Category: Music

Dial-A-Song Reborn Anew!

Lorin Olsen

John Flansburgh and John Linnell started their careers by singing music into their answering machine. People in Brooklyn would call their number and hear the lastest songs/comments from these guys. Thus was born They Might Be Giants. From this humble start, they have recorded albums, CD’s, DVD’s and just about every other digital (and non-digital) form imaginable. And starting last month, they joined the podcast revolution.
The first TMBG podcast contains songs (like “Particle Man” and “Bloodmobile”) as well as typical TMBG wit and sarcasm. These guys are great in every medium they try. I jsut wish that they would be more frequent in their podcasting. Hey guys, keep it coming!
-CyclingRoo-

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It’s Recall Time

Lorin Olsen

When I was growing up in the seventies, I remember when the US auto makers suffered through an interminible string of product recalls. Many of those recalls related to the new emission control guidelines that were imposed by the federal government. Even my Dad had to deal with recall problems. His Chevy Luv Truck was recalled for some kind of emission control repair.

But since that time, I really haven’t had to deal with any product recalls – until this month. As noted earlier, I was one of the fortunate folks who bought a Sony BMG CD with the much publicized XCP malware.

And in today’s email stack, I received a note from Nikon letting me know that their EL-EN3 battery pack (which I purchased for a Nikon D70 DSLR) has been deemed defective and worthy of a recall. Per instructions in the email (and on Nikon’s US site), I determined that my battery was one of the affected battery lots. I called Nikon USA and spoke with an able customer service rep who graciously and throoughly walked me through the recall options. When I started the call, I thought my wife was going to be out a battery for a few weeks. Instead, Nikon graciously offered to ship the new battery – with the provisio that they could bill my credit card for a battery if they didn’t receive my defective battery within thirty (30) days.

Wow! What a great way to accept responsibility for a flaw and offer the customer exemplary service to resolve the issue. Of course, the economics of the two situations are different. Sony sold millions of records with the defect. Nikon’s exposure probably numbered in the thousands. Sony did not have a database of affected users (unless you count the “phone home” spyware info that Sony collected). In Nikon’s case, they did have a list of email addresses for their registered users.

But despite the differences in customer data and/or recall scope, the difference in corporate attitude is what will stay with me. Sony seemed resentful that I would want a replacement for something that they had screwed up. Nikon seemed eager to solve the problem they had caused. There were no excuses. There was no backing away from responisbility. Nikon simply stepped up to their responsibility and did the right thing the first time. Bravo, Nikon. Your customer service tone will result in subsequent purchases by me and my family. May your example inspire all companies to “do the right thing” at the outset – not when you’re forced to.

-CyclingRoo-

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It's Recall Time

Lorin Olsen

When I was growing up in the seventies, I remember when the US auto makers suffered through an interminible string of product recalls. Many of those recalls related to the new emission control guidelines that were imposed by the federal government. Even my Dad had to deal with recall problems. His Chevy Luv Truck was recalled for some kind of emission control repair.
But since that time, I really haven’t had to deal with any product recalls – until this month. As noted earlier, I was one of the fortunate folks who bought a Sony BMG CD with the much publicized XCP malware.
And in today’s email stack, I received a note from Nikon letting me know that their EL-EN3 battery pack (which I purchased for a Nikon D70 DSLR) has been deemed defective and worthy of a recall. Per instructions in the email (and on Nikon’s US site), I determined that my battery was one of the affected battery lots. I called Nikon USA and spoke with an able customer service rep who graciously and throoughly walked me through the recall options. When I started the call, I thought my wife was going to be out a battery for a few weeks. Instead, Nikon graciously offered to ship the new battery – with the provisio that they could bill my credit card for a battery if they didn’t receive my defective battery within thirty (30) days.
Wow! What a great way to accept responsibility for a flaw and offer the customer exemplary service to resolve the issue. Of course, the economics of the two situations are different. Sony sold millions of records with the defect. Nikon’s exposure probably numbered in the thousands. Sony did not have a database of affected users (unless you count the “phone home” spyware info that Sony collected). In Nikon’s case, they did have a list of email addresses for their registered users.
But despite the differences in customer data and/or recall scope, the difference in corporate attitude is what will stay with me. Sony seemed resentful that I would want a replacement for something that they had screwed up. Nikon seemed eager to solve the problem they had caused. There were no excuses. There was no backing away from responisbility. Nikon simply stepped up to their responsibility and did the right thing the first time. Bravo, Nikon. Your customer service tone will result in subsequent purchases by me and my family. May your example inspire all companies to “do the right thing” at the outset – not when you’re forced to.
-CyclingRoo-

