In Port Perry, Ontario This Weekend?
You might like to stop by at the Port Perry Vinyl Record & Collectibles Show on Sunday, the 21st at Latcham Hall (121 Queen Street) from 10 am to 3 pm ; Admission will be $4.
OTA Television Changes Along The Border
Yesterday I received a notice from WPBS-TV, the PBS station based in Watertown NY that broadcasts to Eastern Ontario, that they will be changing over-the-air channels on July 29th, 2019. And apparently several American television stations have already begun transitioning to new channels to free up frequencies for wireless services.
People who use television antennas in southwestern Ontario area have already needed to rescan to find WMYD broadcasts from Detroit on June 1st, 2019 and a new wave of channel changes are expected in July, this transition eventually ending in the summer of 2020.
If you’re getting these stations from cable, satellite or online, you will not see any changes. But if you use a television antenna to get any American station you will need to pay attention to notices by your favourite stations, that will be posted on their official sites and social media feeds for information related to this transition.
Many channels will also start airing notices featuring known personalities from television programs like The Doctors, Inside Edition, Entertainment Tonight, Dr.Phil, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy a month or so before their transition date. And monthly roundups of these transitions are also posted on the official TV Answers Blog, with occasional posts regarding individual channels appearing on TV Answer’s Facebook page.
I’m a bit too deep into Ontario to get American television stations via my antenna but thought people along the border would like to know.
Goodbye iTunes
Bloomberg has reported that iTunes will be no more shortly, Apple having planned to replace this app with three individual apps for music, television and podcasts soon.
Originally announced on January 9th, 2001 at the 2001 Macworld Expo in San Francisco, this program had been released in March 2001 and brought Apple into the music industry, changing that industry by providing easy access to 200,000 individual tracks via a newly created online store by April 2003.
With iTunes 4.1, Apple extended access to their store to Microsoft Windows operating system users on October 16th, 2003, launching the Canadian iTunes store on December 2nd, 2004 with the release of iTunes 4.7.
When version 6 of the program was released on October 12th, 2005, users of this program were given access to popular television programs, Pixar shorts and music videos, later gaining access to Digital Rights Management free recordings via iTunes Plus and the release of version 7.2 of this program on May 29th, 2007. And Canadians were able to purchase or rent major studio films the following year on June 4, 2008 via iTunes 7.6, which eventually contributed to the demise of several DVD and blu-ray rental chains in Canada.
On May 13th, Apple had announced that the AppleTV app was available to Canadian iPhone, iPad and Apple TV customers that are running iOS 12.3 and tvOS 12.3. And that Mac and select Samsung Smart TV owners (2018/19 models) will be able to install and use that new program in the fall.
I suspect the iTunes music store will simply be rebranded to Apple Music, offering streaming and music downloads. And redirect older links to this service.
Record Shows This Weekend
Are you going to be in St. Catharines, Ontario or St. John’s, Newfoundland on Sunday, June the 2nd, 2019? Then you might like to pop in the local record shows that are happening in these cities.
Both events will be occurring at their respectful Holiday Inns :
St. Catharines Record Show / Holiday Inn, 327 Ontario St. / 10:30am-4pm / $4 Admission
Record Fair / Holiday Inn, 180 Portugal Cove Road / 10am-4pm / $2 Admission
World Book Day 2019
It’s World Book Day so I thought i’d write about what books I read the most. And of course these are usually music biographies and books on Canadian music history and the music industry itself.
When it comes to music biographies, my favourites are usually autobiographies or semi-autobiographies like “Freddie Mercury: His Life in His Own Words” by Greg Brooks and Simon Lupton, “My Story, My Dream” by Celine Dion, “U2 by U2” by U2, “Somebody To Love?: A Rock & Roll Memoir” by Grace Slick, “Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock & Roll” by Ann & Nancy Wilson, “Lips Unsealed: A Memoir” by Belinda Carlisle, “Between a Heart and a Rock Place: A Memoir” by Pat Benatar and “I am Ozzy” by Ozzy Osbourne.
