OMT in San Francisco #3: ‘Let it beep’ from One More Thing on Vimeo.

The legend of the early sounds of the Mac remains, apparently, an alluring one. Here, Jim Reekes talks to a Dutch documentary crew (though in English) about his thought process in designing sounds for the Mac, including the famous Mac startup sound.

If you haven’t heard the story, it’s a great tale. But there’s more to why Jim Reekes matters. For one, his insight into how sound design impacts the way people feel about a product is telling. Years later, following an onslaught of still more microcontroller-packed gear and hideous cellphone ringtones, that lesson seems ignored by designers. I know countless phone users who find the traditional phone ring sound. They do so not out of habit (like those people I know who are too young to even remember pre-digital phones), but because it’s the least offensive choice. With all of the growth in sound, you might imagine we’d be finding smart, new interactions, not struggling to cover the basics.

No surprise, then, that Keith Lang at UI&us, a blog centered on user experience, picks this up – it’s as interesting a question of design as it is Mac nostalgia. (I agree with the commenter there – tritone? The original sound doesn’t sound like a tritone to me.)

More importantly, though, Jim Reekes is worth revisiting because of the amount he contributed to sound on the Mac platform. That should be a reminder of how important it is to value the contributions of people who build intelligent sound into platforms, especially at a time when new platforms (iPhone, Android, Chrome) are emerging. Jim is credited (by his site and Wikipedia) for key engineering in QuickTime, he single-handedly created the Mac’s original Sound Manager, build early standalone radio appliances, helped support software on which the Mac multimedia revolution relied (from SoundEdit to Vision to HyperCard to Final Cut to Myst), and even built a jog wheel and hierarchical menu before the iPod.

I like to believe that forward progress is still possible in computing and sound, not only in sexy apps and hardware, but in the decidedly un-sexy plumbing that lies inside our computing platforms. It often comes down to individual men and women who make it happen. And lest you think challenges are insurmountable or the process is glamorous and magical, here’s a good quote from Jim:

The people on the outside think that, you know, it’s like this wonderful world of Oz or Disney going on and all of us are just all these brilliant amazing happy people and like ‘it’s not’ it’s like a sausage factory, I mean, you really don’t want to know how this stuff happens. A lot of it is just bad arguments and politics and working around the rules and, and and not doing the right thing and apologizing for it later and getting fired a few times, I mean, that’s how things got done. It’s definitely like “Don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain.” Jim Reekes.

Source: ProfCast blog (ProfCast, incidentally, a great little tool for making enhanced podcasts and lectures on Mac and Windows)

And that’s to say nothing of the days during which Apple Corps was going after Apple Computer for making products that could make music. (Jim to Boing Boing: “I was getting really tired of this whole thing when the laywers told me I had to change an API from the “noteCmd” to “frequencyCmd.” Good thing they didn’t make 440Hz off-limits.) Now, all that is history, and The Beatles are in a video game.

With that in mind, here’s more on the creation of Mac sound – and its signature sounds.

TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 4: The Mac Startup Sound [Music thing - we miss you, you great blog - 2005]

Jim Reekes at Wikipedia (a degree in composition and theory? What use could that ever possibl— oh.)

Early Apple sound designer Jim Reekes corrects Sosumi myth [Boing Boing, 2005]

Jim Reekes homepage

Music games Rock Band and Guitar Hero are simple enough in terms of gameplay, but testifying to the power of people’s passion for music, their impact has been staggering. At a time when purchasing recorded music has waned from a 90s peak, downloads for games are proving surprising growth, despite pundits predicting the segment would cool off. The talents of the Harmonix team attracted the collaboration of the download-averse surviving Beatles and family members. But most importantly, the popularity of these games has translated into renewed interest in learning to play real instruments. It’s no accident popular music chart sales are surging, or that you will now find a new selection of digital and acoustic (but serious) instruments at your local Best Buy, often located right next to the games section. (Even as a witness to this trend, I was surprised recently to pick up an extra KORG nanoKONTROL in the aisle next to Rock Band.) Heck, even sales of music notation software are growing.

I’m uncertain of the extent to which a game like Rock Band can be identified as the cause of these trends, but there’s no question that popular music making is on the rise, and games are part of the shift. Perhaps it’s a matter of games changing the way people feel about making music. After all, a lot of early music training is very much like a game: to learn a new instrument, you simplify the playing of that instrument into more basic exercises. Obviously, that helps develop chops, but it also boosts confidence, giving a music student a feel for what it’s like to play successfully. (And, let’s face it, even experienced pro players sometimes need to defeat anxiety.)

The dark side of all of this has been that the music itself has been limited to a narrow selection of top-of-the-charts hits and popular classic tracks. Rock Band Network doesn’t yet address the limited instrumentation (guitar, bass, drums, voice), but it does open production to a new range of artists – and that, in turn, could be the beginning of much more to come. By allowing anyone to author and distribute tracks for a nominal subscription fee on Microsoft’s Xbox creation community, Rock Band Network is all about opening floodgates.

Having followed the story here on CDM since last year, I’m thrilled that the Rock Band Network store itself is now live. The results run the gamut from relatively big-name artists to more obscure contributions. (Phone giant T-Mobile will pony up some cash to highlight an “Artist of the Month” from the community, in the interest of shining a spotlight on lesser-known acts.) The only bad news is, while the store is international, the Rock Band Network isn’t immune from the music industry’s trouble crossing national borders; as our own Jaymis discovered to his dismay, countries like Australia are left out. I hope to talk to Harmonix and Microsoft about how they plan to make these kinds of efforts more global with time.

For those countries covered, though, you can now enjoy the store as both an artist and listener (or make that “player”). Starting on launch day last week, of Montreal, The Shins, The Hold Steady, Steven Vai, and geek God Jonathan Coulton were onboard. (“The Future Soon,” anyone?) I’m pleased that among other artists, we have Flight of the Conchords to look forward to.

But I will say, whether you appreciate these games or not, there are promising signs for the music business here, without question. Harmonix’s founders began work with experimental musical interface research, as with many of the readers of this site. Oddly enough, though, what they found was by some measure an entirely new industry.

By the numbers:

• Rock Band Network launches with over 100 songs, out of a private beta; expect far more.
• Artists choose pricing tiers and get a 30% royalty (high for this kind of royalty, at least for a typical indie artist).
• 1,100 tracks are currently available on Rock Band, prior to the many, many more expected on RBN.
• Some 4,300 users have registered on RBN to contribute tracks and/or perform peer review. That’s significant growth for Microsoft’s XNA community, and it’s prior to a wider launch that will be an order of magnitude bigger.

