dematerializing sound (via blissblog)

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nomadologist

Guest
Anyone else read the blissblog post from 12/20? REALLY loved this idea of taking the old "h" word one step further than sonics and laying it thick on the whole Ipod-culture, where music has leaped one evolutionary lightyear further in the process of "dematerializing"--the Ipod culture, rather than being about the oed-Ipod, is about acceleration (LOVE positing Virilio here and ditching D&G and most of Derrida) and the machinegheist.

Afterall, how can capital constrain the immaterial, spectral demi-presences, etc.? There is no object anymore. There is nothing capital can do without the fetish object readyathand.

Postscripted: Couldnt' help but think about this in terms of psycho-pharmacology, my obsession, and I was thinking about Virilio of The Information Bomb, and speed, and how probably 80% or more of my friends are prescribed adderall (dextroamphetamine) XR and have been for years. Some find it the only way to function after they fried their brains raving in the early/mid-90s when faaarr too young to neurologically sustain the damage imo.
 
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Guybrush

Dittohead
Afterall, how can capital constrain the immaterial, spectral demi-presences, etc.? There is no object anymore. There is nothing capital can do without the fetish object readyathand.
And, furthermore, that non-object can be fetched for free (music, tv-series, movies, etc.). I sympathize with struggling artists everywhere, but this, to me, is one of the most positive trends of 21th century so far: entertainment's brusque escape from the claws of profiteers and concomitant hole-and-corner transactions.

Sam Davies' is right in that audio quality has taken strides backwards with the breakthrough of mp3 and other compressed file formats. The sound quality is rapidly increasing though, with the de rigueur bitrate now being well over 192kbit (cf. ordinary CDs' 1411kbit bitrate). 320kbit mp3s are getting quite common too, especially with retailers of dance music mp3s.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
one of the most positive trends of 21th century so far: entertainment's brusque escape from the claws of profiteers and concomitant hole-and-corner transactions.

this is my thesis in a paper i'm writing as we type about the DRMA. wanna finish it for me? :)

The sound quality is rapidly increasing

THANK YOU for noting this. I am so sick of hearing people (who until a month or two ago had no idea about these things) bitching about digital sound quality on IPODS. Of course it sucks. Ipods are new. Digital recording technologies are relatively new and in primitive development stages. They will take leaps and bounds as things like Ipods continue to gain momentum in the market. This is how all new technology works--business-side stalls technology so they can "release" the newest best quality stuff every year around Christmas, or every few years based on market trends. Look at the automobile industry--do you really think we all couldn't be driving hybrids??
 

Guybrush

Dittohead
this is my thesis in a paper i'm writing as we type about the DRMA. wanna finish it for me? :)
You're much too kind. What does DRMA stand for by the way? The free dictionary isn't of much help:
DRMA Damaged Return Merchandise Authorization
DRMA Data Resource Management Association
DRMA Digital Road Map Association
DRMA direct remote memory access
DRMA Distance Riders of Manitoba Association
DRMA Distributed Resource Management Architecture
DRMA Division of Resource Management and Administration
DRMA Downtown Residential Marketing Alliance
DRMA Downtown Retail Merchants Association
DRMA Dual Rate Multiple Access
DRMA Durham Regional Manufacturers Association
DRMA Dynamic Reservation Multiple Access
DRMA Dynamically Reconfigurable Memory Array
:confused:
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I would really like to read this when finished!

Also increased bitrates (from pirated sources, anyway) is a definite fact. Plus Lossless formats becoming slightly more popular. Are you looking at DRM in audio or as a potential system for all copyrightable information in the future?
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
the assignment was that we had to predict the "future" of an industry with regard to the new modes of audience research and their reach. the class instructor is a CEO and he kind of suggested that everything is moving towards symbiotic cross/directmarketing to personalized niche-demographic targets based on algorithms built on the new access to information from huge data sets we have thanks to things like myspace, youtube, etc.

so i'm talking about how open-sourcing and youtube, etc., have taken the power from the business side, so now they're forced to really look at what people are looking at and respond to it. a lot more closely than they ever had to. so business is not going to drive creative for much longer, not in any simple way.

the CEO's line was this: people are worried about being monitored, but wouldn't you rather see an ad next to your gmail for something you might be interested in rather than one for chia pets?
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
So a Pull vs Push scenario then? Perhaps in some senses. Will you address in any sense the problem (both on an aesthetic or moral level and perhaps also on a business level) of having perfect signal, ie- the elimination of noise from a consumer's environment?
--- In other words that fragmentation and atrophy will be a likely consequence of a perfection of niche targeting where you NEVER get anything you don't already know you want???
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
i probably won't address that unless i want to write a pretty large and contrapuntally baroque kind of paper.

altho it is a good counterpoint. i think that the dynamic nature of the audience monitoring process will keep us from getting to that level of self-reference and circularity.
 
I'm in the middle of working on an ad for a real estate company...

...we're shooting a 30 second a 60 second and 3 net virals

the agency and creatives seem to think creating a net based viral ad is just about putting it on youtube and pimping it through e mail...

...i think its nothing they can manipulate, beyond their control and wishful thinking on their part using bullshit to dazzle the client with 'up to the minute' buzzwords just to get more money from them

they'd be better of paying lonely girl 15 to pimp their shit...

...I just smile and do my job
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
i think that the dynamic nature of the audience monitoring process will keep us from getting to that level of self-reference and circularity.