The first music biography I had purchased was David Frike’s “Animal Instincts”, the official but unfortunately now out of print Def Leppard biography I had ordered using a coupon from my “Hysteria” cassette in the late 80’s. And although I have bought the odd unofficial Abba, Alanis Morissette and Freddy Mercury biographies, I prefer official releases from the artists themselves.
My very favourite Canadian music related books are usually about its history, like “The History of Canadian Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Bob Mercereau, “Is This Live?: Inside the Wild Early Years of MuchMusic: The Nation’s Music Station” by former Much Music VJ and “Black Velvet” composer Christopher Ward, “Music from Far and Wide: Celebrating 40 Years of the JUNO Awards” by various authors and “Oh Canada What a Feeling: A Musical Odyssey” by Martin Meluish. But unfortunately my favourite Canadian charting reference material from Nanda Lwin, namely “Top 40 hits: The essential chart guide” and “Top Albums: The Essential Chart Guide” can now only be found at certain public libraries, along with Rick Jackson’s “Encyclopedia of Canadian, Rock, Pop and Folk Music”.
Those are great resources if you’re looking for information on the Canadian music scene from the 1960’s to 2000’s and i’m happy to have secured copies of these books before they went out of print.
Another one of my out of print faves is the second edition, second printing of “Some Straight Talk About The Music Business” by Mona Coxson, one of the few books that explained the Canadian music industry’s inner workings before the release of “The Indie Band Bible: The Ultimate Guide to Breaking a Band” by Moist guitarist Mark Makoway in 2001.
“Music, Money, and Success: The Insider’s Guide to the Music Industry” by Jeffrey and Todd Brabec had covered the Canadian industry, in general. But this was a book that concentrated on the American and international music businesses.
I highly recommend the newly released 8th Edition of that book to anyone who wants to know how the industry now works, along with Steve Knopper’s “Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age” to know what went wrong in the 1990’s and 2000’s.
Those are pretty much my very favourite music related books in my personal library.
I hope that you will find these recommendations interesting.
Another Cash Grab?
The Copyright Act is being reviewed by the Canadian Government and some Canadians are of course concerned that this will include an extension of private copying levies to cell phones and the possibility of websites being blocked for minor copyright violations.
Unfortunately the government has been pretty quiet about this since their December 17th, 2017 press release and I didn’t want to speculate. But a line in the sand needs to be drawn, regardless of what is and isn’t being considered in the closed door meetings they might be having with foreign lobbyists.
I don’t think cell phones should be subject to the private copying levy because streaming is the preferred method of obtaining music on this device according to Music Canada, some customers listening to radio on these devices. And the possibility of having my site blocked because I accidentally linked a site that decided to offer pirated music is just absurd but these kind of proposals have been made in other countries.
This isn’t about giving artists more of their dues but giving labels more money. And streaming is where the improvements are needed when it comes to royalties for artists, so I see no point in levying cell phone storage.
The Copyright Board proposed levying hard drives and microSD memory cards in 2014 but that propose was rejected because a “recording audio medium” is defined by Part VIII, Section 79 of the Copyright Act as “a recording medium, regardless of its material form, onto which a sound recording may be reproduced and that is of a kind ordinarily used by individual consumers for that purpose”.
A cell phone’s primary function is communication, not the receipt, storage and playback of music. And this device is also used to take and view photographs and videos.
It makes no sense to levy this device for royalties for music and nothing else. And this slippery slope is not advantageous for consumers, who would object to paying levies for storing photographs, video and games on their new smartphone, or tablet.
I don’t like being gouged on data fees so I don’t listen to music, watch videos or play video games on mine now. And I seriously doubt i’d enjoy paying more for a newer model, for services I wouldn’t use.
Do we really want to burden the cell phone industry with this? And when it comes to blocking, this can be bypassed with Virtual Private Network services, so is the government going to go after those as well in the name of copyright?
VPNs are used by people who travel and use public wi-fi, for security reasons. Do we really want to loose access to this service over piracy? When a sharp decline in music piracy was observed in 2017 by Music Canada?
A form has been made available by Open Media to provide comments to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on these issues.
Please submit this form and share this link and your opinions on social media before September 17th, 2018. Thank you.