History
of Technology of Music - everything here is designed to pique
your curiosity about music, musical instruments and history. So
delve, delight, explore and enjoy! [Previous page - 1990s - Timeline ] [You are now on a HoTM page filed as: Year 2004 and previous to 1999-2000 - Timelines [Next page Notes on Origins of Electric Guitar ]
History
of Technology of Music - everything here is designed to pique
your curiosity about music, musical instruments and history. So
delve, delight, explore and enjoy!
Please note: This website is in its early phases and will be continually updated and improved and therefore should be regarded as always "under construction".
Page updated 9 August 2007
Contact via the convenient (and virus-free): e-mail form
Popstar deaths: John Bonham died aged 32, drummer of Led Zeppelin, alcohol overdose, Sonny Bono aged 62 died on holiday after skiing into a tree. Tim Buckley at 28 mistook heroin for cocaine; and his son Jeff Buckley at 30 long-later drowned in the Mississippi River. Karen Carpenter at 32 died of anorexia. Mama Cass died at 32 of food asphyxiation. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana died at 27, suicide by shooting. Sam Cooke died aged 33 shot dead by a motel owner. Jerry Garcia once of The Grateful Dead died aged 53 of heroin. Marvin Gaye died aged 44 shot dead by his father. Jimi Hendrix aged 27 died of asphyxiation caused by a drug overdose. Buddy Holly died aged 22 of plane crash with Big Bopper. Australian rocker Michael Hutchence died aged 37 of apparent suicide by hanging. Former Rolling Stone, Brian Jones, died aged 27 in his swimming pool, drowned. Janis Joplin died aged 27 of heroin overdose. John Lennon died aged 40, murdered by a crazed fan (Mark Chapman). Keith Moon of The Who died aged 31 of prescription drug overdose. Jim Morrison of The Doors died aged 27 of drink and possibly heroin overdose. Elvis Presley died aged 42 of prescription drug abuse. Otis Redding died aged 26 by plane crash. Ritchie Valens died aged 17 by plane crash. Stevie Ray Vaughan died aged 35 by helicopter crash. Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols died aged 21 of heroin overdose.
Reported 14 February 2001: Since November 2000, The Beatles have hit the #1 charts yet again. EMI last November released a new compilation Beatles album, called simply 1. It's a compilation of 27 Beatles chart-toppers. It has claimed #1 spot world-wide, from Canada to Chile, from Israel to Iceland.
2001: Billy Joel and Family History: Billy Joel it seems has agonised over aspects of his family history. The result is "a stunning documentary" about his quest to piece the story together. Joel has a long-lost father and a brother, Alexander. In 1930s Germany, Joel's grandfather was Karl Amson Joel, a Jew who owned a textile factory, forced to flee Germany to new York, and to give up his factory to a German, Josef Neckerman. Long later, Billy Joel visits Neckerman's grandchildren in Germany. This documentary has won a prestigious TV award, The Golden Rose of Montreux in 2001.
2002: Rolling Stones release of Hot Rocks 1964-1971 sells 12 million and becomes their first diamond record.
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for this |
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28 August 2002: EMI plans to become the first major record label in Australia to sell its music through an online subscription service.
November 2002: An early pioneer and "legendary figure" of rap music, Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizelli), has been killed inside his recording studio in Queens, New York, aged 37. He had worked about 1983 with RUN-DMC. His death follows that of other hip-hop musicians, including Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. (Reported 1 November 2002)
15 November 2002: Net threat for movie industry: Reports arise in Australia from Star Wars producer Rick McCallum, that big-budget film-making is in danger of collapsing in three years if studios do not stave off the threat posed by movies being downloaded from the Internet. He says, consumers by 2005 will be able to readily download "perfect copies" of new movies using Napster-like software and other file-sharing software, as with the threat posed to CD sales by such sound-handling software. Yet, McCallum says he has no idea how such threats can or should be countered, and no one in the movie industry seems to want to talk about such problems.
Jerusalem: Musicologists are agog as they believe they have found a score of Gustav Mahler's First Symphony with his own handwritten revisions. The score was found in archives "by chance" by a teacher at Jerusalem Academy of Music, Charles Bornstein. Hopes are that Mahler's musical thought processes can now be better analysed. (Reported 22 November 2002 in world press)
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2003: British pop musician Sting is awarded as Commander of British Empire for services to the music industry.