Interesting- but essentially (and correct me if I'm oversimplifying here!) DRM and associate technologies will enable ever closer monitoring and tracking of consumer demands. But the process of selecting which media/marketing signals to transmit to the individual will depend on the interpretation of the data. Presumably it is possible to imagine some kind of lateral-thinking software which would prevent fragmentation-atrophy. But this is this not just wishful thinking? Sometimes getting a signal you not only don't know you want to receive but believe you know you don't want to receive can result in a positive transaction/experience/etc etc...
 
good to see silverdollar man defending his 'nuum...

...it is a UK ting in as much as he is from the UK and it's his ting

I'm all about spinfoam and lattices...

...dubstep was always internatty from the outset

it reminds me of a black hole collapsing from the global 2step/garage supernova to centre itself around london and suck everything into it's dark mass with gravity waves dissipating into the cosmos again...

<a href="http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=747984373"></a><br><embed src="http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf" flashvars="m=747984373&type=video" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="430" height="346"></embed><br>
 
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nomadologist

Guest
damn this shit is getting heavy on the mainframe

here's the thing gek--when data sets get bigger, trends emerge, patterns, and over time, it gets easier to predict what is going to happen with trends. so it's probably going to get easier to know what will sell as time wears on. not foolproof but easier.
 
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tatarsky

Well-known member
the assignment was that we had to predict the "future" of an industry with regard to the new modes of audience research and their reach. the class instructor is a CEO and he kind of suggested that everything is moving towards symbiotic cross/directmarketing to personalized niche-demographic targets based on algorithms built on the new access to information from huge data sets we have thanks to things like myspace, youtube, etc.

so i'm talking about how open-sourcing and youtube, etc., have taken the power from the business side, so now they're forced to really look at what people are looking at and respond to it. a lot more closely than they ever had to. so business is not going to drive creative for much longer, not in any simple way.

OK, MUCH confusion. You're in danger of conflating about twenty different trends, and grossly exaggerating the dynamics of a few.

Firstly, businesses have always had to react to consumer demand. Nothing new here. The distinction comes in the speed at which they'll have to do this, in order to keep up. And further, this is primarily an issue for RETAILERS, rather than manufacturers ("You bought this, so you might also like..."). The pressure on retailers will pipeline down to manufacturers, but ultimately the mechanism underpinning new product development (and branding) is the same - whats selling, who, why, what next >>> let's go there! The idea that business has up til now driven creative is bunk. Again, THE MECHANISM IS THE SAME.

I'd be careful about analysing precisely what you're being asked here - if it's solely about 'market research and its reach', then you cannot go on to talk about research from youtube and user-generated content as altering content itself in any significantly different way to traditional research. It will mean richer data sure, but ultimately, it is the nature of user-generated content and near costless media distribution which alters the product (and, creates new types of products), and with it comes the division into niches - the research and its concomitant marketing adapt to this, play to the niches, but they aren't the source of them. The richer data/niche marketing are a RESPONSE.

The whole symbiotic/niche marketing thing is significant, but can easily be overstated ('...everything is moving towards...' - EVERYTHING? REALLY?). There are a handful of things which people want to have symbiosis with. But it's hard to see how most things are to involve themselves in this alleged new world of niches and relationships - just how many types of consumers of butter are there, and why would anyone want to talk to Anchor? So, no, not EVERYTHING.

In fact, music will probably be the main area where niche marketing does mean something, because there's a capacity for niches to exist.
 
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N

nomadologist

Guest
when i said "everything" i, of course, did not mean everything. i meant generally speaking.

second i disagree on a lot of points but i have to write this paper anyway i'll respond when i can

and business does drive creative, ask anyone who, say, spot-buys ads. or makes ads.
 

tatarsky

Well-known member
when i said "everything" i, of course, did not mean everything. i meant generally speaking.

second i disagree on a lot of points but i have to write this paper anyway i'll respond when i can

and business does drive creative, ask anyone who, say, spot-buys ads. or makes ads.


Apologies, I was perhaps being a bit literal. Still, i reckon a lot of these ideas get massively overplayed. It's like a second .com boom.

Anyway, what precisely do you mean by "business driving creative"?

By creative, do you mean the translation of a marketing strategy in to an idea, be it a tv ad, banner, or whatever, or do you mean, more generally, the creation of products themselves?

I think I can argue against either. ;)
 
for this real estate ad we're working on...

...there's been a downturn in the market so they advertise more

when business was booming they didn't...

so is it that bad business drives the creative ???
 

Guybrush

Dittohead
We definitely need to define what ‘creative’ means for this discussion to be productive. Everything is ‘creative’ nowadays, it seems; I am sure that the real estate people you are working for, Undisputed, think that they are being creative at work, for example. Perhaps even more so than you are?
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
by business drives creative i mean the CREATIVE CONTENT of say, the dialogue, the tagline, etc, of AN ADVERTISEMENT, is now based on BOARDROOM DECISIONS, high up at the BUSINESS SIDE of advertising. there is enough data for business to work with now--they don't have to rely on the creative, say, ad writers, or expensive boutique agencies, to come up with whatever ads they'll have to use without recourse to a business model that can predict how well that ad will work and whether, for example, the business end in teh boardroom will decide to keep outsourcing to a certain boutique agency.

it's too early for this, i'll give more examples later

PS wait wasn't this thread supposed to be about something else? isnt this how message boards work
 
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