Tom Davis and I have been rehearsing songs for the album. It is good to work with a drummer. We’re coming up with some great ideas for the tunes as we rehearse. I’m sure that some of the songs will be a surprise to those people that have only heard the acoustic versions.

Download now or watch on posterous

richpalmer_12July2010_800Kbps.mov (12308 KB)

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Players on the field stretching and warming up for a 7pm start.

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The Issue

Innovative technologies from Sling media, XM Radio and Google are under attack. A handful of big content interests are behind a wave of lawsuits and legislation designed to restrict CE products and consumers’ use of them.

These laws and lawsuits have nothing to do with the commercial piracy or illegal file sharing. Instead, they seek to restrict what Americans can do with lawfully acquired content, for noncommercial purposes, within their private homes and vehicles.

This is not a new issue or a new problem. Some in the industry have always opposed new technologies like the cassette recorder, the VCR and the MP3 player that have enhanced consumers’ quality of life and driven the economy, but also required big content companies to change their existing business models in response to consumer demand.

The Digital Freedom Campaign is fighting back. This growing group of innovators, artists, students and consumers know that they also have rights in this copyright debate and they want to make themselves heard. The campaign has four core messages:

• New digital technologies allow consumers to enjoy legally acquired content where, when and how they want – providing benefits to consumers and the economy while opening up new revenue streams for copyright owners. 
• These same technologies empower creators to develop content, connect directly with broad new audiences, and reap new benefits and revenue from their works. 
• Commercial piracy is wrong. We work to promote pro-consumer business models and ensure that artists are compensated fairly.
• The Digital Freedom Campaign provides a voice for individuals to protect and expand these rights, and as an advocate against efforts to restrict them and limit new technologies.

You can demonstrate your support several ways: You can sign up your company as “supporter of the campaign.” You can sign the Bill of Sights and Sounds. You can promote the campaign on your website.

From DigitalFreedom.org

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Mippin feed validation KEY=2108731c

Taking Music Surveys

For well over five years (so long I can’t remember) I have participated in music surveys at RatetheMusic.com. They claim to be “the internet’s first music rating site.”

The service selects a genre for you to participate based on your submitted profile.; My recent survey was for “Adult Rock”. A short 15-20 second snippet of a song is provided, as well as the song title and artist. The survey asks:

1. Are you familiar with this song? (yes/no)
2. Rate this song: (Unfamiliar/Dislike It a Lot/Dislike It Some/So-So/Like It Some/Like It A Lot)
3. Are you tired of hearing this song? (yes/no)

After you submit your response to the 30 songs, the survey provides you with a list of the songs that you heard and the opportunity to listen to them again.

Becoming Unfamiliar

I have found over the past several years that my survey results are becoming quite predictable. It seems that my responses to almost every survey I take starts with “No, I am not familiar with this song.” This happens even with songs by mainstream artists and many artists that I at one time considered to be favorites. The survey I took this morning had ONE song that I’d heard. Almost all of the artists were familiar names to me.

My listening habits over the past few years have been focused on independent artists. I RARELY turn on a commercial radio station. When I do turn on the radio, I do so under duress because other options, such as my iPod, are not available to me. I often find myself switching from station to station to avoid commercials or songs that simply do nothing for me.

As a result, I find that I have drifted so far away from the mainstream. I am probably not the best candidate for the RateTheMusic service these days. When I attempt to update my profile I cannot fill in the radio stations with any clarity. I don’t listen to terrestrial radio, so there’s nothing to add. So I fill in the three slots with “Pandora“, “Slacker” and “ooTunes“. All are services (with apps on my iPod and phone, as well as the computer) and all offer a myriad of listening options. But I don’t stick to any one channel or station on any of these.

So Many Options

I hope that people will explore more options than what is offered on their local, terrestrial radio stations. If you are being spoon-fed music that the corporations are offering, you are missing the many talented musicians that have tunes to offer. Explore music podcasts, such as can be found at the Association of Music Podcasting. Visit online services such as ReverbNation, CD Baby, and Bandcamp, among others. Find out what you’re missing.

