Muxtape’s are down.
Message on mine:
Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.
From their blog:
No artists or labels have complained. The site is not closed indefinitely. Stay tuned.
Beta users of Muxtape For Bands: you are unaffected by this outage.
The RIAA is in the process of putting music/artists in a bad position. They might want to re-think the way they do business. Their model is losing fans quickly.
The following is a real footer in an email received today. It’s the equivalent of the small talk/print at the end of an auto ad or the copyright infringement read at the end of Major League Baseball games. Sad. These guys really don’t have a need for something like this. In most emails they send, it’s probably 10 times longer than the email body itself.
NOTICE:
This message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed; and it, including any attachments, may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please delete it from your system without copying or forwarding it and notify us by telephone (xxx-xxx-xxxx) or by return e-mail immediately. Boring Business Name, and its affiliated companies do not accept responsibility or liability for any loss or damage arising in any way from your receipt or use or for any errors or omissions in the contents of this communication.
It’s funny to me to see how much some people hold themselves/their product in such high regard. But this comes from the guy who’s not even much of a fan of email signatures. If I have to tell you I’m important, I’m not.
http://www.wingmusic.co.nz/listen.html
Can’t be.
I am writing this letter to inform you that our relationship is on the verge of coming to an end.
It’s not me, it’s you.
My courtship started late last year, November most likely. I found a link to your website and an offer from you to name my price for a subscription. I was excited for this new way into a subscription service. I felt like this could be an opportunity for other magazines to follow especially since most magazines make their money on ads rather than subscriptions.
2007 was a slow year for music. As I stumbled upon your offer and website, I felt that potentially you would be an open door for new music and other fine arts. Though small, there was a small excitement building in anticipation of your arrival in my mailbox soon. I hadn’t had a subscription to any magazines for a while and thought it would be a good change of pace, a little light reading for down times or restroom breaks. And best of all, I set my own price, $5. Yep, that’s right, a full year’s subscription for less than a Super-sized number three (plain Quarter Pounder, with cheese only) at McDonalds.
I know $5 dollars seems a little low. On one hand, I didn’t want you to feel cheap or cheated but on the other hand I wanted a deal. And since I had never had the opportunity to flip your pages, I really didn’t know how much you were worth. So I placed my $5 order and smiled when it was accepted.
Then I waited.
Christmas came and went and you chose not to arrive. I justified your absence to myself by thinking that I ordered late in the month and missed the December cycle since most magazines go out a month ahead of time.
(more…)
I don’t have any idea who the American Family Association is nor have I ever heard of their website OneNewsNow.com but by the looks of it, they are a very far right, Christian conservative group. In fact upon a current visit to their site, the lead story is a call from their founder about boycotting McDonald’s over their ‘refusal to be neutral in the cultural war over homosexuality.’ I am guessing this is a pretty common style of story for this site.
Side note for a moment: I appreciate good moral stances. But I also feel that there are some who take things a little too far. Keep following…
After a little reading today, I have learned that the OneNewsNow is a news aggregator of AP stories and other news sources. Great. Congrats. Another news site. Except for the fact that OneNewsNow has been caught on more than one occasion blocking stories and even modifying them in some instances.
One of the ways that they modify stories is to set up filters/rules to do search & replaces in the articles that come through. In some instances I can see where this could be a benefit; Editorial or op-ed pieces that might come through with inappropriate language or subject matter might be toned down for the OneNewsNow audience. I would be concerned on their part for some copyright issues but I don’t work for them nor read their material so it isn’t worth my time or effort to research it any more.
What is worth my time, was what came across my desk today.
In the AFA/OneNewsNow’s attempt to either keep it clean or politically correct, they got it wrong. Good thing is, wrong in this situation is funny-haha, not funny-gonna-end-up-in-court. Hopefully.
The Olympic trials are currently going on in several sports. Swimming, Bass Fishing, Bowling, Track & Field and many others. ONN (tired of typing here) seems to be covering the trials and the results pretty well. And of course filtering every story that comes through. Including replacing any location of the word GAY with the synonym HOMOSEXUAL.
I don’t guess there’s too much wrong with the aforementioned auto-replacement on articles… until Tim Gay, a United States Olympic hopeful, runs a 9.85 second time to win the 100 meter race. I think you get the idea…
In fact a quick search brought up several stories about Tim over the span of a couple days:
Even worse, this isn’t the first time it has happened to ONN. The NBA draft saw the Memphis Grizzlies picking early on a couple of weeks ago looking for a star player to play right along side their young stud, Rudy Gay.
At the time of this posting, ONN had resolved the issues above. Probably by hand. Maybe they should spend a little time looking into their methods or their algorithms, the current ones seem to have a few flaws. Either way, high comedy all around.