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Musical Metadata Madness

Lorin Olsen

As I type these words, I am overwhemed with a sense of accomplishment. OK, it really isn’t a big accomplishment. And it’s not like I’ve done anything important. But most of us know how good we feel when we’ve cleaned out the garage or gone through the attic. With that in mind, I’ll let you know that I feel satisfied/content because I’ve gone through the musical attic, dusted off all the old boxes, sorted their contents, and re-arranged them in nice, neat rows – I’ve cleaned up my musical metadata.
Over the years, I’ve collected quite a few CD’s. I’ve ripped MP3’s files from these CD’s for the past five years. And in the last few months, I’ve converted some old cassettes into MP3 files. I’ve even spent the time assembling album art wherever I could. But I hadn’t ever been thorough in cleaning up my MP3 metadata. But last Sunday, I got motivated to start the cleanup. And what I thought would take a few hours is finally complete – after a few days.
So what did I do and how did I do it?

  • I wanted to make sure that I had appropriate title/album/date/track# on all my MP3’s. So I did a little research and found MusicBrainz. I’d seen and used this tool about a year ago. But at that time, the tag repository wasn’t very complete. Indeed, I couldn’t match ~25% of my collection. Boy, things have changed. I started with ~3500 songs. And MusicBrainz properly identified ~97% of my collection.
  • For those files MusicBrainz couldn’t identify, I went out to FreeDB and imported the album information into MusicBrainz. This data, combined with the audio “fingerprints “from my files (called TRM‘s by MusicBrainz), allowed me to create new album entries for about twenty previously uncataloged albums.
  • I got rid of twenty or thirty “dead” tracks (15 seconds or less with no real content) that had ended up in my collection.
  • I found a few mislabeled tracks on MusicBrainz, so I submitted “edits” for moderation/inclusion. I’m still waiting for these to get approved by the original submitters.
  • I updated all the ID3 tags on my exisitng MP3 collection with the tags from MusicBrainz. I allowed MusicBrainz to rename all of my files. That way, I’d have good, clean file names. BTW, this meant that my entire iTunes library needed to be rebuilt.
  • I found out that iTunes renames MP3 files on import. That’s not a new revelation. But I didn’t understand which check boxes affected which operations – until now. After renaming all my files with MusicBrainz, I cleared out iTunes and re-imported the files. And iTunes dutifully renamed the files for me. Arrrrrggggghhhhh!
  • So I got the chance to rename the files (once again) using MusicBrainz. I then reloaded the data into iTunes. Just to make a clean start, I deleted all the songs from iTunes and started from scratch. I lost my playlists and the artwork that wasn’t in ID3 tags, but the MP3 collection (and filenames) are now what I want/expect.
  • I tried out the iTunes Album Artwork Locator (by Zelek Software). After using MusicBrainz, this tool made it really simple to identify the appropriate album art. But the free download version is very limited in what you can change. Fortunately, iTunes Art Importer (from YVG Software) is a wonderful tool. Using these tools (and a few web searches), I was able to find album art for all of my albums. Yippee!
  • But I didn’t stop there. I wanted my iPod to also be as tidy as my iTunes directory. So I cleared my iPod and reset it to factory defaults. I then reloaded my entire library. The easiest way to do this is to use the iPod firmware update utility and its Restore funtion. The whole process to reload the iPod took a few hours.

