Interesting Links for 02-01-2014

[andrewducker]

• New year, new laws: world will wake up to raft of changes in 2014
  (tags: law )
• Your Complete Guide to the Science of Hangovers
  (tags: alcohol hangovers )
• Watchmen Manipulations is the new best thing ever.
  (tags: watchmen funny )
• Games now make more on digital than physical media, music very close.
  (tags: media money business uk )
• Redesigned Window

Comments

[bart_calendar]

How long until selling music becomes a thing of the past and merch and ticket sales become the driving economic engine of the music industry?

I'm guessing five years - since it's becoming clearer and clearer every year that artists who don't give a shit about record sales but tour all the time are making much more money then those who are trying to earn cash selling records.

The metal bands seem to have figured this out already - other genres can't be that far behind.

[steer]

Switch over was back in 2009 in the UK:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/mar/17/live-music-out-performs-record-sales

[andrewducker]

Tickets amd Merch are definitely driving forces, but that's still £1billion in sales over the last year, which isn't to be sneezed at.

[ajr]

Was going to say, I'm sure that had already happened, but I see steer beat me to it. 2009 actually sounds quite late to me, I recall going to gigs before then when it seemed more or less common knowledge among all present that t-shirt sales were where the money was at for the bands. It's the one reason I always buy a t-shirt when I go to a gig, even if none of the designs actually grab me.

Touring all the time does have its own pressures, mind.

[steer]

That article on Google glass was amazing. I wonder how resilient as a society we will be to the change. I can remember that in the late 80s I was contemptuous of the mobile phone because it was "for yuppies" and remained so while my wealthier or more open-minded on the subject friends acquired them. I ended up being a very late adopter by the standards of my circle -- which in the end made the few hold outs even more aggrieved "Oh, you're one of those people with a mobile now

[andrewducker]

Yeah, some people held onto the "Only evil people have phones" for far too long. And a lot don't seem to understand that smartphones aren't _phones_ - they're portable networked computers that happen to be able to do voice-comms.

[steer]

I'm pretty sure, in my circle at least, the "mobile phones are evil" meme died before the smart phone really properly became mainstream (around 2000?).

These days the phone function of a mobile is really not its major feature which is quite weird and something few people predicted: "in the future people will carry a device which will let them speak with or see and speak with any of their contacts at almost any time convenient for that person... but they will very rarely use this feature."

[simont]

Well, when you rephrase that as "it will let me speak with any of my contacts at any time convenient for me, thus interrupting said contact at a time very likely to be massively inconvenient for them", it's not so surprising that less intrusive alternatives have been adopted for many purposes.

[octopoid_horror]

I like the separation that a smartphone creates. If I'm looking at my smartphone, you know I'm not paying attention to you, or that I'm not looking where I'm going, or that I'm doing something and so am not necessarily interested in being bothered. If I'm wearing earphones, I'm clearly listening to something.

If my technology is much more discrete, you've no idea what I'm doing, whether I'm paying attention, whether I'm listening to you.

Also, I don't care how old-fashioned it makes me sound, I find the idea of people talking out loud to their devices utterly hilarious.