Intuition versus empiricism

I’ve managed to tamp down some of my more fanciful surmises about how the world works, but it’s still a big, mysterious universe and much is still hidden from our direct understanding. Perhaps some variant on the trust-but-verify approach is worthwhile when dealing with informed intuition. But, as always, I think skepticism is a good guide through a mysterious universe.

“This Song’s About My Baby” – Trial remaster

DL: Download File

Please explain how the database accounting systems that tie subscription stream services to record labels and aggregators/distributors work…

A database accounting system is a software application that tracks and reports on the financial transactions between subscription streaming services, record labels, and aggregators/distributors. This information is used to calculate royalties and other payments due to each party.

The system typically works in the following way:

1. The subscription streaming service collects data on the number of times each song is streamed.
2. The data is then sent to the aggregator/distributor, which is responsible for collecting royalties on behalf of the record labels.
3. The aggregator/distributor then sends the data to the record labels, which use it to calculate royalties.
4. The record labels then pay the artists their royalties.

The database accounting system is an important part of the music industry’s revenue stream. It ensures that artists are paid fairly for their work and that the money is distributed in a timely manner.

Here are some of the benefits of using a database accounting system:

• It provides accurate and timely data on streaming activity.
• It helps to ensure that artists are paid fairly for their work.
• It can help to reduce fraud and errors.
• It can help to improve efficiency and compliance.

If you are a record label or aggregator/distributor, then you should consider using a database accounting system. It can help you to manage your finances more effectively and to ensure that you are paying artists their fair share.

Here are some of the challenges of using a database accounting system:

• The system can be complex and expensive to implement.
• The data may not be accurate or complete.
• The system may not be able to handle the volume of data that is generated by streaming services.
• The system may not be able to keep up with the changes in the music industry.

Despite these challenges, database accounting systems are a valuable tool for the music industry. They can help to ensure that artists are paid fairly for their work and that the money is distributed in a timely manner.

How are these database systems updated when metadata from the level changes — how are the updates sent to stream services for changed metadata?

There are a few different ways that database systems are updated when metadata from the label changes. One way is to use a manual process. In this process, a member of the label’s staff will make the changes to the metadata in the database and then send an email or notification to the streaming service to let them know that the changes have been made.

Another way to update the database is to use an automated process. In this process, the label will use a software application to automatically update the metadata in the database when it changes. This process can be more efficient than the manual process, but it can also be more expensive to set up and maintain.

The updates to the database are sent to the streaming service in a variety of ways. One way is to use a file transfer protocol (FTP). In this process, the label will use an FTP client to upload the updated metadata file to the streaming service’s server.

Another way to send the updates to the streaming service is to use a web service. In this process, the label will use a web service to send the updated metadata to the streaming service’s server.

The method that is used to update the database and send the updates to the streaming service will depend on the specific needs of the label and the streaming service.

Here are some of the benefits of using an automated process to update database metadata:

I was responding to another recording post on another platform (about the difficulty of getting a clean/dry vocal in a small, ‘bright’ room) and started looking at ‘mic carrel’ type sound absorbers. They range from several hundred dollars for larger units way down to about 30 dollars US. In fact, I ended up deciding to buy one of these:

You can also buy it directly from Monoprice with free US shipping, I believe:https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=602650&utm_term=&utm_campaign=PMax:+Smart+Shopping+-+Monoprice+-+Pro+Audio+%26+Instruments&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&hsa_acc=6614305189&hsa_cam=17489108046&hsa_grp=&hsa_ad=&hsa_src=x&hsa_tgt=&hsa_kw=&hsa_mt=&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkMGcBhCSARIsAIW6d0CfnEjr_I6PGCI6FPtwRcU10ulhTqX_A6h3bfIhUC8OzcdI7dh2xUUaAv0XEALw_wcB

So… How well does it work?

I works pretty darn well for helping to tame voice reflections off walls and other nearby objects (which has often been an issue for me when working in my primary computer/mixing area). It’s a well designed, heavy duty-feeling piece of kit with everything you need to set it up on a table or mount it to a mic stand or other vertical pipe/tube of similar size. (I would recommend using a heavy duty, stable stand for such mounting, possibly a tripod with broad spread; the unit is surprisingly heavy — you get your $30 worth of metal, for sure.)

Monoprice: “25dB OF NOISE REDUCTION”

“With it’s [sic] layer of acoustic foam, the Stage Right™ Microphone Isolation Shield reduces outside noise by 25dB, equivalent to a 17x difference in volume! By comparison, a normal conversation is roughly 55dB. The shield can easily reduce that volume down to 30dB, which is equivalent to a whisper. The Stage Right Microphone Isolation Shield does the same thing with any unwanted noise, keeping your vocal tracks cleaner and clearer by orders of magnitude.”

