CERN boffins are confident that fusion, the holy grail of cheap, safe power will be economical and usable within thirty years. It’s a finger in the air sort of estimate, based on projects from the Age of Scientific Optimism, such as the Los Alamos and Apollo moon landing projects.
(more…)

The internet has been great for millionaire music performers and amateurs – it’s everyone else in between who gets screwed. Now we have Radiohead’s publisher Warner Chappell helping confirm the trend. The publisher’s head of business affairs Jane Dyball has divulged some information on the band’s “name your own price” offer last year.

Radiohead offered fans the chance to pay for a low-bitrate version of its new album In Rainbows, an album that was made available in various physical formats on indie label XL Recordings a few weeks later. Since the credit card processing fee could be set at zero, fans could preview and keep the album for free, while true mugs fans could pay twice: once for the preview, and again for the CD.

Not surprisingly, the avalanche of publicity for this brave move gave In Rainbows a huge boost – reversing a decade of dwindling sales for the band. Dyson said this week that Radiohead had sold 3.25 million copies, more than half of which (1.75 million) were physical CDs. 100,000 diehards paid £40 for the box set. This exceeds sales of 2001′s Kid A and Amnesiac and 2004′s Hail To The Thief. Only the band’s The Bends, a US hit in the early 90s, and the worldwide bestseller OK Computer did better.

There were other benefits to this go-it-alone strategy: since physical sales were handled by the Beggars Group’s XL label, an independent, Radiohead kept more of the revenue. The band didn’t have to pay overseas rates for revenue on digital downloads from their site, and cut out the retailer for those box sets, which were sold by Radiohead’s Waste Management operation. Dyball said the band saw more revenue from the “name your own price” digital download than it had from its final album with EMI. So the gimmick proved to be a resounding success for the band and their publisher.

But before musicians cheer too loudly, such success came at the expense of a hard-fought principle. The experiment was only possible because collective bargaining societies bent the rules to make it happen, bringing their own existence into question.

Let’s see why. (more…)

The regulator’s rule book for deciding what is permissible on today’s roads is very thick indeed. The content, behaviour and performance of “stuff on roads” is massive, and grows by the day. Try hot-rodding your lawnmower – or deciding that on Thursdays, you will only make left turns, and see how far you get.

By contrast, the regulator’s rule book for deciding what is permissible on the internet – its content, behaviour and performance – couldn’t be simpler. There isn’t one.
(more…)

Something very spooky happened in the United States last week. The chances are you noticed it too, many days before it was reported.

Tuesday found me in New York, on my first stateside visit in a couple of years. The details of the Bailout plan had just been revealed and the slow burn of outrage was apparent everywhere.

(more…)

Few music business people expect Nokia’s unlimited free music giveaway to be repeated, or even last very long. There simply aren’t enough large consumer companies prepared to take such an expensive gamble .

And Nokia’s richest partners aren’t interested in helping out.

But it’s a radical and interesting offering that merits some serious analysis: certainly, much more than Nokia’s other Dad-at-the-Disco attempts to get down with da yoot.

As we wrote last December – Comes With Music is much more subtle and interesting than most people gave it credit for. There are strings attached, but fewer than with any such previous bundling promotion.

Nokia has been inhaling Chris Anderson’s “Freetardonomics,” and this is what comes out when it exhales. ..

(more…)