For all the access we now have to online commerce, items like music instruments sometimes demand real-world interaction. (And you know how much I love Real World things.) Tom at Music Thing has polled readers there to find out where surviving music shops live around the planet. You can take a look at the map, and add your own locations.

See the map at Google

The results are heavily tilted toward acoustic instruments, naturally, though they happily go well beyond the expected Sam Ash and Guitar Center fare. I’m curious about shops which specialize in electronic gear — analog, digital, old, modern, software, whatever. Of course, not every city can be lucky enough to have a Robotspeak, which is basically CDM heaven (or credit card Hell, depending on how you look at it.) If you do have an electricity-friendly shop, though, let us know, and I’ll add it to my Desired World Tour Destinations list; point it out in comments here.

If you have a shop near you, no matter how small, be sure to mark it!

I love you, Roland. I really do. But it has to be said:

You’re completely clueless when it comes to the coolest things you’ve ever made.

And if an ordinary keyboard with a silly guitar-style body and shoulder strap can be cool, I’m not sure I can even blame you. You just have to listen to the people.

People love their 303, their 808, even their 909. Yet when these a whole generation of kids desperately wanted you to just re-release these things — or your Jupiter, or Juno, any of your other fantastic keyboards and sound toys of yesteryear — you’ve responded with souped-up, “modernized” versions that mainly share only the name.

But most importantly, you killed the keytar (the awesome, infrared-equipped AX-7) just before everyone decided they really had to have one. So, every week, I hear from people wanting them, just because of I mentioned the keytar in a random post back in April 2005.

Ironically, then, I said, the Keytar Lives. And it does, more than ever — just not in your catalog.

In comments, people sound desperate, hungry — sometimes even poetic. (They sing to the keytar, in Spanish, “ESTOS INSTRUMRNTOS SON GENIALES…..YO TENGO UNO Y LO RECOMIENDO, EL NIVEL DE EXPRESIVIDAD EN VIVO CON ESTA JOYITA ES INCREIBLE….”) Pure poetry.

It’s driven the AX-7 prices sky-high on eBay, though some cheaper items remain of lesser-known and older models. The really lucky people get theirs for fifteen bucks at a yard sale from people who don’t know better.

But why not new units, if they’re this popular? Yamaha — I hope you’re listening, too. Korg? How about a nice, cheap CME version with motorized faders and some band dumping paint on it?

But Don’t Take My Word For It

Take the Times. No, not the New York Times or LA Times - the Times, as in London. The one that gave us Times New Roman.

The Digidesign Digi 003 is a strong value if you need this much mixing and I/O facility. But is it overkill for our reader Lynn?

Gear isn’t everything — but getting geared up is the one hurdle that can hold up beginners. In the Ask CDM series, we’ll be answering at random some of the questions we regularly get in our inbox. First up, Lynn Morgan, who’s ready to make the jump to digital. Lynn writes:

My questions will quickly [make it] apparent that I’m from the old “tape” school of recording. But nonetheless, I do understand sound recording to some degree, having recorded 5 long-play projects in “Guitar City”.

I want to set up a home studio where I can record my own tunes. I’ll use guitar, guitar synth, bass and some keyboards and, of course, my vocals. I want the sound to be totally professional and I want the ability to interface with other users of Pro Tools, for possibly background vocals or drums, etc.

My question is this, What do I really need for equipment? The 003 Digidesign looks impressive but what would I need beyond that?

It turns out Lynn isn’t currently a Pro Tools user, but she added this when pressed:

I want to set up a recording system that will not be outdated in 6 months and sound quality to equal the best out there. The transition from “tape” to digital they say has its advantages and disadvantages. I’m just not sure what I need in the “digital” world to make it all happen.

Good questions — and ones I expect will spur some reader comment, too. But let’s divide this up into some smaller questions and look at it that way. I did intend to answer just this sort of question with my book Real World Digital Audio, but there are some specifics I didn’t get into there, so we’ll look at the specific questions.

This wound up being a huge answer, but I know it’s a very Frequently Asked Question.

What do you need?

I think the best way to begin is to think through what you need to do and work backwards from there. With audio hardware, you’ll want to think literally to inputs and outputs and how much you’ll be recording at a time.

What is the sound of an invisible hand playing a MIDI controller?

Yes, in the latest evidence that the Interwebs really are Douglas Adams’ imagined Infinite Improbability Drive, a conversation from CDM’s humble forums about the economics of Radio Shack and MIDI jacks has led to a blog response from a non-musician defending the true legacy of Adam Smith.

I’m serious. I’m not just, you know, dumbing down CDM and pandering to the economist audience to pick up cute economist girls.

The blogger also feels our forum poster say “dude” too much. Like, whatever. Don’t have a cow, man.

It started with a thread about the ridiculous price of electronics. (Personally, I wouldn’t try to extrapolate any kind of larger economic theory from a chain run as badly as Radio Shack has been under recent management, but our posters did, and I digress.)

UK economic blogger Gavin Kennedy fires back:

The myths about the invisible hand are widespread and deep. It has been switched from supporting an argument of Adam Smith about risk-avoiding merchants contemplating the risks of foreign trade into an all purpose guide to individuals in markets …

The real wonder about markets is that there is no central direction; there are no invisible hands, feet, or disembodied parts, guiding anybody. There does not need to be! The relative prices of whatever is exchanged are the only guides needed. It’s called the price system. That’s what Adam Smith actually said.