On 1 April 2003: The Rolling Stones will play China for the first time ever, in Shanghai. Talks were held in the late 1970s for the Stones to appear in China, but came to nothing. The Stones will also play Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and India. (Reported 7 March 2003)
29 April 2003: EMI in UK now plans to make more than 140,000 music tracks available on the Net in Europe's biggest such initiative so far, reports say. Tracks can be burned to CD, copies to MP3 players and bought, through music retailers.
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A report from music industry sources in London indicates that global sales of illegal compact discs are surging beyond one million. Such sales last year jumped 14 per cent to 1.1 billion, worth US$4.6 billion. The market shrank seven per cent in 202 and will probably by 8 per cent this year. Legal recording industry has "virtually disappeared" in Russia, Mexico and Brazil. In the past eighteen months, worldwide, from three to five million people have used pirate website. One UK source says the music recording industry faces ruin. Some blame is to be placed on governments, the source says. as more than 90 per cent of all recordings are fakes in countries such as Poland, Thailand, China and Ukraine. (Reported 11 July 2003)
5 September 2003: Universal, the world's largest record company, is set to slash CD prices by up to 33 per cent to try to lure music consumers back into the shops. Universal's stable of artists includes Eminem, Mariah Carey, U2, and "historically", Eric Clapton, Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix. It is uncertain if Universal in Australia will do likewise.
Action
against music piracy: 10 September 2003: "The Recording
Industry Association of America after considerable groundwork has
filed 261 lawsuits against people it believes are putting songs on
the Internet illegally". Similar suits against "thousands"
of individual song-swappers are to come. Major targets right now are
people who have uploaded more than 1000 songs. Australian sources
suggest such draconian action is not necessary in Australia due to
earlier effective action. (They are Music Industry Privacy
Investigators, headed by Michael Speck and acting for such as Sony
Music Entertainment, Universal Music and EMI.) There has been in
Australia by now a six-year long program which has ordered ISPs to
remove illegal song-swapping websites from their networks. Chief
executive of the Australian Recording Industry Association
commenting on such matters is Stephen Peach.
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Infrasound - soundless music, spooks and hauntings: Fascinating new scientific research arises on inaudible "soundless music" that can manipulate human emotions. It's called "infrasound", and can lead to spooky experiences that the brain takes to be supernatural. The research has been conducted by Richard Lord, a physicist at Britain's National Physical Laboratory at Teddington, London. Composers including Sarah Angliss were also involved in the experiments. The results have just been presented to a conference of British Association for Advancement of Science.
Infrasound is noise below 20 hertz, the lowest frequency the ear can identify with comfort, and has been called "soundless music". For the experiments, which were "double-blind" and conducted with 750 interviewees hearing musical works interspersed with infrasound, the eerie sound was produced at 17Hz, from a loudspeaker attached to a 7-metre length of sewer pipe at 86 decibels - the equivalent with audible sound of standing beside a busy road.
It is mostly inaudible, but most people can detect its presence, describing it as "a throbbing hum felt through the body". Reactions can include shivers down the spine, extreme sorrow, coldness, anxiety, a raised heart rate and butterflies in the stomach. Infrasound can have a profound effect on human emotion even if a person is unaware it is present.
Infrasound is detectable only when played at very high amplitudes. It can occur naturally, as with wind, thunder; or from an elephant or whale, which use it for communication. Man-made sources for it include traffic noise, aircraft, factories and organ pipes.
So-called "supernatural" associations as reactions to hearing infrasound include: spiritual awakenings, ghostly visitations, the spine-chilling reputations of haunted houses, spiritual inspiration as provided by sacred organ music, claims about hauntings, feelings experienced in religious settings such as cathedrals. In a haunted house, people may notice infrasound due to wind causing windows, doors or panels to vibrate, or this could be due to distant traffic noise, noise from aircraft, or anything vibrating at a low frequency such as air-conditioners or refrigerators. Some organ pipes are calibrated to vibrate at less than 20Hz, and so cannot be heard, but they can be felt.
Some "secular symptoms" of hearing infrasound can be motion sickness and sick-building syndrome. The researchers say that hearing infrasound may make a person's current emotional state more vivid. It can also cause (or seem to cause?) candles to flicker, loose paper to quiver or fall, variations in lighting, cold draughts, claustrophobia and magnetic fields. (Just perfect for adding the finishing touches to your ideal haunted house! - Ed) (Reported 10 September 2003 in The Australian Higher Education supplement, article by Mark Henderson)
12 September 2003: Death aged 71 of country music legend Johnny Cash, of complications of diabetes. Time magazine said: "Rarely before Cash had a singer taken vocal pain - not the adolescent shriek of most rock singers - but the abiding ache of a veteran victim - and made it so audible, so immediate, so dark and so deep."
