The Digital Pop Machine

Anyone born during the sixties remembers the decade digital music swallowed pop. The transition from weary rock to synth pop was as fast as the technology that fed it would allow. In 1980, Devo, Blondie and Joy Division topped the charts with their digital pop synth sound and video clips that boasted special effects made possible only by digital video technology. Drum kits were reduced to a single lone stand with a thin boy in a striped shirt playing in time to a pre-recorded overproduced sound of a Roland drum machine. The theatrical piano replaced by a sorry single digital keyboard. Even the guitar was reduced to a mere accompaniment to the digital pre-recorded sequences of a machine that could reproduce the sounds of a thousand instruments.

In 1981, Roland released their first synthesiser supporting the MIDI format. MIDI (Musical Instrumental Digital Interface) is an industry standard protocol that allows musical equipment and computers to communicate with each other. In the early eighties, MIDI, developed sequences which allowed one to record, edit and play back. Soon after interfaces were released for the Apple Macintosh, Commodore 64, PC-Dos and the Atari ST. In 1991 the MIDI was tweaked to allow all types of media control devices to communicate with each other. A number of music file formats based on the MIDI-byte stream are used today to store music in the very compact form used for ringtones and video games.

Today the music industry has come full circle with the decline of record and CD sales and the marked growth of digital music sales in the form of mobile phone ringtones. Full circle in that Joy Divisions "Love will tear us Apart' has made a digital comeback, and can be heard from many a teenagers mobile phone, betraying the anonymity of the caller, and full circle in that once again, music has been reduced to its lowest common denominator. Simple notes on a simple scale encoded and decoded in the simplest possible way.

Yet, there's nothing simple about the digital music business. In July 2008 New Motion Inc (now Atrinsic) a leader in the internet advertising, mobile technology and entertainment industry announced that for a mere $6 million plus, it had acquired the asset of Ringtone.com, a valuable internet domain that receives over 1,000 sign ups per day for the downloading of mobile content.

Burton Katz, the Company’s CEO, commented saying “Ringtones are the historic growth driver behind worldwide mobile content sales. Over the past year and a half, there have been fundamental shifts in the subscription based business model supporting these services creating unique opportunities in a business continuing to see strong consumer demand."

At the same time, Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), an organization that collects royalties for song writers and publishers, is forecasting that overall ringtone sales in the US will fall 7 percent in 2008 to approximately $510 million. That drop indicating an 8 percent drop in 2007 to $550 million. BMI claimed that the market hit its peak in the US in 2006 with sales of $600 million.

CEO of Advertising web Service Steven Bermeister remembers recording music on his Roland Jupiter-8 keyboard. His family established one of the first retail computer shops in Sydney where the now retro Atari ST, with MIDI interface was sold. Even then his love of technology merged comfortably with his love of music. These days he's on the other side of the music business selling digital music and all its applications online through peer to peer networking.

Realizing that the ringtone business in the US was about two years behind Europe in terms of off-deck mobile content plays, in 2003 he established The Ringtone Channel. He wanted to get in early to be well positioned to "ride the wave of success that was seen in Europe and Australia when the US market caught up."

Bermeister says "The heat is coming out of the Ringtone market which means that the flood of players who came into the market late and have been losing money are getting out." He believes that will stabilize the business and bring down the cost of acquiring customers. The players that remain (those who got in early) will divide the market between them.

Madonna's Hung Up was almost certainly written to be downloaded onto a mobile phone and Britney knows it's her Prerogative to join the ringtone game too. The pop industry has fully ingested the digital music platform and is now spitting it out in ever devolving incremental bursts of half digested compositions, catchy enough to dance to and just short enough to forget.

Low Definition Kids in a High Definition World

Gone are the days when you would pull your new TV out the box, plug it in, connect the bunny ears and escape into the wonderful world of television? When our family first migrated from South Africa to Australia in the late seventies, we were mesmerized by the large colored TV that commanded central place on the green shag pile carpet in the living room of our rented Sydney home. In an attempt to maintain control of its apartheid system the South African government censored much of the social progress that was taking place in the rest of the world through conspicuously tight media control of newspapers, radio and the non-existent television of my childhood.

