Im sorry to announce that the radio has been closed down due to legal uncertainties, even though all songs were released under Creative Commons licenses.
That’s the world we live in, once you think it’s safe and turn your back to copyright, it bites you in the ass.
Something seems to have broken in the layout of my blog, I’ll work on it later, when I find the time.
Please forgive any inconveniences you might experience.
Update: Fixed. Thanks to the K2 Team.
I just remembered that another of my favourite songs is Creative Commons licensed, so here is yet another update to my radio:
Re: Your Brains by the wonderful Jonathan Coulton.
I spent two nights sifting through CC-licensed music, and I uploaded two more songs to my radio. But I think I will stop this experiment here.
While there is indeed good, free (as in speech) music out there, I still can’t show you the music I really care about1, at least not legally. I could link to Youtube videos with horrible audio quality (and questionable legality), or I could post a playlist and send you to fetch it’s content at a certain Swedish bay.
But I don’t want this blog to be about music anyway; I just think it’s a great idea to let other people listen to a few samples of the music you like, so they might find something they like, discover new bands or even new genres for themselves. So I’d like to recommend a few songs and have people listen to them without any hassle. It’s what people have done with LPs, CDs, and MCs for decades. It’s the best advertisement any musician and their labels could hope for.
But not on the internet – not in the open. It’s too risky. They (the labels mostly, I guess) could sue me and they might even win. So this music sharing remains in a legal grey area; in the underground.
I’m afraid I can’t offer any insightful conclusion to this little rant. The situation is slowly changing – see Nine Inch Nails – but the big music labels will fight for their (hopefully) lost cause for a long time and do much harm to keep their obsolete business model alive. They not only harm their customers, but probably even more so the artists, who are exploited and chained to a merciless and greedy bureaucracy.
1: “Ode an die Freude”, the Presto from Beethoven’s Ninth, is actually one of my favourite pieces of music, ever. I was lucky to find a free recording of it.
Experimenting with what this blog has to offer, or rather, what I can make it offer, I tried uploading Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode an die Freude” (German for “ode to joy”) onto an opentape installation (actually it’s just an excerpt from the fourth movement of his 9th – and last – symphony).
It seems to have succeeded, but the embedded player won’t load the MP3, probably 15 MB are too much for it. But I couldn’t bring myself to cut it under 11 minutes…
So, if you want to listen to “Ode an die Freude” and, possibly – later – more music, tune in: Unholde Radio.
This MP3 file (and those I might upload later) is actually licensed under a Creatice Commons license, so as long as I don’t charge you for listening to my “Radio” it’s perfectly legal.
That is, if I give credit, of course, so here (and on my credits page) goes:
Excerpt from “Symphony No 9 in D Minor Op. 125: Presto”
Performed by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra
Composed by Ludwig van Beethoven
From the album Beethoven – Opferlied and Symphony Number 9
Once again I set out to set up a blog. I still don’t know what for, but here I go.
Trying to “design” a custom theme I, also once again, noticed my total lack of webdesign talent.
So… I just pasted my fancy “logo” (which took me hours to create) into the standard header. This a geek blog anyway, not an art blog.
So: What can you – and I – expect from this blog?
Not much. I won’t update often, but I won’t bore you with much personal stuff either. So… whenever I do or see or think something geeky, I’ll post it here. Maybe.
I actually do have a couple of “projects” I’m working on. Should any of them ever get off the ground, this blog might actually see some action.
But that’s the future. And for now, this is it.
Good Night.
P.S.: Of course it’s night, I’m a geek, a nerd; I’m nocturnal.
Also, it sounds much better then “Byebye” or something.
P.P.S.: I changed the theme, so I didn’t technically paste my logo into the standard header. Just in a standard header ; )