Harmonix info:
How to Submit a Song; scroll down to “Adding a song to the pipeline.”

How to Become a Peer Reviewer (aka playtester)

I’ll see the Harmonix team this week at GDC; I’m looking forward to it. Let me know if you have questions for them. It is a reminder, though, of why I’m glad to spend my travel time in March at the Game Developer Conference even in place of South by Southwest. I think a lot of our future may be at the former as much as the latter. (Well, and if not, I still get to geek out with discussions of adaptive music engines.)

If this stuff does interest you, don’t miss our previous, exhaustive Q&A’s with Harmonix (thanks to the folks there for being so forthcoming):
Inside the Rock Band Network, as Harmonix Gives Interactive Music its Game-Changer
Your Band in Rock Band: Rock Band Network Beta Opens, Q&A with Harmonix

Computers and computer software can have as much or even more longevity than traditional music hardware – that is, if elements like copy protection don’t intervene first. As a postscript to the discussion last week, prompted by a new software release for the Apple II, here’s a report from our friend Bill Van Loo. He was able to make a productive little workstation out of an old iBook (500Mhz), with access to Reaktor Session instruments and an Apple electric piano now gone.

Bill has been doing a project a week all year, working towards the goal of 52 projects at the end of 2010, so consider this an excuse to peek into his studio and get some inspiration and ideas for projects:

http://www.chromedecay.org/

What’s interesting to me is how productive the results were. But that means there’s a real failure caused by arcane copy protection. And much as we complain about dongles, the dongle worked – it was software/online challenge-response that was the failure point. (Before dongle advocates at developers rejoice, uh, guys, if you add online activation to your dongle as some of you have recently done, you’ve just killed your advantage.)

I don’t think it’s realistic for developers to always provide 100% backwards compatibility. But it’s clear that developers aren’t doing a great job of gracefully bringing products to the end of their life cycle. If a product is to be discontinued, why not do what Propellerhead did with their popular ReBirth instrument and provide it free? Open source licensing isn’t always the answer, as it adds additional legal work and presumes that someone wants all this old source code, which very often, they don’t. But at least by providing a free download, perhaps a very specific license that makes it free to trade the binary file, people don’t lose access to software they use in their music.

Bill’s comments, plus a link to the full story – well worth reading if you’re considering doing something similar yourself:

As it happens, I went through my own version of this (resurrecting old technology to get usable instruments back) and documented it on my blog, as part of my ongoing “52 things” (a “project-a-week” series).

A few years ago, I replaced my trusty titanium PowerBook with a shiny new Intel MacBook. That brought lots of increased power, but it also meant losing some things I really liked as a result of moving from the PowerPC-based PowerBook to the Intel-based MacBook. My favorite Rhodes electric piano sound came from Logic’s EVP73 plugin, which didn’t run on Intel Macs. One of my other favorite sound sources was Reaktor Session, which I loved for its Vierring ensemble, among others.

What it came down to, for me, is that it was worth getting back those capabilities. I learned, along the way, that the dongle-based copy protection schemes (much as I disliked them at the time) of Logic and Max/MSP allowed me to get them up and running extremely quickly.

In contrast to dongle-based copy protection, the challenge/response authorization system of Native Instruments actually made it much more difficult (relatively speaking) to get Reaktor Session installed & going. NI’s customer support got me set up quickly, but having to rely on that to get software working makes it more fragile in terms of dependencies.

5/52: iBook instrument station

iPad, wha? How about new music creation software for the Apple II platform?

8-bit weapon has a new instrument – delivered on 5.25″ floppy, natch – for the Apple //e, IIc, and IIc+. This isn’t just a novelty, though; they’ve built it to be battle-ready for onstage use. That means it works without a user interface, so you can use it without having a monitor plugged in. Here’s usability for you: “Just turn on your Apple II and when the drive light goes off. Then hit the space bar you’re ready to play live~!” Engadget gets the scoop:

Apple II Digital Music Synthesizer available now for 8-bit die-hards [Engadget]

Get over the novelty, and there’s something happening here: recycle old equipment otherwise destined to be toxic waste, make a computer instrument that’s dead-simple to use onstage and doesn’t require looking at the screen, make the most of extremely limited resources rather than burning through computing resources arbitrarily …these are principles that could be applied to any computer music project.

Up to 8 voices, preset sounds (Acoustic Piano, Vibraphone, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Bass, Trumpet, Clarinet, square wave, sawtooth wave, sine wave, Banjo), monophonic QWERTY performance. Now, admittedly, the Apple IIe isn’t much fun to take to a gig. Look for the Apple IIc, a svelte, slim design that was easily one of the best designs Apple has ever made, in any decade. When you do need video out, plug the analog jack directly into a TV, then stare into your soul (or your HDMI-connected, content-protected, latency-inducing TV) and ask yourself what progress means.

Okay, so maybe even at firesale prices (typically $10 or $20), you don’t want to bring an Apple II home. We also learn from our friends James Grahame that 8-bit Weapon has a new sample library:

8 Bit Weapon Chiptune Sound Library [Retro Thing]

There are also a couple of iPhone apps, but… that doesn’t have the same cred, somehow.

So, Let’s Talk Long-Term Investment

It’s a worthy question, though: can a computer last you as an instrument for some 25 or 30 years? I have to take issue again with Gino Robair, who repeats the lament that computers lack longevity. I couldn’t agree more, Gino, that computer’s lives are too short, reliability too low, and repairs to difficult, or that the onward march of software requiring replacement systems is absurd.

But I think Gino is missing cases like this, where folks are still playing on their Apple IIs. This isn’t just nostalgia: it’s actually practicality, conservation, and a certain sound. In short, to the musician, it’s an instrument, as beloved to them – and perhaps strange to everyone else – as a favorite bassoon. (If you can’t stand the sound of 8-bit, I forgive you – but if you love the sound of, say, a specific Reaktor patch, why not expect to use that in 2030?)

Gino also talks about “renting” software, but doesn’t address the existence of open source tools, and indeed, tools like Csound and SuperCollider have new longevity. We likewise watched Hans-Christoph Steiner rescue bins of old PDAs and iPods others thought were literally trash, in order to run Pd. Nor does commercial software have to be excepted from this, just because of its upgrade-cycle business model: just as hardware manufacturers now consider the impact of their goods as waste, software developers could thoughtfully end of life discontinued products, and use copy protection that has a statute of limitations instead of planned obsolescence.

