Conversations with creators and thinkers who are charting the way forward in a tech-saturated society. In our shift to a digital future, we need alternatives to Big Tech. Homepage: techtonic.fm

Also available as an MP3 podcast. More info at our Podcast Central page.

January 14, 2019: David Lowery (Camper Van Beethoven & Cracker) on music in the digital age

Listen to this show:  Pop-up player!

Image above from the U. Georgia article, also linked below.

This week: David Lowery (of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker) talking about musicians in the age of Spotify and Google

Pointers to David Lowery

• Upcoming NYC performance: Cracker/Camper Van Beethoven play this Sunday, Jan 20, in NYC. "Ever dreamed of a Harrison Ford hero swapping his blaster for a microphone? Then Lowery’s your man." -New Yorker

• David on Twitter: @davidclowery

• David's blog: Trichordist ("Artists for an Ethical and Sustainable Internet")

• Camper Van Beethoven: @CamperBeethoven and campervanbeethoven.com

• Cracker: @TheBandCracker and crackersoul.com

• Meet The New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss? (David's notes from his 2012 talk at the SF Music Tech Summit)

• David Lowery and the future of artists' rights (U. Georgia, Nov 8, 2018)

• A $1.6 Billion Spotify Lawsuit Is Based On A Law Made For Player Pianos (The Verge, March 2018)

• From 2016, David Lowery, Cracker Frontman and Artist Advocate, Explains His $150 Million Lawsuit Against Spotify (Billboard)... followed, the next year, by Spotify Settles $43 Million Class Action Copyright Lawsuit (Forbes)

• From 2014, David Lowery: Here's how Pandora is destroying musicians (Salon)

• Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, aka the EU Copyright Directive, which is getting a lot of attention for its Article 13 ... leading David Lowery to write, At This Point We Have to ask Ourselves: is Google Opposed to Article 13 or the Nation State Itself? (Nov 2018) ... see also NBC News on Article 13 (June 2018).

...and finally,...



Recent News

...on the Bezos divorce...



• For Owners Of Amazon’s Ring Security Cameras, Strangers May Have Been Watching Too (The Intercept, Jan 10): "Beginning in 2016, Ring reportedly provided its Ukraine-based research and development team access to a folder on Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service that contained every video created by every Ring camera around the world. . . . the video files were reportedly left unencrypted . . . [and] the Ukraine team was also provided with a corresponding database that linked each specific video file to corresponding specific Ring customers. . . . only a Ring customer’s email address was required to watch cameras from that person’s home."

• Amazon Sends New Year's Greeting to Win Over New Neighbors (Bloomberg, Jan 9): mailers promise "a long and mutually beneficial partnership" from Amazon's "investment" (you know, the investment where New Yorkers pay Amazon three billion dollars to open an office!)

• Apple announces new gadget stuff (WSJ, Jan 11, 2019), including "a triple rear camera for the highest-end model and a double rear camera for the two other models." Beavis & Butthead would have a field day. (Also, do users want multiple rear cameras? Or just to get back the headphone jack?)

• I Gave a Bounty Hunter $300. Then He Located Our Phone (Motherboard, Jan 8, 2019): "T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling access to their customers’ location data, and that data is ending up in the hands of bounty hunters and others not authorized to possess it, letting them track most phones in the country." ... leading to, the very next day, this article: "Senators Kamala Harris, Mark Warner, and Ron Wyden are coming out against telcos who are selling their customers' location data."

CES News

• As CTO of Vizio says in this interview with the Verge (Jan 7) - data collection in Smart TV's is now offsetting the cost of the hardware to the point that a non-Smart TV would have a higher price tag. Just like android phones, user data is used to reduce costs and stay competitive (as Scott Manley puts it). On that point, Bruce Potter writes, "Don’t ever turn on your smart tv features, regardless of vendor. Ever. Just don’t. Don’t even configure the WiFi."

• ...on that same point, Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook (Bloomberg, Jan 8)

• Here's a fun thread about CES idiocy, including some random product called "Sleep 2.0." Remember, "smart" = surveillance. As thread author Ed Zitron puts it, "Think you sleep good? You idiot. You rube. This is sleep 2.0"

• CES’s Kitchen of the Future Is Sort of a Nightmare (Eater.com, Jan 8): "Camera-laden appliances, voice-activated faucets: Seriously, who asked for this?"

Others Worth Reading

• On Facebook (The Ringer, Dec 2018): "almost everyone actually hates almost every interaction with almost every algorithm online" . . . "I miss the human internet with an intensity that borders on homesickness"

• This Startup Wants to Launch Giant Glowing Ads Into the Night Sky (Futurism.com, Jan 8): Russian startup StartRocket says it wants to display enormous billboard-style advertisements in the night sky using arrays of cubesats, a vision it illustrates in a concept video featuring what appear to be the McDonald’s and KFC logos hovering in the sky like new constellations. . . . According to project leader Vlad Sitnikov, this commodification of the night sky is the next logical step in advertising. . . . “We are ruled by brands and events,” he told Futurism. “The Super Bowl, Coca Cola, Brexit, the Olympics, Mercedes, FIFA, Supreme and the Mexican wall."

• It's All Over (Justin Smith, Jan 2019)

• Korean taxi drivers protesting ride-sharing app: thousands have been protesting for months; two taxi drivers have died already from setting themselves on fire in protest.

• If you get the TV show, "Adam Ruins Everything," Season 3, Episode 3 - "Adam Ruins Tech" - is excellent. Lots of truth about Amazon, Google, surveillance capitalism, and the tech monopolies.

- - -

PODCAST: Subscribe to the Techtonic podcast