After all of this, my digital music cabinet is now labeled and sorted quite nicely. Too bad the actual CD’s aren’t as neatly sorted and stacked!
-CyclingRoo-

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And the Beat Goes On

Lorin Olsen


The drumbeat of outrage against Sony is still growing. You don’t have to look very far to see a plethora of links that vary from apologetic to derisive. I won’t link to all of them, but I did find one worth noting. The Washington Post is now reporting that the Sony removal tools (both the patch and full removal tool) install an ActiveX control (called CodeSupport) that is inherently unsafe. Ed Felten (from Freedom to Tinker) recommends that no one should use the Sony uninstall tools.
Well, I didn’t even wait for confirmation. I decided that I didn’t need CodeSupport before I installed the Sony rootkit. So I figured I wouldn’t need it after I uninstalled the roottkit. I used Spybot S&D to remove it (using the Advanced Mode -> Tools -> ActiveX widget).
And then the good news came… According to USA Today, Sony will also replace the “infected” CD with a new (and hopefully uninfected) CD. It’s never too late to show sincere remorse and take the necessary steps to remedy the injury that has been caused. Let’s hope that Sony seeks out the injured customers rather than trying to hide from them.
-CyclingRoo-

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Sony Sells Spyware

Lorin Olsen

It’s been an extraordinarily busy couple of days in the malware detection business. Sony has been all over the news – and the news isn’t so good for them. [Sony BMG Kills Daft DRM CD Rootkit Scheme, Sony Learns a Hard Lesson, Microsoft will identify the XCP software as malware, Sony halts production of CD’s] In an effort to protect the intellectual property of Sony BMG musicians, Sony has embedded some pretty nasty software on the computer systems of their consumers – including me.
If you want to know the grim details, you should read the recent posts over at Sysinternals (Mark Russinovich’s blog). But here are the highlights. Sony has contracted with a DRM technology vendor to “protect” its music from computer piracy. The DRM scheme they have chosen does not allow the customer to use customary PC tools to listen to the music. Instead, the software requires the consumer to install a special player. And along with that player comes a whole bunch of other stuff – including rootkit technology that can be exploited by others for even more nefarious purposes.
My viewpoint is simple. I bought an album from a band I truly love. And in the process, I have been exposed to some very nasty exploits. But it is not the fault of the artists. In fact, the bassist for Switchfoot even went so far as to describe how to defeat this DRM scheme. He didn’t do this to anger his label. Rather, he did this so that his fans could put their music on their iPods. The band and I have both been used. If a vendor places hidden technology in a product, and that technology monitors customer behavior w/o first informing the customer of the monitoring, then that technology should be classified as spyware.
Fortunately, I have removed the spyware from my system – at least, I think I have. I went through Sony BMG’s multi-step process to remove the software. I gave them my name, my email address and I gave them system identifying data – just so I could get their spyware off my system. It took almost three days to get everything off, but I think it’s gone. But I now have so little trust for Sony BMG that I will use any scanning tools at my disposal to ensure that this thing is gone. I’ve used RootKitRevealer. And I will use the Microsoft Windows Anti-Spyware tools when they become available. And I’ll use whatever else I can find to ensure that this stuff is gone.
Why? It’s simple. Sony lied to me. They invaded my system because they felt they couldn’t trust me. Worse still, they eventually relented and “offerred” a means to fix the problem. But they only offered half-steps. They wanted me to install a “service pack” for their spyware – so that it couldn’t be exploited. But I chose to decline that offer and requested complete removal instead. In the final analysis, they forced me to jump through a Cheerio to solve the problems they caused when they invaded my system.
There is nothing that I have done to warrant this treatment. Indeed, I’m one of the good guys. I bought the CD. The funny thing is that I thought about getting it from iTunes first. But I wanted to send a message that people still buy CD’s from stores. Well, I got punished for sending that message. And now, I no longer trust the record labels. I still love Switchfoot. But Sony BMG just lost future business from a good customer.
P.S. If you want to learn more about rootkits, I recommend Greg Hoglund’s book at Amazon.com.
-CyclingRoo-

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The Shadow Proves the Sunshine

Lorin Olsen
Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and light unto my path. Psalms 119:105
We are crooked souls trying to stay up straight,
Dry eyes in the pouring rain well
The shadow proves the sunshine
The shadow proves the sunshine
Switchfoot, The Shadow Proves the Sunshine

