Doctor Who 3rd Season….and 4th!

It’s official — the 3rd season of Doctor Who kicks off next Saturday.

The official website has a nifty flash-animated front page, which gives you a brief tour of several locations from the upcoming series, as well as a little surprise at the end. Check it out.

Plus, they’ve officially announced that the 4th season has been given the go-ahead, and that David Tennant will be staying in the role for the entire season, having been paid 1 million pounds. Woot!

Springtime, and my heart turns to Who Geekery.

Friday Music

Been so busy, I almost forgot to post this. Sorry, but this week is a short one (due to the previously-mentioned busyocity).

First up — a fun one, for my fellow children of the 70s, who sat enraptured while viewing Battle of the Planets on TV. A dance remix of the theme tune, with samples from the show: (Edit: No direct-click on this one — copy and paste the link, and it’ll work fine.) Cuban Boys – “Battle of the Planets (remix)”

Next, here’s a new group that’s being described as the Duran Duran of Norway — and listening to them, you can definitely tell that they’re drawing their inspirations from Simon Le Bon et al. New Violators – “Runaway.”

Another new group that is mining the synthpop past is the London-based Pleasure, whose second album, Pleasure II features this track, which I’ve been enjoying quite a lot: Pleasure – “Out of Love.”

Annika Trost is a German musician whose new album, Trust Me, features songs in German, English and French. I really like her sound — sounds like hip lounge-pop, like something that could be featured in the soundtrack to one of George Clooney’s “Oceans” movies. Trost – “In Diesem Raum.”

Lastly, I know that I posted this before, sometime way back there, but screw it — I love the mix of swelling strings, orchestral beats and spy guitar. Hooverphonic – “This Strange Effect.”

Back to work for me. Enjoy!

Save Internet Radio

The RIAA is trying to kill Internet streaming radio —

On March 1, 2007 the US Copyright Office stunned the Internet radio industry by releasing a ruling on performance royalty fees that are based exclusively on the number of people tuned into an Internet radio station, rather than on a portion of the station’s revenue. They discarded all evidence presented by webcasters about the potentially crippling effect on the industry of such a rate structure, and rubber-stamped the rates requested by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

Under this royalty structure, an Internet radio station with an average listenership of 1000 people would owe $134,000 in royalties during 2007 – plus $98,000 in back payments for 2006. In 2008 they would owe $171,000, and $220,000 in 2009. There is no way for a station with 1000 listeners to make that kind of money, and so this would effectively put them out of business.

Broadcasters, including NPR and Clear Channel, are trying to fight these new rules — one of the few times when Clear Channel has done something good. The fact that they’re on board with NPR should tell you something.

Simply put — the RIAA is a dinosaur. Rather than recognizing that the delivery and consumption of music has changed, they continue to enact draconian practices (forcing through this fee structure, lawsuits against music downloaders, etc.) in an attempt to roll back the changes — to put the genie back in the bottle. They can’t continue to do business as usual in a long-tail, democratized, user-driven environment, and so they’re attacking to maintain their grip on things.

Here are some resources for you — Get involved and stop this.

Copyright Law and the CRB: What Went Wrong?

SaveOurInternetRadio.com

WebcastersUnite.net

….plus, contact your Congressional representatives. Maybe they’ll actually listen to you.