The Dutch Reform Church proclaimed television as the "devil's own box for disseminating communism and immorality". However after the country listened to one of the most spectacular world events - man's first steps on the moon, on radio alone, the government was forced to cede defeat. In January 1976 South Africa joined the century airing limited selections of mundane programs divided into English and Afrikaans during viewing time which ran for a mere five hours per night.

We were elated to arrive in a country where television was an accepted part of life and where four channels aired free from the early hours of the morning all through the night - in English. Perhaps the church was right but as far as we were concerned, the Fonz ruled! We would plonk ourselves down at the end of every school day to eat space food sticks and watch "Happy Days". After dinner we would return to the holy entertainment box filling our heads with new and useless information and over stimulate our senses with the barrage of advertising material, music, action and drama.

Today I watch my children memorized in the same way as they watch Star Wars on our High Definition TV. The picture quality is infinitely better, clearer, sharper, the characters larger, the sound booming through their little psyches, altering their imaginative play forever. A stick in the bush, is transformed into a light saber, the fairy queen is now princess Armedala.

The quality of this larger than life media is delivered into our humble home through a High Definition Multi-media Interface cable HDMI cable that allows the technology of video games consoles, personal computers, digital audio devices, computer monitors and all things high tech, to connect producing state of the art sound, picture and imaging. The home theatre is no longer the simple screening of a rented movie on a Friday night projected onto a white wall in a playroom where cousins and grandparents gather to watch Paul Newman and Robert Redford swindle their way through the west. Today the experience is an all consuming sensory onslaught from which it is almost impossible to disengage.

I remember my sister's indignation when she tried to participate in a visualization exercise that asked her to imagine she was walking through a forest." Disney stole my imagination!" she cried out at the end of the exercise – for she was able only to imagine a young Mowgli wondering through the deep forests of The Jungle Boy. I imagine today's High Definition TV is stealing more than our children's imagination, it's certainly stealing their time. As I watch their little eyes grow in awe at this larger than life, overly defined backlit world, I wonder about the reality against which they will be able to define themselves.

HDMI

Campus Life - the Sober Way

One of the greatest pressures on kids on campus today is the pressure to drink and take drugs - to party. Getting 'out of it' is part and parcel of college life and some might say everyday life too. All cultures have some way of releasing the tensions, relaxing the senses and experiencing alternative perspectives of reality. It would be more productive if our methods of escape were healthier to include meditation, dance, yoga and sport, but campus life is already set in a mold which young adults fine hard to resist. College is also the time when young adults truly experience freedom and coupled with their eternal sense of invincibility, use of drugs and alcohol have become an integrated part of the culture of campus life.

The more mature, the more sensible, the more serious kids might focus more on their studies and less on the background party that accompanies college life, but they too, in all likelihood will celebrate the end of a semester, the end of the year, holidays and week-ends with a small amount of alcohol or the use of soft drugs. In Anthony Wolf's book entitled "Get Out Of My Life But First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall?", he describes how children who are more attached and have close relationships with their parents often rebel the most pushing against their family norms to individuate. College is the perfect place for this expression.

I recently met a kid who had graduated from a College in California called Sober College. It's an educational and therapeutic institution that supports kids who have drug and alcohol addictions and for whom regular college life is not possible because of the inherent culture of drink and drug use. This young man had completely changed his life, undergoing drug rehabilitation, counseling and even 'surf therapy'. He was completing a law degree when I met him. He had learned new ways to manage his stress, to release the pressure. They included surfing, swimming in the ocean and studying music. I was struck by his raw emotional honesty, his mature perspective and his appreciation for the opportunity to transition from alcoholism to sobriety in a supported college environment.

Recently DePauw University expelled the national sorority Delta Zeta because the group got rid of over twenty members because they were considered overweight and socially inept. The social immaturity, the lack of integrity and the blatant discriminatory values expressed by the sorority reflect a campus culture that increasingly pressures kids to devalue themselves. By comparison, the young man from Sober College was infinitely more interesting, intelligent and hopeful. He would not allow himself to be a pawn in a social system that encouraged negative behavior. Now a mature student, he was a fine example how productive a sober college life can be.