Most importantly, though, Gino I believe incorrectly assumes that hardware will last people forever. On the contrary, on CDM, I regularly encounter people who are selling and trading in those beautiful boutique hardware synths, because they find they don’t need all of them. Likewise, you’ll find people working with DSP systems for many years, or even maintaining an old Be computer or mobile device. These are essentially software, used in a specific way because the user so chooses. Software itself is not to blame: planned obsolescence, inferior hardware, botched copy protection, greedy resource consumption, and overly complex software rigs could be.

Indeed, software’s flexibility, its ability to change, is one of its great strengths. It’s a different kind of longevity. How many users might say they’re still using “Cakewalk,” or “Cubase,” or “Performer,” or “Max,” or Notator (now simply called “Logic”)? Those are all applications conceived in the 80s. They’ve changed and grown because users wanted them to, and we’ve been musically enriched as a result. What I think Gino is talking about is quite different – when you expect something to last, and it dies, that’s the real problem. But it’s not an intractable problem for software; indeed, it may be easier for software to solve than hardware. (Ask someone who’s had to deal with servicing a vintage analog synth.)

That to me is the lesson of the 8-bit musician, which transcends just a fondness for old sounds. It’s just as much about doing more with less. That’s not a technological principle; it’s a creative one. It could be as simple as saying, you know, today I’m going to focus on this one tool and one option and not let myself get distracted by the others. Maybe it isn’t the computer that’s the limiting factor, after all. Maybe it’s us.

Longterm Investing [Robair Report]

Last week, what was intended to be a day of posts wound up being several days of updates on events centered around music technology and DIY creation. Here’s a birds-eye view of what we covered, some of the events you can catch in person, and some of what these events reveal.

It’s worthwhile just putting these posts in one spot so you can easily mark your calendar – and you can see, even in this small slice, the amount and breadth of activity happening now.

At STEIM in Amsterdam, I’ll be talking about the state of DIY and open source technology for musicians and artists, and what that means for creative people — both the potential and some of the challenges. So I’d be curious to hear your thoughts before I begin waxing poetic. Readers here aren’t shy, so let us know your concerns in comments.

Now, here’s your guide and calendar to DIY. Tell us what we’ve missed. I’m hoping to devote a permanent spot on Noisepages to an events calendar; anyone with slick WordPress/BuddyPress-based solutions, give us a shout.

The best new inventions.

Don’t miss web-savvy hacks and creations from the music hackday, including an all-JavaScript clone of a popular Nintendo handheld music tool, online Web tools that make musician’s lives easier, and fantastic combinations of Android phones, web listening tools, online data, and physical objects. Meanwhile, if you want to start your own project but don’t know where to begin, Austin is a hotbed of new DIY kits.

February 17. Amsterdam, NL. (event)

Handmade Music kicks off in Amsterdam at the STEIM research center. The action starts at 8p. I’m making a stop there on my way to Stockholm, and hope to provide documentation next week for the rest of the world. Details.

February 19. Toronto, Canada. (event)

Handmade Music hits Toronto.

What they teach us: Why is it a “great time to make electronic music?” Toronto’s organizers point to the fact that makers are spoiler for choice of platform, with monome and Arduino on the hardware side, and ever-more-mature Max/MSP and Pure Data on the software side.

February 28. Austin, Texas USA. (event)

Austin shares all their latest musical inventions, plus resources for those wanting to work on making noises with the Arduino.

What they teach us: beginners can get in on these events, with the aid of newbie-friendly workshops and easygoing, noise-making parties. Oh yeah, and the advanced folks can create terrific, usable music hardware.

March 8. Brooklyn, NY USA.

Handmade Music starts a new series at Galapagos Art Space, between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Details.

February 14, April 3, May 28. Porto, Portugal + worldwide. (call for works)

Digitopia seeks the best Max+Pd patches, dream ideas for musical inventions, and miniature music. I’ll be there in June 2010.

What they teach us: the twist here is making an open source hardware controller the prize, and sharing the how-to with the world. Plus, all the competition entries are required to be open source, meaning the competition itself generates tools for the community.

March 1 deadline; March 12 event. San Francisco + Worldwide.

One-button Game Objects challenges designers to make self-contained sonic and visual interactive art — all using just one button. If you can ship it to San Francisco, we can show it. And in March, we’ll be looking at other ways that just one button can make a musical interface. Call for works info.

Apple’s iPad is here. It starts at $499. It’s a gorgeous, brilliantly-designed device that has the benefits of Apple’s cleverly-engineered, best-in-class developer tools for mobile. A lot are likely to sell. And unfortunately, to me that means bad news for the kind of creative computing we talk about on this site.

To put it briefly, I think the new, mobile Apple is doing immense harm to the computing legacy the company has forged. We could have had a Mac tablet today. Instead, we have a giant iPhone – and that’s a decision that has some serious repercussions. It’s a blow to open source alternatives, but also to open development in general: the power of interchangeable hardware and software, on which everything we do with music and visuals on computers is based.

For years, the Mac community railed against the perceived closed nature of Microsoft. Now, many are rallying behind an Apple with a vision more closed than Redmond’s.

This is important to both CDMs, because it’s on both these sites that I, along with readers and contributors, have advocated open computing as a creative outlet, for creation, sharing, and distribution of music, visuals, and knowledge.

I’m entirely biased by my own perspective. There are certain things I care about, that I believe in. I can talk about the technical, measurable values of each of those, but I can only speak for myself. With that in mind, the iPad, in a single device, embodies the exact opposite of all the reasons I’ve invested so much time in computing for the last 25 years.