God is so awesome! For the past couple of days, I’ve been on an emotional roller-coaster: big highs and big lows with lots of speed in between. But in the midst of all the noise and activity, God really spoke to me with that still, small voice of His. Here’s the preamble and the message:
Last week, my bicycle lighting system died. I use a NightRider TrailRat 2.0. It’s a rechargeable battery connected to a halogen bulb. It sure is bright – when it works. But it stopped working a few weeks ago. After trying to figure it out on my own, I realized I just needed to bite the bullet and buy a new system. So I bought a replacement system and installed it.
I’ve been riding with the new light for a week and it’s worked out fine. But I wanted to see how long the charge would last. I had successfully ridden for two days w/o recharging. And since I was out of town this past weekend, I didn’t recharge it on Sunday night. That was a big mistake!
I rode in yesterday morning with no problems. So I didn’t even give my light a second thought. I started riding home last night and the very first thing that happened was that I accidentally disconnected the light from the battery. It was a stupid mistake. I leaned my knee against the top tube while waiting at a stoplight. When the light turned green, i dropped my knee and dragged it across the connector, thus dislodging the connector. Once I crossed the intersection, the connectors and wires pulled free of one another – and the light went out. Arghhhh! But it was a very easy fix. I just pushed the connectors together and I was on my way.
But about halfway through the ride, my light started to fail. I made it across the big intersection just as my light faded to darkness. So I rode on the sidewalk instead of the street. No big deal, right?
Well, it was a lot harder than I thought. It became dark – very dark. And the sidewalk was very uneven. People were walking on the sidewalk – and I nearly hit them. I barely missed a couple of potholes in the sidewalk. And it was very difficult to navigate around the sections of the sidewalk that were under construction and roped off with orange mesh wiring (or whatever that four-foot plastic fencing is called).
And then God spoke to me. His message was simple: do you need My light? And then He asked me if I had prepared myself to use His light. And then He stepped me throught the last couple of weeks.
– I had a battery, but it failed and needed to be replaced.
– I replaced that battery, but it failed when the battery got disconnected from the light.
– I risked my safety on a limited battery charge. I could have charged it the night before. It isn’t hard to do. But I wanted to see just how long a charge would last (btw, it’s a little over two hours).
– I could see the sidewalk only when a car passed by on the street. But the light of other cars was not sufficient for me to be fully safe and confident.
– I had to move very slowly and carefully when I did not have a fully charged light. I hit a couple of potholes – even though I later remembered that I had seen them there on previous rides.
The underlying application of this message is simple: if you want to ride safely, take the time to charge your battery. Don’t risk it. Even if you know the path, you won’t be completely safe. Even if you have the light of others around you, it is hard to see what is directly in front of you without your own light.
If you want to live safely, always recharge your light by reading God’s Word on a regular basis. Even if you know the path, you can still fall into temptation w/o a bright light to guide you. And you can’t rely exclusively on other people’s lights (their understanding of God’s Word) to guide you. You must recharge your own light.
And you don’t miss the light when you’re in the sunshine. But you really miss it when you’re in the dark. Dear God, may I always remember to be prepared for the dusk. May I always have a fully charged battery. May I always greet your light with joy and thanksgiving.

Yeah Yeah, shine on me
Yeah Yeah, shine on me
Yeah Yeah, shine on me
Yeah Yeah, shine on me