Kirsty Needham reports: Last blast for the music moguls: The fightback against pirate CD copying and Internet song-sharing may be too late to save the big music companies. But their demise may be a win for consumers and musicians? The manager of Australian band, Silverchair, John Watson, says the music industry is facing "a major paradigm shift". Universal Music Group has lost 25.9 per cent world market share in the first half of 2003, losing (AUD?)$3.7bn. Sony Music loses about 14.1 per cent of its world market share. EMI about 12 per cent. Warner Music about 11.9 per cent and has merger talks with BMG which has lost about 11.1 per cent. Predictions include: record stores will close by the hundreds. Music CDs were introduced about 1982. Mass use of the Internet had effect from about early 1996. Peer-to-peer music file sharing began about 2000. Napster was shut down around late-2001-early-2002. DVDs are also making inroads on the traditional music industry. One survey in Australia has found that one-third of music obtained by teenagers has "sourced illegally". Interestingly, file-sharer Net operation, Kazaa, was relocated to Sydney after court action threatened it with shut-down in Netherlands. British retailer Virgin Music has launched a download service offering 200,000 songs for about 60p (AUD$1.40) each. (13-14 September 2003, Sydney Morning Herald)
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19 September 2003: Death in Sydney from cancer of
legendary king
of country music in Australia, Slim Dusty, aged 76.
A view
expressed in HotM's home territory is that Dusty (real name, Gordon
Kirkpatrick), did for music-of-the-people in Australia what Elvis did
for North America and the world. That is, his work and his story will
not die and will continue, with gratitude, to be influential. An
editorial in The Australian newspaper on 20-21
September
remarked: "For as long as people love the Australian landscape,
Slim Dusty's death will not silence his music."
A member of
Australian Aboriginal band Yothu Yindi, Mandawuy
Yunupingu,
sent a message suggesting that Slim Dusty was "the first pioneer
of reconciliation between black and white Australia. The message [in
his songs] brings harmony and balance between people and the land."
Dusty had a 60-year long career and produced 106 albums with
worldwide sales of 6 million. 
Music industry tries sales on eBay: Amid claims that sales of recorded music are slumping by up to 31 per cent over the past three years, partly due to Net piracy and music file-sharing, music industry giant Universal is planning to try sales on eBay auction site at www.ebay.com. (Universal handles Decca Record Company, Deutsche Gramophon, Interscope Geffen A&M Records, Island Def Jam Music Group, Lost Highway Records, MCA Nashville, Mercury Records, Motown Records, Philips, Polydor, Universal Music Latino, Universal Records and Verve Music Group). Universal will try eBay for sales of new releases, catalogue titles including old vinyl and artist memorabilia. (Reported in Icon, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 October, 2003)
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Mergers
against piracy: Four of the world's five largest music
companies
are planning to respond to "uncontrolled competition" by
making new partnerships. BMG is to join with Sony, forming Sony-BMG,
intending to compete with Warner, while Time-Warner is considering a
takeover offer by EMI. Such deals are a response pattern to threats
from music piracy and Internet downloading. At stake are parts of a
worldwide music market worth US$31 billion, now eroded by about 20
per cent due to Internet piracy. Soon there may be only three global
companies remaining. (Reported in Australia, 8 November 2003)
December
2003: In New South Wales, Australia, Tamworth's annual country music
festival according to local media is now ranked in world tourism
stakes as one of the Top Ten music festivals in the world.
December 2003:
Hate crime music:
German band Landser is hauled into the German courts and deemed to be
a criminal organisation, which becomes Germany's first case of a rock
band so-called, as prosecutor Joachim Lampe has pointed out after a
six-month trial in a Berlin court. Landser is German for
"foot-soldier". The band began life as "Final
Solution" in 1992 and lately has been forced to produce several
CDs outside Germany due to Germany' anti-discrimination laws. Lead
singer Michael Regener is sentenced to 40 months in prison for lyrics
that "venerate Hitler". Bass player Andre Moericke and
drummer Christian Wenndorff have got two years' probation plus hours
of community service to perform. The group has become popular
world-wide and "a voice of intolerance" according to Los
Angeles Times.
