I can’t believe it’s less than a month until Scotch on the Rocks 2013! The schedule has been up for a while and so, in keeping with previous years, here’s my run down of what I’m planning to see: Continue reading
SOTR 2013 Speaker Interview
As part of the media buzz machine behind Scotch on the Rocks 2013, all speaks were asked to complete a brief interview.
You can see the full series of responses thus far over on the SOTR blog and my interview is cross posted here in a moment of online narcissism.
Product Review – RHA MA450i – Aluminium Noise Isolating In-Ear Earphones with remote and microphone
It seems like I can’t catch a break when it comes to ear buds. They either don’t feel right (looking at you Shure!) don’t last (thanks Sony and Beats Audio) or get eaten by kittens (sorry Sennheiser – not technically your fault). And with the last pair of buds, the aforementioned Beats Audio, nestling in the bin my quest for anew pair of in ear, passive noise isolating ear buds continues.
Does the US have it easier than Europe when it comes to credit card processing?
I’ve been noticing a growing trend in the difference between payment processing in the US vs the options available in the UK.
In short it seems that pretty much every US based web app offers an inline Credit Card acceptance process (i.e. on their own website rather than kicking you off to a 3rd party provider).
So long Spotify… thank you for the music
Over the weekend I was going through my regular PayPal payments and finally decided to cancel my Spotify subscription.
I’ve been a premium member since May 2010 which means I’ve paid something like £350 over the years. Not a massive amount but still significant.
The primary reason for paying for the service in the first place was access to the mobile client … and if I’m honest I’ve pretty much stopped using it. The only time I listen to music on my phone is when walking or travelling solo. This is rare here at home and when I’m away, cursed data roaming charges mean I can’t use the service.
Then there was this tweet over the weekend from @AndrewBloch:
A musician needs to get 134,250,000 plays on Spotify in order to earn the minimum wage of £10,740 per year #FactOfTheDay
@AndrewBloch
Andrew Bloch
I don’t know the source of the stat but if it’s even close to being accurate then that’s a damning indictment of the current state of music licensing. I had always assumed that Spotify and the other streaming services were part of a new wave of music income that had the foresight to embrace the internet rather than shirking it. But it turns out they’re about as nasty as any other major provider out there.
Oh and there were still the massive blank spots and mystery disappearances which meant that Spotify was not the “complete” solution it pretended to be.
Any one (or even two of the above) would not have been sufficient to make me look at cancelling but taken together I feel the choice is justifiable.
Oh and I’m still open to music streaming as a concept – just as soon as I can find one that actually rewards the musicians for their work in a sustainable way… and I’m not holding my breath!
Update: Friend and (non professional) musician @Chrisedmo sent me a link to the following infographic which shows the break down of earning between the various online music services.
It’s a couple of years old but I shouldn’t imagine the landscape has changed all that much. Surprisingly iTunes is actually quite competitive from an artist’s perpective so I may have to go back to spending my 9.99 per month on the iTunes Music store!
I’m speaking at SOTR 2013!
June 2013 will see the web loving masses descend on Edinburgh (ascend to Edinburgh?) for Scotch on the Rocks 2013.
This will be my 3rd SOTR and this year is even more special because my session on MongoDB has been accepted.
That’s right, I’m a speaker at this year’s conference!
Continue reading
Platform comfort and alternative blindness
Google Reader is shutting down (fear not, this isn’t another Reader autopsy post) and as a result I’ve had to look for an alternative for my RSS needs.
I have a pretty specific set of requirements from my feed reader – it must be web based, sync with an iPad client, have Buffer integration and ideally link to Instapaper & other sharing tools. After a quick #lazyWeb tweet, a number of people recommended Feedly as a viable alternative (this isn’t a post purely about Feedly either).
One quick sign up and import later and I’m looking at what is easily the best web based RSS client I’ve ever seen!
And on to the crux of this post, how often in life, both on-line and off, do we settle for something because it’s familiar and comfortable?
I’ve posted before about getting out of your comfort zone and this is really an extension of that concept.