From the Netherlands: SoundTransit

This is a very cool audio site. Imagine you are going on a trip. First thing you do is go online to book an itinerary. SoundTransit is the front end of a database that consists of geo-tagged found sound, audio samples from all over the world. The front-end looks and feels like one of the online flight booking applications. The geo-tagging allows SoundTransit to match ambient recordings from the database to your intinerary. My favorite so far was a trip from Boston to Paris via Tashkent. The sounds began on a Sunday afternoon in Boston's Chinatown, smoothly flowed to the sounds of rain on a tin roof in Tashkent and finished with passengers waiting for a delayed flight in De Gaulle International in Paris. The product is a single, smooth mp3 produced by SoundTransit on-the-fly once you have selected an itinerary. It is a marvelous organizing principle for a sound database that appeals to the imagination. Take a trip soon.

Common Content: Catalog of Creative Commons Licensed Content

The creative commoners over at Creative Content sponsor an open catalog for Creative Commons licensed material. It is searchable by category and subcategory. Naturally, there is a music category which should be useful in the fish-eyed browsing that goes into BSWC.

From France: Musique-libre.com

From across the length and breadth of France (with some other continental sources thrown in for good measure) comes musique-libre.com. A tremendous variety of music that is very well organized. Great stuff with Creative Commons licensing. If you are looking for a sense of what is happening musically in France, this is your "E" ticket. Dip your toe--En Bord de Nationale by sam.

WeirdoMusic Compilation Release: Numerology

I haven't had time to really dig in to this yet, but there is some fun material on this release that was conceived and compiled by Ton Ruckert. Twenty tracks on the release and so far for me the standout is a track by Messer Chups called Contact 1,2,3,4.

WM has this to say about Numerology:

"According to the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia "modern numerology attaches a series of digits to an inquirer's name and uses these, along with the date of birth, to reveal the person's true nature and prospects (using a method analogous to that of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets in which each letter also represented a number)." It also says that "numerology is based on the assertion by Pythagoras that all things can be expressed in numerical terms, because they are ultimately reducible to numbers." In his mystery school Pythagoras taught his students that nothing could exist without number, he believed that the foundation for almost all of philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, music and creative accomplishment could not exist without the divine organization of progression expressed in numbers. The scientific believe that numerology explains everything runs all the wayto Kepler, when the universal working assumption still was that God left his telephone number (as it were) in the workings of the heavens.

Well, you will probably ask, where does that leave us? Firmly in the past, I suppose, but still, only gather 2, 3, 4 and 5 together, and the mumbo-jumbo artists of the world will construct a theory, a conspiracy, or a piece of magic, that's where this compilation comes in: enjoy!"

BSWC Audio File from 10.01.05 Available

Here is the mp3 file from tonight's show. Listen to the show in it's entirety. Thanks to the Internet Archive for hosting the BSWC audio content. Enjoy.

BSWC Audio File from 9.17.05 Available

Here is the mp3 file from the September 17 show. It is an excerpt of a little over an hour of the show. Thanks to the Internet Archive for hosting the BSWC audio content. Enjoy.

BSWC Artist Playlist for 10.01.05

1 Cuckoo (lonely remix) by shockshadow
2 All That You Give by The Cinematic Orchestra (feat. Fontella Bass)
3 History by Comfortable Silence
4 Morning Euphoria In Tokyo Subway by Girl Boy Moog
5 Spies In Malaysia by Hypnobeat
6 HowCanTheseThingsB by teru
7 wierd christian from UK
8 Electric Bread by Let's Go Bowling
9 Subtraction by Bruce Lenkei
10 religion by Deutschenschuld
11 below-uret-remix by uret
12 Cuckoo feat. Lisa Debenedictis (passive-aggressive mix) by hisboyelroy
13 below by Unknown
14 Ser Livre by Hip Hop Mandando Fechado
15 HIPHOPDSDR_SPOT_ABORTO by Artista
16 HIPHOPDSDR_SERHOMEMSERMULHER by Artista
17 HIPHOPDSDR_SPOT_DIVERSIDADESEXUAL by Artista
18 HIPHOPDSDR_PREVENCAO by Artista
19 Dawnbreaker by DJ Tripswitch
20 cha l'ectro cha cha by Martinibomb and Coconut Monkeyrocket
21 lawn.mix by Lushy
22 Audrey's Horney Blue Cat by Ordio
23 Martian Colony by Torley Wong
24 Manhattan Sapphire (Web Edit) by Ugress
25 Spider Eyes (Spider-Man Theme) by Ugress
26 Munster Beat! by Martinibomb & The Coconut Monkeyrocket

From Spain: The Freesound Project

A big shoutout to Asa for finding the Freesound site...absolutely amazing...I have been waiting all of my life for something like this:

Barcelona, May 2005

The Freesound Project, an internet community supporting free exchange of sounds by musicians, sound artists and researchers, has been launched by the Music Technology Group of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain.

