Friday, October 13, 2023

Honest Broker

 https://www.honest-broker.com/p/my-12-favorite-problems

Start with a list of favorite problems and new information can be checked against them


https://www.honest-broker.com/p/how-american-graffiti-invented-classic

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/i-answer-questions-from-readers music, is rock dead?, the horror of archives
"I suspect that the fear that we have exhausted melodies is actually a disguised concern that commercial music today is embracing very simple formulas. If we expanded our musical palette, many of these apparent limitations would disappear. "


"I realized, early on in my consulting work, that the single biggest mistake large corporations make is investing too much to keep their old business units alive—when they would be wiser putting that cash to work in new opportunities. The major record labels in the current moment are poster children for exactly this mistaken sense of priorities. They will support the ‘old songs’ business model at all costs—it’s a core part of their self image—but return on investment will be dismal."

Skinner box heaven



verra verra interesting


But the most extreme case of music copyright comes from Elizabethan England. Here the Queen gave William Byrd and Thomas Tallis a patent covering all music publishing for a period of 21 years.  Not only did the two composers secure a monopoly over  English music, but they also could prevent retailers or other entrepreneurs in the country from selling “songs made and printed in any foreign country.”

If anybody violated this patent, the fine was 40 shillings. And the music itself was seized and given to Tallis and Byrd. They probably had quite a nice private library of scores by the time the patent expired.

But that’s not all. Byrd and Tallis’s stranglehold on music was so extreme it even covered the printing of blank music paper. That meant that other composers had to pay Tallis and Byrd even before they had written down a single note.
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/8-pieces-of-advice-for-struggling

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/thomas-pynchons-gravitys-rainbow

https://thomaspynchon.com/professor-irwin-coreys-acceptance-of-pynchons-national-book-award/

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