And if you want to hear my show, please visit AudioGumshoe.com. I feature an independent artist on every episode.
 

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Jon Wilde at the Guardian tells us that we’ve been listening to Robert Johnson records much faster than they were intended to be heard. 

Says Wilde,

And now, nearly 50 years after Columbia first packaged his work as King of the Delta Blues, we discover that we’ve been listening to these immortal songs at the wrong speed all along. Either the recordings were accidentally speeded up when first committed to 78, or else they were deliberately speeded up to make them sound more exciting. Whatever, the common consensus among musicologists is that we’ve been listening to Johnson at least 20% too fast. Numerous bloggers have helpfully slowed down Johnson’s best-known work and provided samples so that, for the first time, we can hear Johnson as he intended to be heard.

This doesn’t surprise me. I always felt that the recordings that I’d heard had a bit of “chipmunk” sound to them. It sounded as if Johnson’s voice was thin and above the range I would have envisioned him singing. And the guitar work seemed a bit to rushed at times.

Wilde continues,

If hearing music at the wrong speed is the sort of thing that grills your kippers, then you might want to check out the supremely bonkers back catalogue of Brighton-based Wrong Music. For the rest of us, the right speed will do just fine. Like me, you might be left not a little incredulous to learn that some of the most beloved albums in the canon were released at the wrong speed. As late as 2003, a music professor pointed out that all the early Doors albums, on vinyl and CD, had been slowed down due to a cock-up at the mastering stage. When Kind of Blue was first released on CD it received ecstatic reviews despite the fact that Miles Davis’ trumpet was at the wrong speed on half the tracks. There are those who swear blind that the vinyl version of Dylan’s Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands from Blonde on Blonde was mastered at the wrong speed as it plays at a quarter-tone below the CD version. Most famously, all the original Rolling Stones ABKCO releases were mastered at the wrong tempo, an error first noticed by Keith Richards when the albums came out on CD.

Does any of this matter? Well, I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to hear an album as it was meant to be heard, rather than a version birthed by a studio muppet flicking the wrong switches as he lights up another jazz woodbine.

Be sure to read the entire article here.

Posted via web from A Rich Perspective

All you have to do is visit my Bandcamp page at richpalmer.bandcamp.com. I do ask that you submit your email address to validate the download. I will not sell, tear, spindle, mutilate, slice, dice, mix, mash or make hundreds of julienne fries out of your email address for any other reason than to add you to my notification list. And don’t expect a bunch of spam from me unless I’m singing Monty Python songs. (Spam, spam, spam, spam wonderful spam, wonderful spam.) I don’t like spam email and am pretty sure you don’t like it, either.

And… if you choose to donate anything toward the album, that is great, too. Anything donated will go toward my new album project of pop/rock style songs.

So to recap:
Sing a Song for Safety
FREE
Donations accepted
Please add your email address for validation.

Thanks for your support and have a nice day.

I caught this link in a recent issue of Ragan Daily Newsfeed. Careercast.com posted an article called the 10 Most Stressful Jobs of 2010. In the article it was stated that public relations officers are in the 8th most stressful job, just behind highway patrol officers and ahead of advertising account executives and real estate agents.

The Careercast article states:

Job-related stress has long been the nemesis of workers around the globe. Stress has been linked in studies to everything from low productivity to increased illness to obesity. Fallout from the recession has only compounded the problem. Many work harder for less money, and wonder if they’ll still have a job at day’s end. Combine this with new technology that makes it easier than ever to work around the clock (and even on vacation), and it’s no wonder that on-the-job stress – and finding ways to manage it – has become an ever more important issue.

So, I’m uptight? Is that so? Heh, ask anyone that knows me well enough and they will tell you that I have a passion for my work that causes me to do things “because it is the right thing to do” and to care when “it seems that others do not.” Communicating the mission, activities, news and day-to-day functions of my agency are important to me. I feel I could do so much more. And, of course, I’m attempting to do the work that I feel a passion to do, even when it seems futile.

