X-Cop Fly Company

If you listen to music on YouTube, no doubt you’ve heard of the “VEVO” channels used by the major record labels. However, if you listen to non-dance, non-soft-rock, or older music, you probably wonder why VEVO channels’ “Related Videos” are anything but related. You may put on some Alice in Chains or Nirvana, but be offered Justin Bieber. You may be listening to Rob Zombie or Korn, and be offered Rihanna. You may be listening to the Tom Petty or Van Halen, but be offered Taylor Swift.

Why would major multinational record companies, failing in their fight against the free-market capitalism offered by BitTorrent, MySpace, and iTunes, be flunking common-sense marketing skills?

First, let’s go back to 2000, when the RIAA and the US Federal Government set up a racket to destroy a rising Internet Radio industry. SoundExchange, as this “nonprofit organization” is called, is authorized by law to collect royalties from Internet radio. Unlike other royalty collection groups such as ASCAP, which collect a percentage of the profit, all Internet radio stations playing music of any kind are forced to enroll in this RIAA-funded “nonprofit”, keep detailed records of every visitor and song left, and pay ridiculously-high fees based on the amount of individual listeners per song. Even broadcasters such as ClearChannel stream at a loss. Even if you broadcast yourself banging pots-and-pans or play a non-RIAA artist, you are required by law to enroll in this racket, since all musicians can join in the SoundExchange racket. And any surplus belongs to the RIAA.

SoundExchange forces every Internet competitor to government-licensed, payola’d-by-proxy broadcast radio stations to operate at a loss, and with the inconvenience of keeping detailed records on each listener and song.

But why would the RIAA spend all this money and legal resources to force you to listen to a limited amount of songs? Wouldn’t it make more economic sense to appeal to different audiences?

Time to go back to the 1960s. At that time you had musicians like The Beatles, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and the Jefferson Airplane and behind-the-scenes personalities like Berry Gordy and Phil Spector. Record companies were killing each other to have the biggest hit, and later, the biggest album.

Now, on to the 1990s. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 made it easier for radio stations to merge and form conglomerates like ClearChannel and Cumulus. The “local” radio station became the “classic rock” or “rap” or “alternative” station. The fact that these stations are identical and often remotely controlled by DJs around the country made music promotion much easier.

Armed with easier than ever control of the distribution channels, the RIAA was able to “quality-fix” the music. No longer did they have to worry about the expenses associated with studio engineering and corporate songwriters.

Until the Internet came along. Then the RIAA’s cost-saving “quality-fixing” measures became reduced to the low-quality music that it was.

Reduced to a needle in a haystack, the RIAA continues to push for North-Korean-style regulation of the Internet, via laws, treaties, illegal vigilantism, and everything else they can still afford. They don’t care about the quality of their music. They only care about once again being able to “quality-fix” music.

“Here are your Related Videos. Someday, we hope they once again become your Only Videos.”

Sometimes all it takes is one or two sentences of something to make me feel miserable for days and nights afterward. And that is what happened last night which continues through this evening, and hopefully will end soon.

At least there is light in the evening. Otherwise I’d probably be totally destroyed.

And adding to this:

Every time something happens over there that might be in my favor, I get excited, but within a day I’m visually back there again and naturally resist the chance to return. I know things have changed (though the slowly painfully destructive torturous backbone hasn’t) and it’s been so many years, but I stiffen up like a cold rock when I think about it. And then I bury it for another year.

It’s been a long time. Happy to log into the blog again! It’s been so long I feel kinda like deja vu.

Two reasons: I set up Windows 7 Ultimate, and have been involved in the Ron Paul campaign. I’m glad he not only won the popular vote in the Virgin Islands, but yesterday Ron Paul WON the delegates in Minnesota 20 out of 24!

Tomorrow is my state’s primary. I will be handing out literature at the polls about our delegates and alternates.

And as for other things, too much personal information for a blog, but one is both good and bad, and one thing is really bad.

Don’t know when I’m gonna get started on Flypapers V. I want to wait for the primary season to end, which looks like it’s gonna be about June.

It’s terrible!
(Everything else is gone, but my nose just won’t stop running.)

Bought a bunch of DVDs and a book earlier today. The old that I know and love, and the new that I do not know.

“Old Papers”
(based on a true story)

There’s some paper back there.
Hidden in the old desk,
From many years ago.
A more hopeful time.
Old songs I had heard, and will never hear again,
For the radio station’s not
What it used to be.
Projects and plans,
Some done, some not
Something in me
Doesn’t want to clean it all up
But it has to go.
A mess from many years ago.
Time to say goodbye,
For that era is gone,
And shall never return.
It’s a new day now.
Papers, papers,
Throw them away,
Throw them away.

That things are still good between us.