Landser performs right-wing rock,
appeals to
skinheads and far-right radicals, and their lyrics are deemed a
danger to Jews, Africans and Moslems in Germany. The band members
wear long hair and black leather jackets, and have called themselves
"terrorists with electric guitars".
2003-2004: Amount of money the world movie industry reportedly loses from sales of bootleg DVDs and videos, excluding net piracy: About $4.6 billion (Reliable source -Ed).
2004: Beastie Boys issue To the 5 Boroughs, on Capitol, with "more a political agenda".
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24 January 2004: Singer/songwriter Sara Storer makes Australian country music history, breaking all previous records, by winning seven of her eight nominations at Toyota Golden Guitar Awards. Of the 13 categories judged for the Awards she won: Album of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year, Heritage Song of the Year, Bush Ballad of the Year. She also won APRA Song of the Year (together with Garth Porter and her brother Doug Storer), Vocal Collaboration of the Year, Single of the Year. Storer is a graduate of Tamworth's CMAA College of Country Music and since her 2001 debut has been a writer-performer darling of country music fans. Her achievement is unprecedented in the history of the Tamworth country music festival and the Awards system. Her number of nominations was extraordinary, winning seven awards even more so.
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February 2004: Obituaries appear in world press for famed Hong Kong singer/actress, Anita Mui (Mui Yim-Fong). Died of cancer, aged 40. At the height of her fame in the 1980s she was called "Hong Kong's Madonna". She sold more than 10 million albums and played more than 300 concerts in a 20-year career as "queen of Canto-pop". Her career began with early poverty alleviated by income from performing. In 1982, aged 18, she won a TV talent contest. She eventually won more than 80 music awards for works including Bad Girl, Breaking Through Ice Mountain, Time Flows Like Water. An energetic artist, she also appeared in 40 films (such as Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx in 1996), and was adept in roles stretching between comedy and compassion. In 1991, she broke all Asian performer records by playing 30 consecutive nights at her city's major venue, Hong Kong Coliseum. Then in 1991 she semi-retired, not returning to the stage till 1995. Her final appearances after she had disclosed she had cancer were at an eight-night run of sold-out concerts in November 2003.
As of January 2004: How are the music download wars going? In Australia, part of the state of play is this... Destra is an Internet company dealing with four large music retailers and will possibly use a download voucher system, also distributing artist information. Telstra BigPond and ninemsn are likely to become big players. Apple's iTunes website seems to be bubbling along acceptably but has not made a profit yet (using iPod). BigPond music users pay AUD$1.49 per song. A commentator however complains that online music sellers are only offering about 15 per cent of music that the public actually wants. The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) is planning to launch a separate music chart detailing the most popular downloaded songs.
Given the current boom in "internet music", the recording industry in Australia has begun considering promoting an official chart of legal song downloads. Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA, chief exec being Stephen Peach) is talking with music download services to find accurate data on tracks being bought online. The idea is to combine data on legal net-download sales with data on traditional retail CD sales. (Will it work? - Ed) (Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February 2004)
Music industry in denial?: Lack of sympathy for the problems the world music industry says it suffers due to Net piracy continues to permeate the discussion. A columnist in a major Sydney newspaper claims the music industry is "a living lie", living in denial of contemporary facts. Recent sales figures indicate that Australian sales of recorded music has been at an all-time high. As well, an academic report from the US now indicates that downloading music from the Net does not slow music sales and may even help them. The columnist feels anyway that copyright and intellectual property rights are rendered obsolete by the digital age and its ability to recopy material. He also feels that living artists derive little income from royalties. The music industry tends to provide revenue stream for producers, publishers, promoters, impresarios, packagers, distributors, all the middle men. The academic study referred to comes from Prof. Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Prof. Koleman Strumpf at of all places, Harvard Business School. They tracked sales of 680 albums for a 17-week period in 2002 and found that music file-sharing acted to increase the numbers in some sales-figure-brackets. So the columnist concludes, the music industry just doesn't get it! (Column by Graeme Philipson, computer pages, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 April 2004)
HoTM
noticed, April 2004 in world press: Controversy on world's
worst
songs: Now the list is published, again, and we can all
breathe
sighs of relief, again (?). A self-appointed researcher, Craig Marks,
editor of Blender magazine, using an undescribed
ranking
procedure, has culled the views of music industry insiders,
colleagues and music fans and friends to create THE list of The
World's Worst 50 Songs Ever. We haven't seen the full list,
only
the Top Ten, and we have some problems with it, as some of our own
favourite most-worstest songs are not in the Top Ten.