-CyclingRoo-

Video iPod and iTunes 6

Lorin Olsen

Well, two outta three ain’t bad. First there was the iPod nano. Great product. It’s thin; it’s stylish; it’s selling like crazy. Never mind the recall or any of that stuff. The iPod nano is a winner. Then came the iPod phone. The ROKR failed to thrill. With 100 songs, why would anyone buy this thing. And the carrier choice is absollutely dumbfounding. Personally, I thought that one of the two US CDMA carriers was going to get the business.
Now for the third product: the iPod Video. This wasn’t much of a secret. And the only really novel piece about the hardware is the screen size. With 60GB being the largest current model, htere isn’t much room for mass quantities (of video storage, that is). But since iTunes does support RSS enclosures, I’m sure lots of folks will be storing Rocketboom on their iPod. But back to new things… In order to accomodate the new screen, the scroll wheel has changed again. But the model for this one is the iPod nano. So there no big cataclysmic change for folks to process.
But all of this does mean that there is a new media type for the iPod. Now, there will be a means of directly integrating QuickTime into iTunes. Yes, I know it was there all along. How else did the music videos get displayed on ITMS? But this integration will push Apple one step deeper into the media content channels of the Windows community. In my mind, this is good. I want to see someone challenge Microsoft and WMV. And given Microsoft’s recent settlement with Real, I can be pretty certain that Apple is the best bet for a credible video challenge on Windows.
Will I buy one of these systems? Not now. I have a new 60GB iPod. So there is nothing that would really draw me to this platform right now. But I guarantee that when I need a new iPod, it will be one capable of video storage.
-CyclingRoo-

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DRM: A Dream Or A Nightmare

Lorin Olsen


The summer of 1997 was wonderful. School was out and the kids were enjoying the great weather. I was leading a youth Sunday School class. One of the kids told me about a band called Switchfoot and their first album (The Legend of Chin). The band was (and is) a San Diego band that sang about God as easily as they sang about bright summer days. The name of the band comes from a surfing term about folks who could lead with their left as well as their right foot. And man, they could belt out a tune. Their message was glorious and made your heart dance as much as your toes. And the lyrics would make you think about your relationship to the world as well as your relationship to Christ.
Well, I’ve loved Switchfoot for eight years now. I remember going on a business trip and buying their second album (New Way to be Human). Rather than mess arond and chit-chat with my business associates, I sat in my hotel room that night and just listened to the music wash over me. Wow. These guys could transport you to another place and time.
So with years of listening, I couldn’t wait until their latest album came out. When my son gave me a free coupon for an iTunes song, I used it to purchase the pre-release version of Stars (the first single from the album). The song is wonderful. And it just got me more excited about the upcoming album.
But when the album was released, I was busy on a few other things. So I didn’t get around to buying the album until this week. I hadn’t read any of the press about the album. Nevertheless, I bought the album (sight unseen) on Thursday night. I couldn’t wait to get home and load the album into iTunes so I could listen to the album on my iPod. Well, I was in for a shock.
I didn’t get a chance to load it at home yesterday, so I thought I’d just listen to the album on my laptop. I loaded in the CD. And, presto – I was greeted with silence. Then the autorun feature kicked in and a special player was loaded. I listened to a couple of tracks. And they were quite good. But I wanted to load the album into my normal player. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even see the CD icon as I launched iTunes. What was going on???
I popped open my shiny new Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 browser and started to browse about the new album. And I was deluged by all of the news articles about the album – and its DRM scheme. I found out that by allowing the autorun feature to start, I had installed some pretty awful DRM tools. I couldn’t even use my trusty old CD ripping tools (like CDex) w/o incurring read erros and getting horrible buzz/static on anything I ripped. Yuck. This was worse than spyware. Sony/BMG had installed software on my system that impaired my ability to legally use my own system. Heck, it seemed like I was being punished for buying the CD.
Strangely enough, the bassist and co-founder of Switchfoot (Tim Foreman) had posted an article about how to defeat the DRM utilities. Why would he do this? It turns out that so many people called and complained that the DRM tools precluded them from loading the newest album onto their iPod – just like me. So Tim put together a short primer on how to take your legally acquired album and rip it into a format that could then be loaded into iTunes (and onto an iPod). The procedure he outlined was fairly familiar. Basically, he referenced a tool (CDex) that could rip the CDDA audio track into a WAV file. And then you could convert the WAV to MP3 (or WMA or AAC or whatever you wanted).
Well, I fired up CDex and ripped the audio tracks to WAV files. I then used iTunes to convert these into MP3 files. Of course, I had to spend the time to tag the files. I use MP3Tag to manage ID3 tags on my MP3 files. Then I had to grab the album art and load it into iTunes. For this, I use the iTunes Art Importer.
So after a couple of hours of work, I finally have Nothing Is Sound loaded into iTunes (and onto my iPod). I should have been at this point in a couple of minutes – not a couple of hours. This is a travesty. I bought this album. And I will continue to buy the albums that I listen to. Nevertheless, the only thing that this particular piece of DRM will do is drive people towards alternate means of acquiring their music.
Many people will move to online purchase and download. In fact, I could have bought the album from ITMS and it would have been cheaper – and a whole lot easier. But some folks won’t be troubled with buying the music. Unfortunately, some folks will just get online and illicitly download the tracks. In the end, I think Sony/BMG may have pushed more folks towards piracy – just so they can hear the music from a band they love. And this piracy has forced a fine musician (Tim Foreman) into advising his listeners/fans on ways to defeat the DRM scheme imposed by his label. This is nuts. And the greatest irony is that this band is a Christian band. Their fans are the folks least likely to be stealing music.
In summary…
The Good

