Fuckin' brilliant.

How much you wanna bet that BMI, ASCAP, and the other usual suspects (RIAA etc.) will have a cow when they catch wind of this?

From the article:

Because many businesses already pay licensing companies like ASCAP and BMI for the right to play the radio in their establishments, Porter doesn't have to worry about licensing issues. And most places already have some kind of sound system in place, meaning they just have to plug the iPod in and press play.

i think it's extremely fucking brilliant!!
i wonder if he has a metallica collection for metallica bashing theme nights

Hmm. Dunno. You'd think if the restaurant/bar/whatever paid the ASCAP/BMI fee they could play the music all the like, just as if they were spinning their own CDs or playing the radio. I think.

But the liability of the dude actually putting the music into the iPods. . . that's a little more dicey.

Must be a Meme in ideaspace, I had this idea yesterday or this morning.
Note that he calls his service "soundtracking" not a full fledged DJ service. With the hip Philly audience , massive reatraunt scene and the sucky radio stations, he could make a killing. 'Course I'm hopelessy biased, living in philly and being a dj and all.

Neat, except that what he's essentially doing is renting a bunch of mix CDs in a convenient package.

But djrock3k is right -- it doesn't come anywhere *close* to "being a DJ". The whole point of heading out somewhere with a good DJ is that they know how to judge the crowd, and can build it up and slow it down to keep things interesting. Of course, you don't necessarily notice this until it's absent. :-)

I would've probably investigated streaming and DSL instead of iPods, myself, but I guess that doesn't have the same cachet.

Cypherpunks:

I'm reminded of the put-down "They don't even play
a *real* musical instrument."

A restaurant is not a rave.


"We will shake this cave!"
tom
-=W=-

Yo, this is wickity wickity wack. This wanksta gotta be the worst DJ on the planet. You can't PRE-RECORD a bumpin' DJ set for the clubs -- it's gotta come from the soul, word! You gotta vibe off the room, feel the flow, dig? This cat, he ain't nothin' but posin' like a room full of models at a camera convention. Word is bond. I dig.

/m9: Ill Mitch, is that you?

Edited by author 06-13-2003 04:28 PM
Now what venues could do is rent space for us to leave our mini recording device so we could record the prerecorded set withou having to spend the night at the club either.

Reminds me of that scene in some college humor movie where the professor tires of teaching his class to a room full of non-attending student's tape recorders so he starts leaving a playing tape recording instead of attending either.

I can piciture the club of the future with an iPod by the turntables and a bunch of minidiscs/mp3/etc recodring on the dance floor. Oy Vey.

This is an already popular thing in NYC restaurants and clubs. I know someone who builds the iTunes playlists, drops them on the iPod and deliveries them to the business requesting.

this is not a new idea...there's a company called activaire that has been doing this legit for a couple years in NYC...they license songs from small labels and distribute comps on devices to small boutiques.

/m11 The film was Real Genius starring Val Kilmer. It's a reverse of an Urban Legend... See http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/attend.htm for more details...

Z.