And he compares the myth of the invisible hand to the myth of Santa Clau– hey, stop crying, Suzie. I’m only joking. The invisible guiding direction of market economics is real, and it’s going to bring you a MicroKORG next Christmas, but that’s not until December and your birthday isn’t even until October.

Ahem.

Of course, Gavin is right.

Image credits: gravestone of Adam Smith, Duncan; gravestone of Radio Shack, Куртис Перри.

The writing’s on the wall: DRM for music downloads is deader than the eight track. Okay, actually, that’s not fair: the eight track was relatively good technology.

Just two weeks after Amazon launched their own DRM-free music store, Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon. DRM won’t be gone completely from the Zune store, but there will be hundreds of thousands of DRM-free tracks going live, apparently in November with the release of a new store and new players. That’s a major departure, given that Microsoft built its Zune and PlaysForSure platforms around DRM, and introduced significant new DRM features in Vista. Normally, I don’t like to quote press releases, but I’ll give my friends at the Digital Freedom Campaign a chance for some deserved gloating:

“The industry standard has shifted in the past six months and the tide has turned in favor of consumers,” Maura Corbett, a spokesperson for the Digital Freedom Campaign said. “The number of digital music retailers offering DRM-free music will soon out number those that do not, and consumers will soon live in a world where they can listen to legally purchased music when, how, and where they want. We congratulate Microsoft for joining the growing number of retailers and labels that have realized the best way to increase the sales of digital music, is to listen to their customers.”

Actually, I’ll argue one point. The number of digital music retailers offering DRM-free music already outnumbers those that don’t.

Apple’s iTunes Plus is here, featuring higher-res files and no DRM. CDM reader Ryan Pollack points us to Slashdot, where readers are abuzz about a Maximum PC taste test shootout:

“Maximum PC did double-blind testing with ten listeners in order to determine whether or not normal people could discern the quality difference between the new 256kbps iTunes Plus files and the old, DRM-laden 128kbps tracks.

But wait, there’s more! To add an extra twist, they also tested Apple’s default iPod earbuds vs. an expensive pair of Shure buds to see how much of an impact earbud quality had on the detection rate.”

The result is, not surprisingly, better headphones are better than poorer headphones, more bits are better than fewer, and both is better than one or the other, but bits are more noticeable if the headphones are worse. If you want to spoil the results of the Maximum PC shootout, read that sentence nine or ten times until it makes sense.

Apple Takes a Bite out of DRM [256 kbps versus 128 kbps bitrate, at Maximum PC]

So, who here has given the iTunes Plus store a try? (Old news to many of you; see our previous stories, As Other Music, Others Embrace Downloads, is Big, DRM-Laden Online Music Out? and Where Do You Get Your DRM-Free Music?)

I expect you are truly discerning listeners, of course. Get someone to help you with the blindfold. Slapping your forehead against an Apple Cinema Display hurts bad.

If you want to hear more about the eMusic saga from the company itself, they’ve started a new blog called 17 dots. (For more, see their defense to Ars Technica. Their argument remains simple: people want to pay less for music. Sales are declining; eMusic is the cure. Hypebot has some terrific coverage of the saga of label departures and what it might mean for eMusic. The short story, though eMusic says the departures are amicable, is that a few key labels have left (Victory, Ultra Indie), others are thought to be on the way out (Red House, Silva America, Tzadik), and others are rumored to be leaving. There’s really not a max exodus yet, as some reports might have you believe; the issue seems to be that labels are unhappy at the (distant) #2 online music store.

There are far better people than me to analyze sales data, and if you’ve seen anything intelligent, please send it along. But I think the most important question for musicians to ask is what the underlying trends mean. And there are quite a few unanswered questions about sales in general. You can read the record industry’s market data at the RIAA site. Here’s what I notice people haven’t been asking:

Why talk about the “decline” of music sales while ignoring online sales growth?

Listen to the mainstream press, and the story goes something like this: most online downloads have DRM. Then, major label EMI announced it would drop DRM from iTunes songs (for an additional per-song cost, at a higher bitrate). EMI, says this mainstream narrative, is the exception to the rule.

That’s missing an entirely separate narrative that’s unfolding, which is that many, many smaller labels are embracing new, smaller music stores.

They’re the polar opposite of Apple’s iTunes Music Store:

It’s great news that EMI has decided to drop DRM from its music and video catalogs offered on iTunes. Those tracks will instantly be compatible with other players that support AAC (including, oddly enough, Microsoft’s Zune), and there’s even talk (via Microsoft statement) that Zune itself will go the same direction. With one label leading the way, other labels and other stores may follow.

But “news”? Not really to the readers of CDM. DRM-free digital downloads are nothing new, once you get away from iTunes and the big Windows stores. In fact, many “alternative” digital download services offer richer content within their niche (as with the electronic-focused stores), while still providing big-name artists (eMusic, despite its reputation, carries the likes of Johnny Cash and Ray Charles, among many others).

Here’s a quick list of some of the stores I’ve enjoyed using, listed, in fairness, in alphabetical order. And, yep, I’ve bought from all of them: