Welcome to the "ozmusicrescue" mailing list, which is the mailing list for the project I described on my blog at http://infotrope.net/2011/07/05/its-like-textfiles-com-for-australian... You're subscribed because you commented on that blog post, or otherwise expressed interest in the project. The name "ozmusicrescue" is boring but will do for now. If we come up with something else that we love, we can rename.
I wanted to kick off by explaining the shape and scope of this project as I see it. Here are my thoughts.
1. The scope of this project is "independent and hard-to-find Australian music". (My current personal interests are in the indie/alternative/punk/post- punk/etc sort of genres, but I see no reason to limit it to that.)
2. The goal is to make information about this music, and (eventually/hopefully/ideally) the music itself available as freely and openly as possible, to maximise the possibility of people being able to spread the love. To this end we will release everything we can under open source and open content licenses -- ideally CC-0 ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) for content and a permissive open source license ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_free_software_license) for any code we create.
3. I want us to use existing infrastructure where possible, rather than creating our own. To that end, I think we should be putting structured data into repositories like MusicBrainz (http://musicbrainz.org), encyclopedic content into Wikipedia, digital archive material into the Internet Archive ( http://archive.org/), etc. We should give strong preference to data/content repositories that are run by long-term stable non-profits, whose data/content is accessible via open APIs, and whose data/content is widely used by third parties. This will make our material more accessible to the world at large, and won't wear out our volunteers on maintaining our own servers and databases.
4. This project needs to work within the bounds of copyright law as it currently exists. I personally think said copyright law is deeply deeply flawed, but I also don't want to be sued into oblivion. So when it comes to media archives, we need to think innovatively and come up with legal ways to do it.
5. We should partner, where possible, with other projects and organisations with similar goals. This can range from public libraries and archives, to groups like Creative Commons, to (just a blue-sky example) crowdfunding organisations like pozible.com.au. Partnering will get us more exposure and awareness of our project, and also save us from reinventing the wheel.
6. We need to involve people from a range of backgrounds: musicians, fans, librarians and archivists, coders, journalists and zinesters, everyone. I want us to share knowledge/skills and make this something that all sorts of people can take part in, regardless of technical background, profession, or degree of indie cred.
On 6 July 2011 20:06, Kirrily Robert <s...@infotrope.net> wrote:
> 1. The scope of this project is "independent and hard-to-find Australian music". (My current personal interests are in the indie/alternative/punk/post-
punk/etc sort of genres, but I see no reason to limit it to that.)
No reason not to include everything, including the mainstream.
> 4. This project needs to work within the bounds of copyright law as it > currently exists. I personally think said copyright law is deeply deeply > flawed, but I also don't want to be sued into oblivion. So when it comes to > media archives, we need to think innovatively and come up with legal ways to > do it. > 5. We should partner, where possible, with other projects and organisations > with similar goals. This can range from public libraries and archives, to > groups like Creative Commons, to (just a blue-sky example) crowdfunding > organisations like pozible.com.au. Partnering will get us more exposure and > awareness of our project, and also save us from reinventing the wheel.
One idea I mooted was libraries. State libraries typically have a music library. And they also have newspapers on microfiche. Are digital copies close enough to effectively the same thing? Assume that access will be restricted (users having to show up, much as with current music libraries), so that the copyright industries won't absolutely shit.
We have one state librarian here. Any others?
(I donated most of my fanzine collection to the WA state reference library ten years ago. Creating an index to that would be good, for example. In fact, an index to all Australian music press, zines and magazines and city newspapers. Yes, it'll be a slog.)
I'd like to not get into the notability game ourselves. If we mostly try not to reinvent the wheel, and use existing repositories, we can basically hand off that whole issue.
Also note that while Wikipedia's notability barrier is pretty high, MusicBrainz will list any musical artist/band that's had a release of some kind (album, EP, single... not sure about online only but we can look into it), and Freebase has no bar at all as long as it's a real thing that someone, somewhere might conceivably care about.
> One idea I mooted was libraries. State libraries typically have a > music library. And they also have newspapers on microfiche. Are > digital copies close enough to effectively the same thing? Assume that > access will be restricted (users having to show up, much as with > current music libraries), so that the copyright industries won't > absolutely shit.
> We have one state librarian here. Any others?
