value"....(whatever that means)
Does this not lead us back towards a discussion regarding some musicians undertaking the creative process as a response to their own creative needs rather than for the purpose of commercial success?....In which case perhaps those artists don't need to be funded, because the were always going to find a way to do it.....that is if the artist really was "sufficiently determined" (again...whatever that means).
To what degree do Gray's ideas lead us towards excellence in marketing, rather than excellence in music making as is evident in the UK chart where style seems to dominate over substance.
Do Gray's ideas hold any water for the visual arts, or literature, or is music a special case?
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I was just checking out what was being given an airing on Kim Hill's Saturday morning National Radio show. There was a re-run of an interview with Scoop founder Alastair Thompson that has interesting intro regarding the media.
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On the other copyright thread their are a couple of links that are worth having a look at. There are a few for Shirky that Sacha provided a few links for and the other is the anti-monopoly ebook that Keir suggests.
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Shirky presentation seems fairly reasonable and I must say that the ebook Keir doesn't seem too bad either from the first couple of chapters that I've poured into the speed reading website.
I've just started to see if I can fact check/pick a few holes in the first few examples in the ebook being the James Watt/engine and the music publishing/film industry examples.
To my surprise I think the publishing numbers used in chapter 2 are entirely consistent with the sorts of numbers Rob would have us believe.
Slightyly off topic, but I listened to a podcast last week, which the BBC has now hidden in which the "More or Less" team talked to a Prof Philip Tetlock who has been involved in the study of the accuracy of political forecasts and I'll suggest that the results are applicable, as the copyright issue is a political one.
When asked to identify if there was any type of expert that has emerged in his research as potent factors impacting the accuracy of a forecast, Prof Tetlock indicated 1 factor that emerged as a potent factor which he explained using the analogy of Hedgehogs & Foxes. The factor identified was a cultivated capacity for self-criticism and was in the example the behaviour of the fox.
Later in the interview, Prof Tetlock was asked to make a prediction , to which he responded "I study forecasters, I don't make forecasts", though he subsequently added he hopes that having studied the relevant history does confer some improvement in the accuracy of the forecast, which is no small relief.
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I watched the Aussies play the South Africans at Twenty20 this morning. Every now & then one of the Aussie players was wired up for an over or two with some nice kit allowing two-way conversations to their former team-mates now employed as commentators. Nathan Bracken was quite happy chatting away, including letting the guys know what type of delivery he was planning as he ran in. Ponting was wired up both in the field and when at the non-strikers end when batting, not that he really gave much away.
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Carrying one of the single plastic shell plastic Barbie & Ken-style motorbike helmets always seemed to deter a lot of Tuk-tuk drivers & hawkers in that neck of the woods, in addition to the usual improvements in getting around, getting helmet hair and improving skin exfoliation. They also make a fine workbench.
The sort of rent seeking behaviour you describe and even the seeking of those involved in rent seeking behaviour, looks like being banned in the enlightened UK. The statistics used to justify the change seem to be quite rightly under criticism.