• It’s a closed platform. As with the iPhone, development for the iPad means reliance on Apple’s tools, on the use of proprietary Apple hardware and software just to build an app. Now, those could be worthy sacrifices for a great product. But it also means that Apple alone distributes applications, and decides which applications developers will be allowed to create – something that has never been true on a computing OS. Since the unveiling of the iPhone SDK, Apple apologists argued that somehow this was a decision made by phone carriers, that surely their beloved Apple was not to blame. Yet Apple has chosen that path for a device that, while it lacks a keyboard, otherwise looks for all the world like a computer – like something that could have been a Mac, with all the power and freedom of a Mac, instead of an iPhone.
• It has no standard ports. Like the iPhone, the iPad has only a proprietary dock connector, ensuring Apple has control over the hardware made for the device. You can throw away decades of the lessons of the value of standard connectors, of the freedom to connect a computer as – to use a phrase Apple popularized – a digital hub. There’s not even HDMI to connect to a display. Clarification: video out will be possible, albeit with a proprietary adapter. And *access* to that video port from software has been a huge problem on the iPhone. See additional notes on Create Digital Motion. Additionally, the possibilities of external hardware are not entirely known. Apple will offer a memory card reader adapter that uses USB. But there isn’t a native USB port on the machine, and this doesn’t necessarily suggest full support for USB; hopefully, additional details will emerge.
• It’s tied to iTunes. As with the iPhone, you can’t use the iPad’s drive as a drive. You can’t connect it to a computer and put on it what you like. You’re limited to using third-party apps as conduits or servers – and even then, you’re limited; critical files for media and reading are controlled by Apple’s market-dominating iTunes app. It’s a storage device you own, but that someone else controls. Maybe that’s acceptable for game consoles, but, again, the iPad has the appearance of a computer. (Except, of course, it’s actually not.)
• Apple alone controls the distribution of media. Apple already has a dangerously dominant position in the consumption of music and mobile software, and their iTunes-device link ensures that content goes through their store, their conduit, and ultimately their control. This means that developers are limited in what they can create for the device when it comes to media – a streaming Last.fm app is okay, but an independent music store (like Amazon MP3 on Android) is not. Now, you can add to that Apple dominating book distribution. At a time when we have an opportunity to promote independent e-book publishing, the iPad is accompanied by launch deals from major traditional publishers. What does that mean for independent writers and content? Updated: As several readers have noted, one positive sign is that Apple’s book application supports the open epub format. We’ll see how this works, and how this interoperates with other devices over the coming days and months. (And it’s important, too – this is not Create Digital Books, but a lot of the information we want to read is published in e-books.)
• It’s not an open computer. It’s not a Mac. The bottom line: you can’t do the things that an open computing experience allows. You can’t connect the hardware you want, develop or run the software you want, or have the open-ended experience computers have provided. That’s not to say a tablet or slate or pad or whatever you want to call it needs to be exactly like other computers. On the contrary: if you believe in the computing experience, you believe it should work in new and creative form factors. (There was a time when the clamshell laptop was a new idea, remember, a time when computers were giant bricks you plugged into a TV.)

Limitations are a wonderful thing. Specialized operating systems for mobile make perfect sense. But that’s a design decision – it’s about the interface, the developer tools, the hardware. A mobile device can work just as well without being tied to iTunes or with actual ports on it.

I know what the objection will be: but this computer isn’t “for” people like me. But that’s the whole problem. Apple threatens to split computing into two markets, one for “traditional,” “real” computers, and another for passive consumption devices that try to play games without physical controls and let you read books, watch movies, play music, and run apps so long as you’re willing to go through the conduit of a single company.

And, of course, this wouldn’t be worth my breath if not for my real concern: what if Apple actually succeeds? What if competitors follow this broken path, or fail to offer strong alternatives? The iPad today is a heck of a lot slicker than alternatives. It’s bad news for Linux, Windows, and Android, none of which have really workable competitors yet. It’s especially bad for Linux, in fact, which had a real chance to make its mark on mobile devices. Edit: Actually, one major advantage of a big, splashy Apple announcement – a number of those manufacturers have started talking about their rivals, already in the pipeline.

These issues have always been a matter of open debate. Jean-Louis Gassée infamously got an “OPEN MAC” license plate for his car during the early days of Apple Macintosh. The “open” vision was the vision we got. It’s the Mac II. It’s the expansion capabilities of the Mac that allowed PostScript support, which let the Mac launch computer desktop publishing and ensured the survival of the platform. And it was a vision in contrast to that of one (younger) Steve Jobs, who argued against expansion and nearly made the Mac a failure, another forgotten 80s oddity. It was after Jobs was forced out of the company that the Mac platform, the Mac community as we now know it were really forged, built on the expansion and flexibility those later Macs offered. That expansion port was what enabled early products from Digidesign, which would later become Pro Tools – the very birth of digital audio production.

Like I said, I’m biased by my own opinion. But it’d be unfair, after years of being hard on small developers when it comes to issues of openness, if I held back here. This is the world’s self-proclaimed “largest mobile manufacturer,” the company that, as it reminds us in every press release, launched the computing revolution. I wish I understood why they were now running away from some of the basic ideas that made that revolution possible.

This is what I asked in January 2007 on this site, shortly after the original iPhone was launched:

“1. Will Apple lock down the iPhone, blocking Flash, Java, custom widgets, and open development from its new platform?

2. Could Apple’s multi-touch patents actually stifle growth of new, interactive displays?”

Unfortunately, that turned out to prescient. As for point #2, and perhaps no fault of Apple’s, it’s apparent that multi-touch gestures are now missing in prominent platforms like the Android because of fear of litigation. (Yes, the Droid in my pocket has multi-touch and even a multi-touch API, but nothing in the shipping apps, apparently because someone’s legal department got involved.)

And as for point one, just compare what you can do with a Mac to what you can do with an iPhone.

Ironically, at that same show, I saw the very thing the Mac users most badly wanted: a Mac tablet. But because an independent developer had to hack that product together, it was overpriced and not terribly useful. At the same time, I know some people bought them, because that’s what they wanted. They wanted a Mac tablet.

Ironically, the biggest disadvantage of the iPad is that it’s not a Mac. So now we wait and see if someone can come up with intelligent new tablets that are at least more like PCs.

I know who I’m rooting for. And it’s not this.

Clarifications / thoughts from comments:

Of course, comments are here so that we can have a spectrum of opinions, and believe me, I do read and listen – including (sometimes especially) those with a different perspective than my own.

Some issues worth clarifying, respective to the above:

Several readers pointed out that I’m oversimplifying some of the relative historic “openness” of Apple. When the “Open Mac” battle was raging in the early Mac days (leading to the SE and Mac II), the connectors were indeed often still proprietary. The question was more whether to have ports or expansion at all. In the defense of the early Apple engineers, recall that, with the exception of formats like serial, standards were not as evolved as technologies like USB today. Even though there were already IBM clones, they were clones of IBM PCs, literally, not the open-ended PC market we have today. So readers are absolutely right – I was blurring some of the issues here. At the same time, this only underlines my point.