(That’s not going to silence a jackhammer under your window or a blaring TV across the room — but it will go a long way to drying up unwanted reflections from nearby objects and even reducing ambient noises like computer fans.)

I got my first tape recorder in 1962.

I’ve owned ten reel machines, four 4-tracks (3 TASCAM 3340s, a 40-4) and a 70-8 8 track with an integrated dbx NR rack. (I have no real idea how many cassette decks, certainly over 25. (The last cost the equivalent of $1500 when it was new in ’94.) I’ll be frank: coming from reel machines, my opinion of cassettes as a music medium is that they were convenient and cheap. You could put a couple in a shirt pocket. You could afford to record hours off the radio or all of band practices. The big problem was the horrible fidelity, high noise, high distortion — and, to me, the worst: terrible time domain accuracy — horrible wow and flutter. I hated the way acoustic guitars and nice pianos sounded on cassette.

I’ll be frank, while I get the ‘unintimidating’ factor and convenience — and I well understand that many interesting projects have been done on cassettes¹ — as someone who spent roughly a decade in and out of commercial studios in the 1980s as a freelance engineer and producer, and who ran a small project studio² for around another decade where at least some of my business revolved around remixing and extending 4 track cassette projects, I really have no fondness for trying to get even semi-serious recordings out of the format. (And, yes, I’ve heard Nebraska. I think it benefitted from being a mostly individual project, but if it’s to be held up as a fidelity standard, I’m unpersuaded.)

I’ll admit, my path and history has bent me to seek fidelity in the tools I commit to use. It was an intense struggle trying to get decent sound without spending a fortune when I was a kid, just as a listener. When I started playing music in college and then drifted into engineering (after ‘returning’ to a local two year college to go through their music department’s then-existent music production program), it was the punk rock era. Money was tight in my circles. You had to really scheme to get a decent sounding record, but if you worked hard, worked creatively, you could.

And, for sure, at first I was highly skeptical of digital. Right off, I thought going with the 44.1 kHz sample rate as a standard for the proposed CD standard was too low. (Professional digital audio for video was already established at 48 kHz, allowing a reconstruction filter band of around 4 kHz above the 20 kHz upper limit of human hearing, which, because of the filtering technologies of the time, was generally considered as making it easier to implement brick wall filtering by the so-called Nyquist point.)

¹ And that there is a certain, thinks-they’re-hipsters, science-and-measurement-denying contingent who maintain religiously that any form of analog is better than any form of digital (and will cite a lot of serious nonsense, often fixating on the so-called ‘stairstep’ appearance of wave form representations in DAW software displays while going blank eyed if one tries to explain the Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem or how reconstruction filtering works in the output of DAWs)

² After I could not keep the previously mentioned 8 track running, I bought my first ADAT in late ’92, added another, extended that into a computer-based DAW in ’96. Not everyone remembers ADATs fondly, but, for me, they allowed me to take the quality and capabilities of my studio up multiple notches with stunning quickness. But, as mechanical devices — with the same type of rapidly rotating heliscan heads found in VCRs — they did not last forever. Still, even after the transports began failing, I was able to continue using each deck’s bank of 8 ADC/DACs. (However, due to the design and throughput limits of the old ADAT lightpipe interface, you could only send and receive 8 simultaneous channels at once.)

I’m 71. I grew up on rock and roll, doo wop, psychedelic rock, acid rock, progressive rock, punk rock, post punk…

But, you know, maybe 50 years of rock is plenty…

I’m really not aware of anything new that’s gone on in the genre in the last 30 years — unless you count the ear-grating arrival of Auto-Tune (Melodyne, etc) as both supposedly cool ‘effect’ and as usually, clumsily obvious vocal editing/’correction.’

Now, that’s not to say that I don’t occasionally listen to rock along with a lot of other stuff.

Although so much from my long ago youth was terribly overexposed on the radio, to the point where I absolutely can’t stand listening to it (“Stairway to Heaven,” “Hotel California,” etc, etc, ad nauseum”), I’ve largely come to peace with the fact that the beloved rock of my youth is now a ‘classic’ genre — like folk, blues, trad jazz, swing, jump music, doo-wop, cool jazz, bossa nova, and so on.

There’s no shame in the bouncing ball of culture moving on, and there’s no shame in continuing to like great music from the past.