So why do I keep working in public relations/communications? Perhaps this will explain as explained further in the article:

Surveying 200 different professions based on their potential to strain employees’ nerves, the 2010 Jobs Rated report reveals some surprising trends among the year’s most stressful and least stressful jobs. In particular, many low-stress jobs offer little room for advancement, and often don’t appeal to ambitious, educated job seekers. On the other hand, a number of the most stressful jobs are considered highly sought-after positions, and workers frequently undergo rigorous and costly training for the chance at one of these careers. Becoming an Appliance Repairer or Janitor, for example, may be good for the heart rate, but neither career is exactly fulfilling.

Of course, it may not help that I’m also trained in the industry known to have the highest levels of stress as I continue to work my PR/Communications/Safety Education role. We’re #1! We’re #1!

I’ll be back later, I need to go get a massage.

Posted via web from A Rich Perspective

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For a limited time, the Sing a Song for Safety CD can be purchased at CD Baby for only $5.

How, you ask, is it possible to get the actual CD (not the mp3s) for only $5? It’s very simple:

Choose 3 or more different CDs from the CD Baby Sale Bin and get each CD for just $5. Each CD will be listed at full price until you place at least 3 different eligible CDs into your shopping cart. You can get 3 to 1 million CDs for $5 each, so sample as much new music as you want!

What a great opportunity for you to hear new music from more artists AND get a copy of Sing a Song for Safety, too! Go there now! (Don’t forget to click the $5 banner in the upper right to choose more albums.)

NOTE: Download purchases are not eligible for the $5 sale.

Posted via web from A Rich Perspective

Reach Them, But Keep Them

I just read an article on Mashable that discusses the importance of having retention in your social media marketing. The basic premise is that many companies and campaigns measure viral impact. This is, of course, important, but we all know that viral impact may be short-lived. It is great to reach thousands or hundreds of thousands of people with a message. That may last a day or two, though, and then crash. The hot topic of today become’s yesterday’s news — then fades to obscurity.

In the article, Jeremy Richardson says,

Just because something becomes viral does not mean it will stay viral for long. Even if a situation arose where all the stars of virality are aligned — all of the users are inviting all of their friends, and all of their friends accept -– if there is no real retention, this phase will not last. The number of users will reach a saturation point, and then start to decline. If retention isn’t being tracked, then we have no idea why this is happening.

Big Numbers Don’t Mean Big Results

It has always bothered me that one of the primary tracking methods used by public safety education programs is to count the number of people “reached.” In a nutshell, it seems common practice to do a simple head count of the people that are present during a safety lesson, safety demonstration, or fire house tour. This number is then added to the mix and reported each year in the agency annual report. For instance, each year for the past 19 years I have taught approximately 8,500 children from preschool age through high school. If I do simple math, I can say that 161,500 children total have heard me present a lesson on safety.

Make An Impact, Bring Them Back

In my opinion, evaluation of the results of the safety lesson is the true factor in determining the effect. The number of people reached means nothing. Seriously. If I reach 8,500 kids with a message, but none of the kids retain that message — therefore no behavior change results — has the safety message made an impact? Wouldn’t it be more important to show numbers where the lesson has made an impact? For example, isn’t it better to show that X number of children stayed safe by exhibiting safe behaviors? That, however, is the bane of the safety educator. How does one document the fire that didn’t happen or the fall that didn’t cause an injury? You can’t report intangibles.

So the key, then is retention. In order for us to affect change in behavior, environment or even basic safety knowledge, we must continue to deliver the message time and time again. We, the safety educators, hope to reach as many people as possible, of course. We also hope that they will remember what is said and carry the message forth. We earnestly hope that they will be interested enough to want to receive our messages. Their personal motivation and interest will bring them into a safety lesson with a desire to hear and see the potential to protect their own lives and property. It will help them remember the key information that will then be carried home to their families or back to their workplace. And, when we return again next month or next year, they will be willing to absorb the message.

Honestly, if a person is in my class, but asleep in their chair… I’ve presented the content, but have I really reached them? I can count this person as a warm body in the class, but there will be zero retention of a message they didn’t hear.

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