  • The album is great. I love almost every track. As usual, Switchfoot is showing great musicianship and great lyrical ability. Just like I expect from Switchfoot. These guys make you think about your faith and its practical application in the world.
  • I sure am glad that the Internet has so many good resources on how to fairly use the music that you have purchased. I have been able to solve this problem as well as several others. For exaqmple, I once bought a song from ITMS and wanted to use it in a video. To do this, I had to strip the DRM atoms from off of the AAC files downloaded by ITMS. I was able to find good tools that would solve my problem.
  • This album has made me think about how I use music on the web. It is a good reminder that we (Christ’s followers) need to be “salt and light” in the world. Each time I download a “back catalog” track to sample it, I will be forced to think about fair use and WWJD. Thank goodness for the Podsafe Music Network.
  • Tim Foreman really cares about his fans. He risked a lot by posting steps to defeat the DRM on his own album. I don’t know if what he did was right. After all, he willingly put himself under the authority of Sony/BMG. So to summarily disregard their instructions/desires must have been quite a struggle. Tim, may God give you a peace about everything you are doing. Your heart is in the right place. You are looking out for those who need to hear the message God has given you. When Keith Green got to this point, he created his own label and started to give away his music to those who could not afford the albums.

The Bad

  • Sony really needs to rethink their DRM strategy. This scheme is going to make folks flock away from corporate music monopolies. Apple is making it easier. Too bad the labels are starting to get upset with Apple. In the end, the labels are shooting themselves in the foot (or higher).
  • I hope that this particular problem won’t hurt the sales of this album. It is an excellent follow-on to The Beautiful Letdown.

The Ugly

  • We need to find a way of stemming copyright theft. And we need to find a way of ensuring that fair use is also promoted and supported. It is ugly that the two goals seem to be in conflict with one another.

-CyclingRoo-

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Apple's Big Splash – But How Much Water Displaced?

Lorin Olsen

Apple made their big announcement today. Here are the short highlights:

  • The iTunes phone was released. It is a Moto ROKR. It has a fixed memory size. And a sizable price tag. And it is only available from Cingular. Drats! I wonder if it will be a big seller. Somehow, I don’t think so. The price tag is too high and the memory is too limited. Most folks will see this price point and lust for the Nano instead. Strangely enough, it’s not called the iPhone or even the iTunes Phone. It is iTunes on a mobile device. They are leaving the branding to Cingular and Moto. So we will all call it the ROKR.
  • The iPod Nano was released. It will hold 1,000 songs (4GB of storage). It is ultra-sleek. And its price starts at $199. This will force the Shuffle price down even further. Boy, the iPod product line is getting rather crowded. BTW, I used the Nano photo because I think the Nano is such a sleek, sweet design – and the phone is just what everyone predicted anyway.
  • There is a new version of iTunes (v5.0). Most of the changes are to support the new iPod models (phone and Nano). But there are some nice visual touches and eye candy for existing users. I wonder if they’ve revamped the DRM scheme again. I’ll research and let you know.

There will be a whole lot more to write tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ve got to run off and finish some chores…
-CyclingRoo-

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