The
researchers decided to be forgiving to novelty songs, which was
charitable of them (HoTM has never admired, I've
Been
Everywhere, Man and can live quite happily without it,
forever.)
The Top Ten anyway are: (1) We
Built This City
(from rock 'n' roll) - from Starship (2) Achy Breaky Heart,
Billy Ray Cyrus (Always been sooooo fashionable to
hate this
one!) (3) Everybody Have Fun Tonight from Wang
Chung (4)
Rollin' from Limp Bizkit (5) Ice Baby Ice
from Vanilla
Ice (6) The Heart of Rock and Roll from Huey Lewis
and The
News (yep, it's hip to be square, but it ain't) (7) Don't
Worry,
Be Happy from Bobby McFerrin [here, what about the urban
legend
that he committed suicide?] (8) Party All The Time
from Eddie
Murphy (9) American Life from Madonna (10) Ebony
and Ivory
from Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder.
HoTM
feels that
these researchers might be cowards since they have avoided country
music songs here. HoTM feels that two country songs from the US in
particular need to be regarded with special dread: Drop Kick
Me
Jesus Through The Goalposts of Life and a song (which is a
kind
of reverse triumph of self-pity and ultra-low self esteem), Mothers,
Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.
Other
baddies
discussed are Macarena and Simon and Garfunkel's The
Sound
of Silence (lyrics are too self-important). Is Illegal
Alien
from Genesis worse than Sussudio from Phil Collins?
We
Built This City, written by Bernie Taupin, hit #1 in 23
countries, so obviously a lot of people can't tell a bad song from a
good one. Two people unknown to HoTM have suggested Ground
Control
to Major Tom from David Bowie (which seems a tad harsh), and
Peter Sarstadt's Where do you go to, My Lovely? The
Carnival Is Over, from The Seekers. Or, I've Been
To Paradise
But I've Never Been To Me. About which HoTM,
as a website,
has no opinion.
But, what about those German heavy-metal bands
who
generically sound like they're still pissed-off that Hitler lost
World War Two? Personally, HoTM suspects that The
Beatles
wasted their time with Why Don't We Do It In The Road?
But who
are we to express an opinion? And why do national anthems vary so
much in quality around the world?
Some of HoTM's emailers
have
their own pet hates. A few of them are:
the Pina Colada
song; the
Paul and Paula song "about getting married"; Chirpy
Chirpy Cheep Cheep by Middle of the Road; Stand By
Your Man
by Tammy Wynette and anything by the Bay City Rollers.
Since
the
entire topic is endless, can be a waste of time, and merely turns on
dubious question of dubious tastes, HoTM ends the
controversy
right here, now. If you don't like what's on the radio, turn it off!
Is that difficult? Really?
Week ending 9 April 2004: It is now 30 years since ABBA won the Eurovision song contest with Waterloo. Make that success from 1974 then!
iTunes handles music downloads: Apple's iTunes music download system seems to continue successfully apace despite a version glitch, with consumers buying 3.3 million songs at AUD$1.35 each during a period not actually designated. Music fans have also taken advantage of an extra 500,000 free songs. iTunes by now after a year of operation has reportedly become one of the world's largest legal music download sites, offering 700,000 selections. It claims to have about 70 per cent of the market share of legal downloads for singles and albums. (Reported 11 May 2004)
Freedom of speech on-air suffered disastrously in London recently when a long-experienced DJ was suspended from his morning show for defying a ban on playing Cliff Richards tracks. (Reported 25 June 2004)
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Freedom of speech on-air suffered disastrously in London recently when a long-experienced DJ was suspended from his morning show for defying a ban on playing Cliff Richards tracks. (Reported 25 June 2004)
Quote from in 2004, "If music could change the world, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley would have changed it long ago." South African musician, Hugh Masekela, 65, whose latest work addresses difficult problems in his country.