I would be very interested to know what the various state libraries, national library, and the national film and sound archives, etc, are doing to promote digital access to Australian music for the general public.
I was just looking at http://www.musicaustralia.org/ which is "Hosted by the National Library of Australia on behalf of more than 50 cultural organisations around the nation "... they say that you can "Listen to sound recordings or purchase digital downloads" but a few searches for 80s indie music just gave me suggestions to "search online retailers", "try the ABC shop", etc. I would *love* it if there were viable digital downloads. Wonder who's working on that? (I presume someone is.)
> (I donated most of my fanzine collection to the WA state reference > library ten years ago. Creating an index to that would be good, for > example. In fact, an index to all Australian music press, zines and > magazines and city newspapers. Yes, it'll be a slog.)
> Also note that while Wikipedia's notability barrier is pretty high, > MusicBrainz will list any musical artist/band that's had a release of > some kind (album, EP, single... not sure about online only but we can > look into it), and Freebase has no bar at all as long as it's a real > thing that someone, somewhere might conceivably care about.
I've found Wikipedia very frustrating when adding information. It isn't just that the band/artist is notable, but that the information you're adding isn't notable. Maybe somewhere else (like Freebase) might be more forgiving for note type info.
I agree Musicbrainz the way to go for adding any release type info.
> I was just looking at http://www.musicaustralia.org/ which is "Hosted > by the National Library of Australia on behalf of more than 50 > cultural organisations around the nation "... they say that you can > "Listen to sound recordings or purchase digital downloads" but a few > searches for 80s indie music just gave me suggestions to "search > online retailers", "try the ABC shop", etc. I would *love* it if > there were viable digital downloads. Wonder who's working on that? (I > presume someone is.)
I'd also love to know the story behind musicaustralia. I've noticed my own band's CD on there. I'd love to provide them with a bit more info on where to buy digitally / physically.
Although, I think the core problem, and the reason I'm interested in this project is unavailability. Far too many Aussie bands are now only available on eBay, if there. Is it worth trying to work with the Mushroom's (etc.) of the world to try to get stuff available or figure out why it isn't? From my small amount of research it seems the record companies relegate the issue to the band, who are not contactable and don't care.
One of my mains irritations is recordings like JJJ's Live At The Wireless. I know of a lot of great 90s Aussie band LATW recordings that will never get released due to the general obscurity of the band, but you cannot purchase the rights to the recordings. So they rot. Even a listening post at the library would be nice.
> I would *love* us to work on some kind of open index of Australian > music press, to help people find (eg.) reliable sources for Wikipedia > articles.
I've thought an index of magazines/zine/street-press would be very useful, even to the level of gigs advertised, advertisements printed. Obviously a lot of work though. There are a few magazine index type services around, but nothing open that I'm aware of.
On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 7:20 PM, Andrew Bowie <fo...@anaussiemusicfan.com>wrote:
> > Also note that while Wikipedia's notability barrier is pretty high, > > MusicBrainz will list any musical artist/band that's had a release of > > some kind (album, EP, single... not sure about online only but we can > > look into it), and Freebase has no bar at all as long as it's a real > > thing that someone, somewhere might conceivably care about.
> I've found Wikipedia very frustrating when adding information. It > isn't just that the band/artist is notable, but that the information > you're adding isn't notable. Maybe somewhere else (like Freebase) > might be more forgiving for note type info.
So, quick Freebase explanation is probably in order:
Freebase is a repository of structured data and "facts". Here's the schema for musical artists: http://www.freebase.com/schema/music/artist And here's an example of a relatively well filled out one: http://www.freebase.com/edit/topic/en/midnight_oil It's possible to create your own schema if you have additional information you want to store there. For instance, if we wanted to create a "base" on Freebase of music zines and the bands mentioned in each one, that would be a good use case. But Freebase isn't for general "notes".
The thing about Freebase's structured data is that it gets everywhere. Especially because it's now part of Google. So for instance if you look at the van gogh example given at the bottom of http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/06/organizing-lists-of-related-... of the data for that feature is coming from Freebase. Anywhere that Google might want to get structured data or lists of entities that exist in the world, Freebase data gets in there. And Google's been working on this music thing late, that they announced a couple of months back, so... you can see how having Australian music information in Freebase would be useful.