We’re again revisiting the question of what “consumers” need. The reason Jobs was opposed to ports, expansion, and the general ability of a user to service or upgrade a machine was because he perceived a need for a “consumer” device. In other words, he was making the argument then that his design is making now, and that some commenters are making, as well. Jobs was forced out of Apple, and the “Open Mac” won – and the rest is history. But my devil’s advocate question would be, given that computers with expandability won out in the 80s, why are we in a rush to eliminate that functionality now, in 2010, when even average consumers are more demanding and less afraid of technology? Is that who this is really for, or by the very virtue of its limitations, is this just a toy for gadget lovers? (I’m not asking that rhetorically; I think the readers making this argument have a point, and I’d be curious to hear people follow up.)

The other question is whether Apple was “open” in the intervening time period. However, here I have to invoke some history. Apple under Sculley was working very hard on interoperability with IBM, even though that ultimately failed. The Mac platform may have run a different OS, but it also embraced and/or helped popularize serial ports (hello MIDI), SCSI, and 3.5″ floppy drives (standard storage for the time). Under Amelio, Apple even pursued cloning – before Jobs reigned it in. (I’m not arguing that was a smart business decision, but it did at least qualify as “open.”) Mac OS X and modern Mac hardware are replete with standards, the Safari team is by far the most active contributor to WebKit, and the Apple OS team continues to work hard on interoperability.So, I may have been oversimplifying, too, but I can at least say this particular product is not characteristic of some of the more “open” behavior of Apple in other areas.

Finally, many of the comparisons have been made to the Lemur. I agree the Lemur hardware is aging and the software is relatively inflexible (certainly more so than apps made with the iPhone SDK). As for specifics of how the devices compare in multi-touch accuracy, or whether users will be as satisfied with the iPad as a wireless controller versus the Lemur’s Ethernet cord, that remains worth discussing.

Side note: Nowhere did I say that the alternative to an iPad has to be open source. I’m a huge fan of open source and truly free software. But by the measures above, Windows qualifies as open.

araabMUZIK Live MPC Set Part 1 from Death by Electric Shock on Vimeo.

I have exactly zero interest in entertaining the tired hardware versus software argument that surfaced, inevitably, with the discussion of the upcoming Beat Thang drum machine. But behind that question is a very relevant question: why do people love drum machines? Why do they love particular hardware, like the MPC? What can you learn about digital performance and design from these devices and their master virtuosos?

Watching videos like this one, featuring araabMUZIK, gives me all the answers I need. This is one musician among others. I head to this one because it popped up this month on the wonderful Saturn Never Sleeps blog, written by Rucyl Mills, a site that has become a source of perpetual inspiration. Rucyl, I do take issue with the headline, “Some Hardware Can’t Be Replaced by Software.” That’s not to say there isn’t a usability gap between the MPC and a lot of software – there is. I just think this should be a challenge to anyone who designs software or controllers. Why shouldn’t you design a software-based drum machine you can switch on in a few seconds, or with computer screens in different form factors, or with displays that don’t require careful inspection? Why shouldn’t software — commercial or your own DIY creation — invite obsessive practice?

More to the point, though, I think this does reveal what a drum machine can be. To those of you who say it’s not a “real instrument,” you’re absolutely right. I couldn’t agree more. This isn’t a traditional instrument like a violin. It’s part of a direct lineage to the elaborate contraptions of the one-man band, the impossible sense that one person is controlling an entire ensemble. It’s a compositional machine that challenges push-button dexterity. It connects to the fast finger flashes of the arcade age and the intricate rhythmic reworkings of beat-juggling. (It’s no coincidence, then, that Donkey Kong and hip hop meet here in the sound and in the visuals: it’s no less “Music” with a capital M, but it is music created by the generation that grew up with the video game.)

Ironically, this is also what the monome helped resurrect: simple, single-function software, and grids that allow rhythmic control over music. That’s why I believe the monome proved itself as the “noughts’” (the last decade’s) MPC. But it can also serve as a reminder that many wonderful devices are yet to come, so long as you can be connected to the kind of passion here, whatever your own musical output may sound like or technological inclinations may be.

Just remember, the next time someone gets annoyed as you tap on a desk, or even if you need to take a break from your new album for an extended run of Xbox 360, just say what the drummers say: I’m practicing.

I’m a blogger. I’m supposed to be all about shiny, about scoops and exclusives, about fast-paced development. But even I’ve begun to wonder about the expectations some developers and users alike have about pace. And that doesn’t just apply to the vendors: it applies to writers and users, too.

One theme repeated again and again by developers around NAMM: let’s slow down. It’s not a new idea, but several recent developments make it doubly relevant.

Two hardware products revealed this week in functioning, working order had been separately accused of being vaporware, because they didn’t come out right away – perhaps an indication of the increasingly-compressed perception of time in technology. The Beat Kangz Beat Thang drum machine and Teenage Engineering OP-1 synth/sampler/instrument are now each nearing shipment. Now, I expressed some skepticism about each of these products, only because I tend to believe what ships — too many gorgeous prototypes have wound up unraveling along the difficult road to market. Yes, I even poked fun at the OP-1 for pushing my “awesomeness versus shippingness” continuum. But I’m not surprised that the gestation of these two tools has consumed some time. Frankly, it’s gotten to the point where I feel some relief when I hear about delays. Efficient design can mean faster development, so delays can be a bad thing. But if you really care about quality, sometimes you miss – or don’t set – deadlines.

On the software side, people are still talking about Ableton’s decision to freeze development to fix their software. It’d be a mistake to read too much into that: the 8.1 release of Live wasn’t up to their quality standards, and I’m convinced the underlying process will be improved so that future quality is better. But this goes beyond Ableton.

A correlation of this announcement is the realization that software doesn’t have to ship with bugs. Some tools in our industry simply ship too early. Beyond bugs, there are products that ship with important features missing, or incomplete realization of their ideas. There are products that should have gone through some revision that don’t. There are features that should be taken out and wind up getting left in. Some of this has to do with syncing up with distribution and marketing, but at least the rest of us can adjust our own expectations in regards to the parts of this process we do touch.

