Ryan Tomayko

Songbird 1.0 is Here! —

The big day has come at last.

Walmart Changes Mind on DRM, Keeps Servers Running —

That makes sense to me. Gizmodo seems to think ripping off all those people who purchased that crap is a better idea. I hate DRM as much as the next guy but that’s a really dumb take on the situation, IMO.

Opentape —

PHP-based Muxtape clone that you host yourself. From the project page: “Opentape’s creation and design are proudly inspired by Muxtape’s success and sleek interface. We were sad with it’s untimely shutdown and wanted to let the web mixtape movement continue.”

muxtape.com was RIAA’d a couple of weeks ago. And while the EFF believes they could have decent legal footing if they wanted to challenge the take-down, it seems unlikely that the site will reopen anytime soon, if at all.

Velvet Underground / The Gift —

According to Wikipedia, the short story recited in the left stereo channel during “The Gift” was something Lou Reed put together as a writing project during his college days. My favorite part is when Bill tells Marsha that he still respects her and that, while he didn’t love her, he did feel a certain affection for her.

rtomayko.muxtape.com —

Just great stuff.

Why Ogg Matters —

Interesting. This is the first time I’ve seen mention of Firefox shipping with Ogg Vorbis and Theora built-in. That could definitely change the horrible pace of adoption we’ve seen thus for.

What if Apple stopped issuing DRM keys? —

Single points of failure always suck. Always, always. There’s five billion songs out there that depend on a very small (comparatively) number of key servers owned by a single company. It’s just horrible engineering.

Adrian Holovaty's Insanely Great Remix of Radiohead's "Nude" —

Ranked #22 of 470 derivative works — that’s up from #35 as reported on Waxy at 2:47 PM (roughly five hours ago). Unfortunately, there’s no mp3 / ogg in sight. Somebody really ought to torrent all 470 of them up.

DVD Jon Cracks iTunes DRM Using Fast-Forward —

Where would the world be without DVD Jon?

Rap Lyrics Explained With Charts and Graphs —

Includes a nice chart of the Differentiation of Fat Joe’s Liquid Based Promiscuity :)

Under pressure from EMI, RIAA could disappear —

Could be huge: “rumors continue to swirl that EMI will pull its funding from music trade groups like the RIAA and IFPI, an IFPI spokesman tells Ars that the group is in the middle of a major internal review of its operations.”

The Velvet Underground - Pale Blue Eyes —

Great tune!

Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal [youtube.com] —

Oh man. This song was not this horribly bad when I was a kid.

Lines From Alanis Morissette's "Ironic," Modified to Actually Make them Ironic —

“A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break… at the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco corporate offices in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.”

The Amen Break —

History and potential future of. (via Paul Hammond and Eric Meyers)

JHymn —

Oh wow, I just ripped all my iTunes DRM’d songs down to unprotected AAC in about 10 minutes. These guys did a great job.

del.icio.us: casting the net wider —

Oh crap, he did it this time. Is the RIAA/MPAA going to be after del.icio.us now? Insane, I know but not impossible considering past history.

The History of Sampling —

Why free culture is important – in a java applet.

Who Will Free Fiona Apple? —

Awesome look at how big music companies DON’T GET IT! Ugghh. This stuff drives me crazy.

Get Album Art for your iTunes Songs. —

Export list of songs from iTunes, upload here, drag images to iTunes. Nice.

Positron! Records —

Small label that supports and encourages Creative Commons licensing for their artists. You can purchase some of their bands music from the iTunes Music Store.