Sick.
I have a cold (or something like it) and am very tired. I’m on call tomorrow, and have to be up early, despite the chaos which happened last night, which you were unable to handle in this state, being excessively rude, making rash decisions about people and reversing them less than five minutes later. You never expected all that garbage would happen at 5:00 in the morning, let at all, though in your mind you know you should have been prepared for the worst.

Hopefully will not have forgotten too much of my newly-learned TKD stuff, by the time I’m in better shape and return to it.

And now must I prepare for tomorrow. And probably go to bed early.

Communist leader Mao Tse-tung was known for his repeated attempts to change all aspects of China into his school of Communism. This included the abolition of their gods, religions, and philosophers and forcing people into work on collective farms. Anyone who got in his way were sent to re-education camps or killed.

Something very similar is happening to America’s children and teenagers right now, and it must stop, because it is not only emotionally but physically dangerous – they are being taught that any consequences to their actions should be minimized or ignored.

One common example of this is considering mass amounts of childhood obesity an “epidemic”. When bullied by their classmates for “being fat”, no longer should children start on a proper diet or exercise program and improve their physical health, but they should be coddled by the government school system via lawsuits and regulations into making it less likely for them or their lower-grade peers to be bullied.

While harassment, threats, and physical violence are always illegal and should be reported to the school or other authorities, the extremist liberals who dominate our education system intimidate fast-food restaurants into re-designing their loyalty programs for children, or legislating them out of existence or far from town. For no longer can children think, “I’m getting fat lately, and all the other kids are making fun of me, so maybe I should watch my weight and limit my Happy Meals.” Children no longer have a need to – “there is no such thing as a Happy Meal, and no matter how much of its alternatives I eat, it’s this epidemic going around that makes me fat.”

Think this is a harmless way to get kids to be kind to their classmates? Think again – as they grow into their teenage years, no longer do they have to worry about the consequences of unprotected casual sex – for there is no such thing as a sexually transmitted disease, only sexually transmitted “infections”. Minimizing the consequences of unprotected casual sex will lead to anything from economic and social impediments to being slowly and painfully killed.

As New York schools are banning discussion of poverty, unemployment, and the other “negatives” of life from tests, they are attempting to transform society into the liberal view of “positive” – an unrealistic utopia where you can have and do anything you want, whenever you want, and nothing bad will ever happen. This mentality of a completely transformed society into a “positive” society resembles Maoism, Stalinism, Mussolini, Hitler, and the Holocaust also transforming their society – claiming their mass murder and genocide to be “positive” for their respective countries’ stability, security, and economic well-being. Maintaining these types of fraudulent realities do not work, and when they do “work”, people die.

When these children graduate college, they will see pretty quickly the truth. Rather than dealing with bullies making fun you for being openly gay, you will have to deal with fundamentalist Christians and Muslims warning you of how much of a sinner they believe you to be. Rather than dealing with bullies making fun of you for overeating and being fat, you will have to deal with diabetes and cholesterol. Rather than being permanently financially sound, you might have occasional trouble paying your bills or lose your job for a while. The principals and guidance counselors of adulthood will only stop serious physical violence, threats, and certain types of harassment, not “being made fun of” or “being sad” because of the consequences of something you didn’t know had any.

This mentality has to stop. While we want the best for our kids, trying to transform all of society into one where there are allegedly no risks, diseases, health problems, hurt feelings, or other consequences to your actions (a nonexistent, impossible society) is emotionally and physically dangerous to them as teenagers and adults and to the entire human race. It has failed under fascism, it has failed under communism, and it will fail under extremist liberalism.

Looping the same few seconds over and over, with repeated buffering notices in between.
23 people are supposedly listening, but it’s totally screwed up. No other Shoutcast radio station, including those of the same bandwidth, is giving me probs.

It’s a real shame, haven’t listened to that station (KQLZ Pirate Radio) in a long time.

So I put on The Distance To Here instead. Usually I put that on during bad nights, but also works for good days too.

…to sleep, as I need to call someone early tomorrow morning and just don’t want to sleep.

I’m sure I will, and hopefully soon. But I’ve been up at night a lot lately (and not sleeping well in general) and I’ve gotten used to it.

It’s gotta be the weather. Nice beautiful warm weather for a month, but for a week or so it’s been totally shitty and cold, and I have been feeling equally shitty and cold.

I can’t believe it’s almost Easter already.

I hope my video card isn’t going. It might be, been having occasionally kooky probs lately under both Windows and Linux. Sucks if the card is in its dying days.

But regardless of Easter or the video card or having to get up tomorrow, it’s been totally shitty and cold and I have been feeling shitty and cold since then.

I was almost there. Really. I was very close. The dissatisfaction was nonexistent – and reality, even less. After hours of refusing, I was slowly forced to accept that this disproven fantasy of hope no longer existed. I couldn’t pretend anymore – despite the self-induced illusion of past feelings of hope, I had to accept that this was only a fantasy and no longer existed. Whether you like it or not, the times have changed, changed so much, and in this time (which will hopefully not be the final) the times are currently against you.