Gino Robair has a superb essay on this topic, spawned by the discussion here on CDM and what you readers have been saying:

Why Is This So Complicated? [Electronic Musician Robair Report Blog]

It’s worth reading his whole essay, which also responds to concerns that those of us in the press aren’t being fair and impartial in our reviews. But I want to highlight this passage, because it suggests that the industry can change:

Kirn notes that “all software has bugs.” Perhaps. But wouldn’t it be great if developers came clean and told us what the issues were when their products were released? Better still, wouldn’t it be a win-win situation if manufacturers didn’t make promises that they couldn’t keep about features, but only announced things that are fully functional, perhaps adding extra features in .x updates. Imagine if a developer announced and delivered a bulletproof version of their new audio app, then named five state-of-the-art features that would be added incrementally over the next few months in free updates to registered users (perhaps after they were bug-fixed using public betas).

In fact, as a certain developer noted, you shouldn’t even need a public beta to fix bugs. Adding features doesn’t have to mean adding bugs, because properly engineered, those features would work reliably from the start. Getting testers to find the bugs, or even producing those bugs in the first place, is a cost that should be avoided wherever possible. The goal of any engineering effort should be to stop bugs before they’re created, not test them after they’re created, or worst of all, ship them to customers. Prevention is the best medicine.

This sentence from Gino could be framed and hung on the wall of every software developer. (Actually, I say “developer,” when I should say “manager” – most developers are more than aware of this issue.)

Unfortunately, the industry is training an entire generation of users to wait for the first update before upgrading their apps.

That’s the crux of the problem: it’s one symptom of an epidemic of lowered expectations. Incidentally, when I said “all software has bugs,” I didn’t intend that as an excuse. (I actually got a couple of notes from prominent developers about that who passionately disagreed, partly because they have invested time to avoid just that!) Any software has the potential for failure under specific circumstances that may not be immediately discovered. In this case, though, the point of contention is really known bugs. And those don’t have to ship. Cosmetic issues often do ship, and that’s fine. But music software should be considered “mission-critical,” because to a musician, it is.

It’s known by different names, but most developers, regardless of industry, refer to certain issues as “known but shipping.” If that bug is something more serious, like a crash, it really isn’t okay.

By the way, if you think this is just about software, I think you’re mistaken. I’m biased toward the value of software, but I have to take issue with Gino Robair’s criticism of software’s disposability. I couldn’t agree more — on the software side, that is. I just happen to think it applies to hardware, too. As Gino notes:

Some announcements, however, just seem to pile sexy new features onto an older product while core issues remain unsolved.

Sounds to me like that applies to a lot of hardware electronics, too. And while traditional physical, acoustic instruments have extraordinary longevity – ask a 17th century viola da gamba – a lot of modern instruments, especially electronic ones, are designed to be as disposable as software upgrades. Also, at least a software update doesn’t impact the environment; electronic instruments produce toxins and consume energy in their construction, disposal, or both. (See Gino’s original editor’s note, which focuses on guitars. Gino would no doubt approve of the CDM readers still using their Commodore 64s.)

If we want this situation to change, all of us – not just vendors – will need to participate. All of us are to blame, not just developers. As users, we often ask for more – more features, more stuff – and we want it more quickly. There’s nothing wrong with that, necessarily. But we should also reward developers when they focus on improving quality, and some of the things you can’t see. Because I know we users care about those things, we should be willing to wait for upgrades if that wait pays off in quality, future-proofing, and stability. It’s not wrong to ask for more, but we should be prepared to wait if we want that “more” to actually work. Needless to say, it’s also important for users to invest wisely in software that has value, as some of these pressures are financial.

As writers and publishers, we sometimes aggravate the problem, as well. If we’re reviewing a product in a non-shipping version, we should identify it as such. We can all take the opportunity to review products not just when they’re new, but when they’ve been out for a while. (In fact, readers, if any of you want to help me with some “long-term” reviews of software — tools you know even better because you’ve used them for months or years – I’ll be making that a goal.) We also often look at the presence or absence of features in a vacuum, because that boils down nicely to “Pros” and “Cons” categories. It’s always a challenge, but we can try to go beyond that one dimension.

I don’t want to speak for any writer or publisher other than myself, or criticize any outlet or writer other than myself: this is directed primarily at me, because I’m the one I can control. So I’ll just say this: I’m ready to commit to spending more time with tools. That’s the way I work in my music, so that’s the way I would prefer to write about things. I still believe in getting information out there quickly, because on the Web, you get corrections, clarifications, and new knowledge more quickly as a result. But it’s possible to do that, and spend time on really getting deeper in topics. I also believe it’s important to focus on more than just “news,” which is especially tough – but also especially valuable – on a daily online site. I’ll take that as a personal challenge to myself — it’s New Year’s Resolution season, anyway.

Speed can be a wonderful thing. When I’m teaching, I regularly encourage students to sketch code in a day. Deadlines can be liberating. A number of creations I saw at NAMM got prototypes wrapped up in the days leading to NAMM, so the trade show itself can encourage the forward progress of development.

But some things are important enough that they take time. Sometimes, engineering a solid foundation means being patient now in order to save time later.

I can say, I’m seeing encouraging signs that a lot of music tech vendors are ready to get off the treadmill. I heard repeated again and again “we took longer with this, because then we could do it right.” I can’t imagine anyone complaining about that in the long run.

The food world has slow food, a movement that encourages sustainability, quality, health, local tradition, diversity, and taste. It isn’t just about the food: it’s about how that food is consumed and appreciated by the eater (read: user). I think we need “slow development” in hardware and software. All of the same issues are at stake. Even labor and environmental standards are issues, because music gear and computers, like agriculture, are now globalized and mass-produced.

Nor does this have to apply exclusively to the vendors at NAMM. All of us have projects, technological and musical, that could benefit from our own patience. It could be your new hardware controller, or your new album. The Internet age can be intimidating, as we see people making incredible progress and showing them off in just-uploaded YouTube videos. But each of us has a pace that’s appropriate for each process. Making things and making music should be an enjoyable process. If we’re slower than someone else because we’re learning, because we want to take extra time to work out the details that matter to us, we can savor that. We can give ourselves the time we deserve. That’s likely the first step to being patient with everyone else.

Ultimately, the choice comes down to us. It really is possible to derive new value from slowing down.

For all the focus on clever little music apps on your phone, it’s the slate/tablet form factor that seems to hold the greatest promise for live performance. Thanks to a larger screen area, these devices look far more usable for control – equipped with multi-touch, they could be reasonable substitutes for hardware control surfaces, a la the Lemur.And with greater horsepower under the hood, you might not need to use them as a controller – you could run an entire live gig off them.