One other thing to note: Freebase imports data from MusicBrainz. So if you put information into MusicBrainz, it gets into Freebase, and hence into whatever Google uses structured music data for. So putting it into MusicBrainz in the first place is a smart idea, especially because MB has the most liberal license (Freebase is CC-BY).
End tangent. The question is, where *is* a good place for freeform, unverified notes/comments/etc about Australian music? Maybe our own wiki is the way to go with that. However I would definitely want to keep the goal of getting well referenced, encyclopedic information on notable bands into Wikipedia! The two goals are separate.
Although, I think the core problem, and the reason I'm interested in
> this project is unavailability. Far too many Aussie bands are now only > available on eBay, if there. Is it worth trying to work with the > Mushroom's (etc.) of the world to try to get stuff available or figure > out why it isn't? From my small amount of research it seems the record > companies relegate the issue to the band, who are not contactable and > don't care.
I wonder whether some sort of contact database or other mechanism might be something we could do? At least a bulletin board sort of thing? Does anyone here know HARO (Help A Reporter Out)? It's a mailing list where you regularly get email like "Journalist X from publication Y is looking for experts on topic Z, email them at f...@example.com". There's a regular digest of requests that goes out. Maybe we could do something like that to help people get in touch with band members?
I'm interested in your research that tells you the record companies relegate things to the bands... I'm no expert but presumably this only makes sense if the musicians hold the rights to their work. Is this common? Definitely not with the larger labels, but where's the cutoff?
> One of my mains irritations is recordings like JJJ's Live At The > Wireless. I know of a lot of great 90s Aussie band LATW recordings > that will never get released due to the general obscurity of the band, > but you cannot purchase the rights to the recordings. So they rot. > Even a listening post at the library would be nice.
Would love to get someone from the ABC in here. I think they're definitely a stakeholder in this.
> I would *love* us to work on some kind of open index of Australian > > music press, to help people find (eg.) reliable sources for Wikipedia > > articles.
> I've thought an index of magazines/zine/street-press would be very > useful, even to the level of gigs advertised, advertisements printed. > Obviously a lot of work though. There are a few magazine index type > services around, but nothing open that I'm aware of.
As mentioned, Freebase may be a good place to store this kind of structured info, without having to build our own complex web app.
> For instance, if we wanted to create a "base" on Freebase of music zines and > the bands mentioned in each one, that would be a good use case. But > Freebase isn't for general "notes".
I'll have a look through Freebase on the weekend. Sounds like it could be a good starting spot for an index.
> Maybe we could do something like that to > help people get in touch with band members?
At the very least speaking with the artists should be a goal if possible (although... see below). On that, the audio/video side of the project could be helped by archive.org's audio section, at least for live recordings.
> I'm interested in your research that tells you the record companies relegate > things to the bands... I'm no expert but presumably this only makes sense if > the musicians hold the rights to their work. Is this common? Definitely > not with the larger labels, but where's the cutoff?
My main research in this area were my attempts at seeking some kind of opinion regarding official and unofficial releases from The Sharp and The Truth, both of whom currently have nothing available on the market. I couldn't contact anyone from a record company, all the people did talk to suggested talking the band...
And on contacting bands, that isn't always fun. I certainly had a bad experience contacting The Sharp. Some bands just don't want to be available it seems. I spoke with the guitarist from The Truth a few years back who just shrugged at the unavailability of his music.
The best I got out of the whole experience were some updated Wikipedia articles.
I can only assume contract issues get in the way. I know Regurgitator only just managed to get their Warner material on iTunes. It took a lot of work. I've been meaning to ask what the issue was. They've put everything post Mish Mash on bandcamp bless 'em.
On ABC/Triple J recordings, I've contacted them multiple times on the issue. The last time I did was when the official JJJ CD/DVD a Midnight Oil gig came out. They helpfully suggested I speak with ABC Archives, who told me to speak with the band, who suggest ABC would need to be involved. I'm inspired to try to contact a few other bands I know better (Pre-Shrunk) who have JJJ recordings to see if they know the actual deal.
Third-hand I've heard that although Triple J tends to record shows for broadcast, if the band wants to then release said recording they must pay a large fee. I suspect different bands have different deals, but it seems these recordings aren't likely to get out.