(That said, as a self-recording writer, I don’t think I’ve done any straight rock since about 1999 or so. And that was a joke aimed at a contingent of users on the free indie music stream service I used in that era to get my music out.)

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u/KS2Problema avatar

KS2Problema

6h

To that, I will add a couple of tips I think can contribute to more memorable rock:

Keep it (reasonably) simple. But that doesn’t mean that one should forgo the little grace bits that go into making a smooth song, features like bridges, intros, middle eights or other melodic breaks, and the like.

Unless you’re that kind of writer, it often pays to keep the lyrics on the simple side too, paying attention to basic cadences, not getting too tricky with syllable cramming/tumbling and that sort of thing.

Be on the watch for possible hooks, riffs, for other memorable elements that you can draw out of the song to build more of a sense of song identity around.

With regard to tempo, you might try finding something that feels solid and comfortable… And then try pushing the tempo just a bit.

When I compare and contrast the two very different school districts I attended, the difference was not overtly political, but the character of the districts manifested in distinctly different qualities of education.

One of the districts was progressive, in the sense that they explored and implemented new techniques and theories in education, and seemed open to innovations like team teaching and individualized, programmed learning (I took a number of programmed courses from the Stanford Research Institute that used clever die cut booklets and inserts to simulate individualized and self testing and grading. (This was the early 60s.) They also allowed good students to take advanced classes and shave at their own pace, and emphasized flexibility in dealing with individual students.

The other district I attended was obsessed with sports and trophies, was fixated with making students conform (absurd dress code repressively enforced by (frequently, obviously alcoholic) tough guy coaches), a carefully ‘safe,’ fresh-idea-free curriculum, a long list of banned books by important 19th and 20th century authors… No Walt Whitman. No Mark Twain. Teacher turn over was high, except on the coaching staff. Academics took an absolute backseat to athletics. One of the two advanced math teachers was a multi-championship track coach. He could not teach the classes he was assigned, he could not do the work, he could not grade the work. But he was a heck of a coach. Only four people out of over 30 in the class were able to complete the curriculum, evenas far as he taught it. We didn’t finish the predetermined curriculum. The four got A’s, while everyone else got a D — which was then raised to a C by the school administration when parents of the theoretically college prep students complained en masse. Well I valued my A and did queue well in my college boards in math, i, personally, would have really liked to have had the trig that we never got to because when he wasn’t taking the algebra 2 class out to the track to set up hurdles, he was bogged down trying to teach the middle of algebra 2 — which he clearly was not capable of performing — to uncomprehending college bound Juniors and seniors. (Yes, you could not take Algebra 2 there until your junior year. Meanwhile, if I had stayed in my old school district, I would have been a year ahead.) But, hey, we sure had a lot of damn track trophies.

Oh, there’s a coda to the story: on my first day in the athletic obsessed conservative district, I was stuck in the 8th grade counselor’s office arguing to be allowed to finish Algebra in 8th grade, since I had been taking it already and had an A so far just shitty of mid-year. The counselor wouldn’t have it, of course, but made a big show of ‘consulting with the administration,’ leaving me in his office, which he used for his counseling as well as his school purchasing agent activities. He had left some paperwork for audiovisual gear lying in front of me. Being familiar with net and list prices for a lot of audio gear myself I found myself looking it over and quickly realized he was paying well over twice what he should have been paying as an institutional buyer. I went home that night and told my parents that I was pretty sure purchasing office at my school was corrupt. They were used to me, and they laughed it off. But flash forward about two decades, and six of the seven, mostly long serving school board members were arrested for various forms of corruption and malfeasance, including kickbacks. One of them was acquitted. And the rest served various sentences.

I love YouTube in many ways. I love the fact that it’s an everyman’s platform. I love the fact that there are virtually no gatekeepers there.

But those things mean that, like the internet itself, you can’t believe everything you read, hear, or see, there.

There are some subtopics and real world processes that lend themselves to learning from video. YouTube is great for how-to stuff.

But video is often a highly inefficient way of absorbing detailed information.

If I am reading from a text, I can take it at my own speed, slowing down or speeding up intuitively and unconsciously as I read; I can move forward or back through the text, should I find a passage difficult or need to clarify an issue. In many cases, I can use an index or other search tools to quickly find precisely what I need to know.

Horses for horses, as they used to say.

I like to use the tool that fits the job. Video is great for some things. But for investigating complex or confounding topics, I’ll take a book or a blog or an article from someone who has taken the time to lay out his facts and thoughts coherently and, if expertise is an issue, whose credentials I can quickly investigate… all by reading.