How do you value things that are freely obtained?

Amanda Palmer talks about how she’s monetized her art in a non-traditional manner, and how much success she has had and how much money she has made despite giving her music away for free.

Her husband had some words about piracy that dovetail beautifully with Amanda’s philosophy. They got me to thinking — how much do we really value the things that we get without paying for them?
Continue reading “How do you value things that are freely obtained?”

How do you value things that are freely obtained?
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The Four Chord Song

Via CompulsoryAccount7746, Justin Griffith, and the Youtube recommended links on the last video I posted today, every song in the whole universe is identical zomg!!!

Okay, not every song, and not identical, but there’s a crapload that are comprised of the same four chords. This isn’t exactly a new observation, but seeing Axis Of Awesome put them all together back to back like this is pretty damn sweet. This parallels with the fact that you can apparently also sing a large number of songs to a large number of tunes, thanks to a poetic and musical scansion called common meter.

The Four Chord Song

Will we ever run out of new music?

Some fun math for your Friday. Vsauce discusses whether or not it’s possible to ever run out of new music, directly challenging the thought that the lack of originality in popular music is due to us hitting some sort of “peak creativity”.

The number of possible combinations of bits that make up a valid mp3 might be significantly less than an admixture of every possible bit combination therein, of course — mp3s have a file structure that must be present to be readable. But for the purposes of this thought experiment, let’s assume a file format like mp3 that already has its header accounted for, and the rest is just a blind read of bits.

Will we ever run out of new music?

William Tapley writes Mitt Romney’s new campaign jingle

You might know him as the Third Eagle of the Apocalypse, the Co-Prophet of the End Times, and/or an absolutely unhinged religious conspiracy theorist. And now you’ll all know him as the bard behind Mitt Romney’s new campaign jingle. Just as soon as Romney picks it up and splashes it across his commercials.

A hero in Tapley’s mind. Well, that tells us everything we need to know about Romney’s chances.

William Tapley writes Mitt Romney’s new campaign jingle

Dear racist, misogynist, homophobic trolls: THANK YOU!

Clever Pie has crafted what could be the ultimate love song to the most useless and hate-filled parts of the internet. Also known as, “its general populace”.

I really hope those of you who get off on this kind of trolling see this video and have a moment of self-reflection. You know, at least long enough to realize that maybe you should re-lube and switch hands. No no, don’t stop to wipe the Dorito spice off. It’ll make it tingle.

Hat tip to Man Boobz and, in turn, Feministe.

Dear racist, misogynist, homophobic trolls: THANK YOU!

The Oncoming Storm, The Destroyer of Worlds, The Bringer of ROCK

The Cybermen have met their match, because here comes a full metal Doctor.

I just about burst into tears of joy when he hit the I Am the Doctor theme at 2:24. I hadn’t read the video description before listening and had a complete geek-out moment. It was epic. Undignified to the casual observer, I’m sure, but epic nonetheless.

Be right back, I’m going to go buy every single one of his covers, since he also does Castlevania, Megaman, Skyrim, Transformers, Ninja Turtles, and hell, even My Little Pony.

Hat tip to Phil Plait, who pretty much got the best title right out of the gate. Way to wreck it for the rest of us.

The Oncoming Storm, The Destroyer of Worlds, The Bringer of ROCK