Mayhem & Chaos Blog

Music industry watch

Finally an Artist HOWTO for Bands!

For the longest time I've wanted to write something like an Artist HOWTO that tells aspiring bands about the crooks who run the music industry. Things like not accepting a recording contract, keeping rights to your masters and all sorts of wisdom that aspiring artists should know about trying to be an artist in the age of the Internet. But, I am not a musical artist, so I don't have a complete picture required to actually write this, so I never pursued it.

Fortunately David Byrne has written this Artist HOWTO!

David lays out the realities of the music industry and outlines what models will work on the net. He's included lots and lots of good quotes from people who tell it like it is. This is simply the best concise wrap-up of the state of the industry today. Read it!

2007 may be the year the music industry broke. But the new music industry is already here -- we've been building it for the last 10 years!

Cool ideas

High fructose corn syrup is on the way out, finally.

At the beginning of 2007 I made the resolution to stop consuming as much High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and Trans Fats as possible. These two nasties are in food everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I've pretty much stopped shopping at traditional grocery stores and do as much shopping as I can at Trader Joes. It turns out that I don't have to read the labels at Trader Joes -- they've already figured out that HFCS is evil and I've seen it in only a few of their products. They still sell soda's that have plenty HFCS in them, but soda's haven't been part of my diet for a while, so those are easy to avoid.

Now a small grocery in Seattle has declared itself free of HFCS:

There are no Wheat Thins at PCC Natural Markets, no boxes of Kellogg's Raisin Bran, not even any Sara Lee whole grain bagels or Oroweat cracked-wheat hot dog buns.

What customers will find is almost unheard of: a supermarket free of products containing high-fructose corn syrup.

Three cheers for PCC! I hope that Trader Joes will follow suit and nuke the remainder of HFCS products on their shelves.