With this week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), many onlookers expected news on these devices, particularly as industry buzz anticipated a big announcement during Microsoft chairman Steve Ballmer’s keynote last night. And we got that news – sort of. Unfortunately, manufacturers teased “concepts” and prototypes, without much in the way of details – a repeat performance of 2009’s fuzzy glimpse at this device category.

That said, having been wrong about when it’ll happen, I’m still convinced we’re about to see a flood of new PC devices with interesting potential for music performance. Here’s what we’ve got so far:

Dell has a tablet “concept.” Dell’s own keynote included a brief mention of a five-inch tablet. That could make a nice form factor to stow on a keyboard or music stand as a controller. That’s about all it’ll do, as the pictures show only an audio output jack. But it will evidently have multitouch. This is only a “concept,” with no details publicly released; I’ll be following up with Dell if they announce an actual product. Photos:

Dell Tablet Concept [Flickr]

More on Dell’s new lineup (the rest of it is shipping, and may interest you more, anyway — Dell is taking advantage of wildly cheaper PC component prices to deliver some amazing machines under $1000)

HP’s Slate: Seen briefly in Ballmer’s CES keynote, the Slate is a “consumer notebook” in a slate form factor. The only good news relative to Dell’s model is that this is supposedly hardware that will ship. The bad news is, HP isn’t saying much else. The device does have a nice, sizable screen, at at least 10″ or larger (if my ability to tell the scale of things relative to Steve Ballmer’s torso is correct). That could make this an appealing alternative to other devices and form factors.

And, oh yeah, Apple: Here’s the power of Apple: PC makers, who have been shipping tablets for years, and who have shipped alternative form factors for years more, are accused of ripping off an Apple product that isn’t yet public, and about which most of us know nothing about (including, indeed, if it actually exists in the form we think it does). Not only that, but sight unseen, I’ve heard many people who assume that the Apple model of this currently-nonexistent product category will be superior, even though they don’t know what OS it’ll run, what it’ll do, what it’ll look like, what size it’ll be, or what it’ll cost. PC vendors, of course, had the opportunity to provide a clear alternative, and instead made their picture somewhat murky, too.

I don’t just mean Mac fanboys, either, who could be excused the pre-emptive positive review. Even The New York Times got in the act. Ashlee Vance of the NYT Bits blog wrote in advance of Ballmer’s speech:

It could be one of Steve Ballmer’s riskiest trade-show moves in years.

On Wednesday, Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, will unveil a novel take on a slate-type computer … This product better be good because Apple is expected to unveil its take on the slate/tablet form factor later this month … The last thing Mr. Ballmer wants to hold up is a me-too device.

Yes, how dare he … announce … a product … that might compete with a product that no one has seen yet? What a risky move! (Deep thought: can a product be “me-too” even before there’s a “me,” or in this case, an “i”?)

That said, yes, most industry analysts expect an Apple announcement later this month. I’m skeptical about whether such an announcement will be useful to our audience, however. If Apple chooses its relatively locked-down iPhone-style operating system over the Mac OS, and if there’s no hardware input and output, and if the focus is buying magazines and books from iTunes, I think I’ll pass. Of course, some PC vendors may go a similar route.

And, in fairness, I’m sure part of what has prompted PC makers to unveil prototypes of non-shipping products is fears of what happens if Apple gets there first. It’s too bad Apple doesn’t leak a secret plan to solve global warming, or give away chocolates.

Android is a big winner. Murky as the slate announcements were, the one message that has been clear out of CES is that we’re going to see more of Android.
HP may even ship a version of HP Slate running the OS, says TechCrunch. Ordinarily, this would be relatively bad news; on Windows, you can run any music software, whereas Android is relatively limited. But I think that could improve, with open source controllers and work on porting free multimedia tools like Pd (Pure Data) and Processing.

Just keep in mind…

Don’t forget “traditional” tablets for multi-touch. Sure, these smaller slates are interesting, apparently an attempt to blend the appeal of e-readers like Kindle and Nook with handhelds like the iPhone. But why carry a tablet and a laptop when a multitouch laptop could be both? Yep, tablet PCs are back, now with multi-touch input as well as pen. And their convertible form factor means you could have multi-touch control without your arms getting tired.

Case in point: Dell’s Latitude XT2 joins entries from Lenovo and HP. HP’s TouchSmart tm2 (as seen on Engadget) finally improves on HP’s previous, somewhat underpowered entry; I’ll be looking more closely at it. Also appealing: the HP is the first of these devices I’ve seen to pack discrete graphics, which could give you a machine with enough graphics muscle to do live visuals and video, plus music, all with multi-touch control and the I/O ports you’d expect on a laptop. It could be an all-in-one live performance beast if it pans out; I hope to check it out soon.

More analysis of the options – and why the upcoming battles could be a battle for computing’s soul:

Gotta Be Mobile has long been a stalwart analyst of, and advocate for, the tablet PC. Here’s the surprise: even die-hard Tablet PC fans are skeptical about just what the new “tablet” or “slate” means. And the bigger surprise: even outside of the world of music and visualist sites like CDM, people are asking the question about whether the future of slate/tablet computing is passive consumption. Here’s Tablet PC MVP Warner Crocker writing for the blog:

Then there’s the question of what do we do with these things now that we seem to be on the threshold of seeing them everywhere? That boils down to content and in most cases that means consuming it, not creating it.

Floating on a Sea of Tablet Paradoxes

Christophe Stoll of precious, the Hamburg-based design firm responsible for everything from familiar soft synth user interfaces to rock band graphic looks, has similar skepticism. His take is even more far-reaching: in the midst of rabid gadget consumption, what about affordability, ecological impact, and truly open, community development? His first story looked at some of the shiny possibilities in the future:

The tablet innovation race: Three commented examples of what Tablet Computers could look like in the near future.

A follow-up story, however, responding to comments by me and others, wondered if a more open, sustainable, hype-free future could apply more intelligent design:
Tablet innovation race II: Some more critical thoughts regarding the ongoing hype around tablet computers.

Bottom line: by this time next year, I do expect that we’ll have some powerful, new, affordable solutions for multi-touch control and portable music and visual performance. Just what form that will take, though, isn’t much clearer now than it was this time last year. I hope that situation will change soon – and I hope Apple doesn’t prove to be the only company able to articulate a vision for the category.