July 2004: Disney in US is being sued by the family of the writer (Solomon Linda) of the classic African song The Lion Sleeps Tonight, for improperly using the song in its film, The Lion King and its sequel. Linda wrote the song in 1939 and sold his copyright to a South African publishing company (this being subject of a documentary screened in Australia that this website noted with great interest) – a company which on-sold the composition to US music publishing interests, though nothing was re-arranged or recorded till the 1950s – but the song evidently travelled around and was commented. UK law of the day would have suggested that the copyright would have reverted to Linda's heirs 25 years after he died, in 1962, which has failed to happen. The unforgettable song is estimated to have earned US$15 million in royalties so far, of which Linda and his family saw very little. (Oh yes, the USA, the land-of-freedom-of-speech and sundry other virtues, we no longer think, in very many ways, shapes or forms by 2004 – Ed)
More music piracy war action: (Reported 4 September 2004): Another blow is struck in the music piracy wars. A US appeals court has just disappointed Hollywood studios by ruling that the makers of peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing software are not legally liable for the possible copyright infringements of their users. The court has upheld a ruling of 2003 which cleared Grokster and Streamcast Networks of liability for their software users actions. And in days of this latest ruling, the Recording Industry Association of America announced 744 new lawsuits against suspected music pirates. Meanwhile, the film piracy wars have been hotting up as the FBI has raided the homes of five file sharers thought to be part of a 7000-strong network using software known as Direct Connect - in cases where up to 84 movies have supposedly been pirated.
Rolling Stone magazine has recently taken a poll on "the greatest songs of all time", polling 500 contenders. Results include: (1) Bob Dylan, Like A Rolling Stone (2) Rolling Stones, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (3) John Lennon, Imagine (4) Marvin Gaye, What's Going On (5) Aretha Franklin, Respect (6) Beach Boys, Good Vibrations (7) Chuck Berry, Johnny B. Goode, (8) Beatles, Hey Jude (9) Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit (10) Ray Charles, What'd I say?
(Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 19 November 2004)
US impresario and media manager Robert Sillerman has reportedly bought about 85 per cent of the estate of Elvis Presley, including rights to the singer's name and management of his films and music, plus Graceland, the singer's one-time mansion. The deal is worth US$100 million. The Presley assets have previously been managed by Lisa Marie Presley and Elvis Presley Enterprises. (Reported 18 December 2004)
German radio stations are to be encouraged to play more German pop music in the German language in an effort to encourage the domestic music industry, government officials have said. Ruling Social Democrats plus Greens are urging their radio stations to play at least 35 per cent German music, about half of which should be from new bands or music at least produced in Germany. Protests have arisen in Germany that stations are playing too much foreign music, making it harder for local acts to succeed. (Much the same could be said for Australia, and maybe, most countries today. - Ed) (Reported 18 December 2004)
Late 2004: Manager Herbert Breslin writes a tell-all book on famed opera singer Luciano Pavarotti. Breslin has managed and press-agented the singer for 36 years. We won't tell all here, but this is stuff to read! The classical music industry is "a tiddly snit business", so Breslin and Pavarotti set out to "realign its fee structures". Herbert Breslin and Anne Midgette, The King and I. Doubleday, 2004.
Music choice diversity reduces in the shops Surprise Surprise: A new study by an Australian PhD student, Alex Malik, has found that consumer choice in Australian music stores has "fallen dramatically", by up to 50 per cent in terms of new music offerings. Malik has analysed new music releases between 2001 and 2004 and found a 30 per cent reduction in numbers of CD singles released. Mr Malik, a former in-house lawyer for Australian Recording Industry Assocation does not blame music file-sharing for any problems, he suggests that music choices are simply reducing. Music DVDs sales are increasingly, generally. Music listeners wanting diversity are being forced to buy from overseas outlets. (Reported 30 December 2004)
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22 June 2004: The world's biggest legal Internet music store has opened in Europe as Steve Jobs, chief executive of the store's owner, Apple Computer, predicts the end of store-based record buying. Jobs hopes to put music pirates out of business as well, by offering tracks for about AUD$2 from iTunes library of 700,000 tracks. The per -track cost in France and Germany will be about AUD$2.60. Australians are not yet told when the service will be available in Australia. (Reported 22 June 2004)
May 2004: DVDs predicted to wipe out VCR use. It is only since 2002 that DVD recorders moved from their home in PCs to some space under the TV. By May 2004, DVD sales in Australia re predicted to jump from around 25,000 in 2003 to 300,000 sold in 2004. But watch out also for PVR, which can record about 80 hours of TV. (Newspaper item, 8-9 May 2004)
1988
and may 2004: US Congress enacts law against digital piracy, but by
May 2004 one congressman feels the law went to far, disadvantaging
libraries wanting to archive material, and is against traditional US
views on “fair use”, ie, personal/non-commercial
use.