"The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples..."

When they say huge, they mean huge. The database is fantastic and the functionality superb. Not only can you play the sounds, but there is some limited overdubbing possible within the collection. I have to believe that I have only scratched the surface of this wonderful contribution to networld.

Artist Playlist for September 24

Many thanks to Asa for researching and presenting this show. I got to enjoy some time with the family. The mp3 will get posted later this week.

1 Orange skies (image of you) by Effect
2 Manhattan Sapphire (Web Edit) by Ugress
3 (INTERLUDE) french frogs by Oyez -freesound.org
4 intro by Thierry Blanchard
5 tbls by Thierry Blanchard
6 Son of a Hobo by Ashwan
7 (INTERLUDE) french crickets by Oyez
8 Ramadanby Nood
9 Ezanby vanillapudding
10 would you everby itoa // www.acediamusic.org
11 Hi Boys And Girlsby Fortyone
12 dutch train coming 2
13 SEVby Alexandre CHARON
14 The Love God by Martinibomb
15 Csanca by ST
16 (INTERLUDE) french bells
17 Girl by Cezary Ostrowski
18 Love Bird (featuring Lisa Debenedictis ) by callmeyang
19 Quantified by thelaw
20 Swing E Sesso (Remix) by Ugress
21 (INTERLUDE) french night Oyez
22 food story by stud // www.acediamusic.org
23 That JJ Slink
by Thin
24 (INTERLUDE) french dogs
25 Rock n Roll McDonalds by The Shut-Ins - tribute to wesley willis
26 Munster Beat!by
Martinibomb & The Coconut Monkeyrocket
27 Oddio Oddballio by M.Ace
28 Oddio Shellacio by M.Ace
29 (INTERLUDE) SS Kresge Co
30 My Name is Geoff by fourstones
31 Sweet Life by ASHWAN
32 Somebody Lovedby The Weepies
33 (INTERLUDE) french crickets by Oyez
34 Bauhelm Dub by disrupt
35 King George Warmonger - Thunder Dub by Messian Dread
36 Œ(INTERLUDE) french frogs by Oyez
37 ichtio by melodium
38 SUPER NEGROby GENGHIS ft. STEREO BLACK STARR
39 Kairo by
Salam

Lawrence Lessig on the Battle between Google and the Authors Guild

From Lawrence Lessig:

"Google has been sued by the Authors Guild, and a number of individual authors. This follows similar threats hinted at by the American Association of Publishers. The authors and the publishers consider Google’s latest fantastic idea, Google Print — a project to Google-ize 20,000,000 books — to be “massive copyright infringement.” They have asked a federal court to shut Google Print down.

It is 1976 all over again. [Sony Corp v. Universal City Studios] Then, like now, content owners turned to the courts to stop an extraordinary new technology. Then, like now, copyright is the weapon of choice. But then, like now, the content owners of course don’t really want the court to stop the new technology. Then, like now, they simply want to be paid for the innovations of someone else. Then, like now, the content owners ought to lose.

This is the best case to illustrate the story I told at the start of Free Culture. Property law since time immemorial had held that your land reached from the ground to the heavens. Then airplanes were invented — a technology oblivious to this ancient law. A couple of farmers sued to enforce their ancient rights — insisting airplanes can’t fly over land without their permission. And thus the Supreme Court had to decide whether this ancient law — much older than the law of copyright — should prevail over this new technology.

The Supreme Court’s answer was perfectly clear: Absolutely not. “Common sense revolts at the idea,” Justice Douglas wrote. And with that sentence, hundreds of years of property law was gone, and the world was a much wealthier place."

Visit Lessig Blog for the complete post. Oyez has the Oral arguments for the Betamax case available at their site.