Sampling and online reuse are enormously common in our culture today. But if you really believe in making some of that culture freely accessible, it follows you must also make free licenses explicit. Simply taking something because it’s there isn’t fair to the person who created the content, whose rights should come first, and it doesn’t help advance the cause of free content. If we want content to be more freely accessible, we need to give first priority to those materials explicitly licensed for free use.

All of that is to say, we need to obey the law. And that’s generally been the goal on CDM.

Here’s the rub: while Creative Commons licenses show a lot of promise, they also have occasionally run up against vague definitions or not-quite-airtight license variants. Case in point: the “non-commercial” restriction commonly used by creators. Let’s say you upload an image to Flickr. Adding a “non-commercial” restriction seems logical enough as a way to protect yourself against your image being abused, right?

The problem is, when looking at the actual language of the license, the definition of non-commercial use is not clear. Here’s what the license says:

“You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. “

Source: the current full text of the license (3.0)

Is CDM’s usage of Flickr images with non-commercial Creative Commons licenses a violation of that license? It’s not entirely clear. While the site uses those images for illustrative purposes, and while the site carries ads from which we gather revenue, it’d be a stretch to say the use of the images themselves was directed toward monetary gain.

Ultimately, though, an ambiguous license isn’t good enough. To be able to use images without contacting photographers for their permission, we need confidence that the license is clear. And even if we were on legally good standing – and it’s unclear that we are – we would want to obey the intentions of the content creators.

The question of commercial status and the Creative Commons license led to a prolonged Twitter discussion between me and Chris Randall of Analog Industries and plug-in maker Audio Damage. Unlike CDM, the Analog Industries blog is copyrighted, not under a Creative Commons license, but Chris has used CC licenses in the past for his music. Chris’ argument was, in short, that CDM was in violation of the CC-NC license as the use constituted a commercial use. The obligation lies with me to prove otherwise, and based on the survey results, I don’t think I can.

I’m not the only person bothered by the ambiguity. Creative Commons has conceded that questions about commercial or non-commercial are some of the most common queries they receive. And the situation was ambiguous enough for CC to undertake a full survey of CC users and creators.

The results of this survey were published in September:
Defining Noncommercial

Read through the complete results, however, and the question of non-commercial status is murkier than ever. The most significant question for publishers (and many content creators) is at what point a site with ads becomes a commercial use. You’ll see the answers can vary wildly depending on how the question is asked, and what the respondent understands to be the usage case.

That said, now having fully read through the results, I think I have to change the policy on CDM. Having some people disagree isn’t good enough, and no matter how you ask the question, a significant number of content creators view sites with ads as commercial – no discussion. (Some even would classify sites by non-profits using ads to recoup hosting costs in this way!)

I’ve found Flickr users have actually been really enthusiastic to discover their work on the site; those are the comments I’ve gotten. Unfortunately, I have to balance that enthusiasm against the larger perception of the policy.

In short, if you’re placing images under an NC license, don’t expect to see them on CDM any more.

New CDM policy

From here on out, I will only make use of images that fit one of the following conditions:

• Creative Commons licenses with BY, SA, or ND restrictions, but not NC
• Public domain images
• Images used as implied (such as press images, etc.)
• Images used by specific permission

Videos are, of course, a different story, as the ability to embed these materials is assumed to mean an implied license, and I’ve never seen otherwise. Likewise, it seems that the use of Flickr tag slideshows and badges containing images – even copyrighted images – does not violate Flickr’s terms of service or the wishes of the copyright holder; this is in essence a view of the Flickr site itself, and should not diminish the value of a photographer’s work nor conflict with their likely intentions when they upload to Flickr.

There’s really no way to operate on the Internet without coming across some of these gray areas, but to me the spirit of the law and the intentions of the creators remains paramount.

How to protect your work without Non-Commercial restrictions

This may raise the question, how do you prevent your work from being exploited while at the same time allowing a site like CDM to republish it? One of the “commercial” uses cited in the survey results is the rather nasty scenario of the spam blog re-purposing stories via RSS. There have been cases of CC-licensed Flickr images being used for ads in bus stops. (See the instance of Virgin’s ads, taken from CC-licensed Flickr images. Note, however, the controversy there – aside from whether they actually complied with the CC licenses – was whether they had the rights to the likenesses of people in those images, which is a different legal area.)

My answer, and the answer on which I’ve settled for CDM’s content: use a ShareAlike license.

What makes ShareAlike unique is that it requires any distribution or repurposing of your content to have the “resulting work only under the same, similar or a compatible license.” That means you couldn’t, say, make an ad out of your photo without placing the ad under the same license — effectively preventing some of the more nefarious uses of CC-licensed works.

I do think that Creative Commons needs to present more explicit, clear, legally-binding documentation for the Non-Commercial restriction in the actual license. But until then, if you’re bothered by this ambiguity, you can resort to the more unambiguous ShareAlike license term.

Note that CDM itself is under a ShareAlike license. Because it’s compatible with any of the other CC SA licenses, that also gives us the right to use SA-licensed content – and, incidentally, were we not licensed that way, we should not have that ability.

HELP US!

To bring CDM into compliance with the non-commercial license, I need your help.

Got some regex skills? A regular expression should be able to purge all the images in CDM’s story database with non-commercial CC licenses, because images link to the specific license used. It’s simply a matter of then pulling the img src, anchor, and image caption div code around that license link.

Get in touch or respond in comments.

Got an image you don’t want to see lost? You can search CDM easily by your name and/or Flickr userid and find your image. Then let us know:

Provide permissions for a CC-NC-licensed image [Google Docs form]

Correction: I can actually observe a number of images I’ve used over the years with links back to CDM from the Flickr pages. So this would actually be the worst possible thing I could do, to remove those images. Obviously, the better solution is to wait and see if someone requests that an archived image be taken down. The Creative Commons license itself is non-revocable, but since this falls into a gray area in which we may not even been in compliance with someone’s license, that’s a moot point. And since those images are clearly marked by license, any derivative work based on them could check first if the license permits derivations. (That’s something you’d have to do anyway, as some images on CDM are copyrighted and used exclusively on CDM by permission.)

As a separate note, I’m now going to go through my own Flickr accounts and remove the non-commercial requirement, because my sense is that ShareAlike will prevent the unlikely event of them being abused within the license terms.

Disclaimer: This story is an editorial, an opinion piece. It does not constitute a legal statement (I’m not a lawyer) or official, binding statement of Create Digital Music’s policy. It expresses only the opinions of its author.