(Sydney Morning Herald, May 2004)
Website seen during 2004: Check out www.musicplasma.com to find a way to expand your musical tastes. Type in the name of a band or musical artist and Musicplasma will display similar bands and artists plus discography information.
US folk/rock legend Bob Dylan, albeit ultra-deadpan, receives honorary Doctorate of Music from St. Andrew's University, Scotland. He apparently left without speaking a word. (Reported 25 June 2004)
First week of July 2004: And 1954: Radio stations around the world (and including in Australia) by way of marking the 50th birthday of a musical revolution evidently believe that Rock 'n' Roll began with the Elvis Presley rendition of That's All Right, Mama. So be it.
1954: (and 3 July 2004): The Fender Stratocaster guitar has its 50th birthday about now - as invented by radio repairman Leo Fender, and by now perhaps the most recognisable guitar in use for popular music. A guitar professor at University of Southern California says... "From a technical standpoint, it was a genius invention because it's absolutely practical - it moulds into the [player's] body perfectly. As soon as you hold one, it embraces you." In early 1954, Fender had a business in Los Angeles, after tinkering with improving amplified hollow-body instruments since the late 1940s. His first solid-body guitars, including the Telecaster Broadcaster, were made from 1951. The Stratocaster, with simple, built-in electronics, was sold from September 1954 and quickly became popular with musicians playing styles from rock to jazz to classical. Experts say that no two Strats sound quite alike, and they can produce a remarkable variety of sounds. Now, Fender Strats are made at the Fender plant in Corona near Los Angeles. A replica of the first Strat made now sells for around US$5400. At charity auctions held before mid-2004, a Strat played by Eric Clapton on some of his bigger hits sold for US$959,000 and one played by Stevie Ray Vaughan sold for US$623,000.
20 July 2004: Glowing publicity for his Australian tour for Britain's biggest- selling jazz musician, Jamie Cullum and his modern versions of jazz classics. Looks like an artist to watch – and enjoy - Ed.
According to a recent UK report, about 600,000 pirate movies are downloaded each day in the US alone. Reported in Australia, 24 July 2004.
Muso getting attention in October 2004 in the Australian press, Gavin DeGraw, a 26-year-old singer songwriter from New York.
Headline: New software could be aspiring music artists' waterloo (?):
It will come as no surprise to anyone with an ear for music, but Abba's Eurovision-winning song, Waterloo, has all the characteristics of a surefire hit, while this year's winner, Hard Rock Hallelujah, outlandish Finnish band, Lordi, doesn't.
The verdict was delivered by a computer running software developed for record companies to help them predict which songs will be hits and which will flop. And it seems to work. Last week, Hard Rock Hallelujah was at number 25 on the British charts; Waterloo went to number one in 1974.
The developers claim the software can identify a potential Top 30 hit within 20 seconds and has an accuracy rate of at least 80 per cent.
Critics argue that the technology could stifle creativity and promote dull uniformity. But backers of the software say that record labels may be encouraged to take more risks because the likely appeal of unusual songs can be judged in advance.
The program analyses 30 criteria including melody, beat, tempo, chord progression and cadence, and cross-refers them to a database of three million songs. It also spots mathematical similarities, even though songs might not sound the same or even be from the same genre.
It gives each piece of music a "hit grading" from zero to 1000. A score of 700 or more indicates that the song falls into a cluster of existing hits on the database and, theoretically, has got what it takes to succeed. The software is also capable of scoring a new song on its longevity - using its "classic grade".
The catchy Waterloo generated a hit rating of 722 and a classic grade of 764, justifying its enduring popularity. The software placed it in the same hit cluster as Keane's Is It Any Wonder? and Elton John's I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues. Lordi's song received a hit rating of just 368, way below the threshold for big-sellers.
The technology has already generated at least one hit single for Sony BMG and been used by a string of other major labels, including EMI, Capitol Records, Universal Music Group and Disney's Hollywood Records.
It has also thrown up a number of surprising connections: it showed that U2's Where The Streets Have No Name shares mathematical properties with Ode To Joy, the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
"A beautiful melody to Beethoven still sounds beautiful to us today," said Mike McCready, chief executive of Platinum Blue Music Intelligence, one of two companies that developed the software.
(Item originally from The Sunday Times – then The Australian, 19 June, 2006)
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Ray
Hoff at the Tamworth Country Music Festival 2004